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diff --git a/5317-0.txt b/5317-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..079ff95 --- /dev/null +++ b/5317-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4649 @@ +The Project Gutenberg eBook of Through the Magic Door, by Arthur Conan Doyle + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you +will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before +using this eBook. + +Title: Through the Magic Door + +Author: Arthur Conan Doyle + +Release Date: June 30, 2002 [eBook #5317] +[Most recently updated: June 14, 2022] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +Produced by: Anders Thulin and Andrew Sly + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR *** + +[Illustration] + + + + +Through the Magic Door + +by Arthur Conan Doyle + + +Contents + + I. + II. + III. + IV. + V. + VI. + VII. + VIII. + IX. + X. + XI. + XII. + + + + +I. + + +I care not how humble your bookshelf may be, nor how lowly the room +which it adorns. Close the door of that room behind you, shut off with +it all the cares of the outer world, plunge back into the soothing +company of the great dead, and then you are through the magic portal +into that fair land whither worry and vexation can follow you no more. +You have left all that is vulgar and all that is sordid behind you. +There stand your noble, silent comrades, waiting in their ranks. Pass +your eye down their files. Choose your man. And then you have but to +hold up your hand to him and away you go together into dreamland. +Surely there would be something eerie about a line of books were it not +that familiarity has deadened our sense of it. Each is a mummified soul +embalmed in cere-cloth and natron of leather and printer’s ink. Each +cover of a true book enfolds the concentrated essence of a man. The +personalities of the writers have faded into the thinnest shadows, as +their bodies into impalpable dust, yet here are their very spirits at +your command. + +It is our familiarity also which has lessened our perception of the +miraculous good fortune which we enjoy. Let us suppose that we were +suddenly to learn that Shakespeare had returned to earth, and that he +would favour any of us with an hour of his wit and his fancy. How +eagerly we would seek him out! And yet we have him—the very best of +him—at our elbows from week to week, and hardly trouble ourselves to +put out our hands to beckon him down. No matter what mood a man may be +in, when once he has passed through the magic door he can summon the +world’s greatest to sympathize with him in it. If he be thoughtful, +here are the kings of thought. If he be dreamy, here are the masters of +fancy. Or is it amusement that he lacks? He can signal to any one of +the world’s great story-tellers, and out comes the dead man and holds +him enthralled by the hour. The dead are such good company that one may +come to think too little of the living. It is a real and a pressing +danger with many of us, that we should never find our own thoughts and +our own souls, but be ever obsessed by the dead. Yet second-hand +romance and second-hand emotion are surely better than the dull, +soul-killing monotony which life brings to most of the human race. But +best of all when the dead man’s wisdom and the dead man’s example give +us guidance and strength and in the living of our own strenuous days. + +Come through the magic door with me, and sit here on the green settee, +where you can see the old oak case with its untidy lines of volumes. +Smoking is not forbidden. Would you care to hear me talk of them? Well, +I ask nothing better, for there is no volume there which is not a dear, +personal friend, and what can a man talk of more pleasantly than that? +The other books are over yonder, but these are my own favourites—the +ones I care to re-read and to have near my elbow. There is not a +tattered cover which does not bring its mellow memories to me. + +Some of them represent those little sacrifices which make a possession +dearer. You see the line of old, brown volumes at the bottom? Every one +of those represents a lunch. They were bought in my student days, when +times were not too affluent. Threepence was my modest allowance for my +midday sandwich and glass of beer; but, as luck would have it, my way +to the classes led past the most fascinating bookshop in the world. +Outside the door of it stood a large tub filled with an ever-changing +litter of tattered books, with a card above which announced that any +volume therein could be purchased for the identical sum which I carried +in my pocket. As I approached it a combat ever raged betwixt the hunger +of a youthful body and that of an inquiring and omnivorous mind. Five +times out of six the animal won. But when the mental prevailed, then +there was an entrancing five minutes’ digging among out-of-date +almanacs, volumes of Scotch theology, and tables of logarithms, until +one found something which made it all worth while. If you will look +over these titles, you will see that I did not do so very badly. Four +volumes of Gordon’s “Tacitus” (life is too short to read originals, so +long as there are good translations), Sir William Temple’s Essays, +Addison’s works, Swift’s “Tale of a Tub,” Clarendon’s “History,” “Gil +Blas,” Buckingham’s Poems, Churchill’s Poems, “Life of Bacon”—not so +bad for the old threepenny tub. + +They were not always in such plebeian company. Look at the thickness of +the rich leather, and the richness of the dim gold lettering. Once they +adorned the shelves of some noble library, and even among the odd +almanacs and the sermons they bore the traces of their former +greatness, like the faded silk dress of the reduced gentlewoman, a +present pathos but a glory of the past. + +Reading is made too easy nowadays, with cheap paper editions and free +libraries. A man does not appreciate at its full worth the thing that +comes to him without effort. Who now ever gets the thrill which Carlyle +felt when he hurried home with the six volumes of Gibbon’s “History” +under his arm, his mind just starving for want of food, to devour them +at the rate of one a day? A book should be your very own before you can +really get the taste of it, and unless you have worked for it, you will +never have the true inward pride of possession. + +If I had to choose the one book out of all that line from which I have +had most pleasure and most profit, I should point to yonder stained +copy of Macaulay’s “Essays.” It seems entwined into my whole life as I +look backwards. It was my comrade in my student days, it has been with +me on the sweltering Gold Coast, and it formed part of my humble kit +when I went a-whaling in the Arctic. Honest Scotch harpooners have +addled their brains over it, and you may still see the grease stains +where the second engineer grappled with Frederick the Great. Tattered +and dirty and worn, no gilt-edged morocco-bound volume could ever take +its place for me. + +What a noble gateway this book forms through which one may approach the +study either of letters or of history! Milton, Machiavelli, Hallam, +Southey, Bunyan, Byron, Johnson, Pitt, Hampden, Clive, Hastings, +Chatham—what nuclei for thought! With a good grip of each how pleasant +and easy to fill in all that lies between! The short, vivid sentences, +the broad sweep of allusion, the exact detail, they all throw a glamour +round the subject and should make the least studious of readers desire +to go further. If Macaulay’s hand cannot lead a man upon those pleasant +paths, then, indeed, he may give up all hope of ever finding them. + +When I was a senior schoolboy this book—not this very volume, for it +had an even more tattered predecessor—opened up a new world to me. +History had been a lesson and abhorrent. Suddenly the task and the +drudgery became an incursion into an enchanted land, a land of colour +and beauty, with a kind, wise guide to point the path. In that great +style of his I loved even the faults—indeed, now that I come to think +of it, it was the faults which I loved best. No sentence could be too +stiff with rich embroidery, and no antithesis too flowery. It pleased +me to read that “a universal shout of laughter from the Tagus to the +Vistula informed the Pope that the days of the crusades were past,” and +I was delighted to learn that “Lady Jerningham kept a vase in which +people placed foolish verses, and Mr. Dash wrote verses which were fit +to be placed in Lady Jerningham’s vase.” Those were the kind of +sentences which used to fill me with a vague but enduring pleasure, +like chords which linger in the musician’s ear. A man likes a plainer +literary diet as he grows older, but still as I glance over the Essays +I am filled with admiration and wonder at the alternate power of +handling a great subject, and of adorning it by delightful detail—just +a bold sweep of the brush, and then the most delicate stippling. As he +leads you down the path, he for ever indicates the alluring side-tracks +which branch away from it. An admirable, if somewhat old-fashioned, +literary and historical education might be effected by working through +every book which is alluded to in the Essays. I should be curious, +however, to know the exact age of the youth when he came to the end of +his studies. + +I wish Macaulay had written a historical novel. I am convinced that it +would have been a great one. I do not know if he had the power of +drawing an imaginary character, but he certainly had the gift of +reconstructing a dead celebrity to a remarkable degree. Look at the +simple half-paragraph in which he gives us Johnson and his atmosphere. +Was ever a more definite picture given in a shorter space— + +“As we close it, the club-room is before us, and the table on which +stand the omelet for Nugent, and the lemons for Johnson. There are +assembled those heads which live for ever on the canvas of Reynolds. +There are the spectacles of Burke, and the tall thin form of Langton, +the courtly sneer of Beauclerk and the beaming smile of Garrick, Gibbon +tapping his snuff-box, and Sir Joshua with his trumpet in his ear. In +the foreground is that strange figure which is as familiar to us as the +figures of those among whom we have been brought up—the gigantic body, +the huge massy face, seamed with the scars of disease, the brown coat, +the black worsted stockings, the grey wig with the scorched foretop, +the dirty hands, the nails bitten and pared to the quick. We see the +eyes and mouth moving with convulsive twitches; we see the heavy form +rolling; we hear it puffing, and then comes the ‘Why, sir!’ and the +‘What then, sir?’ and the ‘No, sir!’ and the ‘You don’t see your way +through the question, sir!’” + +It is etched into your memory for ever. + +I can remember that when I visited London at the age of sixteen the +first thing I did after housing my luggage was to make a pilgrimage to +Macaulay’s grave, where he lies in Westminster Abbey, just under the +shadow of Addison, and amid the dust of the poets whom he had loved so +well. It was the one great object of interest which London held for me. +And so it might well be, when I think of all I owe him. It is not +merely the knowledge and the stimulation of fresh interests, but it is +the charming gentlemanly tone, the broad, liberal outlook, the general +absence of bigotry and of prejudice. My judgment now confirms all that +I felt for him then. + +My four-volume edition of the History stands, as you see, to the right +of the Essays. Do you recollect the third chapter of that work—the one +which reconstructs the England of the seventeenth century? It has +always seemed to me the very high-water mark of Macaulay’s powers, with +its marvellous mixture of precise fact and romantic phrasing. The +population of towns, the statistics of commerce, the prosaic facts of +life are all transmuted into wonder and interest by the handling of the +master. You feel that he could have cast a glamour over the +multiplication table had he set himself to do so. Take a single +concrete example of what I mean. The fact that a Londoner in the +country, or a countryman in London, felt equally out of place in those +days of difficult travel, would seem to hardly require stating, and to +afford no opportunity of leaving a strong impression upon the reader’s +mind. See what Macaulay makes of it, though it is no more than a +hundred other paragraphs which discuss a hundred various points— + +“A cockney in a rural village was stared at as much as if he had +intruded into a kraal of Hottentots. On the other hand, when the lord +of a Lincolnshire or Shropshire manor appeared in Fleet Street, he was +as easily distinguished from the resident population as a Turk or a +Lascar. His dress, his gait, his accent, the manner in which he gazed +at the shops, stumbled into gutters, ran against the porters, and stood +under the waterspouts, marked him out as an excellent subject for the +operations of swindlers and banterers. Bullies jostled him into the +kennel, Hackney coachmen splashed him from head to foot, thieves +explored with perfect security the huge pockets of his horseman’s coat, +while he stood entranced by the splendour of the Lord Mayor’s Show. +Money-droppers, sore from the cart’s tail, introduced themselves to +him, and appeared to him the most honest friendly gentlemen that he had +ever seen. Painted women, the refuse of Lewkner Lane and Whetstone +Park, passed themselves on him for countesses and maids of honour. If +he asked his way to St. James’, his informants sent him to Mile End. If +he went into a shop, he was instantly discerned to be a fit purchaser +of everything that nobody else would buy, of second-hand embroidery, +copper rings, and watches that would not go. If he rambled into any +fashionable coffee-house, he became a mark for the insolent derision of +fops, and the grave waggery of Templars. Enraged and mortified, he soon +returned to his mansion, and there, in the homage of his tenants and +the conversation of his boon companions, found consolation for the +vexations and humiliations which he had undergone. There he was once +more a great man, and saw nothing above himself except when at the +assizes he took his seat on the bench near the Judge, or when at the +muster of the militia he saluted the Lord Lieutenant.” + +On the whole, I should put this detached chapter of description at the +very head of his Essays, though it happens to occur in another volume. +The History as a whole does not, as it seems to me, reach the same +level as the shorter articles. One cannot but feel that it is a +brilliant piece of special pleading from a fervid Whig, and that there +must be more to be said for the other side than is there set forth. +Some of the Essays are tinged also, no doubt, by his own political and +religious limitations. The best are those which get right away into the +broad fields of literature and philosophy. Johnson, Walpole, Madame +D’Arblay, Addison, and the two great Indian ones, Clive and Warren +Hastings, are my own favourites. Frederick the Great, too, must surely +stand in the first rank. Only one would I wish to eliminate. It is the +diabolically clever criticism upon Montgomery. One would have wished to +think that Macaulay’s heart was too kind, and his soul too gentle, to +pen so bitter an attack. Bad work will sink of its own weight. It is +not necessary to souse the author as well. One would think more highly +of the man if he had not done that savage bit of work. + +I don’t know why talking of Macaulay always makes me think of Scott, +whose books in a faded, olive-backed line, have a shelf, you see, of +their own. Perhaps it is that they both had so great an influence, and +woke such admiration in me. Or perhaps it is the real similarity in the +minds and characters of the two men. You don’t see it, you say? Well, +just think of Scott’s “Border Ballads,” and then of Macaulay’s “Lays.” +The machines must be alike, when the products are so similar. Each was +the only man who could possibly have written the poems of the other. +What swing and dash in both of them! What a love of all that is manly +and noble and martial! So simple, and yet so strong. But there are +minds on which strength and simplicity are thrown away. They think that +unless a thing is obscure it must be superficial, whereas it is often +the shallow stream which is turbid, and the deep which is clear. Do you +remember the fatuous criticism of Matthew Arnold upon the glorious +“Lays,” where he calls out “is this poetry?” after quoting— + +“And how can man die better + Than facing fearful odds +For the ashes of his fathers + And the Temples of his Gods?” + + +In trying to show that Macaulay had not the poetic sense he was really +showing that he himself had not the dramatic sense. The baldness of the +idea and of the language had evidently offended him. But this is +exactly where the true merit lies. Macaulay is giving the rough, blunt +words with which a simple-minded soldier appeals to two comrades to +help him in a deed of valour. Any high-flown sentiment would have been +absolutely out of character. The lines are, I think, taken with their +context, admirable ballad poetry, and have just the dramatic quality +and sense which a ballad poet must have. That opinion of Arnold’s shook +my faith in his judgment, and yet I would forgive a good deal to the +man who wrote— + +“One more charge and then be dumb, + When the forts of Folly fall, +May the victors when they come + Find my body near the wall.” + + +Not a bad verse that for one’s life aspiration. + +This is one of the things which human society has not yet +understood—the value of a noble, inspiriting text. When it does we +shall meet them everywhere engraved on appropriate places, and our +progress through the streets will be brightened and ennobled by one +continual series of beautiful mental impulses and images, reflected +into our souls from the printed thoughts which meet our eyes. To think +that we should walk with empty, listless minds while all this splendid +material is running to waste. I do not mean mere Scriptural texts, for +they do not bear the same meaning to all, though what human creature +can fail to be spurred onwards by “Work while it is day, for the night +cometh when no man can work.” But I mean those beautiful thoughts—who +can say that they are uninspired thoughts?—which may be gathered from a +hundred authors to match a hundred uses. A fine thought in fine +language is a most precious jewel, and should not be hid away, but be +exposed for use and ornament. To take the nearest example, there is a +horse-trough across the road from my house, a plain stone trough, and +no man could pass it with any feelings save vague discontent at its +ugliness. But suppose that on its front slab you print the verse of +Coleridge— + +“He prayeth best who loveth best + All things, both great and small +For the dear Lord who fashioned him + He knows and loveth all.” + + +I fear I may misquote, for I have not “The Ancient Mariner” at my +elbow, but even as it stands does it not elevate the horse-trough? We +all do this, I suppose, in a small way for ourselves. There are few men +who have not some chosen quotations printed on their study +mantelpieces, or, better still, in their hearts. Carlyle’s +transcription of “Rest! Rest! Shall I not have all Eternity to rest +in!” is a pretty good spur to a weary man. But what we need is a more +general application of the same thing for public and not for private +use, until people understand that a graven thought is as beautiful an +ornament as any graven image, striking through the eye right deep down +into the soul. + +However, all this has nothing to do with Macaulay’s glorious lays, save +that when you want some flowers of manliness and patriotism you can +pluck quite a bouquet out of those. I had the good fortune to learn the +Lay of Horatius off by heart when I was a child, and it stamped itself +on my plastic mind, so that even now I can reel off almost the whole of +it. Goldsmith said that in conversation he was like the man who had a +thousand pounds in the bank, but could not compete with the man who had +an actual sixpence in his pocket. So the ballad that you bear in your +mind outweighs the whole bookshelf which waits for reference. But I +want you now to move your eye a little farther down the shelf to the +line of olive-green volumes. That is my edition of Scott. But surely I +must give you a little breathing space before I venture upon them. + + + + +II. + + +It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good +books which are your very own. You may not appreciate them at first. +You may pine for your novel of crude and unadulterated adventure. You +may, and will, give it the preference when you can. But the dull days +come, and the rainy days come, and always you are driven to fill up the +chinks of your reading with the worthy books which wait so patiently +for your notice. And then suddenly, on a day which marks an epoch in +your life, you understand the difference. You see, like a flash, how +the one stands for nothing, and the other for literature. From that day +onwards you may return to your crudities, but at least you do so with +some standard of comparison in your mind. You can never be the same as +you were before. Then gradually the good thing becomes more dear to +you; it builds itself up with your growing mind; it becomes a part of +your better self, and so, at last, you can look, as I do now, at the +old covers and love them for all that they have meant in the past. Yes, +it was the olive-green line of Scott’s novels which started me on to +rhapsody. They were the first books I ever owned—long, long before I +could appreciate or even understand them. But at last I realized what a +treasure they were. In my boyhood I read them by surreptitious +candle-ends in the dead of the night, when the sense of crime added a +new zest to the story. Perhaps you have observed that my “Ivanhoe” is +of a different edition from the others. The first copy was left in the +grass by the side of a stream, fell into the water, and was eventually +picked up three days later, swollen and decomposed, upon a mud-bank. I +think I may say, however, that I had worn it out before I lost it. +Indeed, it was perhaps as well that it was some years before it was +replaced, for my instinct was always to read it again instead of +breaking fresh ground. + +I remember the late James Payn telling the anecdote that he and two +literary friends agreed to write down what scene in fiction they +thought the most dramatic, and that on examining the papers it was +found that all three had chosen the same. It was the moment when the +unknown knight, at Ashby-de-la-Zouch, riding past the pavilions of the +lesser men, strikes with the sharp end of his lance, in a challenge to +mortal combat, the shield of the formidable Templar. It was, indeed, a +splendid moment! What matter that no Templar was allowed by the rules +of his Order to take part in so secular and frivolous an affair as a +tournament? It is the privilege of great masters to make things so, and +it is a churlish thing to gainsay it. Was it not Wendell Holmes who +described the prosaic man, who enters a drawing-room with a couple of +facts, like ill-conditioned bull-dogs at his heels, ready to let them +loose on any play of fancy? The great writer can never go wrong. If +Shakespeare gives a sea-coast to Bohemia, or if Victor Hugo calls an +English prize-fighter Mr. Jim-John-Jack—well, it _was_ so, and that’s +an end of it. “There is no second line of rails at that point,” said an +editor to a minor author. “I make a second line,” said the author; and +he was within his rights, if he can carry his readers’ conviction with +him. + +But this is a digression from “Ivanhoe.” What a book it is! The second +greatest historical novel in our language, I think. Every successive +reading has deepened my admiration for it. Scott’s soldiers are always +as good as his women (with exceptions) are weak; but here, while the +soldiers are at their very best, the romantic figure of Rebecca redeems +the female side of the story from the usual commonplace routine. Scott +drew manly men because he was a manly man himself, and found the task a +sympathetic one. + +He drew young heroines because a convention demanded it, which he had +never the hardihood to break. It is only when we get him for a dozen +chapters on end with a minimum of petticoat—in the long stretch, for +example, from the beginning of the Tournament to the end of the Friar +Tuck incident—that we realize the height of continued romantic +narrative to which he could attain. I don’t think in the whole range of +our literature we have a finer sustained flight than that. + +There is, I admit, an intolerable amount of redundant verbiage in +Scott’s novels. Those endless and unnecessary introductions make the +shell very thick before you come to the oyster. They are often +admirable in themselves, learned, witty, picturesque, but with no +relation or proportion to the story which they are supposed to +introduce. Like so much of our English fiction, they are very good +matter in a very bad place. Digression and want of method and order are +traditional national sins. Fancy introducing an essay on how to live on +nothing a year as Thackeray did in “Vanity Fair,” or sandwiching in a +ghost story as Dickens has dared to do. As well might a dramatic author +rush up to the footlights and begin telling anecdotes while his play +was suspending its action and his characters waiting wearily behind +him. It is all wrong, though every great name can be quoted in support +of it. Our sense of form is lamentably lacking, and Sir Walter sinned +with the rest. But get past all that to a crisis in the real story, and +who finds the terse phrase, the short fire-word, so surely as he? Do +you remember when the reckless Sergeant of Dragoons stands at last +before the grim Puritan, upon whose head a price has been set: “A +thousand marks or a bed of heather!” says he, as he draws. The Puritan +draws also: “The Sword of the Lord and of Gideon!” says he. No verbiage +there! But the very spirit of either man and of either party, in the +few stern words, which haunt your mind. “Bows and Bills!” cry the Saxon +Varangians, as the Moslem horse charges home. You feel it is just what +they must have cried. Even more terse and businesslike was the actual +battle-cry of the fathers of the same men on that long-drawn day when +they fought under the “Red Dragon of Wessex” on the low ridge at +Hastings. “Out! Out!” they roared, as the Norman chivalry broke upon +them. Terse, strong, prosaic—the very genius of the race was in the +cry. + +Is it that the higher emotions are not there? Or is it that they are +damped down and covered over as too precious to be exhibited? Something +of each, perhaps. I once met the widow of the man who, as a young +signal midshipman, had taken Nelson’s famous message from the Signal +Yeoman and communicated it to the ship’s company. The officers were +impressed. The men were not. “Duty!” they muttered. “We’ve always done +it. Why not?” Anything in the least highfalutin’ would depress, not +exalt, a British company. It is the under statement which delights +them. German troops can march to battle singing Luther’s hymns. +Frenchmen will work themselves into a frenzy by a song of glory and of +Fatherland. Our martial poets need not trouble to imitate—or at least +need not imagine that if they do so they will ever supply a want to the +British soldier. Our sailors working the heavy guns in South Africa +sang: “Here’s another lump of sugar for the Bird.” I saw a regiment go +into action to the refrain of “A little bit off the top.” The martial +poet aforesaid, unless he had the genius and the insight of a Kipling, +would have wasted a good deal of ink before he had got down to such +chants as these. The Russians are not unlike us in this respect. I +remember reading of some column ascending a breach and singing lustily +from start to finish, until a few survivors were left victorious upon +the crest with the song still going. A spectator inquired what wondrous +chant it was which had warmed them to such a deed of valour, and he +found that the exact meaning of the words, endlessly repeated, was +“Ivan is in the garden picking cabbages.” The fact is, I suppose, that +a mere monotonous sound may take the place of the tom-tom of savage +warfare, and hypnotize the soldier into valour. + +Our cousins across the Atlantic have the same blending of the comic +with their most serious work. Take the songs which they sang during the +most bloody war which the Anglo-Celtic race has ever waged—the only war +in which it could have been said that they were stretched to their +uttermost and showed their true form—“Tramp, tramp, tramp,” “John +Brown’s Body,” “Marching through Georgia”—all had a playful humour +running through them. Only one exception do I know, and that is the +most tremendous war-song I can recall. Even an outsider in time of +peace can hardly read it without emotion. I mean, of course, Julia Ward +Howe’s “War-Song of the Republic,” with the choral opening line: “Mine +eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” If that were ever +sung upon a battle-field the effect must have been terrific. + +A long digression, is it not? But that is the worst of the thoughts at +the other side of the Magic Door. You can’t pull one out without a +dozen being entangled with it. But it was Scott’s soldiers that I was +talking of, and I was saying that there is nothing theatrical, no +posing, no heroics (the thing of all others which the hero abominates), +but just the short bluff word and the simple manly ways, with every +expression and metaphor drawn from within his natural range of thought. +What a pity it is that he, with his keen appreciation of the soldier, +gave us so little of those soldiers who were his own contemporaries—the +finest, perhaps, that the world has ever seen! It is true that he wrote +a life of the great Soldier Emperor, but that was the one piece of +hackwork of his career. How could a Tory patriot, whose whole training +had been to look upon Napoleon as a malignant Demon, do justice to such +a theme? But the Europe of those days was full of material which he of +all men could have drawn with a sympathetic hand. What would we not +give for a portrait of one of Murat’s light-cavalrymen, or of a +Grenadier of the Old Guard, drawn with the same bold strokes as the +Rittmeister of Gustavus or the archers of the French King’s Guard in +“Quentin Durward”? + +In his visit to Paris Scott must have seen many of those iron men who +during the preceding twenty years had been the scourge and also the +redemption of Europe. To us the soldiers who scowled at him from the +sidewalks in 1814 would have been as interesting and as much romantic +figures of the past as the mail-clad knights or ruffling cavaliers of +his novels. A picture from the life of a Peninsular veteran, with his +views upon the Duke, would be as striking as Dugald Dalgetty from the +German wars. But then no man ever does realize the true interest of the +age in which he happens to live. All sense of proportion is lost, and +the little thing hard-by obscures the great thing at a distance. It is +easy in the dark to confuse the fire-fly and the star. Fancy, for +example, the Old Masters seeking their subjects in inn parlours, or St. +Sebastians, while Columbus was discovering America before their very +faces. + +I have said that I think “Ivanhoe” the best of Scott’s novels. I +suppose most people would subscribe to that. But how about the second +best? It speaks well for their general average that there is hardly one +among them which might not find some admirers who would vote it to a +place of honour. To the Scottish-born man those novels which deal with +Scottish life and character have a quality of raciness which gives them +a place apart. There is a rich humour of the soil in such books as “Old +Mortality,” “The Antiquary,” and “Rob Roy,” which puts them in a +different class from the others. His old Scottish women are, next to +his soldiers, the best series of types that he has drawn. At the same +time it must be admitted that merit which is associated with dialect +has such limitations that it can never take the same place as work +which makes an equal appeal to all the world. On the whole, perhaps, +“Quentin Durward,” on account of its wider interests, its strong +character-drawing, and the European importance of the events and people +described, would have my vote for the second place. It is the father of +all those sword-and-cape novels which have formed so numerous an +addition to the light literature of the last century. The pictures of +Charles the Bold and of the unspeakable Louis are extraordinarily +vivid. I can see those two deadly enemies watching the hounds chasing +the herald, and clinging to each other in the convulsion of their cruel +mirth, more clearly than most things which my eyes have actually rested +upon. + +The portrait of Louis with his astuteness, his cruelty, his +superstition and his cowardice is followed closely from Comines, and is +the more effective when set up against his bluff and war-like rival. It +is not often that historical characters work out in their actual +physique exactly as one would picture them to be, but in the High +Church of Innsbruck I have seen effigies of Louis and Charles which +might have walked from the very pages of Scott-Louis, thin, ascetic, +varminty; and Charles with the head of a prize-fighter. It is hard on +us when a portrait upsets all our preconceived ideas, when, for +example, we see in the National Portrait Gallery a man with a noble, +olive-tinted, poetic face, and with a start read beneath it that it is +the wicked Judge Jeffreys. Occasionally, however, as at Innsbruck, we +are absolutely satisfied. I have before me on the mantelpiece yonder a +portrait of a painting which represents Queen Mary’s Bothwell. Take it +down and look at it. Mark the big head, fit to conceive large schemes; +the strong animal face, made to captivate a sensitive, feminine woman; +the brutally forceful features—the mouth with a suggestion of wild +boars’ tusks behind it, the beard which could bristle with fury: the +whole man and his life-history are revealed in that picture. I wonder +if Scott had ever seen the original which hangs at the Hepburn family +seat? + +Personally, I have always had a very high opinion of a novel which the +critics have used somewhat harshly, and which came almost the last from +his tired pen. I mean “Count Robert of Paris.” I am convinced that if +it had been the first, instead of the last, of the series it would have +attracted as much attention as “Waverley.” I can understand the state +of mind of the expert, who cried out in mingled admiration and despair: +“I have studied the conditions of Byzantine Society all my life, and +here comes a Scotch lawyer who makes the whole thing clear to me in a +flash!” Many men could draw with more or less success Norman England, +or mediaeval France, but to reconstruct a whole dead civilization in so +plausible a way, with such dignity and such minuteness of detail, is, I +should think, a most wonderful _tour de force_. His failing health +showed itself before the end of the novel, but had the latter half +equalled the first, and contained scenes of such humour as Anna Comnena +reading aloud her father’s exploits, or of such majesty as the account +of the muster of the Crusaders upon the shores of the Bosphorus, then +the book could not have been gainsaid its rightful place in the very +front rank of the novels. + +I would that he had carried on his narrative, and given us a glimpse of +the actual progress of the First Crusade. What an incident! Was ever +anything in the world’s history like it? It had what historical +incidents seldom have, a definite beginning, middle and end, from the +half-crazed preaching of Peter down to the Fall of Jerusalem. Those +leaders! It would take a second Homer to do them justice. Godfrey the +perfect soldier and leader, Bohemund the unscrupulous and formidable, +Tancred the ideal knight errant, Robert of Normandy the half-mad hero! +Here is material so rich that one feels one is not worthy to handle it. +What richest imagination could ever evolve anything more marvellous and +thrilling than the actual historical facts? + +But what a glorious brotherhood the novels are! Think of the pure +romance of “The Talisman”; the exquisite picture of Hebridean life in +“The Pirate”; the splendid reproduction of Elizabethan England in +“Kenilworth”; the rich humour of the “Legend of Montrose”; above all, +bear in mind that in all that splendid series, written in a coarse age, +there is not one word to offend the most sensitive ear, and it is borne +in upon one how great and noble a man was Walter Scott, and how high +the service which he did for literature and for humanity. + +For that reason his life is good reading, and there it is on the same +shelf as the novels. Lockhart was, of course, his son-in-law and his +admiring friend. The ideal biographer should be a perfectly impartial +man, with a sympathetic mind, but a stern determination to tell the +absolute truth. One would like the frail, human side of a man as well +as the other. I cannot believe that anyone in the world was ever quite +so good as the subject of most of our biographies. Surely these worthy +people swore a little sometimes, or had a keen eye for a pretty face, +or opened the second bottle when they would have done better to stop at +the first, or did something to make us feel that they were men and +brothers. They need not go the length of the lady who began a biography +of her deceased husband with the words—“D—— was a dirty man,” but the +books certainly would be more readable, and the subjects more lovable +too, if we had greater light and shade in the picture. + +But I am sure that the more one knew of Scott the more one would have +admired him. He lived in a drinking age, and in a drinking country, and +I have not a doubt that he took an allowance of toddy occasionally of +an evening which would have laid his feeble successors under the table. +His last years, at least, poor fellow, were abstemious enough, when he +sipped his barley-water, while the others passed the decanter. But what +a high-souled chivalrous gentleman he was, with how fine a sense of +honour, translating itself not into empty phrases, but into years of +labour and denial! You remember how he became sleeping partner in a +printing house, and so involved himself in its failure. There was a +legal, but very little moral, claim against him, and no one could have +blamed him had he cleared the account by a bankruptcy, which would have +enabled him to become a rich man again within a few years. Yet he took +the whole burden upon himself and bore it for the rest of his life, +spending his work, his time, and his health in the one long effort to +save his honour from the shadow of a stain. It was nearly a hundred +thousand pounds, I think, which he passed on to the creditors—a great +record, a hundred thousand pounds, with his life thrown in. + +And what a power of work he had! It was superhuman. Only the man who +has tried to write fiction himself knows what it means when it is +recorded that Scott produced two of his long novels in one single year. +I remember reading in some book of reminiscences—on second thoughts it +was in Lockhart himself—how the writer had lodged in some rooms in +Castle Street, Edinburgh, and how he had seen all evening the +silhouette of a man outlined on the blind of the opposite house. All +evening the man wrote, and the observer could see the shadow hand +conveying the sheets of paper from the desk to the pile at the side. He +went to a party and returned, but still the hand was moving the sheets. +Next morning he was told that the rooms opposite were occupied by +Walter Scott. + +A curious glimpse into the psychology of the writer of fiction is shown +by the fact that he wrote two of his books—good ones, too—at a time +when his health was such that he could not afterwards remember one word +of them, and listened to them when they were read to him as if he were +hearing the work of another man. Apparently the simplest processes of +the brain, such as ordinary memory, were in complete abeyance, and yet +the very highest and most complex faculty—imagination in its supreme +form—was absolutely unimpaired. It is an extraordinary fact, and one to +be pondered over. It gives some support to the feeling which every +writer of imaginative work must have, that his supreme work comes to +him in some strange way from without, and that he is only the medium +for placing it upon the paper. The creative thought—the germ thought +from which a larger growth is to come, flies through his brain like a +bullet. He is surprised at his own idea, with no conscious sense of +having originated it. And here we have a man, with all other brain +functions paralyzed, producing this magnificent work. Is it possible +that we are indeed but conduit pipes from the infinite reservoir of the +unknown? Certainly it is always our best work which leaves the least +sense of personal effort. + +And to pursue this line of thought, is it possible that frail physical +powers and an unstable nervous system, by keeping a man’s materialism +at its lowest, render him a more fitting agent for these spiritual +uses? It is an old tag that + +“Great Genius is to madness close allied, +And thin partitions do those rooms divide.” + + +But, apart from genius, even a moderate faculty for imaginative work +seems to me to weaken seriously the ties between the soul and the body. + +Look at the British poets of a century ago: Chatterton, Burns, Shelley, +Keats, Byron. Burns was the oldest of that brilliant band, yet Burns +was only thirty-eight when he passed away, “burned out,” as his brother +terribly expressed it. Shelley, it is true, died by accident, and +Chatterton by poison, but suicide is in itself a sign of a morbid +state. It is true that Rogers lived to be almost a centenarian, but he +was banker first and poet afterwards. Wordsworth, Tennyson, and +Browning have all raised the average age of the poets, but for some +reason the novelists, especially of late years, have a deplorable +record. They will end by being scheduled with the white-lead workers +and other dangerous trades. Look at the really shocking case of the +young Americans, for example. What a band of promising young writers +have in a few years been swept away! There was the author of that +admirable book, “David Harum”; there was Frank Norris, a man who had in +him, I think, the seeds of greatness more than almost any living +writer. His “Pit” seemed to me one of the finest American novels. He +also died a premature death. Then there was Stephen Crane—a man who had +also done most brilliant work, and there was Harold Frederic, another +master-craftsman. Is there any profession in the world which in +proportion to its numbers could show such losses as that? In the +meantime, out of our own men Robert Louis Stevenson is gone, and Henry +Seton Merriman, and many another. + +Even those great men who are usually spoken of as if they had rounded +off their career were really premature in their end. Thackeray, for +example, in spite of his snowy head, was only 52; Dickens attained the +age of 58; on the whole, Sir Walter, with his 61 years of life, +although he never wrote a novel until he was over 40, had, fortunately +for the world, a longer working career than most of his brethren. + +He employed his creative faculty for about twenty years, which is as +much, I suppose, as Shakespeare did. The bard of Avon is another +example of the limited tenure which Genius has of life, though I +believe that he outlived the greater part of his own family, who were +not a healthy stock. He died, I should judge, of some nervous disease; +that is shown by the progressive degeneration of his signature. +Probably it was locomotor ataxy, which is the special scourge of the +imaginative man. Heine, Daudet, and how many more, were its victims. As +to the tradition, first mentioned long after his death, that he died of +a fever contracted from a drinking bout, it is absurd on the face of +it, since no such fever is known to science. But a very moderate +drinking bout would be extremely likely to bring a chronic nervous +complaint to a disastrous end. + +One other remark upon Scott before I pass on from that line of green +volumes which has made me so digressive and so garrulous. No account of +his character is complete which does not deal with the strange, +secretive vein which ran through his nature. Not only did he stretch +the truth on many occasions in order to conceal the fact that he was +the author of the famous novels, but even intimate friends who met him +day by day were not aware that he was the man about whom the whole of +Europe was talking. Even his wife was ignorant of his pecuniary +liabilities until the crash of the Ballantyne firm told her for the +first time that they were sharers in the ruin. A psychologist might +trace this strange twist of his mind in the numerous elfish +Fenella-like characters who flit about and keep their irritating secret +through the long chapters of so many of his novels. + +It’s a sad book, Lockhart’s “Life.” It leaves gloom in the mind. The +sight of this weary giant, staggering along, burdened with debt, +overladen with work, his wife dead, his nerves broken, and nothing +intact but his honour, is one of the most moving in the history of +literature. But they pass, these clouds, and all that is left is the +memory of the supremely noble man, who would not be bent, but faced +Fate to the last, and died in his tracks without a whimper. He sampled +every human emotion. Great was his joy and great his success, great was +his downfall and bitter his grief. But of all the sons of men I don’t +think there are many greater than he who lies under the great slab at +Dryburgh. + + + + +III. + + +We can pass the long green ranks of the Waverley Novels and Lockhart’s +“Life” which flanks them. Here is heavier metal in the four big grey +volumes beyond. They are an old-fashioned large-print edition of +Boswell’s “Life of Johnson.” I emphasize the large print, for that is +the weak point of most of the cheap editions of English Classics which +come now into the market. With subjects which are in the least archaic +or abstruse you need good clear type to help you on your way. The other +is good neither for your eyes nor for your temper. Better pay a little +more and have a book that is made for use. + +That book interests me—fascinates me—and yet I wish I could join +heartily in that chorus of praise which the kind-hearted old bully has +enjoyed. It is difficult to follow his own advice and to “clear one’s +mind of cant” upon the subject, for when you have been accustomed to +look at him through the sympathetic glasses of Macaulay or of Boswell, +it is hard to take them off, to rub one’s eyes, and to have a good +honest stare on one’s own account at the man’s actual words, deeds, and +limitations. If you try it you are left with the oddest mixture of +impressions. How could one express it save that this is John Bull taken +to literature—the exaggerated John Bull of the caricaturists—with every +quality, good or evil, at its highest? Here are the rough crust over a +kindly heart, the explosive temper, the arrogance, the insular +narrowness, the want of sympathy and insight, the rudeness of +perception, the positiveness, the overbearing bluster, the strong +deep-seated religious principle, and every other characteristic of the +cruder, rougher John Bull who was the great grandfather of the present +good-natured Johnnie. + +If Boswell had not lived I wonder how much we should hear now of his +huge friend? With Scotch persistence he has succeeded in inoculating +the whole world with his hero worship. It was most natural that he +should himself admire him. The relations between the two men were +delightful and reflect all credit upon each. But they are not a safe +basis from which any third person could argue. When they met, Boswell +was in his twenty-third and Johnson in his fifty-fourth year. The one +was a keen young Scot with a mind which was reverent and +impressionable. The other was a figure from a past generation with his +fame already made. From the moment of meeting the one was bound to +exercise an absolute ascendency over the other which made unbiassed +criticism far more difficult than it would be between ordinary father +and son. Up to the end this was the unbroken relation between them. + +It is all very well to pooh-pooh Boswell as Macaulay has done, but it +is not by chance that a man writes the best biography in the language. +He had some great and rare literary qualities. One was a clear and +vivid style, more flexible and Saxon than that of his great model. +Another was a remarkable discretion which hardly once permitted a fault +of taste in this whole enormous book where he must have had to pick his +steps with pitfalls on every side of him. They say that he was a fool +and a coxcomb in private life. He is never so with a pen in his hand. +Of all his numerous arguments with Johnson, where he ventured some +little squeak of remonstrance, before the roaring “No, sir!” came to +silence him, there are few in which his views were not, as experience +proved, the wiser. On the question of slavery he was in the wrong. But +I could quote from memory at least a dozen cases, including such vital +subjects as the American Revolution, the Hanoverian Dynasty, Religious +Toleration, and so on, where Boswell’s views were those which survived. + +But where he excels as a biographer is in telling you just those little +things that you want to know. How often you read the life of a man and +are left without the remotest idea of his personality. It is not so +here. The man lives again. There is a short description of Johnson’s +person—it is not in the Life, but in the Tour to the Hebrides, the very +next book upon the shelf, which is typical of his vivid portraiture. +May I take it down, and read you a paragraph of it?— + +“His person was large, robust, I may say approaching to the gigantic, +and grown unwieldy from corpulency. His countenance was naturally of +the cast of an ancient statue, but somewhat disfigured by the scars of +King’s evil. He was now in his sixty-fourth year and was become a +little dull of hearing. His sight had always been somewhat weak, yet so +much does mind govern and even supply the deficiencies of organs that +his perceptions were uncommonly quick and accurate. His head, and +sometimes also his body, shook with a kind of motion like the effect of +palsy. He appeared to be frequently disturbed by cramps or convulsive +contractions of the nature of that distemper called St. Vitus’ dance. +He wore a full suit of plain brown clothes, with twisted hair buttons +of the same colour, a large bushy greyish wig, a plain shirt, black +worsted stockings and silver buckles. Upon this tour when journeying he +wore boots and a very wide brown cloth great-coat with pockets which +might almost have held the two volumes of his folio dictionary, and he +carried in his hand a large English oak stick.” + +You must admit that if one cannot reconstruct the great Samuel after +that it is not Mr. Boswell’s fault—and it is but one of a dozen equally +vivid glimpses which he gives us of his hero. It is just these +pen-pictures of his of the big, uncouth man, with his grunts and his +groans, his Gargantuan appetite, his twenty cups of tea, and his tricks +with the orange-peel and the lamp-posts, which fascinate the reader, +and have given Johnson a far broader literary vogue than his writings +could have done. + +For, after all, which of those writings can be said to have any life +to-day? Not “Rasselas,” surely—that stilted romance. “The Lives of the +Poets” are but a succession of prefaces, and the “Ramblers” of +ephemeral essays. There is the monstrous drudgery of the Dictionary, a +huge piece of spadework, a monument to industry, but inconceivable to +genius. “London” has a few vigorous lines, and the “Journey to the +Hebrides” some spirited pages. This, with a number of political and +other pamphlets, was the main output of his lifetime. Surely it must be +admitted that it is not enough to justify his predominant place in +English literature, and that we must turn to his humble, much-ridiculed +biographer for the real explanation. + +And then there was his talk. What was it which gave it such +distinction? His clear-cut positiveness upon every subject. But this is +a sign of a narrow finality—impossible to the man of sympathy and of +imagination, who sees the other side of every question and understands +what a little island the greatest human knowledge must be in the ocean +of infinite possibilities which surround us. Look at the results. Did +ever any single man, the very dullest of the race, stand convicted of +so many incredible blunders? It recalls the remark of Bagehot, that if +at any time the views of the most learned could be stamped upon the +whole human race the result would be to propagate the most absurd +errors. He was asked what became of swallows in the winter. Rolling and +wheezing, the oracle answered: “Swallows,” said he, “certainly sleep +all the winter. A number of them conglobulate together by flying round +and round, and then all in a heap throw themselves under water and lie +in the bed of a river.” Boswell gravely dockets the information. +However, if I remember right, even so sound a naturalist as White of +Selborne had his doubts about the swallows. More wonderful are +Johnson’s misjudgments of his fellow-authors. There, if anywhere, one +would have expected to find a sense of proportion. Yet his conclusions +would seem monstrous to a modern taste. “Shakespeare,” he said, “never +wrote six consecutive good lines.” He would only admit two good verses +in Gray’s exquisite “Elegy written in a Country Churchyard,” where it +would take a very acid critic to find two bad ones. “Tristram Shandy” +would not live. “Hamlet” was gabble. Swift’s “Gulliver’s Travels” was +poor stuff, and he never wrote anything good except “A Tale of a Tub.” +Voltaire was illiterate. Rousseau was a scoundrel. Deists, like Hume, +Priestley, or Gibbon, could not be honest men. + +And his political opinions! They sound now like a caricature. I suppose +even in those days they were reactionary. “A poor man has no honour.” +“Charles the Second was a good King.” “Governments should turn out of +the Civil Service all who were on the other side.” “Judges in India +should be encouraged to trade.” “No country is the richer on account of +trade.” (I wonder if Adam Smith was in the company when this +proposition was laid down!) “A landed proprietor should turn out those +tenants who did not vote as he wished.” “It is not good for a labourer +to have his wages raised.” “When the balance of trade is against a +country, the margin _must_ be paid in current coin.” Those were a few +of his convictions. + +And then his prejudices! Most of us have some unreasoning aversion. In +our more generous moments we are not proud of it. But consider those of +Johnson! When they were all eliminated there was not so very much left. +He hated Whigs. He disliked Scotsmen. He detested Nonconformists (a +young lady who joined them was “an odious wench”). He loathed +Americans. So he walked his narrow line, belching fire and fury at +everything to the right or the left of it. Macaulay’s posthumous +admiration is all very well, but had they met in life Macaulay would +have contrived to unite under one hat nearly everything that Johnson +abominated. + +It cannot be said that these prejudices were founded on any strong +principle, or that they could not be altered where his own personal +interests demanded it. This is one of the weak points of his record. In +his dictionary he abused pensions and pensioners as a means by which +the State imposed slavery upon hirelings. When he wrote the unfortunate +definition a pension must have seemed a most improbable contingency, +but when George III., either through policy or charity, offered him one +a little later, he made no hesitation in accepting it. One would have +liked to feel that the violent expression of his convictions +represented a real intensity of feeling, but the facts in this instance +seem against it. + +He was a great talker—but his talk was more properly a monologue. It +was a discursive essay, with perhaps a few marginal notes from his +subdued audience. How could one talk on equal terms with a man who +could not brook contradiction or even argument upon the most vital +questions in life? Would Goldsmith defend his literary views, or Burke +his Whiggism, or Gibbon his Deism? There was no common ground of +philosophic toleration on which one could stand. If he could not argue +he would be rude, or, as Goldsmith put it: “If his pistol missed fire, +he would knock you down with the butt end.” In the face of that +“rhinoceros laugh” there was an end of gentle argument. Napoleon said +that all the other kings would say “Ouf!” when they heard he was dead, +and so I cannot help thinking that the older men of Johnson’s circle +must have given a sigh of relief when at last they could speak freely +on that which was near their hearts, without the danger of a scene +where “Why, no, sir!” was very likely to ripen into “Let us have no +more on’t!” Certainly one would like to get behind Boswell’s account, +and to hear a chat between such men as Burke and Reynolds, as to the +difference in the freedom and atmosphere of the Club on an evening when +the formidable Doctor was not there, as compared to one when he was. + +No smallest estimate of his character is fair which does not make due +allowance for the terrible experiences of his youth and early middle +age. His spirit was as scarred as his face. He was fifty-three when the +pension was given him, and up to then his existence had been spent in +one constant struggle for the first necessities of life, for the daily +meal and the nightly bed. He had seen his comrades of letters die of +actual privation. From childhood he had known no happiness. The half +blind gawky youth, with dirty linen and twitching limbs, had always, +whether in the streets of Lichfield, the quadrangle of Pembroke, or the +coffee-houses of London, been an object of mingled pity and amusement. +With a proud and sensitive soul, every day of his life must have +brought some bitter humiliation. Such an experience must either break a +man’s spirit or embitter it, and here, no doubt, was the secret of that +roughness, that carelessness for the sensibilities of others, which +caused Boswell’s father to christen him “Ursa Major.” If his nature was +in any way warped, it must be admitted that terrific forces had gone to +the rending of it. His good was innate, his evil the result of a +dreadful experience. + +And he had some great qualities. Memory was the chief of them. He had +read omnivorously, and all that he had read he remembered, not merely +in the vague, general way in which we remember what we read, but with +every particular of place and date. If it were poetry, he could quote +it by the page, Latin or English. Such a memory has its enormous +advantage, but it carries with it its corresponding defect. With the +mind so crammed with other people’s goods, how can you have room for +any fresh manufactures of your own? A great memory is, I think, often +fatal to originality, in spite of Scott and some other exceptions. The +slate must be clear before you put your own writing upon it. When did +Johnson ever discover an original thought, when did he ever reach +forward into the future, or throw any fresh light upon those enigmas +with which mankind is faced? Overloaded with the past, he had space for +nothing else. Modern developments of every sort cast no first herald +rays upon his mind. He journeyed in France a few years before the +greatest cataclysm that the world has ever known, and his mind, +arrested by much that was trivial, never once responded to the +storm-signals which must surely have been visible around him. We read +that an amiable Monsieur Sansterre showed him over his brewery and +supplied him with statistics as to his output of beer. It was the same +foul-mouthed Sansterre who struck up the drums to drown Louis’ voice at +the scaffold. The association shows how near the unconscious sage was +to the edge of that precipice and how little his learning availed him +in discerning it. + +He would have been a great lawyer or divine. Nothing, one would think, +could have kept him from Canterbury or from the Woolsack. In either +case his memory, his learning, his dignity, and his inherent sense of +piety and justice, would have sent him straight to the top. His brain, +working within its own limitations, was remarkable. There is no more +wonderful proof of this than his opinions on questions of Scotch law, +as given to Boswell and as used by the latter before the Scotch judges. +That an outsider with no special training should at short notice write +such weighty opinions, crammed with argument and reason, is, I think, +as remarkable a _tour de force_ as literature can show. + +Above all, he really was a very kind-hearted man, and that must count +for much. His was a large charity, and it came from a small purse. The +rooms of his house became a sort of harbour of refuge in which several +strange battered hulks found their last moorings. There were the blind +Mr. Levett, and the acidulous Mrs. Williams, and the colourless Mrs. De +Moulins, all old and ailing—a trying group amid which to spend one’s +days. His guinea was always ready for the poor acquaintance, and no +poet was so humble that he might not preface his book with a dedication +whose ponderous and sonorous sentences bore the hall-mark of their +maker. It is the rough, kindly man, the man who bore the poor +street-walker home upon his shoulders, who makes one forget, or at +least forgive, the dogmatic pedantic Doctor of the Club. + +There is always to me something of interest in the view which a great +man takes of old age and death. It is the practical test of how far the +philosophy of his life has been a sound one. Hume saw death afar, and +met it with unostentatious calm. Johnson’s mind flinched from that +dread opponent. His letters and his talk during his latter years are +one long cry of fear. It was not cowardice, for physically he was one +of the most stout-hearted men that ever lived. There were no limits to +his courage. It was spiritual diffidence, coupled with an actual belief +in the possibilities of the other world, which a more humane and +liberal theology has done something to soften. How strange to see him +cling so desperately to that crazy body, with its gout, its asthma, its +St. Vitus’ dance, and its six gallons of dropsy! What could be the +attraction of an existence where eight hours of every day were spent +groaning in a chair, and sixteen wheezing in a bed? “I would give one +of these legs,” said he, “for another year of life.” None the less, +when the hour did at last strike, no man could have borne himself with +more simple dignity and courage. Say what you will of him, and resent +him how you may, you can never open those four grey volumes without +getting some mental stimulus, some desire for wider reading, some +insight into human learning or character, which should leave you a +better and a wiser man. + + + + +IV. + + +Next to my Johnsoniana are my Gibbons—two editions, if you please, for +my old complete one being somewhat crabbed in the print I could not +resist getting a set of Bury’s new six-volume presentment of the +History. In reading that book you don’t want to be handicapped in any +way. You want fair type, clear paper, and a light volume. You are not +to read it lightly, but with some earnestness of purpose and keenness +for knowledge, with a classical atlas at your elbow and a note-book +hard by, taking easy stages and harking back every now and then to keep +your grip of the past and to link it up with what follows. There are no +thrills in it. You won’t be kept out of your bed at night, nor will you +forget your appointments during the day, but you will feel a certain +sedate pleasure in the doing of it, and when it is done you will have +gained something which you can never lose—something solid, something +definite, something that will make you broader and deeper than before. + +Were I condemned to spend a year upon a desert island and allowed only +one book for my companion, it is certainly that which I should choose. +For consider how enormous is its scope, and what food for thought is +contained within those volumes. It covers a thousand years of the +world’s history, it is full and good and accurate, its standpoint is +broadly philosophic, its style dignified. With our more elastic methods +we may consider his manner pompous, but he lived in an age when +Johnson’s turgid periods had corrupted our literature. For my own part +I do not dislike Gibbon’s pomposity. A paragraph should be measured and +sonorous if it ventures to describe the advance of a Roman legion, or +the debate of a Greek Senate. You are wafted upwards, with this lucid +and just spirit by your side upholding and instructing you. Beneath you +are warring nations, the clash of races, the rise and fall of +dynasties, the conflict of creeds. Serene you float above them all, and +ever as the panorama flows past, the weighty measured unemotional voice +whispers the true meaning of the scene into your ear. + +It is a most mighty story that is told. You begin with a description of +the state of the Roman Empire when the early Caesars were on the +throne, and when it was undisputed mistress of the world. You pass down +the line of the Emperors with their strange alternations of greatness +and profligacy, descending occasionally to criminal lunacy. When the +Empire went rotten it began at the top, and it took centuries to +corrupt the man behind the spear. Neither did a religion of peace +affect him much, for, in spite of the adoption of Christianity, Roman +history was still written in blood. The new creed had only added a +fresh cause of quarrel and violence to the many which already existed, +and the wars of angry nations were mild compared to those of excited +sectaries. + +Then came the mighty rushing wind from without, blowing from the waste +places of the world, destroying, confounding, whirling madly through +the old order, leaving broken chaos behind it, but finally cleansing +and purifying that which was stale and corrupt. A storm-centre +somewhere in the north of China did suddenly what it may very well do +again. The human volcano blew its top off, and Europe was covered by +the destructive debris. The absurd point is that it was not the +conquerors who overran the Roman Empire, but it was the terrified +fugitives, who, like a drove of stampeded cattle, blundered over +everything which barred their way. It was a wild, dramatic time—the +time of the formation of the modern races of Europe. The nations came +whirling in out of the north and east like dust-storms, and amid the +seeming chaos each was blended with its neighbour so as to toughen the +fibre of the whole. The fickle Gaul got his steadying from the Franks, +the steady Saxon got his touch of refinement from the Norman, the +Italian got a fresh lease of life from the Lombard and the Ostrogoth, +the corrupt Greek made way for the manly and earnest Mahommedan. +Everywhere one seems to see a great hand blending the seeds. And so one +can now, save only that emigration has taken the place of war. It does +not, for example, take much prophetic power to say that something very +great is being built up on the other side of the Atlantic. When on an +Anglo-Celtic basis you see the Italian, the Hun, and the Scandinavian +being added, you feel that there is no human quality which may not be +thereby evolved. + +But to revert to Gibbon: the next stage is the flight of Empire from +Rome to Byzantium, even as the Anglo-Celtic power might find its centre +some day not in London but in Chicago or Toronto. There is the whole +strange story of the tidal wave of Mahommedanism from the south, +submerging all North Africa, spreading right and left to India on the +one side and to Spain on the other, finally washing right over the +walls of Byzantium until it, the bulwark of Christianity, became what +it is now, the advanced European fortress of the Moslem. Such is the +tremendous narrative covering half the world’s known history, which can +all be acquired and made part of yourself by the aid of that humble +atlas, pencil, and note-book already recommended. + +When all is so interesting it is hard to pick examples, but to me there +has always seemed to be something peculiarly impressive in the first +entrance of a new race on to the stage of history. It has something of +the glamour which hangs round the early youth of a great man. You +remember how the Russians made their debut—came down the great rivers +and appeared at the Bosphorus in two hundred canoes, from which they +endeavoured to board the Imperial galleys. Singular that a thousand +years have passed and that the ambition of the Russians is still to +carry out the task at which their skin-clad ancestors failed. Or the +Turks again; you may recall the characteristic ferocity with which they +opened their career. A handful of them were on some mission to the +Emperor. The town was besieged from the landward side by the +barbarians, and the Asiatics obtained leave to take part in a skirmish. +The first Turk galloped out, shot a barbarian with his arrow, and then, +lying down beside him, proceeded to suck his blood, which so horrified +the man’s comrades that they could not be brought to face such uncanny +adversaries. So, from opposite sides, those two great races arrived at +the city which was to be the stronghold of the one and the ambition of +the other for so many centuries. + +And then, even more interesting than the races which arrive are those +that disappear. There is something there which appeals most powerfully +to the imagination. Take, for example, the fate of those Vandals who +conquered the north of Africa. They were a German tribe, blue-eyed and +flaxen-haired, from somewhere in the Elbe country. Suddenly they, too, +were seized with the strange wandering madness which was epidemic at +the time. Away they went on the line of least resistance, which is +always from north to south and from east to west. South-west was the +course of the Vandals—a course which must have been continued through +pure love of adventure, since in the thousands of miles which they +traversed there were many fair resting-places, if that were only their +quest. + +They crossed the south of France, conquered Spain, and, finally, the +more adventurous passed over into Africa, where they occupied the old +Roman province. For two or three generations they held it, much as the +English hold India, and their numbers were at the least some hundreds +of thousands. Presently the Roman Empire gave one of those flickers +which showed that there was still some fire among the ashes. Belisarius +landed in Africa and reconquered the province. The Vandals were cut off +from the sea and fled inland. Whither did they carry those blue eyes +and that flaxen hair? Were they exterminated by the negroes, or did +they amalgamate with them? Travellers have brought back stories from +the Mountains of the Moon of a Negroid race with light eyes and hair. +Is it possible that here we have some trace of the vanished Germans? + +It recalls the parallel case of the lost settlements in Greenland. That +also has always seemed to me to be one of the most romantic questions +in history—the more so, perhaps, as I have strained my eyes to see +across the ice-floes the Greenland coast at the point (or near it) +where the old “Eyrbyggia” must have stood. That was the Scandinavian +city, founded by colonists from Iceland, which grew to be a +considerable place, so much so that they sent to Denmark for a bishop. +That would be in the fourteenth century. The bishop, coming out to his +see, found that he was unable to reach it on account of a climatic +change which had brought down the ice and filled the strait between +Iceland and Greenland. From that day to this no one has been able to +say what has become of these old Scandinavians, who were at the time, +be it remembered, the most civilized and advanced race in Europe. They +may have been overwhelmed by the Esquimaux, the despised Skroeling—or +they may have amalgamated with them—or conceivably they might have held +their own. Very little is known yet of that portion of the coast. It +would be strange if some Nansen or Peary were to stumble upon the +remains of the old colony, and find possibly in that antiseptic +atmosphere a complete mummy of some bygone civilization. + +But once more to return to Gibbon. What a mind it must have been which +first planned, and then, with the incessant labour of twenty years, +carried out that enormous work! There was no classical author so little +known, no Byzantine historian so diffuse, no monkish chronicle so +crabbed, that they were not assimilated and worked into their +appropriate place in the huge framework. Great application, great +perseverance, great attention to detail was needed in all this, but the +coral polyp has all those qualities, and somehow in the heart of his +own creation the individuality of the man himself becomes as +insignificant and as much overlooked as that of the little creature +that builds the reef. A thousand know Gibbon’s work for one who cares +anything for Gibbon. + +And on the whole this is justified by the facts. Some men are greater +than their work. Their work only represents one facet of their +character, and there may be a dozen others, all remarkable, and uniting +to make one complex and unique creature. It was not so with Gibbon. He +was a cold-blooded man, with a brain which seemed to have grown at the +expense of his heart. I cannot recall in his life one generous impulse, +one ardent enthusiasm, save for the Classics. His excellent judgment +was never clouded by the haze of human emotion—or, at least, it was +such an emotion as was well under the control of his will. Could +anything be more laudable—or less lovable? He abandons his girl at the +order of his father, and sums it up that he “sighs as a lover but obeys +as a son.” The father dies, and he records the fact with the remark +that “the tears of a son are seldom lasting.” The terrible spectacle of +the French Revolution excited in his mind only a feeling of self-pity +because his retreat in Switzerland was invaded by the unhappy refugees, +just as a grumpy country gentleman in England might complain that he +was annoyed by the trippers. There is a touch of dislike in all the +allusions which Boswell makes to Gibbon—often without even mentioning +his name—and one cannot read the great historian’s life without +understanding why. + +I should think that few men have been born with the material for +self-sufficient contentment more completely within himself than Edward +Gibbon. He had every gift which a great scholar should have, an +insatiable thirst for learning in every form, immense industry, a +retentive memory, and that broadly philosophic temperament which +enables a man to rise above the partisan and to become the impartial +critic of human affairs. It is true that at the time he was looked upon +as bitterly prejudiced in the matter of religious thought, but his +views are familiar to modern philosophy, and would shock no +susceptibilities in these more liberal (and more virtuous) days. Turn +him up in that Encyclopedia, and see what the latest word is upon his +contentions. “Upon the famous fifteenth and sixteenth chapters it is +not necessary to dwell,” says the biographer, “because at this time of +day no Christian apologist dreams of denying the substantial truth of +any of the more important allegations of Gibbon. Christians may +complain of the suppression of some circumstances which might influence +the general result, and they must remonstrate against the unfair +construction of their case. But they no longer refuse to hear any +reasonable evidence tending to show that persecution was less severe +than had been once believed, and they have slowly learned that they can +afford to concede the validity of all the secondary causes assigned by +Gibbon and even of others still more discreditable. The fact is, as the +historian has again and again admitted, that his account of the +secondary causes which contributed to the progress and establishment of +Christianity leaves the question as to the natural or supernatural +origin of Christianity practically untouched.” This is all very well, +but in that case how about the century of abuse which has been showered +upon the historian? Some posthumous apology would seem to be called +for. + +Physically, Gibbon was as small as Johnson was large, but there was a +curious affinity in their bodily ailments. Johnson, as a youth, was +ulcerated and tortured by the king’s evil, in spite of the Royal touch. +Gibbon gives us a concise but lurid account of his own boyhood. + +“I was successively afflicted by lethargies and fevers, by opposite +tendencies to a consumptive and dropsical habit, by a contraction of my +nerves, a fistula in my eye, and the bite of a dog, most vehemently +suspected of madness. Every practitioner was called to my aid, the fees +of the doctors were swelled by the bills of the apothecaries and +surgeons. There was a time when I swallowed more physic than food, and +my body is still marked by the indelible scars of lancets, issues, and +caustics.” + +Such is his melancholy report. The fact is that the England of that day +seems to have been very full of that hereditary form of chronic +ill-health which we call by the general name of struma. How far the +hard-drinking habits in vogue for a century or so before had anything +to do with it I cannot say, nor can I trace a connection between struma +and learning; but one has only to compare this account of Gibbon with +Johnson’s nervous twitches, his scarred face and his St. Vitus’ dance, +to realize that these, the two most solid English writers of their +generation, were each heir to the same gruesome inheritance. + +I wonder if there is any picture extant of Gibbon in the character of +subaltern in the South Hampshire Militia? With his small frame, his +huge head, his round, chubby face, and the pretentious uniform, he must +have looked a most extraordinary figure. Never was there so round a peg +in a square hole! His father, a man of a very different type, held a +commission, and this led to poor Gibbon becoming a soldier in spite of +himself. War had broken out, the regiment was mustered, and the +unfortunate student, to his own utter dismay, was kept under arms until +the conclusion of hostilities. For three years he was divorced from his +books, and loudly and bitterly did he resent it. The South Hampshire +Militia never saw the enemy, which is perhaps as well for them. Even +Gibbon himself pokes fun at them; but after three years under canvas it +is probable that his men had more cause to smile at their book-worm +captain than he at his men. His hand closed much more readily on a +pen-handle than on a sword-hilt. In his lament, one of the items is +that his colonel’s example encouraged the daily practice of hard and +even excessive drinking, which gave him the gout. “The loss of so many +busy and idle hours were not compensated for by any elegant pleasure,” +says he; “and my temper was insensibly soured by the society of rustic +officers, who were alike deficient in the knowledge of scholars and the +manners of gentlemen.” The picture of Gibbon flushed with wine at the +mess-table, with these hard-drinking squires around him, must certainly +have been a curious one. He admits, however, that he found consolations +as well as hardships in his spell of soldiering. It made him an +Englishman once more, it improved his health, it changed the current of +his thoughts. It was even useful to him as an historian. In a +celebrated and characteristic sentence, he says, “The discipline and +evolutions of a modern battalion gave me a clearer notion of the +Phalanx and the Legions, and the captain of the Hampshire Grenadiers +has not been useless to the historian of the Roman Empire.” + +If we don’t know all about Gibbon it is not his fault, for he wrote no +fewer than six accounts of his own career, each differing from the +other, and all equally bad. A man must have more heart and soul than +Gibbon to write a good autobiography. It is the most difficult of all +human compositions, calling for a mixture of tact, discretion, and +frankness which make an almost impossible blend. Gibbon, in spite of +his foreign education, was a very typical Englishman in many ways, with +the reticence, self-respect, and self-consciousness of the race. No +British autobiography has ever been frank, and consequently no British +autobiography has ever been good. Trollope’s, perhaps, is as good as +any that I know, but of all forms of literature it is the one least +adapted to the national genius. You could not imagine a British +Rousseau, still less a British Benvenuto Cellini. In one way it is to +the credit of the race that it should be so. If we do as much evil as +our neighbours we at least have grace enough to be ashamed of it and to +suppress its publication. + +There on the left of Gibbon is my fine edition (Lord Braybrooke’s) of +Pepys’ Diary. That is, in truth, the greatest autobiography in our +language, and yet it was not deliberately written as such. When Mr. +Pepys jotted down from day to day every quaint or mean thought which +came into his head he would have been very much surprised had any one +told him that he was doing a work quite unique in our literature. Yet +his involuntary autobiography, compiled for some obscure reason or for +private reference, but certainly never meant for publication, is as +much the first in that line of literature as Boswell’s book among +biographies or Gibbon’s among histories. + +As a race we are too afraid of giving ourselves away ever to produce a +good autobiography. We resent the charge of national hypocrisy, and yet +of all nations we are the least frank as to our own emotions—especially +on certain sides of them. Those affairs of the heart, for example, +which are such an index to a man’s character, and so profoundly modify +his life—what space do they fill in any man’s autobiography? Perhaps in +Gibbon’s case the omission matters little, for, save in the instance of +his well-controlled passion for the future Madame Neckar, his heart was +never an organ which gave him much trouble. The fact is that when the +British author tells his own story he tries to make himself +respectable, and the more respectable a man is the less interesting +does he become. Rousseau may prove himself a maudlin degenerate. +Cellini may stand self-convicted as an amorous ruffian. If they are not +respectable they are thoroughly human and interesting all the same. + +The wonderful thing about Mr. Pepys is that a man should succeed in +making himself seem so insignificant when really he must have been a +man of considerable character and attainments. Who would guess it who +read all these trivial comments, these catalogues of what he had for +dinner, these inane domestic confidences—all the more interesting for +their inanity! The effect left upon the mind is of some grotesque +character in a play, fussy, self-conscious, blustering with women, +timid with men, dress-proud, purse-proud, trimming in politics and in +religion, a garrulous gossip immersed always in trifles. And yet, +though this was the day-by-day man, the year-by-year man was a very +different person, a devoted civil servant, an eloquent orator, an +excellent writer, a capable musician, and a ripe scholar who +accumulated 3000 volumes—a large private library in those days—and had +the public spirit to leave them all to his University. You can forgive +old Pepys a good deal of his philandering when you remember that he was +the only official of the Navy Office who stuck to his post during the +worst days of the Plague. He may have been—indeed, he assuredly was—a +coward, but the coward who has sense of duty enough to overcome his +cowardice is the most truly brave of mankind. + +But the one amazing thing which will never be explained about Pepys is +what on earth induced him to go to the incredible labour of writing +down in shorthand cipher not only all the trivialities of his life, but +even his own very gross delinquencies which any other man would have +been only too glad to forget. The Diary was kept for about ten years, +and was abandoned because the strain upon his eyes of the crabbed +shorthand was helping to destroy his sight. I suppose that he became so +familiar with it that he wrote it and read it as easily as he did +ordinary script. But even so, it was a huge labour to compile these +books of strange manuscript. Was it an effort to leave some memorial of +his own existence to single him out from all the countless sons of men? +In such a case he would assuredly have left directions in somebody’s +care with a reference to it in the deed by which he bequeathed his +library to Cambridge. In that way he could have ensured having his +Diary read at any date he chose to name after his death. But no +allusion to it was left, and if it had not been for the ingenuity and +perseverance of a single scholar the dusty volumes would still lie +unread in some top shelf of the Pepysian Library. Publicity, then, was +not his object. What could it have been? The only alternative is +reference and self-information. You will observe in his character a +curious vein of method and order, by which he loved, to be for ever +estimating his exact wealth, cataloguing his books, or scheduling his +possessions. It is conceivable that this systematic recording of his +deeds—even of his misdeeds—was in some sort analogous, sprung from a +morbid tidiness of mind. It may be a weak explanation, but it is +difficult to advance another one. + +One minor point which must strike the reader of Pepys is how musical a +nation the English of that day appear to have been. Every one seems to +have had command of some instrument, many of several. Part-singing was +common. There is not much of Charles the Second’s days which we need +envy, but there, at least, they seem to have had the advantage of us. +It was real music, too—music of dignity and tenderness—with words which +were worthy of such treatment. This cult may have been the last remains +of those mediaeval pre-Reformation days when the English Church choirs +were, as I have read somewhere, the most famous in Europe. A strange +thing this for a land which in the whole of last century has produced +no single master of the first rank! + +What national change is it which has driven music from the land? Has +life become so serious that song has passed out of it? In Southern +climes one hears poor folk sing for pure lightness of heart. In +England, alas, the sound of a poor man’s voice raised in song means +only too surely that he is drunk. And yet it is consoling to know that +the germ of the old powers is always there ready to sprout forth if +they be nourished and cultivated. If our cathedral choirs were the best +in the old Catholic days, it is equally true, I believe, that our +orchestral associations are now the best in Europe. So, at least, the +German papers said on the occasion of the recent visit of a north of +England choir. But one cannot read Pepys without knowing that the +general musical habit is much less cultivated now than of old. + + + + +V. + + +It is a long jump from Samuel Pepys to George Borrow—from one pole of +the human character to the other—and yet they are in contact on the +shelf of my favourite authors. There is something wonderful, I think, +about the land of Cornwall. That long peninsula extending out into the +ocean has caught all sorts of strange floating things, and has held +them there in isolation until they have woven themselves into the +texture of the Cornish race. What is this strange strain which lurks +down yonder and every now and then throws up a great man with singular +un-English ways and features for all the world to marvel at? It is not +Celtic, nor is it the dark old Iberian. Further and deeper lie the +springs. Is it not Semitic, Phoenician, the roving men of Tyre, with +noble Southern faces and Oriental imaginations, who have in far-off +days forgotten their blue Mediterranean and settled on the granite +shores of the Northern Sea? + +Whence came the wonderful face and great personality of Henry Irving? +How strong, how beautiful, how un-Saxon it was! I only know that his +mother was a Cornish woman. Whence came the intense glowing imagination +of the Brontes—so unlike the Miss-Austen-like calm of their +predecessors? Again, I only know that their mother was a Cornish woman. +Whence came this huge elfin creature, George Borrow, with his eagle +head perched on his rocklike shoulders, brown-faced, white-headed, a +king among men? Where did he get that remarkable face, those strange +mental gifts, which place him by himself in literature? Once more, his +father was a Cornishman. Yes, there is something strange, and weird, +and great, lurking down yonder in the great peninsula which juts into +the western sea. Borrow may, if he so pleases, call himself an East +Anglian—“an English Englishman,” as he loved to term it—but is it a +coincidence that the one East Anglian born of Cornish blood was the one +who showed these strange qualities? The birth was accidental. The +qualities throw back to the twilight of the world. + +There are some authors from whom I shrink because they are so +voluminous that I feel that, do what I may, I can never hope to be well +read in their works. Therefore, and very weakly, I avoid them +altogether. There is Balzac, for example, with his hundred odd volumes. +I am told that some of them are masterpieces and the rest pot-boilers, +but that no one is agreed which is which. Such an author makes an undue +claim upon the little span of mortal years. Because he asks too much +one is inclined to give him nothing at all. Dumas, too! I stand on the +edge of him, and look at that huge crop, and content myself with a +sample here and there. But no one could raise this objection to Borrow. +A month’s reading—even for a leisurely reader—will master all that he +has written. There are “Lavengro,” “The Bible in Spain,” “Romany Rye,” +and, finally, if you wish to go further, “Wild Wales.” Only four +books—not much to found a great reputation upon—but, then, there are no +other four books quite like them in the language. + +He was a very strange man, bigoted, prejudiced, obstinate, inclined to +be sulky, as wayward as a man could be. So far his catalogue of +qualities does not seem to pick him as a winner. But he had one great +and rare gift. He preserved through all his days a sense of the great +wonder and mystery of life—the child sense which is so quickly dulled. +Not only did he retain it himself, but he was word-master enough to +make other people hark back to it also. As he writes you cannot help +seeing through his eyes, and nothing which his eyes saw or his ear +heard was ever dull or commonplace. It was all strange, mystic, with +some deeper meaning struggling always to the light. If he chronicled +his conversation with a washer-woman there was something arresting in +the words he said, something singular in her reply. If he met a man in +a public-house one felt, after reading his account, that one would wish +to know more of that man. If he approached a town he saw and made you +see—not a collection of commonplace houses or frowsy streets, but +something very strange and wonderful, the winding river, the noble +bridge, the old castle, the shadows of the dead. Every human being, +every object, was not so much a thing in itself, as a symbol and +reminder of the past. He looked through a man at that which the man +represented. Was his name Welsh? Then in an instant the individual is +forgotten and he is off, dragging you in his train, to ancient Britons, +intrusive Saxons, unheard-of bards, Owen Glendower, mountain raiders +and a thousand fascinating things. Or is it a Danish name? He leaves +the individual in all his modern commonplace while he flies off to huge +skulls at Hythe (in parenthesis I may remark that I have examined the +said skulls with some care, and they seemed to me to be rather below +the human average), to Vikings, Berserkers, Varangians, Harald +Haardraada, and the innate wickedness of the Pope. To Borrow all roads +lead to Rome. + +But, my word, what English the fellow could write! What an organ-roll +he could get into his sentences! How nervous and vital and vivid it all +is! + +There is music in every line of it if you have been blessed with an ear +for the music of prose. Take the chapter in “Lavengro” of how the +screaming horror came upon his spirit when he was encamped in the +Dingle. The man who wrote that has caught the true mantle of Bunyan and +Defoe. And, observe the art of it, under all the simplicity—notice, for +example, the curious weird effect produced by the studied repetition of +the word “dingle” coming ever round and round like the master-note in a +chime. Or take the passage about Britain towards the end of “The Bible +in Spain.” I hate quoting from these masterpieces, if only for the very +selfish reason that my poor setting cannot afford to show up +brilliants. None the less, cost what it may, let me transcribe that one +noble piece of impassioned prose— + +“O England! long, long may it be ere the sun of thy glory sink beneath +the wave of darkness! Though gloomy and portentous clouds are now +gathering rapidly around thee, still, still may it please the Almighty +to disperse them, and to grant thee a futurity longer in duration and +still brighter in renown than thy past! Or, if thy doom be at hand, may +that doom be a noble one, and worthy of her who has been styled the Old +Queen of the waters! May thou sink, if thou dost sink, amidst blood and +flame, with a mighty noise, causing more than one nation to participate +in thy downfall! Of all fates, may it please the Lord to preserve thee +from a disgraceful and a slow decay; becoming, ere extinct, a scorn and +a mockery for those self-same foes who now, though they envy and abhor +thee, still fear thee, nay even against their will, honour and respect +thee…. Remove from thee the false prophets, who have seen vanity and +divined lies; who have daubed thy wall with untempered mortar, that it +may fall; who see visions of peace where there is no peace; who have +strengthened the hands of the wicked, and made the heart of the +righteous sad. Oh, do this, and fear not the result, for either shall +thy end be a majestic and an enviable one; or God shall perpetuate thy +reign upon the waters, thou Old Queen!” + +Or take the fight with the Flaming Tinman. It’s too long for +quotation—but read it, read every word of it. Where in the language can +you find a stronger, more condensed and more restrained narrative? I +have seen with my own eyes many a noble fight, more than one +international battle, where the best of two great countries have been +pitted against each other—yet the second-hand impression of Borrow’s +description leaves a more vivid remembrance upon my mind than any of +them. This is the real witchcraft of letters. + +He was a great fighter himself. He has left a secure reputation in +other than literary circles—circles which would have been amazed to +learn that he was a writer of books. With his natural advantages, his +six foot three of height and his staglike agility, he could hardly fail +to be formidable. But he was a scientific sparrer as well, though he +had, I have been told, a curious sprawling fashion of his own. And how +his heart was in it—how he loved the fighting men! You remember his +thumb-nail sketches of his heroes. If you don’t I must quote one, and +if you do you will be glad to read it again— + +“There’s Cribb, the Champion of England, and perhaps the best man in +England; there he is, with his huge, massive figure, and face +wonderfully like that of a lion. There is Belcher, the younger, not the +mighty one, who is gone to his place, but the Teucer Belcher, the most +scientific pugilist that ever entered a ring, only wanting strength to +be I won’t say what. He appears to walk before me now, as he did that +evening, with his white hat, white great coat, thin genteel figure, +springy step, and keen determined eye. Crosses him, what a contrast! +Grim, savage Shelton, who has a civil word for nobody, and a hard blow +for anybody. Hard! One blow given with the proper play of his athletic +arm will unsense a giant. Yonder individual, who strolls about with his +hands behind him, supporting his brown coat lappets, undersized, and +who looks anything but what he is, is the king of the light-weights, +so-called—Randall! The terrible Randall, who has Irish blood in his +veins; not the better for that, nor the worse; and not far from him is +his last antagonist, Ned Turner, who, though beaten by him, still +thinks himself as good a man, in which he is, perhaps, right, for it +was a near thing. But how shall I name them all? They were there by +dozens, and all tremendous in their way. There was Bulldog Hudson, and +fearless Scroggins, who beat the conqueror of Sam the Jew. There was +Black Richmond—no, he was not there, but I knew him well; he was the +most dangerous of blacks, even with a broken thigh. There was Purcell, +who could never conquer until all seemed over with him. There was—what! +shall I name thee last? Ay, why not? I believe that thou art the last +of all that strong family still above the sod, where mayst thou long +continue—true piece of English stuff—Tom of Bedford. Hail to thee, Tom +of Bedford, or by whatever name it may please thee to be called, Spring +or Winter! Hail to thee, six-foot Englishman of the brown eye, worthy +to have carried a six-foot bow at Flodden, where England’s yeomen +triumphed over Scotland’s King, his clans and chivalry. Hail to thee, +last of English bruisers, after all the many victories which thou hast +achieved—true English victories, unbought by yellow gold.” + +Those are words from the heart. Long may it be before we lose the +fighting blood which has come to us from of old! In a world of peace we +shall at last be able to root it from our natures. In a world which is +armed to the teeth it is the last and only guarantee of our future. +Neither our numbers, nor our wealth, nor the waters which guard us can +hold us safe if once the old iron passes from our spirit. Barbarous, +perhaps—but there are possibilities for barbarism, and none in this +wide world for effeminacy. + +Borrow’s views of literature and of literary men were curious. +Publisher and brother author, he hated them with a fine comprehensive +hatred. In all his books I cannot recall a word of commendation to any +living writer, nor has he posthumous praise for those of the generation +immediately preceding. Southey, indeed, he commends with what most +would regard as exaggerated warmth, but for the rest he who lived when +Dickens, Thackeray, and Tennyson were all in their glorious prime, +looks fixedly past them at some obscure Dane or forgotten Welshman. The +reason was, I expect, that his proud soul was bitterly wounded by his +own early failures and slow recognition. He knew himself to be a chief +in the clan, and when the clan heeded him not he withdrew in haughty +disdain. Look at his proud, sensitive face and you hold the key to his +life. + +Harking back and talking of pugilism, I recall an incident which gave +me pleasure. A friend of mine read a pugilistic novel called “Rodney +Stone” to a famous Australian prize-fighter, stretched upon a bed of +mortal sickness. The dying gladiator listened with intent interest but +keen, professional criticism to the combats of the novel. The reader +had got to the point where the young amateur fights the brutal Berks. +Berks is winded, but holds his adversary off with a stiff left arm. The +amateur’s second in the story, an old prize-fighter, shouts some advice +to him as to how to deal with the situation. “That’s right. By —— he’s +got him!” yelled the stricken man in the bed. Who cares for critics +after that? + +You can see my own devotion to the ring in that trio of brown volumes +which stand, appropriately enough, upon the flank of Borrow. They are +the three volumes of “Pugilistica,” given me years ago by my old +friend, Robert Barr, a mine in which you can never pick for half an +hour without striking it rich. Alas! for the horrible slang of those +days, the vapid witless Corinthian talk, with its ogles and its fogles, +its pointless jokes, its maddening habit of italicizing a word or two +in every sentence. Even these stern and desperate encounters, fit +sports for the men of Albuera and Waterloo, become dull and vulgar, in +that dreadful jargon. You have to turn to Hazlitt’s account of the +encounter between the Gasman and the Bristol Bull, to feel the savage +strength of it all. It is a hardened reader who does not wince even in +print before that frightful right-hander which felled the giant, and +left him in “red ruin” from eyebrow to jaw. But even if there be no +Hazlitt present to describe such a combat it is a poor imagination +which is not fired by the deeds of the humble heroes who lived once so +vividly upon earth, and now only appeal to faithful ones in these +little-read pages. They were picturesque creatures, men of great force +of character and will, who reached the limits of human bravery and +endurance. There is Jackson on the cover, gold upon brown, “gentleman +Jackson,” Jackson of the balustrade calf and the noble head, who wrote +his name with an 88-pound weight dangling from his little finger. + +Here is a pen-portrait of him by one who knew him well— + +“I can see him now as I saw him in ’84 walking down Holborn Hill, +towards Smithfield. He had on a scarlet coat worked in gold at the +buttonholes, ruffles and frill of fine lace, a small white stock, no +collar (they were not then invented), a looped hat with a broad black +band, buff knee-breeches and long silk strings, striped white silk +stockings, pumps and paste buckles; his waistcoat was pale blue satin, +sprigged with white. It was impossible to look on his fine ample chest, +his noble shoulders, his waist (if anything too small), his large but +not too large hips, his balustrade calf and beautifully turned but not +over delicate ankle, his firm foot and peculiarly small hand, without +thinking that nature had sent him on earth as a model. On he went at a +good five miles and a half an hour, the envy of all men and the +admiration of all women.” + +Now, that is a discriminating portrait—a portrait which really helps +you to see that which the writer sets out to describe. After reading it +one can understand why even in reminiscent sporting descriptions of +those old days, amid all the Tonis and Bills and Jacks, it is always +Mr. John Jackson. He was the friend and instructor of Byron and of half +the bloods in town. Jackson it was who, in the heat of combat, seized +the Jew Mendoza by the hair, and so ensured that the pugs for ever +afterwards should be a close-cropped race. Inside you see the square +face of old Broughton, the supreme fighting man of the eighteenth +century, the man whose humble ambition it was to begin with the pivot +man of the Prussian Guard, and work his way through the regiment. He +had a chronicler, the good Captain Godfrey, who has written some +English which would take some beating. How about this passage?— + +“He stops as regularly as the swordsman, and carries his blows truly in +the line; he steps not back distrusting of himself, to stop a blow, and +puddle in the return, with an arm unaided by his body, producing but +fly-flap blows. No! Broughton steps boldly and firmly in, bids a +welcome to the coming blow; receives it with his guardian arm; then, +with a general summons of his swelling muscles, and his firm body +seconding his arm, and supplying it with all its weight, pours the +pile-driving force upon his man.” + +One would like a little more from the gallant Captain. Poor Broughton! +He fought once too often. “Why, damn you, you’re beat!” cried the Royal +Duke. “Not beat, your highness, but I can’t see my man!” cried the +blinded old hero. Alas, there is the tragedy of the ring as it is of +life! The wave of youth surges ever upwards, and the wave that went +before is swept sobbing on to the shingle. “Youth will be served,” said +the terse old pugs. But what so sad as the downfall of the old +champion! Wise Tom Spring—Tom of Bedford, as Borrow calls him—had the +wit to leave the ring unconquered in the prime of his fame. Cribb also +stood out as a champion. But Broughton, Slack, Belcher, and the +rest—their end was one common tragedy. + +The latter days of the fighting men were often curious and unexpected, +though as a rule they were short-lived, for the alternation of the +excess of their normal existence and the asceticism of their training +undermined their constitution. Their popularity among both men and +women was their undoing, and the king of the ring went down at last +before that deadliest of light-weights, the microbe of tubercle, or +some equally fatal and perhaps less reputable bacillus. The crockiest +of spectators had a better chance of life than the magnificent young +athlete whom he had come to admire. Jem Belcher died at 30, Hooper at +31, Pearce, the Game Chicken, at 32, Turner at 35, Hudson at 38, +Randall, the Nonpareil, at 34. Occasionally, when they did reach mature +age, their lives took the strangest turns. Gully, as is well known, +became a wealthy man, and Member for Pontefract in the Reform +Parliament. Humphries developed into a successful coal merchant. Jack +Martin became a convinced teetotaller and vegetarian. Jem Ward, the +Black Diamond, developed considerable powers as an artist. Cribb, +Spring, Langan, and many others, were successful publicans. Strangest +of all, perhaps, was Broughton, who spent his old age haunting every +sale of old pictures and bric-a-brac. One who saw him has recorded his +impression of the silent old gentleman, clad in old-fashioned garb, +with his catalogue in his hand—Broughton, once the terror of England, +and now the harmless and gentle collector. + +Many of them, as was but natural, died violent deaths, some by accident +and a few by their own hands. No man of the first class ever died in +the ring. The nearest approach to it was the singular and mournful fate +which befell Simon Byrne, the brave Irishman, who had the misfortune to +cause the death of his antagonist, Angus Mackay, and afterwards met his +own end at the hands of Deaf Burke. Neither Byrne nor Mackay could, +however, be said to be boxers of the very first rank. It certainly +would appear, if we may argue from the prize-ring, that the human +machine becomes more delicate and is more sensitive to jar or shock. In +the early days a fatal end to a fight was exceedingly rare. Gradually +such tragedies became rather more common, until now even with the +gloves they have shocked us by their frequency, and we feel that the +rude play of our forefathers is indeed too rough for a more highly +organized generation. Still, it may help us to clear our minds of cant +if we remember that within two or three years the hunting-field and the +steeple-chase claim more victims than the prize-ring has done in two +centuries. + +Many of these men had served their country well with that strength and +courage which brought them fame. Cribb was, if I mistake not, in the +Royal Navy. So was the terrible dwarf Scroggins, all chest and +shoulders, whose springing hits for many a year carried all before them +until the canny Welshman, Ned Turner, stopped his career, only to be +stopped in turn by the brilliant Irishman, Jack Randall. Shaw, who +stood high among the heavy-weights, was cut to pieces by the French +Cuirassiers in the first charge at Waterloo. The brutal Berks died +greatly in the breach of Badajos. The lives of these men stood for +something, and that was just the one supreme thing which the times +called for—an unflinching endurance which could bear up against a world +in arms. Look at Jem Belcher—beautiful, heroic Jem, a manlier Byron—but +there, this is not an essay on the old prize-ring, and one man’s lore +is another man’s bore. Let us pass those three low-down, unjustifiable, +fascinating volumes, and on to nobler topics beyond! + + + + +VI. + + +Which are the great short stories of the English language? Not a bad +basis for a debate! This I am sure of: that there are far fewer +supremely good short stories than there are supremely good long books. +It takes more exquisite skill to carve the cameo than the statue. But +the strangest thing is that the two excellences seem to be separate and +even antagonistic. Skill in the one by no means ensures skill in the +other. The great masters of our literature, Fielding, Scott, Dickens, +Thackeray, Reade, have left no single short story of outstanding merit +behind them, with the possible exception of Wandering Willie’s Tale in +“Red Gauntlet.” On the other hand, men who have been very great in the +short story, Stevenson, Poe, and Bret Harte, have written no great +book. The champion sprinter is seldom a five-miler as well. + +Well, now, if you had to choose your team whom would you put in? You +have not really a large choice. What are the points by which you judge +them? You want strength, novelty, compactness, intensity of interest, a +single vivid impression left upon the mind. Poe is the master of all. I +may remark by the way that it is the sight of his green cover, the next +in order upon my favourite shelf, which has started this train of +thought. Poe is, to my mind, the supreme original short story writer of +all time. His brain was like a seed-pod full of seeds which flew +carelessly around, and from which have sprung nearly all our modern +types of story. Just think of what he did in his offhand, prodigal +fashion, seldom troubling to repeat a success, but pushing on to some +new achievement. To him must be ascribed the monstrous progeny of +writers on the detection of crime—“_quorum pars parva fui!_” Each may +find some little development of his own, but his main art must trace +back to those admirable stories of Monsieur Dupin, so wonderful in +their masterful force, their reticence, their quick dramatic point. +After all, mental acuteness is the one quality which can be ascribed to +the ideal detective, and when that has once been admirably done, +succeeding writers must necessarily be content for all time to follow +in the same main track. But not only is Poe the originator of the +detective story; all treasure-hunting, cryptogram-solving yarns trace +back to his “Gold Bug,” just as all pseudo-scientific Verne-and-Wells +stories have their prototypes in the “Voyage to the Moon,” and the +“Case of Monsieur Valdemar.” If every man who receives a cheque for a +story which owes its springs to Poe were to pay tithe to a monument for +the master, he would have a pyramid as big as that of Cheops. + +And yet I could only give him two places in my team. One would be for +the “Gold Bug,” the other for the “Murder in the Rue Morgue.” I do not +see how either of those could be bettered. But I would not admit +_perfect_ excellence to any other of his stories. These two have a +proportion and a perspective which are lacking in the others, the +horror or weirdness of the idea intensified by the coolness of the +narrator and of the principal actor, Dupin in the one case and Le Grand +in the other. The same may be said of Bret Harte, also one of those +great short story tellers who proved himself incapable of a longer +flight. He was always like one of his own gold-miners who struck a rich +pocket, but found no continuous reef. The pocket was, alas, a very +limited one, but the gold was of the best. “The Luck of Roaring Camp” +and “Tennessee’s Partner” are both, I think, worthy of a place among my +immortals. They are, it is true, so tinged with Dickens as to be almost +parodies of the master, but they have a symmetry and satisfying +completeness as short stories to which Dickens himself never attained. +The man who can read those two stories without a gulp in the throat is +not a man I envy. + +And Stevenson? Surely he shall have two places also, for where is a +finer sense of what the short story can do? He wrote, in my judgment, +two masterpieces in his life, and each of them is essentially a short +story, though the one happened to be published as a volume. The one is +“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” which, whether you take it as a vivid +narrative or as a wonderfully deep and true allegory, is a supremely +fine bit of work. The other story of my choice would be “The Pavilion +on the Links”—the very model of dramatic narrative. That story stamped +itself so clearly on my brain when I read it in _Cornhill_ that when I +came across it again many years afterwards in volume form, I was able +instantly to recognize two small modifications of the text—each very +much for the worse—from the original form. They were small things, but +they seemed somehow like a chip on a perfect statue. Surely it is only +a very fine work, of art which could leave so definite an impression as +that. Of course, there are a dozen other of his stories which would put +the average writer’s best work to shame, all with the strange Stevenson +glamour upon them, of which I may discourse later, but only to those +two would I be disposed to admit that complete excellence which would +pass them into such a team as this. + +And who else? If it be not an impertinence to mention a contemporary, I +should certainly have a brace from Rudyard Kipling. His power, his +compression, his dramatic sense, his way of glowing suddenly into a +vivid flame, all mark him as a great master. But which are we to choose +from that long and varied collection, many of which have claims to the +highest? Speaking from memory, I should say that the stories of his +which have impressed me most are “The Drums of the Fore and Aft,” “The +Man who Would be King,” “The Man who Was,” and “The Brushwood Boy.” +Perhaps, on the whole, it is the first two which I should choose to add +to my list of masterpieces. + +They are stories which invite criticism and yet defy it. The great +batsman at cricket is the man who can play an unorthodox game, take +every liberty which is denied to inferior players, and yet succeed +brilliantly in the face of his disregard of law. So it is here. I +should think the model of these stories is the most dangerous that any +young writer could follow. There is digression, that most deadly fault +in the short narrative; there is incoherence, there is want of +proportion which makes the story stand still for pages and bound +forward in a few sentences. But genius overrides all that, just as the +great cricketer hooks the off ball and glides the straight one to leg. +There is a dash, an exuberance, a full-blooded, confident mastery which +carries everything before it. Yes, no team of immortals would be +complete which did not contain at least two representatives of Kipling. + +And now whom? Nathaniel Hawthorne never appealed in the highest degree +to me. The fault, I am sure, is my own, but I always seemed to crave +stronger fare than he gave me. It was too subtle, too elusive, for +effect. Indeed, I have been more affected by some of the short work of +his son Julian, though I can quite understand the high artistic claims +which the senior writer has, and the delicate charm of his style. There +is Bulwer Lytton as a claimant. His “Haunted and the Haunters” is the +very best ghost story that I know. As such I should include it in my +list. There was a story, too, in one of the old +Blackwoods—“Metempsychosis” it was called, which left so deep an +impression upon my mind that I should be inclined, though it is many +years since I read it, to number it with the best. Another story which +has the characteristics of great work is Grant Allen’s “John Creedy.” +So good a story upon so philosophic a basis deserves a place among the +best. There is some first-class work to be picked also from the +contemporary work of Wells and of Quiller-Couch which reaches a high +standard. One little sketch—“Old Œson” in “Noughts and Crosses”—is, in +my opinion, as good as anything of the kind which I have ever read. + +And all this didactic talk comes from looking at that old green cover +of Poe. I am sure that if I had to name the few books which have really +influenced my own life I should have to put this one second only to +Macaulay’s Essays. I read it young when my mind was plastic. It +stimulated my imagination and set before me a supreme example of +dignity and force in the methods of telling a story. It is not +altogether a healthy influence, perhaps. It turns the thoughts too +forcibly to the morbid and the strange. + +He was a saturnine creature, devoid of humour and geniality, with a +love for the grotesque and the terrible. The reader must himself +furnish the counteracting qualities or Poe may become a dangerous +comrade. We know along what perilous tracks and into what deadly +quagmires his strange mind led him, down to that grey October Sunday +morning when he was picked up, a dying man, on the side-walk at +Baltimore, at an age which should have seen him at the very prime of +his strength and his manhood. + +I have said that I look upon Poe as the world’s supreme short story +writer. His nearest rival, I should say, was Maupassant. The great +Norman never rose to the extreme force and originality of the American, +but he had a natural inherited power, an inborn instinct towards the +right way of making his effects, which mark him as a great master. He +produced stories because it was in him to do so, as naturally and as +perfectly as an apple tree produces apples. What a fine, sensitive, +artistic touch it is! How easily and delicately the points are made! +How clear and nervous is his style, and how free from that redundancy +which disfigures so much of our English work! He pares it down to the +quick all the time. + +I cannot write the name of Maupassant without recalling what was either +a spiritual interposition or an extraordinary coincidence in my own +life. I had been travelling in Switzerland and had visited, among other +places, that Gemmi Pass, where a huge cliff separates a French from a +German canton. On the summit of this cliff was a small inn, where we +broke our journey. It was explained to us that, although the inn was +inhabited all the year round, still for about three months in winter it +was utterly isolated, because it could at any time only be approached +by winding paths on the mountain side, and when these became +obliterated by snow it was impossible either to come up or to descend. +They could see the lights in the valley beneath them, but were as +lonely as if they lived in the moon. So curious a situation naturally +appealed to one’s imagination, and I speedily began to build up a short +story in my own mind, depending upon a group of strong antagonistic +characters being penned up in this inn, loathing each other and yet +utterly unable to get away from each other’s society, every day +bringing them nearer to tragedy. For a week or so, as I travelled, I +was turning over the idea. + +At the end of that time I returned through France. Having nothing to +read I happened to buy a volume of Maupassant’s Tales which I had never +seen before. The first story was called “L’Auberge” (The Inn)—and as I +ran my eye down the printed page I was amazed to see the two words, +“Kandersteg” and “Gemmi Pass.” I settled down and read it with +ever-growing amazement. The scene was laid in the inn I had visited. +The plot depended on the isolation of a group of people through the +snowfall. Everything that I imagined was there, save that Maupassant +had brought in a savage hound. + +Of course, the genesis of the thing is clear enough. He had chanced to +visit the inn, and had been impressed as I had been by the same train +of thought. All that is quite intelligible. But what is perfectly +marvellous is that in that short journey I should have chanced to buy +the one book in all the world which would prevent me from making a +public fool of myself, for who would ever have believed that my work +was not an imitation? I do not think that the hypothesis of coincidence +can cover the facts. It is one of several incidents in my life which +have convinced me of spiritual interposition—of the promptings of some +beneficent force outside ourselves, which tries to help us where it +can. The old Catholic doctrine of the Guardian Angel is not only a +beautiful one, but has in it, I believe, a real basis of truth. + +Or is it that our subliminal ego, to use the jargon of the new +psychology, or our astral, in the terms of the new theology, can learn +and convey to the mind that which our own known senses are unable to +apprehend? But that is too long a side track for us to turn down it. + +When Maupassant chose he could run Poe close in that domain of the +strange and weird which the American had made so entirely his own. Have +you read Maupassant’s story called “Le Horla”? That is as good a bit of +_diablerie_ as you could wish for. And the Frenchman has, of course, +far the broader range. He has a keen sense of humour, breaking out +beyond all decorum in some of his stories, but giving a pleasant +sub-flavour to all of them. And yet, when all is said, who can doubt +that the austere and dreadful American is far the greater and more +original mind of the two? + +Talking of weird American stories, have you ever read any of the works +of Ambrose Bierce? I have one of his works there, “In the Midst of +Life.” This man had a flavour quite his own, and was a great artist in +his way. It is not cheering reading, but it leaves its mark upon you, +and that is the proof of good work. + +I have often wondered where Poe got his style. There is a sombre +majesty about his best work, as if it were carved from polished jet, +which is peculiarly his own. I dare say if I took down that volume I +could light anywhere upon a paragraph which would show you what I mean. +This is the kind of thing— + +“Now there are fine tales in the volumes of the Magi—in the iron-bound +melancholy volumes of the Magi. Therein, I say, are glorious histories +of the heaven and of the earth, and of the mighty sea—and of the genius +that overruled the sea, and the earth, and the lofty heaven. There were +much lore, too, in the sayings which were said by the Sybils, and holy, +holy things were heard of old by the dim leaves which trembled round +Dodona, but as Allah liveth, that fable which the Demon told me as he +sat by my side in the shadow of the tomb, I hold to be the most +wonderful of all.” Or this sentence: “And then did we, the seven, start +from our seats in horror, and stand trembling and aghast, for the tones +in the voice of the shadow were not the tones of any one being, but of +a multitude of beings, and, varying in their cadences from syllable to +syllable, fell duskily upon our ears in the well-remembered and +familiar accents of many thousand departed friends.” + +Is there not a sense of austere dignity? No man invents a style. It +always derives back from some influence, or, as is more usual, it is a +compromise between several influences. I cannot trace Poe’s. And yet if +Hazlitt and De Quincey had set forth to tell weird stories they might +have developed something of the kind. + +Now, by your leave, we will pass on to my noble edition of “The +Cloister and the Hearth,” the next volume on the left. + +I notice, in glancing over my rambling remarks, that I classed +“Ivanhoe” as the second historical novel of the century. I dare say +there are many who would give “Esmond” the first place, and I can quite +understand their position, although it is not my own. I recognize the +beauty of the style, the consistency of the character-drawing, the +absolutely perfect Queen Anne atmosphere. There was never an historical +novel written by a man who knew his period so thoroughly. But, great as +these virtues are, they are not the essential in a novel. The essential +in a novel is interest, though Addison unkindly remarked that the real +essential was that the pastrycooks should never run short of paper. Now +“Esmond” is, in my opinion, exceedingly interesting during the +campaigns in the Lowlands, and when our Machiavelian hero, the Duke, +comes in, and also whenever Lord Mohun shows his ill-omened face; but +there are long stretches of the story which are heavy reading. A +pre-eminently good novel must always advance and never mark time. +“Ivanhoe” never halts for an instant, and that just makes its +superiority as a novel over “Esmond,” though as a piece of literature I +think the latter is the more perfect. + +No, if I had three votes, I should plump them all for “The Cloister and +the Hearth,” as being our greatest historical novel, and, indeed, as +being our greatest novel of any sort. I think I may claim to have read +most of the more famous foreign novels of last century, and (speaking +only for myself and within the limits of my reading) I have been more +impressed by that book of Reade’s and by Tolstoi’s “Peace and War” than +by any others. They seem to me to stand at the very top of the +century’s fiction. There is a certain resemblance in the two—the sense +of space, the number of figures, the way in which characters drop in +and drop out. The Englishman is the more romantic. The Russian is the +more real and earnest. But they are both great. + +Think of what Reade does in that one book. He takes the reader by the +hand, and he leads him away into the Middle Ages, and not a +conventional study-built Middle Age, but a period quivering with life, +full of folk who are as human and real as a ’bus-load in Oxford Street. +He takes him through Holland, he shows him the painters, the dykes, the +life. He leads him down the long line of the Rhine, the spinal marrow +of Mediaeval Europe. He shows him the dawn of printing, the beginnings +of freedom, the life of the great mercantile cities of South Germany, +the state of Italy, the artist-life of Rome, the monastic institutions +on the eve of the Reformation. And all this between the covers of one +book, so naturally introduced, too, and told with such vividness and +spirit. Apart from the huge scope of it, the mere study of Gerard’s own +nature, his rise, his fall, his regeneration, the whole pitiable +tragedy at the end, make the book a great one. It contains, I think, a +blending of knowledge with imagination, which makes it stand alone in +our literature. Let any one read the “Autobiography of Benvenuto +Cellini,” and then Charles Reade’s picture of Mediaeval Roman life, if +he wishes to appreciate the way in which Reade has collected his rough +ore and has then smelted it all down in his fiery imagination. It is a +good thing to have the industry to collect facts. It is a greater and a +rarer one to have the tact to know how to use them when you have got +them. To be exact without pedantry, and thorough without being dull, +that should be the ideal of the writer of historical romance. + +Reade is one of the most perplexing figures in our literature. Never +was there a man so hard to place. At his best he is the best we have. +At his worst he is below the level of Surreyside melodrama. But his +best have weak pieces, and his worst have good. There is always silk +among his cotton, and cotton among his silk. But, for all his flaws, +the man who, in addition to the great book, of which I have already +spoken, wrote “It is Never Too Late to Mend,” “Hard Cash,” “Foul Play,” +and “Griffith Gaunt,” must always stand in the very first rank of our +novelists. + +There is a quality of heart about his work which I recognize nowhere +else. He so absolutely loves his own heroes and heroines, while he so +cordially detests his own villains, that he sweeps your emotions along +with his own. No one has ever spoken warmly enough of the humanity and +the lovability of his women. It is a rare gift—very rare for a man—this +power of drawing a human and delightful girl. If there is a better one +in nineteenth-century fiction than Julia Dodd I have never had the +pleasure of meeting her. A man who could draw a character so delicate +and so delightful, and yet could write such an episode as that of the +Robber Inn in “The Cloister and the Hearth,” adventurous romance in its +highest form, has such a range of power as is granted to few men. My +hat is always ready to come off to Charles Reade. + + + + +VII. + + +It is good to have the magic door shut behind us. On the other side of +that door are the world and its troubles, hopes and fears, headaches +and heartaches, ambitions and disappointments; but within, as you lie +back on the green settee, and face the long lines of your silent +soothing comrades, there is only peace of spirit and rest of mind in +the company of the great dead. Learn to love, learn to admire them; +learn to know what their comradeship means; for until you have done so +the greatest solace and anodyne God has given to man have not yet shed +their blessing upon you. Here behind this magic door is the rest house, +where you may forget the past, enjoy the present, and prepare for the +future. + +You who have sat with me before upon the green settee are familiar with +the upper shelf, with the tattered Macaulay, the dapper Gibbon, the +drab Boswell, the olive-green Scott, the pied Borrow, and all the +goodly company who rub shoulders yonder. By the way, how one wishes +that one’s dear friends would only be friends also with each other. Why +should Borrow snarl so churlishly at Scott? One would have thought that +noble spirit and romantic fancy would have charmed the huge vagrant, +and yet there is no word too bitter for the younger man to use towards +the elder. The fact is that Borrow had one dangerous virus in him—a +poison which distorts the whole vision—for he was a bigoted sectarian +in religion, seeing no virtue outside his own interpretation of the +great riddle. Downright heathendom, the blood-stained Berserk or the +chaunting Druid, appealed to his mind through his imagination, but the +man of his own creed and time who differed from him in minutiae of +ritual, or in the interpretation of mystic passages, was at once evil +to the bone, and he had no charity of any sort for such a person. Scott +therefore, with his reverent regard for old usages, became at once +hateful in his eyes. In any case he was a disappointed man, the big +Borrow, and I cannot remember that he ever had much to say that was +good of any brother author. Only in the bards of Wales and in the +Scalds of the Sagas did he seem to find his kindred spirits, though it +has been suggested that his complex nature took this means of informing +the world that he could read both Cymric and Norse. But we must not be +unkind behind the magic door—and yet to be charitable to the +uncharitable is surely the crown of virtue. + +So much for the top line, concerning which I have already gossipped for +six sittings, but there is no surcease for you, reader, for as you see +there is a second line, and yet a third, all equally dear to my heart, +and all appealing in the same degree to my emotions and to my memory. +Be as patient as you may, while I talk of these old friends, and tell +you why I love them, and all that they have meant to me in the past. If +you picked any book from that line you would be picking a little fibre +also from my mind, very small, no doubt, and yet an intimate and +essential part of what is now myself. Hereditary impulses, personal +experiences, books—those are the three forces which go to the making of +man. These are the books. + +This second line consists, as you see, of novelists of the eighteenth +century, or those of them whom I regard as essential. After all, +putting aside single books, such as Sterne’s “Tristram Shandy,” +Goldsmith’s “Vicar of Wakefield,” and Miss Burney’s “Evelina,” there +are only three authors who count, and they in turn wrote only three +books each, of first-rate importance, so that by the mastery of nine +books one might claim to have a fairly broad view of this most +important and distinctive branch of English literature. The three men +are, of course, Fielding, Richardson, and Smollett. The books are: +Richardson’s “Clarissa Harlowe,” “Pamela,” and “Sir Charles Grandison”; +Fielding’s “Tom Jones”, “Joseph Andrews,” and “Amelia”; Smollett’s +“Peregrine Pickle,” “Humphrey Clinker,” and “Roderick Random.” There we +have the real work of the three great contemporaries who illuminated +the middle of the eighteenth century—only nine volumes in all. Let us +walk round these nine volumes, therefore, and see whether we cannot +discriminate and throw a little light, after this interval of a hundred +and fifty years, upon their comparative aims, and how far they have +justified them by the permanent value of their work. A fat little +bookseller in the City, a rakehell wit of noble blood, and a rugged +Scotch surgeon from the navy—those are the three strange immortals who +now challenge a comparison—the three men who dominate the fiction of +their century, and to whom we owe it that the life and the types of +that century are familiar to us, their fifth generation. + +It is not a subject to be dogmatic upon, for I can imagine that these +three writers would appeal quite differently to every temperament, and +that whichever one might desire to champion one could find arguments to +sustain one’s choice. Yet I cannot think that any large section of the +critical public could maintain that Smollett was on the same level as +the other two. Ethically he is gross, though his grossness is +accompanied by a full-blooded humour which is more mirth-compelling +than the more polished wit of his rivals. I can remember in callow +boyhood—_puris omnia pura_—reading “Peregrine Pickle,” and laughing +until I cried over the Banquet in the Fashion of the Ancients. I read +it again in my manhood with the same effect, though with a greater +appreciation of its inherent bestiality. That merit, a gross primitive +merit, he has in a high degree, but in no other respect can he +challenge comparison with either Fielding or Richardson. His view of +life is far more limited, his characters less varied, his incidents +less distinctive, and his thoughts less deep. Assuredly I, for one, +should award him the third place in the trio. + +But how about Richardson and Fielding? There is indeed a competition of +giants. Let us take the points of each in turn, and then compare them +with each other. + +There is one characteristic, the rarest and subtlest of all, which each +of them had in a supreme degree. Each could draw the most delightful +women—the most perfect women, I think, in the whole range of our +literature. If the eighteenth-century women were like that, then the +eighteenth-century men got a great deal more than they ever deserved. +They had such a charming little dignity of their own, such good sense, +and yet such dear, pretty, dainty ways, so human and so charming, that +even now they become our ideals. One cannot come to know them without a +double emotion, one of respectful devotion towards themselves, and the +other of abhorrence for the herd of swine who surrounded them. Pamela, +Harriet Byron, Clarissa, Amelia, and Sophia Western were all equally +delightful, and it was not the negative charm of the innocent and +colourless woman, the amiable doll of the nineteenth century, but it +was a beauty of nature depending upon an alert mind, clear and strong +principles, true womanly feelings, and complete feminine charm. In this +respect our rival authors may claim a tie, for I could not give a +preference to one set of these perfect creatures over another. The +plump little printer and the worn-out man-about-town had each a supreme +woman in his mind. + +But their men! Alas, what a drop is there! To say that we are all +capable of doing what Tom Jones did—as I have seen stated—is the worst +form of inverted cant, the cant which makes us out worse than we are. +It is a libel on mankind to say that a man who truly loves a woman is +usually false to her, and, above all, a libel that he should be false +in the vile fashion which aroused good Tom Newcome’s indignation. Tom +Jones was no more fit to touch the hem of Sophia’s dress than Captain +Booth was to be the mate of Amelia. Never once has Fielding drawn a +gentleman, save perhaps Squire Alworthy. A lusty, brawling, +good-hearted, material creature was the best that he could fashion. +Where, in his heroes, is there one touch of distinction, of +spirituality, of nobility? Here I think that the plebeian printer has +done very much better than the aristocrat. Sir Charles Grandison is a +very noble type—spoiled a little by over-coddling on the part of his +creator, perhaps, but a very high-souled and exquisite gentleman all +the same. Had _he_ married Sophia or Amelia I should not have forbidden +the banns. Even the persevering Mr. B—— and the too amorous Lovelace +were, in spite of their aberrations, men of gentle nature, and had +possibilities of greatness and tenderness within them. Yes, I cannot +doubt that Richardson drew the higher type of man—and that in Grandison +he has done what has seldom or never been bettered. + +Richardson was also the subtler and deeper writer, in my opinion. He +concerns himself with fine consistent character-drawing, and with a +very searching analysis of the human heart, which is done so easily, +and in such simple English, that the depth and truth of it only come +upon reflection. He condescends to none of those scuffles and +buffetings and pantomime rallies which enliven, but cheapen, many of +Fielding’s pages. The latter has, it may be granted, a broader view of +life. He had personal acquaintance of circles far above, and also far +below, any which the douce citizen, who was his rival, had ever been +able or willing to explore. His pictures of low London life, the prison +scenes in “Amelia,” the thieves’ kitchens in “Jonathan Wild,” the +sponging houses and the slums, are as vivid and as complete as those of +his friend Hogarth—the most British of artists, even as Fielding was +the most British of writers. But the greatest and most permanent facts +of life are to be found in the smallest circles. Two men and a woman +may furnish either the tragedian or the comedian with the most +satisfying theme. And so, although his range was limited, Richardson +knew very clearly and very thoroughly just that knowledge which was +essential for his purpose. Pamela, the perfect woman of humble life, +Clarissa, the perfect lady, Grandison the ideal gentleman—these were +the three figures on which he lavished his most loving art. And now, +after one hundred and fifty years, I do not know where we may find more +satisfying types. + +He was prolix, it may be admitted, but who could bear to have him cut? +He loved to sit down and tell you just all about it. His use of letters +for his narratives made this gossipy style more easy. First _he_ writes +and he tells all that passed. You have his letter. _She_ at the same +time writes to her friend, and also states her views. This also you +see. The friends in each case reply, and you have the advantage of +their comments and advice. You really do know all about it before you +finish. It may be a little wearisome at first, if you have been +accustomed to a more hustling style with fireworks in every chapter. +But gradually it creates an atmosphere in which you live, and you come +to know these people, with their characters and their troubles, as you +know no others of the dream-folk of fiction. Three times as long as an +ordinary book, no doubt, but why grudge the time? What is the hurry? +Surely it is better to read one masterpiece than three books which will +leave no permanent impression on the mind. + +It was all attuned to the sedate life of that, the last of the quiet +centuries. In the lonely country-house, with few letters and fewer +papers, do you suppose that the readers ever complained of the length +of a book, or could have too much of the happy Pamela or of the unhappy +Clarissa? It is only under extraordinary circumstances that one can now +get into that receptive frame of mind which was normal then. Such an +occasion is recorded by Macaulay, when he tells how in some Indian hill +station, where books were rare, he let loose a copy of “Clarissa.” The +effect was what might have been expected. Richardson in a suitable +environment went through the community like a mild fever. They lived +him, and dreamed him, until the whole episode passed into literary +history, never to be forgotten by those who experienced it. It is +tuned, for every ear. That beautiful style is so correct and yet so +simple that there is no page which a scholar may not applaud nor a +servant-maid understand. + +Of course, there are obvious disadvantages to the tale which is told in +letters. Scott reverted to it in “Guy Mannering,” and there are other +conspicuous successes, but vividness is always gained at the expense of +a strain upon the reader’s good-nature and credulity. One feels that +these constant details, these long conversations, could not possibly +have been recorded in such a fashion. The indignant and dishevelled +heroine could not sit down and record her escape with such cool +minuteness of description. Richardson does it as well as it could be +done, but it remains intrinsically faulty. Fielding, using the third +person, broke all the fetters which bound his rival, and gave a freedom +and personal authority to the novel which it had never before enjoyed. +There at least he is the master. + +And yet, on the whole, my balance inclines towards Richardson, though I +dare say I am one in a hundred in thinking so. First of all, beyond +anything I may have already urged, he had the supreme credit of having +been the first. Surely the originator should have a higher place than +the imitator, even if in imitating he should also improve and amplify. +It is Richardson and not Fielding who is the father of the English +novel, the man who first saw that without romantic gallantry, and +without bizarre imaginings, enthralling stories may be made from +everyday life, told in everyday language. This was his great new +departure. So entirely was Fielding his imitator, or rather perhaps his +parodist, that with supreme audacity (some would say brazen impudence) +he used poor Richardson’s own characters, taken from “Pamela,” in his +own first novel, “Joseph Andrews,” and used them too for the unkind +purpose of ridiculing them. As a matter of literary ethics, it is as if +Thackeray wrote a novel bringing in Pickwick and Sam Weller in order to +show what faulty characters these were. It is no wonder that even the +gentle little printer grew wroth, and alluded to his rival as a +somewhat unscrupulous man. + +And then there is the vexed question of morals. Surely in talking of +this also there is a good deal of inverted cant among a certain class +of critics. The inference appears to be that there is some subtle +connection between immorality and art, as if the handling of the lewd, +or the depicting of it, were in some sort the hallmark of the true +artist. It is not difficult to handle or depict. On the contrary, it is +so easy, and so essentially dramatic in many of its forms, that the +temptation to employ it is ever present. It is the easiest and cheapest +of all methods of creating a spurious effect. The difficulty does not +lie in doing it. The difficulty lies in avoiding it. But one tries to +avoid it because on the face of it there is no reason why a writer +should cease to be a gentleman, or that he should write for a woman’s +eyes that which he would be justly knocked down for having said in a +woman’s ears. But “you must draw the world as it is.” Why must you? +Surely it is just in selection and restraint that the artist is shown. +It is true that in a coarser age great writers heeded no restrictions, +but life itself had fewer restrictions then. We are of our own age, and +must live up to it. + +But must these sides of life be absolutely excluded? By no means. Our +decency need not weaken into prudery. It all lies in the spirit in +which it is done. No one who wished to lecture on these various spirits +could preach on a better text than these three great rivals, +Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett. It is possible to draw vice with +some freedom for the purpose of condemning it. Such a writer is a +moralist, and there is no better example than Richardson. Again, it is +possible to draw vice with neither sympathy nor disapprobation, but +simply as a fact which is there. Such a writer is a realist, and such +was Fielding. Once more, it is possible to draw vice in order to +extract amusement from it. Such a man is a coarse humorist, and such +was Smollett. Lastly, it is possible to draw vice in order to show +sympathy with it. Such a man is a wicked man, and there were many among +the writers of the Restoration. But of all reasons that exist for +treating this side of life, Richardson’s were the best, and nowhere do +we find it more deftly done. + +Apart from his writings, there must have been something very noble +about Fielding as a man. He was a better hero than any that he drew. +Alone he accepted the task of cleansing London, at that time the most +dangerous and lawless of European capitals. Hogarth’s pictures give +some notion of it in the pre-Fielding days, the low roughs, the +high-born bullies, the drunkenness, the villainies, the thieves’ +kitchens with their riverside trapdoors, down which the body is thrust. +This was the Augean stable which had to be cleaned, and poor Hercules +was weak and frail and physically more fitted for a sick-room than for +such a task. It cost him his life, for he died at 47, worn out with his +own exertions. It might well have cost him his life in more dramatic +fashion, for he had become a marked man to the criminal classes, and he +headed his own search-parties when, on the information of some bribed +rascal, a new den of villainy was exposed. But he carried his point. In +little more than a year the thing was done, and London turned from the +most rowdy to what it has ever since remained, the most law-abiding of +European capitals. Has any man ever left a finer monument behind him? + +If you want the real human Fielding you will find him not in the +novels, where his real kindliness is too often veiled by a mock +cynicism, but in his “Diary of his Voyage to Lisbon.” He knew that his +health was irretrievably ruined and that his years were numbered. Those +are the days when one sees a man as he is, when he has no longer a +motive for affectation or pretence in the immediate presence of the +most tremendous of all realities. Yet, sitting in the shadow of death, +Fielding displayed a quiet, gentle courage and constancy of mind, which +show how splendid a nature had been shrouded by his earlier frailties. + +Just one word upon another eighteenth-century novel before I finish +this somewhat didactic chat. You will admit that I have never prosed so +much before, but the period and the subject seem to encourage it. I +skip Sterne, for I have no great sympathy with his finicky methods. And +I skip Miss Burney’s novels, as being feminine reflections of the great +masters who had just preceded her. But Goldsmith’s “Vicar of Wakefield” +surely deserves one paragraph to itself. There is a book which is +tinged throughout, as was all Goldsmith’s work, with a beautiful +nature. No one who had not a fine heart could have written it, just as +no one without a fine heart could have written “The Deserted Village.” +How strange it is to think of old Johnson patronizing or snubbing the +shrinking Irishman, when both in poetry, in fiction, and in the drama +the latter has proved himself far the greater man. But here is an +object-lesson of how the facts of life may be treated without offence. +Nothing is shirked. It is all faced and duly recorded. Yet if I wished +to set before the sensitive mind of a young girl a book which would +prepare her for life without in any way contaminating her delicacy of +feeling, there is no book which I should choose so readily as “The +Vicar of Wakefield.” + +So much for the eighteenth-century novelists. They have a shelf of +their own in the case, and a corner of their own in my brain. For years +you may never think of them, and then suddenly some stray word or train +of thought leads straight to them, and you look at them and love them, +and rejoice that you know them. But let us pass to something which may +interest you more. + +If statistics could be taken in the various free libraries of the +kingdom to prove the comparative popularity of different novelists with +the public, I think that it is quite certain that Mr. George Meredith +would come out very low indeed. If, on the other hand, a number of +authors were convened to determine which of their fellow-craftsmen they +considered the greatest and the most stimulating to their own minds, I +am equally confident that Mr. Meredith would have a vast preponderance +of votes. Indeed, his only conceivable rival would be Mr. Hardy. It +becomes an interesting study, therefore, why there should be such a +divergence of opinion as to his merits, and what the qualities are +which have repelled so many readers, and yet have attracted those whose +opinion must be allowed to have a special weight. + +The most obvious reason is his complete unconventionality. The public +read to be amused. The novelist reads to have new light thrown upon his +art. To read Meredith is _not_ a mere amusement; it is an intellectual +exercise, a kind of mental dumb-bell with which you develop your +thinking powers. Your mind is in a state of tension the whole time that +you are reading him. + +If you will follow my nose as the sportsman follows that of his +pointer, you will observe that these remarks are excited by the +presence of my beloved “Richard Feverel,” which lurks in yonder corner. +What a great book it is, how wise and how witty! Others of the master’s +novels may be more characteristic or more profound, but for my own part +it is the one which I would always present to the new-comer who had not +yet come under the influence. I think that I should put it third after +“Vanity Fair” and “The Cloister and the Hearth” if I had to name the +three novels which I admire most in the Victorian era. The book was +published, I believe, in 1859, and it is almost incredible, and says +little for the discrimination of critics or public, that it was nearly +twenty years before a second edition was needed. + +But there are never effects without causes, however inadequate the +cause may be. What was it that stood in the way of the book’s success? +Undoubtedly it was the style. And yet it is subdued and tempered here +with little of the luxuriance and exuberance which it attained in the +later works. But it was an innovation, and it stalled off both the +public and the critics. They regarded it, no doubt, as an affectation, +as Carlyle’s had been considered twenty years before, forgetting that +in the case of an original genius style is an organic thing, part of +the man as much as the colour of his eyes. It is not, to quote Carlyle, +a shirt to be taken on and off at pleasure, but a skin, eternally +fixed. And this strange, powerful style, how is it to be described? +Best, perhaps, in his own strong words, when he spoke of Carlyle with +perhaps the _arrière pensée_ that the words would apply as strongly to +himself. + +“His favourite author,” says he, “was one writing on heroes in a style +resembling either early architecture or utter dilapidation, so loose +and rough it seemed. A wind-in-the-orchard style that tumbled down here +and there an appreciable fruit with uncouth bluster, sentences without +commencements running to abrupt endings and smoke, like waves against a +sea-wall, learned dictionary words giving a hand to street slang, and +accents falling on them haphazard, like slant rays from driving clouds; +all the pages in a breeze, the whole book producing a kind of +electrical agitation in the mind and joints.” + +What a wonderful description and example of style! And how vivid is the +impression left by such expressions as “all the pages in a breeze.” As +a comment on Carlyle, and as a sample of Meredith, the passage is +equally perfect. + +Well, “Richard Feverel” has come into its own at last. I confess to +having a strong belief in the critical discernment of the public. I do +not think good work is often overlooked. Literature, like water, finds +its true level. Opinion is slow to form, but it sets true at last. I am +sure that if the critics were to unite to praise a bad book or to damn +a good one they could (and continually do) have a five-year influence, +but it would in no wise affect the final result. Sheridan said that if +all the fleas in his bed had been unanimous, they could have pushed him +out of it. I do not think that any unanimity of critics has ever pushed +a good book out of literature. + +Among the minor excellences of “Richard Feverel”—excuse the prolixity +of an enthusiast—are the scattered aphorisms which are worthy of a +place among our British proverbs. What could be more exquisite than +this, “Who rises from prayer a better man his prayer is answered”; or +this, “Expediency is man’s wisdom. Doing right is God’s”; or, “All +great thoughts come from the heart”? Good are the words “The coward +amongst us is he who sneers at the failings of humanity,” and a healthy +optimism rings in the phrase “There is for the mind but one grasp of +happiness; from that uppermost pinnacle of wisdom whence we see that +this world is well designed.” In more playful mood is “Woman is the +last thing which will be civilized by man.” Let us hurry away abruptly, +for he who starts quotation from “Richard Feverel” is lost. + +He has, as you see, a goodly line of his brothers beside him. There are +the Italian ones, “Sandra Belloni,” and “Vittoria”; there is “Rhoda +Fleming,” which carried Stevenson off his critical feet; “Beauchamp’s +Career,” too, dealing with obsolete politics. No great writer should +spend himself upon a temporary theme. It is like the beauty who is +painted in some passing fashion of gown. She tends to become obsolete +along with her frame. Here also is the dainty “Diana,” the egoist with +immortal Willoughby Pattern, eternal type of masculine selfishness, and +“Harry Richmond,” the first chapters of which are, in my opinion, among +the finest pieces of narrative prose in the language. That great mind +would have worked in any form which his age had favoured. He is a +novelist by accident. As an Elizabethan he would have been a great +dramatist; under Queen Anne a great essayist. But whatever medium he +worked in, he must equally have thrown the image of a great brain and a +great soul. + + + + +VIII. + + +We have left our eighteenth-century novelists—Fielding, Richardson, and +Smollett—safely behind us, with all their solidity and their audacity, +their sincerity, and their coarseness of fibre. They have brought us, +as you perceive, to the end of the shelf. What, not wearied? Ready for +yet another? Let us run down this next row, then, and I will tell you a +few things which may be of interest, though they will be dull enough if +you have not been born with that love of books in your heart which is +among the choicest gifts of the gods. If that is wanting, then one +might as well play music to the deaf, or walk round the Academy with +the colour-blind, as appeal to the book-sense of an unfortunate who has +it not. + +There is this old brown volume in the corner. How it got there I cannot +imagine, for it is one of those which I bought for threepence out of +the remnant box in Edinburgh, and its weather-beaten comrades are up +yonder in the back gallery, while this one has elbowed its way among +the quality in the stalls. But it is worth a word or two. Take it out +and handle it! See how swarthy it is, how squat, with how bullet-proof +a cover of scaling leather. Now open the fly-leaf “_Ex libris_ +Guilielmi Whyte. 1672” in faded yellow ink. I wonder who William Whyte +may have been, and what he did upon earth in the reign of the merry +monarch. A pragmatical seventeenth-century lawyer, I should judge, by +that hard, angular writing. The date of issue is 1642, so it was +printed just about the time when the Pilgrim Fathers were settling down +into their new American home, and the first Charles’s head was still +firm upon his shoulders, though a little puzzled, no doubt, at what was +going on around it. The book is in Latin—though Cicero might not have +admitted it—and it treats of the laws of warfare. + +I picture some pedantic Dugald Dalgetty bearing it about under his buff +coat, or down in his holster, and turning up the reference for every +fresh emergency which occurred. “Hullo! here’s a well!” says he. “I +wonder if I may poison it?” Out comes the book, and he runs a dirty +forefinger down the index. “_Ob fas est aquam hostis venere_,” etc. +“Tut, tut, it’s not allowed. But here are some of the enemy in a barn? +What about that?” “_Ob fas est hostem incendio_,” etc. “Yes; he says we +may. Quick, Ambrose, up with the straw and the tinder box.” Warfare was +no child’s play about the time when Tilly sacked Magdeburg, and +Cromwell turned his hand from the mash tub to the sword. It might not +be much better now in a long campaign, when men were hardened and +embittered. Many of these laws are unrepealed, and it is less than a +century since highly disciplined British troops claimed their dreadful +rights at Badajos and Rodrigo. Recent European wars have been so short +that discipline and humanity have not had time to go to pieces, but a +long war would show that man is ever the same, and that civilization is +the thinnest of veneers. + +Now you see that whole row of books which takes you at one sweep nearly +across the shelf? I am rather proud of those, for they are my +collection of Napoleonic military memoirs. There is a story told of an +illiterate millionaire who gave a wholesale dealer an order for a copy +of all books in any language treating of any aspect of Napoleon’s +career. He thought it would fill a case in his library. He was somewhat +taken aback, however, when in a few weeks he received a message from +the dealer that he had got 40,000 volumes, and awaited instructions as +to whether he should send them on as an instalment, or wait for a +complete set. The figures may not be exact, but at least they bring +home the impossibility of exhausting the subject, and the danger of +losing one’s self for years in a huge labyrinth of reading, which may +end by leaving no very definite impression upon your mind. But one +might, perhaps, take a corner of it, as I have done here in the +military memoirs, and there one might hope to get some finality. + +Here is Marbot at this end—the first of all soldier books in the world. +This is the complete three-volume French edition, with red and gold +cover, smart and _débonnaire_ like its author. Here he is in one +frontispiece with his pleasant, round, boyish face, as a Captain of his +beloved Chasseurs. And here in the other is the grizzled old bull-dog +as a full general, looking as full of fight as ever. It was a real blow +to me when some one began to throw doubts upon the authenticity of +Marbot’s memoirs. Homer may be dissolved into a crowd of skin-clad +bards. Even Shakespeare may be jostled in his throne of honour by +plausible Baconians; but the human, the gallant, the inimitable Marbot! +His book is that which gives us the best picture by far of the +Napoleonic soldiers, and to me they are even more interesting than +their great leader, though his must ever be the most singular figure in +history. But those soldiers, with their huge shakoes, their hairy +knapsacks, and their hearts of steel—what men they were! And what a +latent power there must be in this French nation which could go on +pouring out the blood of its sons for twenty-three years with hardly a +pause! + +It took all that time to work off the hot ferment which the Revolution +had left in men’s veins. And they were not exhausted, for the very last +fight which the French fought was the finest of all. Proud as we are of +our infantry at Waterloo, it was really with the French cavalry that +the greenest laurels of that great epic rested. They got the better of +our own cavalry, they took our guns again and again, they swept a large +portion of our allies from the field, and finally they rode off +unbroken, and as full of fight as ever. Read Gronow’s “Memoirs,” that +chatty little yellow volume yonder which brings all that age back to us +more vividly than any more pretentious work, and you will find the +chivalrous admiration which our officers expressed at the fine +performance of the French horsemen. + +It must be admitted that, looking back upon history, we have not always +been good allies, nor yet generous co-partners in the battlefield. The +first is the fault of our politics, where one party rejoices to break +what the other has bound. The makers of the Treaty are staunch enough, +as the Tories were under Pitt and Castlereagh, or the Whigs at the time +of Queen Anne, but sooner or later the others must come in. At the end +of the Marlborough wars we suddenly vamped up a peace and, left our +allies in the lurch, on account of a change in domestic politics. We +did the same with Frederick the Great, and would have done it in the +Napoleonic days if Fox could have controlled the country. And as to our +partners of the battlefield, how little we have ever said that is +hearty as to the splendid staunchness of the Prussians at Waterloo. You +have to read the Frenchman, Houssaye, to get a central view and to +understand the part they played. Think of old Blucher, seventy years +old, and ridden over by a regiment of charging cavalry the day before, +yet swearing that he would come to Wellington if he had to be strapped +to his horse. He nobly redeemed his promise. + +The loss of the Prussians at Waterloo was not far short of our own. You +would not know it, to read our historians. And then the abuse of our +Belgian allies has been overdone. Some of them fought splendidly, and +one brigade of infantry had a share in the critical instant when the +battle was turned. This also you would not learn from British sources. +Look at our Portuguese allies also! They trained into magnificent +troops, and one of Wellington’s earnest desires was to have ten +thousand of them for his Waterloo campaign. It was a Portuguese who +first topped the rampart of Badajos. They have never had their due +credit, nor have the Spaniards either, for, though often defeated, it +was their unconquerable pertinacity which played a great part in the +struggle. No; I do not think that we are very amiable partners, but I +suppose that all national history may be open to a similar charge. + +It must be confessed that Marbot’s details are occasionally a little +hard to believe. Never in the pages of Lever has there been such a +series of hairbreadth escapes and dare-devil exploits. Surely he +stretched it a little sometimes. You may remember his adventure at +Eylau—I think it was Eylau—how a cannon-ball, striking the top of his +helmet, paralyzed him by the concussion of his spine; and how, on a +Russian officer running forward to cut him down, his horse bit the +man’s face nearly off. This was the famous charger which savaged +everything until Marbot, having bought it for next to nothing, cured it +by thrusting a boiling leg of mutton into its mouth when it tried to +bite him. It certainly does need a robust faith to get over these +incidents. And yet, when one reflects upon the hundreds of battles and +skirmishes which a Napoleonic officer must have endured—how they must +have been the uninterrupted routine of his life from the first dark +hair upon his lip to the first grey one upon his head, it is +presumptuous to say what may or may not have been possible in such +unparalleled careers. At any rate, be it fact or fiction—fact it is, in +my opinion, with some artistic touching up of the high lights—there are +few books which I could not spare from my shelves better than the +memoirs of the gallant Marbot. + +I dwell upon this particular book because it is the best; but take the +whole line, and there is not one which is not full of interest. Marbot +gives you the point of view of the officer. So does De Segur and De +Fezensac and Colonel Gonville, each in some different branch of the +service. But some are from the pens of the men in the ranks, and they +are even more graphic than the others. Here, for example, are the +papers of good old Cogniet, who was a grenadier of the Guard, and could +neither read nor write until after the great wars were over. A tougher +soldier never went into battle. Here is Sergeant Bourgogne, also with +his dreadful account of that nightmare campaign in Russia, and the +gallant Chevillet, trumpeter of Chasseurs, with his matter-of-fact +account of all that he saw, where the daily “combat” is sandwiched in +betwixt the real business of the day, which was foraging for his frugal +breakfast and supper. There is no better writing, and no easier +reading, than the records of these men of action. + +A Briton cannot help asking himself, as he realizes what men these +were, what would have happened if 150,000 Cogniets and Bourgognes, with +Marbots to lead them, and the great captain of all time in the prime of +his vigour at their head, had made their landing in Kent? For months it +was touch-and-go. A single naval slip which left the Channel clear +would have been followed by an embarkation from Boulogne, which had +been brought by constant practice to so incredibly fine a point that +the last horse was aboard within two hours of the start. Any evening +might have seen the whole host upon the Pevensey Flats. What then? We +know what Humbert did with a handful of men in Ireland, and the story +is not reassuring. Conquest, of course, is unthinkable. The world in +arms could not do that. But Napoleon never thought of the conquest of +Britain. He has expressly disclaimed it. What he did contemplate was a +gigantic raid in which he would do so much damage that for years to +come England would be occupied at home in picking up the pieces, +instead of having energy to spend abroad in thwarting his Continental +plans. + +Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Sheerness in flames, with London either +levelled to the ground or ransomed at his own figure—that was a more +feasible programme. Then, with the united fleets of conquered Europe at +his back, enormous armies and an inexhaustible treasury, swollen with +the ransom of Britain, he could turn to that conquest of America which +would win back the old colonies of France and leave him master of the +world. If the worst happened and he had met his Waterloo upon the South +Downs, he would have done again what he did in Egypt and once more in +Russia: hurried back to France in a swift vessel, and still had force +enough to hold his own upon the Continent. It would, no doubt, have +been a big stake to lay upon the table—150,000 of his best—but he could +play again if he lost; while, if he won, he cleared the board. A fine +game—if little Nelson had not stopped it, and with one blow fixed the +edge of salt water as the limit of Napoleon’s power. + +There’s the cast of a medal on the top of that cabinet which will bring +it all close home to you. It is taken from the die of the medal which +Napoleon had arranged to issue on the day that he reached London. It +serves, at any rate, to show that his great muster was not a bluff, but +that he really did mean serious business. On one side is his head. On +the other France is engaged in strangling and throwing to earth a +curious fish-tailed creature, which stands for perfidious Albion. +“Frappe a Londres” is printed on one part of it, and “La Descente dans +Angleterre” upon another. Struck to commemorate a conquest, it remains +now as a souvenir of a fiasco. But it was a close call. + +By the way, talking of Napoleon’s flight from Egypt, did you ever see a +curious little book called, if I remember right, “Intercepted Letters”? +No; I have no copy upon this shelf, but a friend is more fortunate. It +shows the almost incredible hatred which existed at the end of the +eighteenth century between the two nations, descending even to the most +petty personal annoyance. On this occasion the British Government +intercepted a mail-bag of letters coming from French officers in Egypt +to their friends at home, and they either published them, or at least +allowed them to be published, in the hope, no doubt, of causing +domestic complications. Was ever a more despicable action? But who +knows what other injuries had been inflicted to draw forth such a +retaliation? I have myself seen a burned and mutilated British mail +lying where De Wet had left it; but suppose the refinement of his +vengeance had gone so far as to publish it, what a thunder-bolt it +might have been! + +As to the French officers, I have read their letters, though even after +a century one had a feeling of guilt when one did so. But, on the +whole, they are a credit to the writers, and give the impression of a +noble and chivalrous set of men. Whether they were all addressed to the +right people is another matter, and therein lay the poisoned sting of +this most un-British affair. As to the monstrous things which were done +upon the other side, remember the arrest of all the poor British +tourists and commercials who chanced to be in France when the war was +renewed in 1803. They had run over in all trust and confidence for a +little outing and change of air. They certainly got it, for Napoleon’s +steel grip fell upon them, and they rejoined their families in 1814. He +must have had a heart of adamant and a will of iron. Look at his +conduct over the naval prisoners. The natural proceeding would have +been to exchange them. For some reason he did not think it good policy +to do so. All representations from the British Government were set +aside, save in the case of the higher officers. Hence the miseries of +the hulks and the dreadful prison barracks in England. Hence also the +unhappy idlers of Verdun. What splendid loyalty there must have been in +those humble Frenchmen which never allowed them for one instant to turn +bitterly upon the author of all their great misfortunes. It is all +brought vividly home by the description of their prisons given by +Borrow in “Lavengro.” This is the passage— + +“What a strange appearance had those mighty casernes, with their blank, +blind walls, without windows or grating, and their slanting roofs, out +of which, through orifices where the tiles had been removed, would be +protruded dozens of grim heads, feasting their prison-sick eyes on the +wide expanse of country unfolded from their airy height. Ah! there was +much misery in those casernes; and from those roofs, doubtless, many a +wistful look was turned in the direction of lovely France. Much had the +poor inmates to endure, and much to complain of, to the disgrace of +England be it said—of England, in general so kind and bountiful. +Rations of carrion meat, and bread from which I have seen the very +hounds occasionally turn away, were unworthy entertainment even for the +most ruffian enemy, when helpless and captive; and such, alas! was the +fare in those casernes. And then, those visits, or rather ruthless +inroads, called in the slang of the place ‘straw-plait hunts,’ when in +pursuit of a contraband article, which the prisoners, in order to +procure themselves a few of the necessaries and comforts of existence, +were in the habit of making, red-coated battalions were marched into +the prisons, who, with the bayonet’s point, carried havoc and ruin into +every poor convenience which ingenious wretchedness had been +endeavouring to raise around it; and then the triumphant exit with the +miserable booty, and worst of all, the accursed bonfire, on the barrack +parade of the plait contraband, beneath the view of glaring eyeballs +from those lofty roofs, amid the hurrahs of the troops frequently +drowned in the curses poured down from above like a tempest-shower, or +in the terrific war-whoop of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’” + +There is a little vignette of Napoleon’s men in captivity. Here is +another which is worth preserving of the bearing of his veterans when +wounded on the field of battle. It is from Mercer’s recollections of +the Battle of Waterloo. Mercer had spent the day firing case into the +French cavalry at ranges from fifty to two hundred yards, losing +two-thirds of his own battery in the process. In the evening he had a +look at some of his own grim handiwork. + +“I had satisfied my curiosity at Hougoumont, and was retracing my steps +up the hill when my attention was called to a group of wounded +Frenchmen by the calm, dignified, and soldier-like oration addressed by +one of them to the rest. I cannot, like Livy, compose a fine harangue +for my hero, and, of course, I could not retain the precise words, but +the import of them was to exhort them to bear their sufferings with +fortitude; not to repine, like women or children, at what every soldier +should have made up his mind to suffer as the fortune of war, but above +all, to remember that they were surrounded by Englishmen, before whom +they ought to be doubly careful not to disgrace themselves by +displaying such an unsoldier-like want of fortitude. + +“The speaker was sitting on the ground with his lance stuck upright +beside him—an old veteran with thick bushy, grizzly beard, countenance +like a lion—a lancer of the old guard, and no doubt had fought in many +a field. One hand was flourished in the air as he spoke, the other, +severed at the wrist, lay on the earth beside him; one ball (case-shot, +probably) had entered his body, another had broken his leg. His +suffering, after a night of exposure so mangled, must have been great; +yet he betrayed it not. His bearing was that of a Roman, or perhaps an +Indian warrior, and I could fancy him concluding appropriately his +speech in the words of the Mexican king, ‘And I too; am I on a bed of +roses?’” + +What a load of moral responsibility upon one man! But his mind was +insensible to moral responsibility. Surely if it had not been it must +have been crushed beneath it. Now, if you want to understand the +character of Napoleon—but surely I must take a fresh start before I +launch on so portentous a subject as that. + +But before I leave the military men let me, for the credit of my own +country, after that infamous incident of the letters, indicate these +six well-thumbed volumes of “Napier’s History.” This is the story of +the great Peninsular War, by one who fought through it himself, and in +no history has a more chivalrous and manly account been given of one’s +enemy. Indeed, Napier seems to me to push it too far, for his +admiration appears to extend not only to the gallant soldiers who +opposed him, but to the character and to the ultimate aims of their +leader. He was, in fact, a political follower of Charles James Fox, and +his heart seems to have been with the enemy even at the moment when he +led his men most desperately against them. In the verdict of history +the action of those men who, in their honest zeal for freedom, inflamed +somewhat by political strife, turned against their own country, when it +was in truth the Champion of Freedom, and approved of a military despot +of the most uncompromising kind, seems wildly foolish. + +But if Napier’s politics may seem strange, his soldiering was splendid, +and his prose among the very best that I know. There are passages in +that work—the one which describes the breach of Badajos, that of the +charge of the Fusiliers at Albuera, and that of the French advance at +Fuentes d’Onoro—which once read haunt the mind for ever. The book is a +worthy monument of a great national epic. Alas! for the pregnant +sentence with which it closes, “So ended the great war, and with it all +memory of the services of the veterans.” Was there ever a British war +of which the same might not have been written? + +The quotation which I have given from Mercer’s book turns my thoughts +in the direction of the British military reminiscences of that period, +less numerous, less varied, and less central than the French, but full +of character and interest all the same. I have found that if I am +turned loose in a large library, after hesitating over covers for half +an hour or so, it is usually a book of soldier memoirs which I take +down. Man is never so interesting as when he is thoroughly in earnest, +and no one is so earnest as he whose life is at stake upon the event. +But of all types of soldier the best is the man who is keen upon his +work, and yet has general culture which enables him to see that work in +its due perspective, and to sympathize with the gentler aspirations of +mankind. Such a man is Mercer, an ice-cool fighter, with a sense of +discipline and decorum which prevented him from moving when a bombshell +was fizzing between his feet, and yet a man of thoughtful and +philosophic temperament, with a weakness for solitary musings, for +children, and for flowers. He has written for all time the classic +account of a great battle, seen from the point of view of a battery +commander. Many others of Wellington’s soldiers wrote their personal +reminiscences. You can get them, as I have them there, in the pleasant +abridgement of “Wellington’s Men” (admirably edited by Dr. +Fitchett)—Anton the Highlander, Harris the rifleman, and Kincaid of the +same corps. It is a most singular fate which has made an Australian +nonconformist clergyman the most sympathetic and eloquent reconstructor +of those old heroes, but it is a noble example of that unity of the +British race, which in fifty scattered lands still mourns or rejoices +over the same historic record. + +And just one word, before I close down this over-long and too +discursive chatter, on the subject of yonder twin red volumes which +flank the shelf. They are Maxwell’s “History of Wellington,” and I do +not think you will find a better or more readable one. The reader must +ever feel towards the great soldier what his own immediate followers +felt, respect rather than affection. One’s failure to attain a more +affectionate emotion is alleviated by the knowledge that it was the +last thing which he invited or desired. “Don’t be a damned fool, sir!” +was his exhortation to the good citizen who had paid him a compliment. +It was a curious, callous nature, brusque and limited. The hardest +huntsman learns to love his hounds, but he showed no affection and a +good deal of contempt for the men who had been his instruments. “They +are the scum of the earth,” said he. “All English soldiers are fellows +who have enlisted for drink. That is the plain fact—they have all +enlisted for drink.” His general orders were full of undeserved +reproaches at a time when the most lavish praise could hardly have met +the real deserts of his army. When the wars were done he saw little, +save in his official capacity, of his old comrades-in-arms. And yet, +from major-general to drummer-boy, he was the man whom they would all +have elected to serve under, had the work to be done once more. As one +of them said, “The sight of his long nose was worth ten thousand men on +a field of battle.” They were themselves a leathery breed, and cared +little for the gentler amenities so long as the French were well +drubbed. + +His mind, which was comprehensive and alert in warfare, was singularly +limited in civil affairs. As a statesman he was so constant an example +of devotion to duty, self-sacrifice, and high disinterested character, +that the country was the better for his presence. But he fiercely +opposed Catholic Emancipation, the Reform Bill, and everything upon +which our modern life is founded. He could never be brought to see that +a pyramid should stand on its base and not on its apex, and that the +larger the pyramid, the broader should be the base. Even in military +affairs he was averse from every change, and I know of no improvements +which came from his initiative during all those years when his +authority was supreme. The floggings which broke a man’s spirit and +self-respect, the leathern stock which hampered his movements, all the +old traditional regime found a champion in him. On the other hand, he +strongly opposed the introduction of the percussion cap as opposed to +the flint and steel in the musket. Neither in war nor in politics did +he rightly judge the future. + +And yet in reading his letters and dispatches, one is surprised +sometimes at the incisive thought and its vigorous expression. There is +a passage in which he describes the way in which his soldiers would +occasionally desert into some town which he was besieging. “They knew,” +he writes, “that they must be taken, for when we lay our bloody hands +upon a place we are sure to take it, sooner or later; but they liked +being dry and under cover, and then that extraordinary caprice which +always pervades the English character! Our deserters are very badly +treated by the enemy; those who deserted in France were treated as the +lowest of mortals, slaves and scavengers. Nothing but English caprice +can account for it; just what makes our noblemen associate with +stage-coach drivers, and become stage-coach drivers themselves.” After +reading that passage, how often does the phrase “the extraordinary +caprice which always pervades the English character” come back as one +observes some fresh manifestation of it! + +But let not my last note upon the great duke be a carping one. Rather +let my final sentence be one which will remind you of his frugal and +abstemious life, his carpetless floor and little camp bed, his precise +courtesy which left no humblest letter unanswered, his courage which +never flinched, his tenacity which never faltered, his sense of duty +which made his life one long unselfish effort on behalf of what seemed +to him to be the highest interest of the State. Go down and stand by +the huge granite sarcophagus in the dim light of the crypt of St. +Paul’s, and in the hush of that austere spot, cast back your mind to +the days when little England alone stood firm against the greatest +soldier and the greatest army that the world has ever known. Then you +feel what this dead man stood for, and you pray that we may still find +such another amongst us when the clouds gather once again. + +You see that the literature of Waterloo is well represented in my small +military library. Of all books dealing with the personal view of the +matter, I think that “Siborne’s Letters,” which is a collection of the +narratives of surviving officers made by Siborne in the year 1827, is +the most interesting. Gronow’s account is also very vivid and +interesting. Of the strategical narratives, Houssaye’s book is my +favourite. Taken from the French point of view, it gets the actions of +the allies in truer perspective than any English or German account can +do; but there is a fascination about that great combat which makes +every narrative that bears upon it of enthralling interest. + +Wellington used to say that too much was made of it, and that one would +imagine that the British Army had never fought a battle before. It was +a characteristic speech, but it must be admitted that the British Army +never had, as a matter of fact, for many centuries fought a battle +which was finally decisive of a great European war. There lies the +perennial interest of the incident, that it was the last act of that +long-drawn drama, and that to the very fall of the curtain no man could +tell how the play would end—“the nearest run thing that ever you +saw”—that was the victor’s description. It is a singular thing that +during those twenty-five years of incessant fighting the material and +methods of warfare made so little progress. So far as I know, there was +no great change in either between 1789 and 1805. The breech-loader, +heavy artillery, the ironclad, all great advances in the art of war, +have been invented in time of peace. There are some improvements so +obvious, and at the same time so valuable, that it is extraordinary +that they were not adopted. Signalling, for example, whether by +heliograph or by flag-waving, would have made an immense difference in +the Napoleonic campaigns. The principle of the semaphore was well +known, and Belgium, with its numerous windmills, would seem to be +furnished with natural semaphores. Yet in the four days during which +the campaign of Waterloo was fought, the whole scheme of military +operations on both sides was again and again imperilled, and finally in +the case of the French brought to utter ruin by lack of that +intelligence which could so easily have been conveyed. June 18th was at +intervals a sunshiny day—a four-inch glass mirror would have put +Napoleon in communication with Gruchy, and the whole history of Europe +might have been altered. Wellington himself suffered dreadfully from +defective information which might have been easily supplied. The +unexpected presence of the French army was first discovered at four in +the morning of June 15. It was of enormous importance to get the news +rapidly to Wellington at Brussels that he might instantly concentrate +his scattered forces on the best line of resistance—yet, through the +folly of sending only a single messenger, this vital information did +not reach him until three in the afternoon, the distance being thirty +miles. Again, when Blucher was defeated at Ligny on the 16th, it was of +enormous importance that Wellington should know at once the line of his +retreat so as to prevent the French from driving a wedge between them. +The single Prussian officer who was despatched with this information +was wounded, and never reached his destination, and it was only next +day that Wellington learned the Prussian plans. On what tiny things +does History depend! + + + + +IX. + + +The contemplation of my fine little regiment of French military memoirs +had brought me to the question of Napoleon himself, and you see that I +have a very fair line dealing with him also. There is Scott’s life, +which is not entirely a success. His ink was too precious to be shed in +such a venture. But here are the three volumes of the physician +Bourrienne—that Bourrienne who knew him so well. Does any one ever know +a man so well as his doctor? They are quite excellent and admirably +translated. Meneval also—the patient Meneval—who wrote for untold hours +to dictation at ordinary talking speed, and yet was expected to be +legible and to make no mistakes. At least his master could not fairly +criticize his legibility, for is it not on record that when Napoleon’s +holograph account of an engagement was laid before the President of the +Senate, the worthy man thought that it was a drawn plan of the battle? +Meneval survived his master and has left an excellent and intimate +account of him. There is Constant’s account, also written from that +point of view in which it is proverbial that no man is a hero. But of +all the vivid terrible pictures of Napoleon the most haunting is by a +man who never saw him and whose book was not directly dealing with him. +I mean Taine’s account of him, in the first volume of “Les Origines de +la France Contemporaine.” You can never forget it when once you have +read it. He produces his effect in a wonderful, and to me a novel, way. +He does not, for example, say in mere crude words that Napoleon had a +more than mediaeval Italian cunning. He presents a succession of +documents—gives a series of contemporary instances to prove it. Then, +having got that fixed in your head by blow after blow, he passes on to +another phase of his character, his coldhearted amorousness, his power +of work, his spoiled child wilfulness, or some other quality, and piles +up his illustrations of that. Instead, for example, of saying that the +Emperor had a marvellous memory for detail, we have the account of the +head of Artillery laying the list of all the guns in France before his +master, who looked over it and remarked, “Yes, but you have omitted two +in a fort near Dieppe.” So the man is gradually etched in with +indelible ink. It is a wonderful figure of which you are conscious in +the end, the figure of an archangel, but surely of an archangel of +darkness. + +We will, after Taine’s method, take one fact and let it speak for +itself. Napoleon left a legacy in a codicil to his will to a man who +tried to assassinate Wellington. There is the mediaeval Italian again! +He was no more a Corsican than the Englishman born in India is a +Hindoo. Read the lives of the Borgias, the Sforzas, the Medicis, and of +all the lustful, cruel, broad-minded, art-loving, talented despots of +the little Italian States, including Genoa, from which the Buonapartes +migrated. There at once you get the real descent of the man, with all +the stigmata clear upon him—the outward calm, the inward passion, the +layer of snow above the volcano, everything which characterized the old +despots of his native land, the pupils of Machiavelli, but all raised +to the dimensions of genius. You can whitewash him as you may, but you +will never get a layer thick enough to cover the stain of that +cold-blooded deliberate endorsement of his noble adversary’s +assassination. + +Another book which gives an extraordinarily vivid picture of the man is +this one—the Memoirs of Madame de Remusat. She was in daily contact +with him at the Court, and she studied him with those quick critical +eyes of a clever woman, the most unerring things in life when they are +not blinded by love. If you have read those pages, you feel that you +know him as if you had yourself seen and talked with him. His singular +mixture of the small and the great, his huge sweep of imagination, his +very limited knowledge, his intense egotism, his impatience of +obstacles, his boorishness, his gross impertinence to women, his +diabolical playing upon the weak side of every one with whom he came in +contact—they make up among them one of the most striking of historical +portraits. + +Most of my books deal with the days of his greatness, but here, you +see, is a three-volume account of those weary years at St. Helena. Who +can help pitying the mewed eagle? And yet if you play the great game +you must pay a stake. This was the same man who had a royal duke shot +in a ditch because he was a danger to his throne. Was not he himself a +danger to every throne in Europe? Why so harsh a retreat as St. Helena, +you say? Remember that he had been put in a milder one before, that he +had broken away from it, and that the lives of fifty thousand men had +paid for the mistaken leniency. All this is forgotten now, and the +pathetic picture of the modern Prometheus chained to his rock and +devoured by the vultures of his own bitter thoughts, is the one +impression which the world has retained. It is always so much easier to +follow the emotions than the reason, especially where a cheap +magnanimity and second-hand generosity are involved. But reason must +still insist that Europe’s treatment of Napoleon was not vindictive, +and that Hudson Lowe was a man who tried to live up to the trust which +had been committed to him by his country. + +It was certainly not a post from which any one would hope for credit. +If he were slack and easy-going all would be well. But there would be +the chance of a second flight with its consequences. If he were strict +and assiduous he would be assuredly represented as a petty tyrant. “I +am glad when you are on outpost,” said Lowe’s general in some campaign, +“for then I am sure of a sound rest.” He was on outpost at St. Helena, +and because he was true to his duties Europe (France included) had a +sound rest. But he purchased it at the price of his own reputation. The +greatest schemer in the world, having nothing else on which to vent his +energies, turned them all to the task of vilifying his guardian. It was +natural enough that he who had never known control should not brook it +now. It is natural also that sentimentalists who have not thought of +the details should take the Emperor’s point of view. What is +deplorable, however, is that our own people should be misled by +one-sided accounts, and that they should throw to the wolves a man who +was serving his country in a post of anxiety and danger, with such +responsibility upon him as few could ever have endured. Let them +remember Montholon’s remark: “An angel from heaven would not have +satisfied us.” Let them recall also that Lowe with ample material never +once troubled to state his own case. “_Je fais mon devoir et suis +indifférent pour le reste_,” said he, in his interview with the +Emperor. They were no idle words. + +Apart from this particular epoch, French literature, which is so rich +in all its branches, is richest of all in its memoirs. Whenever there +was anything of interest going forward there was always some kindly +gossip who knew all about it, and was ready to set it down for the +benefit of posterity. Our own history has not nearly enough of these +charming sidelights. Look at our sailors in the Napoleonic wars, for +example. They played an epoch-making part. For nearly twenty years +Freedom was a Refugee upon the seas. Had our navy been swept away, then +all Europe would have been one organized despotism. At times everybody +was against us, fighting against their own direct interests under the +pressure of that terrible hand. We fought on the waters with the +French, with the Spaniards, with the Danes, with the Russians, with the +Turks, even with our American kinsmen. Middies grew into post-captains, +and admirals into dotards during that prolonged struggle. And what have +we in literature to show for it all? Marryat’s novels, many of which +are founded upon personal experience, Nelson’s and Collingwood’s +letters, Lord Cochrane’s biography—that is about all. I wish we had +more of Collingwood, for he wielded a fine pen. Do you remember the +sonorous opening of his Trafalgar message to his captains?— + +“The ever to be lamented death of Lord Viscount Nelson, Duke of Bronte, +the Commander-in-Chief, who fell in the action of the 21st, in the arms +of Victory, covered with glory, whose memory will be ever dear to the +British Navy and the British Nation; whose zeal for the honour of his +king and for the interests of his country will be ever held up as a +shining example for a British seaman—leaves to me a duty to return +thanks, etc., etc.” + +It was a worthy sentence to carry such a message, written too in a +raging tempest, with sinking vessels all around him. But in the main it +is a poor crop from such a soil. No doubt our sailors were too busy to +do much writing, but none the less one wonders that among so many +thousands there were not some to understand what a treasure their +experiences would be to their descendants. I can call to mind the old +three-deckers which used to rot in Portsmouth Harbour, and I have often +thought, could they tell their tales, what a missing chapter in our +literature they could supply. + +It is not only in Napoleonic memoirs that the French are so fortunate. +The almost equally interesting age of Louis XIV. produced an even more +wonderful series. If you go deeply into the subject you are amazed by +their number, and you feel as if every one at the Court of the Roi +Soleil had done what he (or she) could to give away their neighbours. +Just to take the more obvious, there are St. Simon’s Memoirs—those in +themselves give us a more comprehensive and intimate view of the age +than anything I know of which treats of the times of Queen Victoria. +Then there is St. Evremond, who is nearly as complete. Do you want the +view of a woman of quality? There are the letters of Madame de Sevigne +(eight volumes of them), perhaps the most wonderful series of letters +that any woman has ever penned. Do you want the confessions of a rake +of the period? Here are the too salacious memoirs of the mischievous +Duc de Roquelaure, not reading for the nursery certainly, not even for +the boudoir, but a strange and very intimate picture of the times. All +these books fit into each other, for the characters of the one reappear +in the others. You come to know them quite familiarly before you have +finished, their loves and their hates, their duels, their intrigues, +and their ultimate fortunes. If you do not care to go so deeply into it +you have only to put Julia Pardoe’s four-volumed “Court of Louis XIV.” +upon your shelf, and you will find a very admirable condensation—or a +distillation rather, for most of the salt is left behind. There is +another book too—that big one on the bottom shelf—which holds it all +between its brown and gold covers. An extravagance that—for it cost me +some sovereigns—but it is something to have the portraits of all that +wonderful galaxy, of Louis, of the devout Maintenon, of the frail +Montespan, of Bossuet, Fénelon, Molière, Racine, Pascal, Condé, +Turenne, and all the saints and sinners of the age. If you want to make +yourself a present, and chance upon a copy of “The Court and Times of +Louis XIV.,” you will never think that your money has been wasted. + +Well, I have bored you unduly, my patient friend, with my love of +memoirs, Napoleonic and otherwise, which give a touch of human interest +to the arid records of history. Not that history should be arid. It +ought to be the most interesting subject upon earth, the story of +ourselves, of our forefathers, of the human race, the events which made +us what we are, and wherein, if Weismann’s views hold the field, some +microscopic fraction of this very body which for the instant we chance +to inhabit may have borne a part. But unfortunately the power of +accumulating knowledge and that of imparting it are two very different +things, and the uninspired historian becomes merely the dignified +compiler of an enlarged almanac. Worst of all, when a man does come +along with fancy and imagination, who can breathe the breath of life +into the dry bones, it is the fashion for the dryasdusts to belabour +him, as one who has wandered away from the orthodox path and must +necessarily be inaccurate. So Froude was attacked. So also Macaulay in +his day. But both will be read when the pedants are forgotten. If I +were asked my very ideal of how history should be written, I think I +should point to those two rows on yonder shelf, the one M’Carthy’s +“History of Our Own Times,” the other Lecky’s “History of England in +the Eighteenth Century.” Curious that each should have been written by +an Irishman, and that though of opposite politics and living in an age +when Irish affairs have caused such bitterness, both should be +conspicuous not merely for all literary graces, but for that broad +toleration which sees every side of a question, and handles every +problem from the point of view of the philosophic observer and never of +the sectarian partisan. + +By the way, talking of history, have you read Parkman’s works? He was, +I think, among the very greatest of the historians, and yet one seldom +hears his name. A New England man by birth, and writing principally of +the early history of the American Settlements and of French Canada, it +is perhaps excusable that he should have no great vogue in England, but +even among Americans I have found many who have not read him. There are +four of his volumes in green and gold down yonder, “The Jesuits in +Canada,” and “Frontenac,” but there are others, all of them well worth +reading, “Pioneers of France,” “Montcalm and Wolfe,” “Discovery of the +Great West,” etc. Some day I hope to have a complete set. + +Taking only that one book, “The Jesuits in Canada,” it is worth a +reputation in itself. And how noble a tribute is this which a man of +Puritan blood pays to that wonderful Order! He shows how in the heyday +of their enthusiasm these brave soldiers of the Cross invaded Canada as +they did China and every other place where danger was to be faced, and +a horrible death to be found. I don’t care what faith a man may +profess, or whether he be a Christian at all, but he cannot read these +true records without feeling that the very highest that man has ever +evolved in sanctity and devotion was to be found among these marvellous +men. They were indeed the pioneers of civilization, for apart from +doctrines they brought among the savages the highest European culture, +and in their own deportment an object-lesson of how chastely, +austerely, and nobly men could live. France has sent myriads of brave +men on to her battlefields, but in all her long record of glory I do +not think that she can point to any courage so steadfast and so +absolutely heroic as that of the men of the Iroquois Mission. + +How nobly they lived makes the body of the book, how serenely they died +forms the end to it. It is a tale which cannot even now be read without +a shudder—a nightmare of horrors. Fanaticism may brace a man to hurl +himself into oblivion, as the Mahdi’s hordes did before Khartoum, but +one feels that it is at least a higher development of such emotion, +where men slowly and in cold blood endure so thankless a life, and +welcome so dreadful an end. Every faith can equally boast its martyrs—a +painful thought, since it shows how many thousands must have given +their blood for error—but in testifying to their faith these brave men +have testified to something more important still, to the subjugation of +the body and to the absolute supremacy of the dominating spirit. + +The story of Father Jogue is but one of many, and yet it is worth +recounting, as showing the spirit of the men. He also was on the +Iroquois Mission, and was so tortured and mutilated by his sweet +parishioners that the very dogs used to howl at his distorted figure. +He made his way back to France, not for any reason of personal rest or +recuperation, but because he needed a special dispensation to say Mass. +The Catholic Church has a regulation that a priest shall not be +deformed, so that the savages with their knives had wrought better than +they knew. He received his dispensation and was sent for by Louis XIV., +who asked him what he could do for him. No doubt the assembled +courtiers expected to hear him ask for the next vacant Bishopric. What +he did actually ask for, as the highest favour, was to be sent back to +the Iroquois Mission, where the savages signalized his arrival by +burning him alive. + +Parkman is worth reading, if it were only for his account of the +Indians. Perhaps the very strangest thing about them, and the most +unaccountable, is their small numbers. The Iroquois were one of the +most formidable of tribes. They were of the Five Nations, whose +scalping-parties wandered over an expanse of thousands of square miles. +Yet there is good reason to doubt whether the whole five nations could +have put as many thousand warriors in the field. It was the same with +all the other tribes of Northern Americans, both in the east, the +north, and the west. Their numbers were always insignificant. And yet +they had that huge country to themselves, the best of climates, and +plenty of food. Why was it that they did not people it thickly? It may +be taken as a striking example of the purpose and design which run +through the affairs of men, that at the very moment when the old world +was ready to overflow the new world was empty to receive it. Had North +America been peopled as China is peopled, the Europeans might have +founded some settlements, but could never have taken possession of the +continent. Buffon has made the striking remark that the creative power +appeared to have never had great vigour in America. He alluded to the +abundance of the flora and fauna as compared with that of other great +divisions of the earth’s surface. Whether the numbers of the Indians +are an illustration of the same fact, or whether there is some special +cause, is beyond my very modest scientific attainments. When one +reflects upon the countless herds of bison which used to cover the +Western plains, or marks in the present day the race statistics of the +French Canadians at one end of the continent, and of the Southern negro +at the other, it seems absurd to suppose that there is any geographical +reason against Nature being as prolific here as elsewhere. However, +these be deeper waters, and with your leave we will get back into my +usual six-inch wading-depth once more. + + + + +X. + + +I don’t know how those two little books got in there. They are Henley’s +“Song of the Sword” and “Book of Verses.” They ought to be over yonder +in the rather limited Poetry Section. Perhaps it is that I like his +work so, whether it be prose or verse, and so have put them ready to my +hand. He was a remarkable man, a man who was very much greater than his +work, great as some of his work was. I have seldom known a personality +more magnetic and stimulating. You left his presence, as a battery +leaves a generating station, charged up and full. He made you feel what +a lot of work there was to be done, and how glorious it was to be able +to do it, and how needful to get started upon it that very hour. With +the frame and the vitality of a giant he was cruelly bereft of all +outlet for his strength, and so distilled it off in hot words, in warm +sympathy, in strong prejudices, in all manner of human and stimulating +emotions. Much of the time and energy which might have built an +imperishable name for himself was spent in encouraging others; but it +was not waste, for he left his broad thumb-mark upon all that passed +beneath it. A dozen second-hand Henleys are fortifying our literature +to-day. + +Alas that we have so little of his very best! for that very best was +the finest of our time. Few poets ever wrote sixteen consecutive lines +more noble and more strong than those which begin with the well-known +quatrain— + +“Out of the night that covers me, + Black as the pit from Pole to Pole, +I thank whatever Gods there be + For my unconquerable soul.” + + +It is grand literature, and it is grand pluck too; for it came from a +man who, through no fault of his own, had been pruned, and pruned +again, like an ill-grown shrub, by the surgeon’s knife. When he said— + +“In the fell clutch of Circumstance + I have not winced nor cried aloud, +Beneath the bludgeonings of Chance + My head is bloody but unbowed.” + + +It was not what Lady Byron called “the mimic woe” of the poet, but it +was rather the grand defiance of the Indian warrior at the stake, whose +proud soul can hold in hand his quivering body. + +There were two quite distinct veins of poetry in Henley, each the very +extreme from the other. The one was heroic, gigantic, running to large +sweeping images and thundering words. Such are the “Song of the Sword” +and much more that he has written, like the wild singing of some +Northern scald. The other, and to my mind both the more characteristic +and the finer side of his work, is delicate, precise, finely etched, +with extraordinarily vivid little pictures drawn in carefully phrased +and balanced English. Such are the “Hospital Verses,” while the “London +Voluntaries” stand midway between the two styles. What! you have not +read the “Hospital Verses!” Then get the “Book of Verses” and read them +without delay. You will surely find something there which, for good or +ill, is unique. You can name—or at least I can name—nothing to compare +it with. Goldsmith and Crabbe have written of indoor themes; but their +monotonous, if majestic metre, wearies the modern reader. But this is +so varied, so flexible, so dramatic. It stands by itself. Confound the +weekly journals and all the other lightning conductors which caused +such a man to pass away, and to leave a total output of about five +booklets behind him! + +However, all this is an absolute digression, for the books had no +business in this shelf at all. This corner is meant for chronicles of +various sorts. Here are three in a line, which carry you over a +splendid stretch of French (which usually means European) history, +each, as luck would have it, beginning just about the time when the +other leaves off. The first is Froissart, the second de Monstrelet, and +the third de Comines. When you have read the three you have the best +contemporary account first hand of considerably more than a century—a +fair slice out of the total written record of the human race. + +Froissart is always splendid. If you desire to avoid the mediaeval +French, which only a specialist can read with pleasure, you can get +Lord Berners’ almost equally mediaeval, but very charming English, or +you can turn to a modern translation, such as this one of Johnes. A +single page of Lord Berners is delightful; but it is a strain, I think, +to read bulky volumes in an archaic style. Personally, I prefer the +modern, and even with that you have shown some patience before you have +reached the end of that big second tome. + +I wonder whether, at the time, the old Hainault Canon had any idea of +what he was doing—whether it ever flashed across his mind that the day +might come when his book would be the one great authority, not only +about the times in which he lived, but about the whole institution of +chivalry? I fear that it is far more likely that his whole object was +to gain some mundane advantage from the various barons and knights +whose names and deeds be recounts. He has left it on record, for +example, that when he visited the Court of England he took with him a +handsomely-bound copy of his work; and, doubtless, if one could follow +the good Canon one would find his journeys littered with similar copies +which were probably expensive gifts to the recipient, for what return +would a knightly soul make for a book which enshrined his own valour? + +But without looking too curiously into his motives, it must be admitted +that the work could not have been done more thoroughly. There is +something of Herodotus in the Canon’s cheery, chatty, garrulous, +take-it-or-leave-it manner. But he has the advantage of the old Greek +in accuracy. Considering that he belonged to the same age which gravely +accepted the travellers’ tales of Sir John Maundeville, it is, I think, +remarkable how careful and accurate the chronicler is. Take, for +example, his description of Scotland and the Scotch. Some would give +the credit to Jean-le-Bel, but that is another matter. Scotch +descriptions are a subject over which a fourteenth-century Hainaulter +might fairly be allowed a little scope for his imagination. Yet we can +see that the account must on the whole have been very correct. The +Galloway nags, the girdle-cakes, the bagpipes—every little detail rings +true. Jean-le-Bel was actually present in a Border campaign, and from +him Froissart got his material; but he has never attempted to embroider +it, and its accuracy, where we can to some extent test it, must +predispose us to accept his accounts where they are beyond our +confirmation. + +But the most interesting portion of old Froissart’s work is that which +deals with the knights and the knight-errants of his time, their deeds, +their habits, their methods of talking. It is true that he lived +himself just a little after the true heyday of chivalry; but he was +quite early enough to have met many of the men who had been looked upon +as the flower of knighthood of the time. His book was read too, and +commented on by these very men (as many of them as could read), and so +we may take it that it was no fancy portrait, but a correct picture of +these soldiers which is to be found in it. The accounts are always +consistent. If you collate the remarks and speeches of the knights (as +I have had occasion to do) you will find a remarkable uniformity +running through them. We may believe then that this really does +represent the kind of men who fought at Crecy and at Poictiers, in the +age when both the French and the Scottish kings were prisoners in +London, and England reached a pitch of military glory which has perhaps +never been equalled in her history. + +In one respect these knights differ from anything which we have had +presented to us in our historical romances. To turn to the supreme +romancer, you will find that Scott’s mediaeval knights were usually +muscular athletes in the prime of life: Bois-Guilbert, Front-de-Bœuf, +Richard, Ivanhoe, Count Robert—they all were such. But occasionally the +most famous of Froissart’s knights were old, crippled and blinded. +Chandos, the best lance of his day, must have been over seventy when he +lost his life through being charged upon the side on which he had +already lost an eye. He was well on to that age when he rode out from +the English army and slew the Spanish champion, big Marten Ferrara, +upon the morning of Navaretta. Youth and strength were very useful, no +doubt, especially where heavy armour had to be carried, but once on the +horse’s back the gallant steed supplied the muscles. In an English +hunting-field many a doddering old man, when he is once firmly seated +in his familiar saddle, can give points to the youngsters at the game. +So it was among the knights, and those who had outlived all else could +still carry to the wars their wiliness, their experience with arms, +and, above all, their cool and undaunted courage. + +Beneath his varnish of chivalry, it cannot be gainsayed that the knight +was often a bloody and ferocious barbarian. There was little quarter in +his wars, save when a ransom might be claimed. But with all his +savagery, he was a light-hearted creature, like a formidable boy +playing a dreadful game. He was true also to his own curious code, and, +so far as his own class went, his feelings were genial and sympathetic, +even in warfare. There was no personal feeling or bitterness as there +might be now in a war between Frenchmen and Germans. On the contrary, +the opponents were very softspoken and polite to each other. “Is there +any small vow of which I may relieve you?” “Would you desire to attempt +some small deed of arms upon me?” And in the midst of a fight they +would stop for a breather, and converse amicably the while, with many +compliments upon each other’s prowess. When Seaton the Scotsman had +exchanged as many blows as he wished with a company of French knights, +he said, “Thank you, gentlemen, thank you!” and galloped away. An +English knight made a vow, “for his own advancement and the exaltation +of his lady,” that he would ride into the hostile city of Paris, and +touch with his lance the inner barrier. The whole story is most +characteristic of the times. As he galloped up, the French knights +around the barrier, seeing that he was under vow, made no attack upon +him, and called out to him that he had carried himself well. As he +returned, however, there stood an unmannerly butcher with a pole-axe +upon the side-walk, who struck him as he passed, and killed him. Here +ends the chronicler; but I have not the least doubt that the butcher +had a very evil time at the hands of the French knights, who would not +stand by and see one of their own order, even if he were an enemy, meet +so plebeian an end. + +De Comines, as a chronicler, is less quaint and more conventional than +Froissart, but the writer of romance can dig plenty of stones out of +that quarry for the use of his own little building. Of course Quentin +Durward has come bodily out of the pages of De Comines. The whole +history of Louis XI. and his relations with Charles the Bold, the +strange life at Plessis-le-Tours, the plebeian courtiers, the barber +and the hangman, the astrologers, the alternations of savage cruelty +and of slavish superstition—it is all set forth here. One would imagine +that such a monarch was unique, that such a mixture of strange +qualities and monstrous crimes could never be matched, and yet like +causes will always produce like results. Read Walewski’s “Life of Ivan +the Terrible,” and you will find that more than a century later Russia +produced a monarch even more diabolical, but working exactly on the +same lines as Louis, even down to small details. The same cruelty, the +same superstition, the same astrologers, the same low-born associates, +the same residence outside the influence of the great cities—a parallel +could hardly be more complete. If you have not supped too full of +horrors when you have finished Ivan, then pass on to the same author’s +account of Peter the Great. What a land! What a succession of monarchs! +Blood and snow and iron! Both Ivan and Peter killed their own sons. And +there is a hideous mockery of religion running through it all which +gives it a grotesque horror of its own. We have had our Henry the +Eighth, but our very worst would have been a wise and benevolent rule +in Russia. + +Talking of romance and of chivalry, that tattered book down yonder has +as much between its disreputable covers as most that I know. It is +Washington Irving’s “Conquest of Granada.” I do not know where he got +his material for this book—from Spanish Chronicles, I presume—but the +wars between the Moors and the Christian knights must have been among +the most chivalrous of exploits. I could not name a book which gets the +beauty and the glamour of it better than this one, the lance-heads +gleaming in the dark defiles, the red bale fires glowing on the crags, +the stern devotion of the mail-clad Christians, the debonnaire and +courtly courage of the dashing Moslem. Had Washington Irving written +nothing else, that book alone should have forced the door of every +library. I love all his books, for no man wrote fresher English with a +purer style; but of them all it is still “The Conquest of Granada” to +which I turn most often. + +To hark back for a moment to history as seen in romances, here are two +exotics side by side, which have a flavour that is new. They are a +brace of foreign novelists, each of whom, so far as I know, has only +two books. This green-and-gold volume contains both the works of the +Pomeranian Meinhold in an excellent translation by Lady Wilde. The +first is “Sidonia the Sorceress,” the second, “The Amber Witch.” I +don’t know where one may turn for a stranger view of the Middle Ages, +the quaint details of simple life, with sudden intervals of grotesque +savagery. The most weird and barbarous things are made human and +comprehensible. There is one incident which haunts one after one has +read it, where the executioner chaffers with the villagers as to what +price they will give him for putting some young witch to the torture, +running them up from a barrel of apples to a barrel and a half, on the +grounds that he is now old and rheumatic, and that the stooping and +straining is bad for his back. It should be done on a sloping hill, he +explains, so that the “dear little children” may see it easily. Both +“Sidonia” and “The Amber Witch” give such a picture of old Germany as I +have never seen elsewhere. + +But Meinhold belongs to a bygone generation. This other author, in whom +I find a new note, and one of great power, is Merejkowski, who is, if I +mistake not, young and with his career still before him. “The +Forerunner” and “The Death of the Gods” are the only two books of his +which I have been able to obtain, but the pictures of Renaissance Italy +in the one, and of declining Rome in the other, are in my opinion among +the masterpieces of fiction. I confess that as I read them I was +pleased to find how open my mind was to new impressions, for one of the +greatest mental dangers which comes upon a man as he grows older is +that he should become so attached to old favourites that he has no room +for the new-comer, and persuades himself that the days of great things +are at an end because his own poor brain is getting ossified. You have +but to open any critical paper to see how common is the disease, but a +knowledge of literary history assures us that it has always been the +same, and that if the young writer is discouraged by adverse +comparisons it has been the common lot from the beginning. He has but +one resource, which is to pay no heed to criticism, but to try to +satisfy his own highest standard and leave the rest to time and the +public. Here is a little bit of doggerel, pinned, as you see, beside my +bookcase, which may in a ruffled hour bring peace and guidance to some +younger brother— + +“Critics kind—never mind! +Critics flatter—no matter! +Critics blame—all the same! +Critics curse—none the worse! +Do your best— —— the rest!” + + + + +XI. + + +I have been talking in the past tense of heroes and of knight-errants, +but surely their day is not yet passed. When the earth has all been +explored, when the last savage has been tamed, when the final cannon +has been scrapped, and the world has settled down into unbroken virtue +and unutterable dulness, men will cast their thoughts back to our age, +and will idealize our romance and—our courage, even as we do that of +our distant forbears. “It is wonderful what these people did with their +rude implements and their limited appliances!” That is what they will +say when they read of our explorations, our voyages, and our wars. + +Now, take that first book on my travel shelf. It is Knight’s “Cruise of +the _Falcon_.” Nature was guilty of the pun which put this soul into a +body so named. Read this simple record and tell me if there is anything +in Hakluyt more wonderful. Two landsmen—solicitors, if I remember +right—go down to Southampton Quay. They pick up a long-shore youth, and +they embark in a tiny boat in which they put to sea. Where do they turn +up? At Buenos Ayres. Thence they penetrate to Paraguay, return to the +West Indies, sell their little boat there, and so home. What could the +Elizabethan mariners have done more? There are no Spanish galleons now +to vary the monotony of such a voyage, but had there been I am very +certain our adventurers would have had their share of the doubloons. +But surely it was the nobler when done out of the pure lust of +adventure and in answer to the call of the sea, with no golden bait to +draw them on. The old spirit still lives, disguise it as you will with +top hats, frock coats, and all prosaic settings. Perhaps even they also +will seem romantic when centuries have blurred them. + +Another book which shows the romance and the heroism which still linger +upon earth is that large copy of the “Voyage of the _Discovery_ in the +Antarctic” by Captain Scott. Written in plain sailor fashion with no +attempt at over-statement or colour, it none the less (or perhaps all +the more) leaves a deep impression upon the mind. As one reads it, and +reflects on what one reads, one seems to get a clear view of just those +qualities which make the best kind of Briton. Every nation produces +brave men. Every nation has men of energy. But there is a certain type +which mixes its bravery and its energy with a gentle modesty and a +boyish good-humour, and it is just this type which is the highest. Here +the whole expedition seem to have been imbued with the spirit of their +commander. No flinching, no grumbling, every discomfort taken as a +jest, no thought of self, each working only for the success of the +enterprise. When you have read of such privations so endured and so +chronicled, it makes one ashamed to show emotion over the small +annoyances of daily life. Read of Scott’s blinded, scurvy-struck party +staggering on to their goal, and then complain, if you can, of the heat +of a northern sun, or the dust of a country road. + +That is one of the weaknesses of modern life. We complain too much. We +are not ashamed of complaining. Time was when it was otherwise—when it +was thought effeminate to complain. The Gentleman should always be the +Stoic, with his soul too great to be affected by the small troubles of +life. “You look cold, sir,” said an English sympathizer to a French +_emigré_. The fallen noble drew himself up in his threadbare coat. +“Sir,” said he, “a gentleman is never cold.” One’s consideration for +others as well as one’s own self-respect should check the grumble. This +self-suppression, and also the concealment of pain are two of the old +_noblesse oblige_ characteristics which are now little more than a +tradition. Public opinion should be firmer on the matter. The man who +must hop because his shin is hacked, or wring his hand because his +knuckles are bruised should be made to feel that he is an object not of +pity, but of contempt. + +The tradition of Arctic exploration is a noble one among Americans as +well as ourselves. The next book is a case in point. It is Greely’s +“Arctic Service,” and it is a worthy shelf-companion to Scott’s +“Account of the Voyage of the _Discovery_.” There are incidents in this +book which one can never forget. The episode of those twenty-odd men +lying upon that horrible bluff, and dying one a day from cold and +hunger and scurvy, is one which dwarfs all our puny tragedies of +romance. And the gallant starving leader giving lectures on abstract +science in an attempt to take the thoughts of the dying men away from +their sufferings—what a picture! It is bad to suffer from cold and bad +to suffer from hunger, and bad to live in the dark; but that men could +do all these things for six months on end, and that some should live to +tell the tale, is, indeed, a marvel. What a world of feeling lies in +the exclamation of the poor dying lieutenant: “Well, this _is_ +wretched,” he groaned, as he turned his face to the wall. + +The Anglo-Celtic race has always run to individualism, and yet there is +none which is capable of conceiving and carrying out a finer ideal of +discipline. There is nothing in Roman or Grecian annals, not even the +lava-baked sentry at Pompeii, which gives a more sternly fine +object-lesson in duty than the young recruits of the British army who +went down in their ranks on the Birkenhead. And this expedition of +Greely’s gave rise to another example which seems to me hardly less +remarkable. You may remember, if you have read the book, that even when +there were only about eight unfortunates still left, hardly able to +move for weakness and hunger, the seven took the odd man out upon the +ice, and shot him dead for breach of discipline. The whole grim +proceeding was carried out with as much method and signing of papers, +as if they were all within sight of the Capitol at Washington. His +offence had consisted, so far as I can remember, of stealing and eating +the thong which bound two portions of the sledge together, something +about as appetizing as a bootlace. It is only fair to the commander to +say, however, that it was one of a series of petty thefts, and that the +thong of a sledge might mean life or death to the whole party. + +Personally I must confess that anything bearing upon the Arctic Seas is +always of the deepest interest to me. He who has once been within the +borders of that mysterious region, which can be both the most lovely +and the most repellent upon earth, must always retain something of its +glamour. Standing on the confines of known geography I have shot the +southward flying ducks, and have taken from their gizzards pebbles +which they have swallowed in some land whose shores no human foot has +trod. The memory of that inexpressible air, of the great ice-girt lakes +of deep blue water, of the cloudless sky shading away into a light +green and then into a cold yellow at the horizon, of the noisy +companionable birds, of the huge, greasy-backed water animals, of the +slug-like seals, startlingly black against the dazzling whiteness of +the ice—all of it will come back to a man in his dreams, and will seem +little more than some fantastic dream itself, so removed is it from the +main stream of his life. And then to play a fish a hundred tons in +weight, and worth two thousand pounds—but what in the world has all +this to do with my bookcase? + +Yet it has its place in my main line of thought, for it leads me +straight to the very next upon the shelf, Bullen’s “Cruise of the +_Cachelot_,” a book which is full of the glamour and the mystery of the +sea, marred only by the brutality of those who go down to it in ships. +This is the sperm-whale fishing, an open-sea affair, and very different +from that Greenland ice groping in which I served a seven-months’ +apprenticeship. Both, I fear, are things of the past—certainly the +northern fishing is so, for why should men risk their lives to get oil +when one has but to sink a pipe in the ground. It is the more fortunate +then that it should have been handled by one of the most virile writers +who has described a sailor’s life. Bullen’s English at its best rises +to a great height. If I wished to show how high, I would take that next +book down, “Sea Idylls.” + +How is this, for example, if you have an ear for the music of prose? It +is a simple paragraph out of the magnificent description of a long calm +in the tropics. + +“A change, unusual as unwholesome, came over the bright blue of the +sea. No longer did it reflect, as in a limpid mirror, the splendour of +the sun, the sweet silvery glow of the moon, or the coruscating +clusters of countless stars. Like the ashen-grey hue that bedims the +countenance of the dying, a filmy greasy skin appeared to overspread +the recent loveliness of the ocean surface. The sea was sick, stagnant, +and foul, from its turbid waters arose a miasmatic vapour like a breath +of decay, which clung clammily to the palate and dulled all the senses. +Drawn by some strange force, from the unfathomable depths below, eerie +shapes sought the surface, blinking glassily at the unfamiliar glare +they had exchanged for their native gloom—uncouth creatures bedight +with tasselled fringes like weed-growths waving around them, +fathom-long, medusae with coloured spots like eyes clustering all over +their transparent substance, wriggling worm-like forms of such elusive +matter that the smallest exposure to the sun melted them, and they were +not. Lower down, vast pale shadows creep sluggishly along, happily +undistinguishable as yet, but adding a half-familiar flavour to the +strange, faint smell that hung about us.” + +Take the whole of that essay which describes a calm in the Tropics, or +take the other one: “Sunrise as seen from the Crow’s-nest,” and you +must admit that there have been few finer pieces of descriptive English +in our time. If I had to choose a sea library of only a dozen volumes I +should certainly give Bullen two places. The others? Well, it is so +much a matter of individual taste. “Tom Cringle’s Log” should have one +for certain. I hope boys respond now as they once did to the sharks and +the pirates, the planters, and all the rollicking high spirits of that +splendid book. Then there is Dana’s “Two Years before the Mast.” I +should find room also for Stevenson’s “Wrecker” and “Ebb Tide.” Clark +Russell deserves a whole shelf for himself, but anyhow you could not +miss out “The Wreck of the _Grosvenor_.” Marryat, of course, must be +represented, and I should pick “Midshipman Easy” and “Peter Simple” as +his samples. Then throw in one of Melville’s Otaheite books—now far too +completely forgotten—“Typee” or “Omoo,” and as a quite modern flavour +Kipling’s “Captains Courageous” and Jack London’s “Sea Wolf,” with +Conrad’s “Nigger of the Narcissus.” Then you will have enough to turn +your study into a cabin and bring the wash and surge to your ears, if +written words can do it. Oh, how one longs for it sometimes when life +grows too artificial, and the old Viking blood begins to stir! Surely +it must linger in all of us, for no man who dwells in an island but had +an ancestor in longship or in coracle. Still more must the salt drop +tingle in the blood of an American when you reflect that in all that +broad continent there is not one whose forefather did not cross 3000 +miles of ocean. And yet there are in the Central States millions and +millions of their descendants who have never seen the sea. + +I have said that “Omoo” and “Typee,” the books in which the sailor +Melville describes his life among the Otaheitans, have sunk too rapidly +into obscurity. What a charming and interesting task there is for some +critic of catholic tastes and sympathetic judgment to undertake rescue +work among the lost books which would repay salvage! A small volume +setting forth their names and their claims to attention would be +interesting in itself, and more interesting in the material to which it +would serve as an introduction. I am sure there are many good books, +possibly there are some great ones, which have been swept away for a +time in the rush. What chance, for example, has any book by an unknown +author which is published at a moment of great national excitement, +when some public crisis arrests the popular mind? Hundreds have been +still-born in this fashion, and are there none which should have lived +among them? Now, there is a book, a modern one, and written by a youth +under thirty. It is Snaith’s “Broke of Covenden,” and it scarce +attained a second edition. I do not say that it is a Classic—I should +not like to be positive that it is not—but I am perfectly sure that the +man who wrote it has the possibility of a Classic within him. Here is +another novel—“Eight Days,” by Forrest. You can’t buy it. You are lucky +even if you can find it in a library. Yet nothing ever written will +bring the Indian Mutiny home to you as this book will do. Here’s +another which I will warrant you never heard of. It is Powell’s “Animal +Episodes.” No, it is not a collection of dog-and-cat anecdotes, but it +is a series of very singularly told stories which deal with the animal +side of the human, and which you will feel have an entirely new flavour +if you have a discriminating palate. The book came out ten years ago, +and is utterly unknown. If I can point to three in one small shelf, how +many lost lights must be flitting in the outer darkness! + +Let me hark back for a moment to the subject with which I began, the +romance of travel and the frequent heroism of modern life. I have two +books of Scientific Exploration here which exhibit both these qualities +as strongly as any I know. I could not choose two better books to put +into a young man’s hands if you wished to train him first in a gentle +and noble firmness of mind, and secondly in a great love for and +interest in all that pertains to Nature. The one is Darwin’s “Journal +of the Voyage of the _Beagle_.” Any discerning eye must have detected +long before the “Origin of Species” appeared, simply on the strength of +this book of travel, that a brain of the first order, united with many +rare qualities of character, had arisen. Never was there a more +comprehensive mind. Nothing was too small and nothing too great for its +alert observation. One page is occupied in the analysis of some +peculiarity in the web of a minute spider, while the next deals with +the evidence for the subsidence of a continent and the extinction of a +myriad animals. And his sweep of knowledge was so great—botany, +geology, zoology, each lending its corroborative aid to the other. How +a youth of Darwin’s age—he was only twenty-three when in the year 1831 +he started round the world on the surveying ship _Beagle_—could have +acquired such a mass of information fills one with the same wonder, and +is perhaps of the same nature, as the boy musician who exhibits by +instinct the touch of the master. Another quality which one would be +less disposed to look for in the savant is a fine contempt for danger, +which is veiled in such modesty that one reads between the lines in +order to detect it. When he was in the Argentine, the country outside +the Settlements was covered with roving bands of horse Indians, who +gave no quarter to any whites. Yet Darwin rode the four hundred miles +between Bahia and Buenos Ayres, when even the hardy Gauchos refused to +accompany him. Personal danger and a hideous death were small things to +him compared to a new beetle or an undescribed fly. + +The second book to which I alluded is Wallace’s “Malay Archipelago.” +There is a strange similarity in the minds of the two men, the same +courage, both moral and physical, the same gentle persistence, the same +catholic knowledge and wide. sweep of mind, the same passion for the +observation of Nature. Wallace by a flash of intuition understood and +described in a letter to Darwin the cause of the Origin of Species at +the very time when the latter was publishing a book founded upon twenty +years’ labour to prove the same thesis. What must have been his +feelings when he read that letter? And yet he had nothing to fear, for +his book found no more enthusiastic admirer than the man who had in a +sense anticipated it. Here also one sees that Science has its heroes no +less than Religion. One of Wallace’s missions in Papua was to examine +the nature and species of the Birds-of-Paradise; but in the course of +the years of his wanderings through those islands he made a complete +investigation of the whole fauna. A footnote somewhere explains that +the Papuans who lived in the Bird-of-Paradise country were confirmed +cannibals. Fancy living for years with or near such neighbours! Let a +young fellow read these two books, and he cannot fail to have both his +mind and his spirit strengthened by the reading. + + + + +XII. + + +Here we are at the final seance. For the last time, my patient comrade, +I ask you to make yourself comfortable upon the old green settee, to +look up at the oaken shelves, and to bear with me as best you may while +I preach about their contents. The last time! And yet, as I look along +the lines of the volumes, I have not mentioned one out of ten of those +to which I owe a debt of gratitude, nor one in a hundred of the +thoughts which course through my brain as I look at them. As well +perhaps, for the man who has said all that he has to say has invariably +said too much. + +Let me be didactic for a moment! I assume this solemn—oh, call it not +pedantic!—attitude because my eye catches the small but select corner +which constitutes my library of Science. I wanted to say that if I were +advising a young man who was beginning life, I should counsel him to +devote one evening a week to scientific reading. Had he the +perseverance to adhere to his resolution, and if he began it at twenty, +he would certainly find himself with an unusually well-furnished mind +at thirty, which would stand him in right good stead in whatever line +of life he might walk. When I advise him to read science, I do not mean +that he should choke himself with the dust of the pedants, and lose +himself in the subdivisions of the Lepidoptera, or the classifications +of the dicotyledonous plants. These dreary details are the prickly +bushes in that enchanted garden, and you are foolish indeed if you +begin your walks by butting your head into one. Keep very clear of them +until you have explored the open beds and wandered down every easy +path. For this reason avoid the text-books, which repel, and cultivate +that popular science which attracts. You cannot hope to be a specialist +upon all these varied subjects. Better far to have a broad idea of +general results, and to understand their relations to each other. A +very little reading will give a man such a knowledge of geology, for +example, as will make every quarry and railway cutting an object of +interest. A very little zoology will enable you to satisfy your +curiosity as to what is the proper name and style of this buff-ermine +moth which at the present instant is buzzing round the lamp. A very +little botany will enable you to recognize every flower you are likely +to meet in your walks abroad, and to give you a tiny thrill of interest +when you chance upon one which is beyond your ken. A very little +archaeology will tell you all about yonder British tumulus, or help you +to fill in the outline of the broken Roman camp upon the downs. A very +little astronomy will cause you to look more intently at the heavens, +to pick out your brothers the planets, who move in your own circles, +from the stranger stars, and to appreciate the order, beauty, and +majesty of that material universe which is most surely the outward sign +of the spiritual force behind it. How a man of science can be a +materialist is as amazing to me as how a sectarian can limit the +possibilities of the Creator. Show me a picture without an artist, show +me a bust without a sculptor, show me music without a musician, and +then you may begin to talk to me of a universe without a +Universe-maker, call Him by what name you will. + +Here is Flammarion’s “L’Atmosphere”—a very gorgeous though +weather-stained copy in faded scarlet and gold. The book has a small +history, and I value it. A young Frenchman, dying of fever on the west +coast of Africa, gave it to me as a professional fee. The sight of it +takes me back to a little ship’s bunk, and a sallow face with large, +sad eyes looking out at me. Poor boy, I fear that he never saw his +beloved Marseilles again! + +Talking of popular science, I know no better books for exciting a man’s +first interest, and giving a broad general view of the subject, than +these of Samuel Laing. Who would have imagined that the wise savant and +gentle dreamer of these volumes was also the energetic secretary of a +railway company? Many men of the highest scientific eminence have begun +in prosaic lines of life. Herbert Spencer was a railway engineer. +Wallace was a land surveyor. But that a man with so pronounced a +scientific brain as Laing should continue all his life to devote his +time to dull routine work, remaining in harness until extreme old age, +with his soul still open to every fresh idea and his brain acquiring +new concretions of knowledge, is indeed a remarkable fact. Read those +books, and you will be a fuller man. + +It is an excellent device to talk about what you have recently read. +Rather hard upon your audience, you may say; but without wishing to be +personal, I dare bet it is more interesting than your usual small talk. +It must, of course, be done with some tact and discretion. It is the +mention of Laing’s works which awoke the train of thought which led to +these remarks. I had met some one at a _table d’hôte_ or elsewhere who +made some remark about the prehistoric remains in the valley of the +Somme. I knew all about those, and showed him that I did. I then threw +out some allusion to the rock temples of Yucatan, which he instantly +picked up and enlarged upon. He spoke of ancient Peruvian civilization, +and I kept well abreast of him. I cited the Titicaca image, and he knew +all about that. He spoke of Quaternary man, and I was with him all the +time. Each was more and more amazed at the fulness and the accuracy of +the information of the other, until like a flash the explanation +crossed my mind. “You are reading Samuel Laing’s ‘Human Origins’!” I +cried. So he was, and so by a coincidence was I. We were pouring water +over each other, but it was all new-drawn from the spring. + +There is a big two-volumed book at the end of my science shelf which +would, even now, have its right to be called scientific disputed by +some of the pedants. It is Myers’ “Human Personality.” My own opinion, +for what it is worth, is that it will be recognized a century hence as +a great root book, one from which a whole new branch of science will +have sprung. Where between four covers will you find greater evidence +of patience, of industry, of thought, of discrimination, of that sweep +of mind which can gather up a thousand separate facts and bind them all +in the meshes of a single consistent system? Darwin has not been a more +ardent collector in zoology than Myers in the dim regions of psychic +research, and his whole hypothesis, so new that a new nomenclature and +terminology had to be invented to express it, telepathy, the +subliminal, and the rest of it, will always be a monument of acute +reasoning, expressed in fine prose and founded upon ascertained fact. + +The mere suspicion of scientific thought or scientific methods has a +great charm in any branch of literature, however far it may be removed +from actual research. Poe’s tales, for example, owe much to this +effect, though in his case it was a pure illusion. Jules Verne also +produces a charmingly credible effect for the most incredible things by +an adept use of a considerable amount of real knowledge of nature. But +most gracefully of all does it shine in the lighter form of essay, +where playful thoughts draw their analogies and illustrations from +actual fact, each showing up the other, and the combination presenting +a peculiar piquancy to the reader. + +Where could I get better illustration of what I mean than in those +three little volumes which make up Wendell Holmes’ immortal series, +“The Autocrat,” “The Poet,” and “The Professor at the Breakfast Table”? +Here the subtle, dainty, delicate thought is continually reinforced by +the allusion or the analogy which shows the wide, accurate knowledge +behind it. What work it is! how wise, how witty, how large-hearted and +tolerant! Could one choose one’s philosopher in the Elysian fields, as +once in Athens, I would surely join the smiling group who listened to +the human, kindly words of the Sage of Boston. I suppose it is just +that continual leaven of science, especially of medical science, which +has from my early student days given those books so strong an +attraction for me. Never have I so known and loved a man whom I had +never seen. It was one of the ambitions of my lifetime to look upon his +face, but by the irony of Fate I arrived in his native city just in +time to lay a wreath upon his newly-turned grave. Read his books again, +and see if you are not especially struck by the up-to-dateness of them. +Like Tennyson’s “In Memoriam,” it seems to me to be work which sprang +into full flower fifty years before its time. One can hardly open a +page haphazard without lighting upon some passage which illustrates the +breadth of view, the felicity of phrase, and the singular power of +playful but most suggestive analogy. Here, for example, is a +paragraph—no better than a dozen others—which combines all the rare +qualities:— + +“Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good +mental machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if anything +is thrust upon them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their +motion. A weak mind does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; +stupidity often saves a man from going mad. We frequently see persons +in insane hospitals, sent there in consequence of what are called +religious mental disturbances. I confess that I think better of them +than of many who hold the same notions, and keep their wits and enjoy +life very well, outside of the asylums. Any decent person ought to go +mad if he really holds such and such opinions…. Anything that is +brutal, cruel, heathenish, that makes life hopeless for the most of +mankind, and perhaps for entire races—anything that assumes the +necessity for the extermination of instincts which were given to be +regulated—no matter by what name you call it—no matter whether a fakir, +or a monk, or a deacon believes it—if received, ought to produce +insanity in every well-regulated mind.” + +There’s a fine bit of breezy polemics for the dreary fifties—a fine bit +of moral courage too for the University professor who ventured to say +it. + +I put him above Lamb as an essayist, because there is a flavour of +actual knowledge and of practical acquaintance with the problems and +affairs of life, which is lacking in the elfin Londoner. I do not say +that the latter is not the rarer quality. There are my “Essays of +Elia,” and they are well-thumbed as you see, so it is not because I +love Lamb less that I love this other more. Both are exquisite, but +Wendell Holmes is for ever touching some note which awakens an +answering vibration within my own mind. + +The essay must always be a somewhat repellent form of literature, +unless it be handled with the lightest and deftest touch. It is too +reminiscent of the school themes of our boyhood—to put a heading and +then to show what you can get under it. Even Stevenson, for whom I have +the most profound admiration, finds it difficult to carry the reader +through a series of such papers, adorned with his original thought and +quaint turn of phrase. Yet his “Men and Books” and “Virginibus +Puerisque” are high examples of what may be done in spite of the +inherent unavoidable difficulty of the task. + +But his style! Ah, if Stevenson had only realized how beautiful and +nervous was his own natural God-given style, he would never have been +at pains to acquire another! It is sad to read the much-lauded anecdote +of his imitating this author and that, picking up and dropping, in +search of the best. The best is always the most natural. When Stevenson +becomes a conscious stylist, applauded by so many critics, he seems to +me like a man who, having most natural curls, will still conceal them +under a wig. The moment he is precious he loses his grip. But when he +will abide by his own sterling Lowland Saxon, with the direct word and +the short, cutting sentence, I know not where in recent years we may +find his mate. In this strong, plain setting the occasional happy word +shines like a cut jewel. A really good stylist is like Beau Brummell’s +description of a well-dressed man—so dressed that no one would ever +observe him. The moment you begin to remark a man’s style the odds are +that there is something the matter with it. It is a clouding of the +crystal—a diversion of the reader’s mind from the matter to the manner, +from the author’s subject to the author himself. + +No, I have not the Edinburgh edition. If you think of a +presentation—but I should be the last to suggest it. Perhaps on the +whole I would prefer to have him in scattered books, rather than in a +complete set. The half is more than the whole of most authors, and not +the least of him. I am sure that his friends who reverenced his memory +had good warrant and express instructions to publish this complete +edition—very possibly it was arranged before his lamented end. Yet, +speaking generally, I would say that an author was best served by being +very carefully pruned before being exposed to the winds of time. Let +every weak twig, every immature shoot be shorn away, and nothing but +strong, sturdy, well-seasoned branches left. So shall the whole tree +stand strong for years to come. How false an impression of the true +Stevenson would our critical grandchild acquire if he chanced to pick +down any one of half a dozen of these volumes! As we watched his hand +stray down the rank, how we would pray that it might alight upon the +ones we love, on the “New Arabian Nights” “The Ebb-tide,” “The +Wrecker,” “Kidnapped,” or “Treasure Island.” These can surely never +lose their charm. + +What noble books of their class are those last, “Kidnapped” and +“Treasure Island”! both, as you see, shining forth upon my lower shelf. +“Treasure Island” is the better story, while I could imagine that +“Kidnapped” might have the more permanent value as being an excellent +and graphic sketch of the state of the Highlands after the last +Jacobite insurrection. Each contains one novel and admirable character, +Alan Breck in the one, and Long John in the other. Surely John Silver, +with his face the size of a ham, and his little gleaming eyes like +crumbs of glass in the centre of it, is the king of all seafaring +desperadoes. Observe how the strong effect is produced in his case: +seldom by direct assertion on the part of the story-teller, but usually +by comparison, innuendo, or indirect reference. The objectionable Billy +Bones is haunted by the dread of “a seafaring man with one leg.” +Captain Flint, we are told, was a brave man; “he was afraid of none, +not he, only Silver—Silver was that genteel.” Or, again, where John +himself says, “there was some that was feared of Pew, and some that was +feared of Flint; but Flint his own self was feared of me. Feared he +was, and proud. They was the roughest crew afloat was Flint’s. The +devil himself would have been feared to go to sea with them. Well, now, +I will tell you. I’m not a boasting man, and you seen yourself how easy +I keep company; but when I was quartermaster, lambs wasn’t the word for +Flint’s old buccaneers.” So, by a touch here and a hint there, there +grows upon us the individuality of the smooth-tongued, ruthless, +masterful, one-legged devil. He is to us not a creation of fiction, but +an organic living reality with whom we have come in contact; such is +the effect of the fine suggestive strokes with which he is drawn. And +the buccaneers themselves, how simple and yet how effective are the +little touches which indicate their ways of thinking and of acting. “I +want to go in that cabin, I do; I want their pickles and wine and +that.” “Now, if you had sailed along o’ Bill you wouldn’t have stood +there to be spoke twice—not you. That was never Bill’s way, not the way +of sich as sailed with him.” Scott’s buccaneers in “The Pirate” are +admirable, but they lack something human which we find here. It will be +long before John Silver loses his place in sea fiction, “and you may +lay to that.” + +Stevenson was deeply influenced by Meredith, and even in these books +the influence of the master is apparent. There is the apt use of an +occasional archaic or unusual word, the short, strong descriptions, the +striking metaphors, the somewhat staccato fashion of speech. Yet, in +spite of this flavour, they have quite individuality enough to +constitute a school of their own. Their faults, or rather perhaps their +limitations, lie never in the execution, but entirely in the original +conception. They picture only one side of life, and that a strange and +exceptional one. There is no female interest. We feel that it is an +apotheosis of the boy-story—the penny number of our youth _in +excelsis_. But it is all so good, so fresh, so picturesque, that, +however limited its scope, it still retains a definite and well-assured +place in literature. There is no reason why “Treasure Island” should +not be to the rising generation of the twenty-first century what +“Robinson Crusoe” has been to that of the nineteenth. The balance of +probability is all in that direction. + +The modern masculine novel, dealing almost exclusively with the +rougher, more stirring side of life, with the objective rather than the +subjective, marks the reaction against the abuse of love in fiction. +This one phase of life in its orthodox aspect, and ending in the +conventional marriage, has been so hackneyed and worn to a shadow, that +it is not to be wondered at that there is a tendency sometimes to swing +to the other extreme, and to give it less than its fair share in the +affairs of men. In British fiction nine books out of ten have held up +love and marriage as the be-all and end-all of life. Yet we know, in +actual practice, that this may not be so. In the career of the average +man his marriage is an incident, and a momentous incident; but it is +only one of several. He is swayed by many strong emotions—his business, +his ambitions, his friendships, his struggles with the recurrent +dangers and difficulties which tax a man’s wisdom and his courage. Love +will often play a subordinate part in his life. How many go through the +world without ever loving at all? It jars upon us then to have it +continually held up as the predominating, all-important fact in life; +and there is a not unnatural tendency among a certain school, of which +Stevenson is certainly the leader, to avoid altogether a source of +interest which has been so misused and overdone. If all love-making +were like that between Richard Feverel and Lucy Desborough, then indeed +we could not have too much of it; but to be made attractive once more, +the passion must be handled by some great master who has courage to +break down conventionalities and to go straight to actual life for his +inspiration. + +The use of novel and piquant forms of speech is one of the most obvious +of Stevenson’s devices. No man handles his adjectives with greater +judgment and nicer discrimination. There is hardly a page of his work +where we do not come across words and expressions which strike us with +a pleasant sense of novelty, and yet express the meaning with admirable +conciseness. “His eyes came coasting round to me.” It is dangerous to +begin quoting, as the examples are interminable, and each suggests +another. Now and then he misses his mark, but it is very seldom. As an +example, an “eye-shot” does not commend itself as a substitute for “a +glance,” and “to tee-hee” for “to giggle” grates somewhat upon the ear, +though the authority of Chaucer might be cited for the expressions. + +Next in order is his extraordinary faculty for the use of pithy +similes, which arrest the attention and stimulate the imagination. “His +voice sounded hoarse and awkward, like a rusty lock.” “I saw her sway, +like something stricken by the wind.” “His laugh rang false, like a +cracked bell.” “His voice shook like a taut rope.” “My mind flying like +a weaver’s shuttle.” “His blows resounded on the grave as thick as +sobs.” “The private guilty considerations I would continually observe +to peep forth in the man’s talk like rabbits from a hill.” Nothing +could be more effective than these direct and homely comparisons. + +After all, however, the main characteristic of Stevenson is his curious +instinct for saying in the briefest space just those few words which +stamp the impression upon the reader’s mind. He will make you see a +thing more clearly than you would probably have done had your eyes +actually rested upon it. Here are a few of these word-pictures, taken +haphazard from among hundreds of equal merit— + +“Not far off Macconochie was standing with his tongue out of his mouth, +and his hand upon his chin, like a dull fellow thinking hard. + +“Stewart ran after us for more than a mile, and I could not help +laughing as I looked back at last and saw him on a hill, holding his +hand to his side, and nearly burst with running. + +“Ballantrae turned to me with a face all wrinkled up, and his teeth all +showing in his mouth…. He said no word, but his whole appearance was a +kind of dreadful question. + +“Look at him, if you doubt; look at him, grinning and gulping, a +detected thief. + +“He looked me all over with a warlike eye, and I could see the +challenge on his lips.” + +What could be more vivid than the effect produced by such sentences as +these? + +There is much more that might be said as to Stevenson’s peculiar and +original methods in fiction. As a minor point, it might be remarked +that he is the inventor of what may be called the mutilated villain. It +is true that Mr. Wilkie Collins has described one gentleman who had not +only been deprived of all his limbs, but was further afflicted by the +insupportable name of Miserrimus Dexter. Stevenson, however, has used +the effect so often, and with such telling results, that he may be said +to have made it his own. To say nothing of Hyde, who was the very +impersonation of deformity, there is the horrid blind Pew, Black Dog +with two fingers missing, Long John with his one leg, and the sinister +catechist who is blind but shoots by ear, and smites about him with his +staff. In “The Black Arrow,” too, there is another dreadful creature +who comes tapping along with a stick. Often as he has used the device, +he handles it so artistically that it never fails to produce its +effect. + +Is Stevenson a classic? Well, it is a large word that. You mean by a +classic a piece of work which passes into the permanent literature of +the country. As a rule, you only know your classics when they are in +their graves. Who guessed it of Poe, and who of Borrow? The Roman +Catholics only canonize their saints a century after their death. So +with our classics. The choice lies with our grandchildren. But I can +hardly think that healthy boys will ever let Stevenson’s books of +adventure die, nor do I think that such a short tale as “The Pavilion +on the Links” nor so magnificent a parable as “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” +will ever cease to be esteemed. How well I remember the eagerness, the +delight with which I read those early tales in “Cornhill” away back in +the late seventies and early eighties. They were unsigned, after the +old unfair fashion, but no man with any sense of prose could fail to +know that they were all by the same author. Only years afterwards did I +learn who that author was. + +I have Stevenson’s collected poems over yonder in the small cabinet. +Would that he had given us more! Most of them are the merest playful +sallies of a freakish mind. But one should, indeed, be a classic, for +it is in my judgment by all odds the best narrative ballad of the last +century—that is if I am right in supposing that “The Ancient Mariner” +appeared at the very end of the eighteenth. I would put Coleridge’s +tour de force of grim fancy first, but I know none other to compare in +glamour and phrase and easy power with “Ticonderoga.” Then there is his +immortal epitaph. The two pieces alone give him a niche of his own in +our poetical literature, just as his character gives him a niche of his +own in our affections. No, I never met him. But among my most prized +possessions are several letters which I received from Samoa. From that +distant tower he kept a surprisingly close watch upon what was doing +among the bookmen, and it was his hand which was among the first held +out to the striver, for he had quick appreciation and keen sympathies +which met another man’s work half-way, and wove into it a beauty from +his own mind. + +And now, my very patient friend, the time has come for us to part, and +I hope my little sermons have not bored you over-much. If I have put +you on the track of anything which you did not know before, then verify +it and pass it on. If I have not, there is no harm done, save that my +breath and your time have been wasted. There may be a score of mistakes +in what I have said—is it not the privilege of the conversationalist to +misquote? My judgments may differ very far from yours, and my likings +may be your abhorrence; but the mere thinking and talking of books is +in itself good, be the upshot what it may. For the time the magic door +is still shut. You are still in the land of faerie. But, alas, though +you shut that door, you cannot seal it. Still come the ring of bell, +the call of telephone, the summons back to the sordid world of work and +men and daily strife. Well, that’s the real life after all—this only +the imitation. And yet, now that the portal is wide open and we stride +out together, do we not face our fate with a braver heart for all the +rest and quiet and comradeship that we found behind the Magic Door? + + + + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR *** + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will +be renamed. + +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law 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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