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| author | nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org> | 2025-01-23 13:52:47 -0800 |
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| committer | nfenwick <nfenwick@pglaf.org> | 2025-01-23 13:52:47 -0800 |
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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..d7b82bc --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,4 @@ +*.txt text eol=lf +*.htm text eol=lf +*.html text eol=lf +*.md text eol=lf diff --git a/LICENSE.txt b/LICENSE.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6312041 --- /dev/null +++ b/LICENSE.txt @@ -0,0 +1,11 @@ +This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements, +metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be +in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES. + +Procedures for determining public domain status are described in +the "Copyright How-To" at https://www.gutenberg.org. + +No investigation has been made concerning possible copyrights in +jurisdictions other than the United States. Anyone seeking to utilize +this eBook outside of the United States should confirm copyright +status under the laws that apply to them. diff --git a/README.md b/README.md new file mode 100644 index 0000000..48c863f --- /dev/null +++ b/README.md @@ -0,0 +1,2 @@ +Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for +eBook #64457 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64457) diff --git a/old/64457-0.txt b/old/64457-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index e41a3d1..0000000 --- a/old/64457-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,7771 +0,0 @@ -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 64457 *** - - - - -_THE_ - -COMMON READER - - -BY - -VIRGINIA A WOOLF - - -“. . . I rejoice to concur with the common -reader; for by the common sense of readers, -uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the -refinements of subtlety and the dogmatism of -learning, must be generally decided all claim to -poetical honors.” - -DR. JOHNSON, _Life of Gray._ - - -_New York_ - -HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY - - - - -COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY -HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. - - - - -TO - -LYTTON STRACHEY - - - - -Some of these papers appeared originally in the _Times Literary -Supplement_ and the _Dial_. I have to thank the Editors for allowing me -to reprint them here; some are based upon articles written for various -newspapers, while others appear now for the first time. - - - - -_CONTENTS_ - -The Common Reader -The Pastons and Chaucer -On Not Knowing Greek -The Elizabethan Lumber Room -Notes on an Elizabethan Play -Montaigne -The Duchess of Newcastle -Rambling Round Evelyn -Defoe -Addison - -The Lives of the Obscure -I. The Taylors and the Edgeworths -II. Laetitia Pilkington -III. Miss Ormerod - -Jane Austen -Modern Fiction -“Jane Eyre” and “Wuthering Heights” -George Eliot -The Russian Point of View - -Outlines— -I. Miss Mitford -II. Dr. Bentley -III. Lady Dorothy Nevill -IV. Archbishop Thomson - -The Patron and the Crocus -The Modern Essay -Joseph Conrad -How It Strikes a Contemporary - - - - -THE COMMON READER - - - - -_The Common Reader_ - - -There is a sentence in Dr. Johnson’s Life of Gray which might well be -written up in all those rooms, too humble to be called libraries, yet -full of books, where the pursuit of reading is carried on by private -people. “. . . I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the -common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all -the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be -finally decided all claim to poetical honours.” It defines their -qualities; it dignifies their aims; it bestows upon a pursuit which -devours a great deal of time, and is yet apt to leave behind it nothing -very substantial, the sanction of the great man’s approval. - -The common reader, as Dr. Johnson implies, differs from the critic and -the scholar. He is worse educated, and nature has not gifted him so -generously. He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart -knowledge or correct the opinions of others. Above all, he is guided by -an instinct to create for himself, out of whatever odds and ends he can -come by, some kind of whole—a portrait of a man, a sketch of an age, a -theory of the art of writing. He never ceases, as he reads, to run up -some rickety and ramshackle fabric which shall give him the temporary -satisfaction of looking sufficiently like the real object to allow of -affection, laughter, and argument. Hasty, inaccurate, and superficial, -snatching now this poem, now that scrap of old furniture without caring -where he finds it or of what nature it may be so long as it serves his -purpose and rounds his structure, his deficiencies as a critic are too -obvious to be pointed out; but if he has, as Dr. Johnson maintained, -some say in the final distribution of poetical honours, then, perhaps, -it may be worth while to write down a few of the ideas and opinions -which, insignificant in themselves, yet contribute to so mighty a -result. - - - - -_The Pastons and Chaucer_[1] - - -The tower of Caister Castle still rises ninety feet into the air, and -the arch still stands from which Sir John Fastolf’s barges sailed out to -fetch stone for the building of the great castle. But now jackdaws nest -on the tower, and of the castle, which once covered six acres of ground, -only ruined walls remain, pierced by loop-holes and surmounted by -battlements, though there are neither archers within nor cannon without. -As for the “seven religious men” and the “seven poor folk” who should, -at this very moment, be praying for the souls of Sir John and his -parents, there is no sign of them nor sound of their prayers. The place -is a ruin. Antiquaries speculate and differ. - -Not so very far off lie more ruins—the ruins of Bromholm Priory, where -John Paston was buried, naturally enough, since his house was only a -mile or so away, lying on low ground by the sea, twenty miles north of -Norwich. The coast is dangerous, and the land, even in our time, -inaccessible. Nevertheless the little bit of wood at Bromholm, the -fragment of the true Cross, brought pilgrims incessantly to the Priory, -and sent them away with eyes opened and limbs straightened. But some of -them with their newly-opened eyes saw a sight which shocked them—the -grave of John Paston in Bromholm Priory without a tombstone. The news -spread over the country-side. The Pastons had fallen; they that had been -so powerful could no longer afford a stone to put above John Paston’s -head. Margaret, his widow, could not pay her debts; the eldest son, Sir -John, wasted his property upon women and tournaments, while the younger, -John also, though a man of greater parts, thought more of his hawks than -of his harvests. - -The pilgrims of course were liars, as people whose eyes have just been -opened by a piece of the true Cross have every right to be; but their -news, none the less, was welcome. The Pastons had risen in the world. -People said even that they had been bondmen not so very long ago. At any -rate, men still living could remember John’s grandfather Clement tilling -his own land, a hard-working peasant; and William, Clement’s son, -becoming a judge and buying land; and John, William’s son, marrying well -and buying more land and quite lately inheriting the vast new castle at -Caister, and all Sir John’s lands in Norfolk and Suffolk. People said -that he had forged the old knight’s will. What wonder, then, that he -lacked a tombstone? But, if we consider the character of Sir John -Paston, John’s eldest son, and his upbringing and his surroundings, and -the relations between himself and his father as the family letters -reveal them, we shall see how difficult it was, and how likely to be -neglected—this business of making his father’s tombstone. - -For let us imagine, in the most desolate part of England known to us at -the present moment, a raw, new-built house, without telephone, bathroom, -or drains, arm-chairs or newspapers, and one shelf perhaps of books, -unwieldy to hold, expensive to come by. The windows look out upon a few -cultivated fields and a dozen hovels, and beyond them there is the sea -on one side, on the other a vast fen. A single road crosses the fen, but -there is a hole in it, which, one of the farm hands reports, is big -enough to swallow a carriage. And, the man adds, Tom Topcroft, the mad -bricklayer, has broken loose again and ranges the country half-naked, -threatening to kill any one who approaches him. That is what they talk -about at dinner in the desolate house, while the chimney smokes -horribly, and the draught lifts the carpets on the floor. Orders are -given to lock all gates at sunset, and, when the long dismal evening has -worn itself away, simply and solemnly, girt about with dangers as they -are, these isolated men and women fall upon their knees in prayer. - -In the fifteenth century, however, the wild landscape was broken -suddenly and very strangely by vast piles of brand-new masonry. There -rose out of the sand-hills and heaths of the Norfolk coast a huge bulk -of stone, like a modern hotel in a watering-place; but there was no -parade, no lodging houses, and no pier at Yarmouth then, and this -gigantic building on the outskirts of the town was built to house one -solitary old gentleman without any children—Sir John Fastolf, who had -fought at Agincourt and acquired great wealth. He had fought at -Agincourt and got but little reward. No one took his advice. Men spoke -ill of him behind his back. He was well aware of it; his temper was none -the sweeter for it. He was a hot-tempered old man, powerful, embittered -by a sense of grievance. But whether on the battlefield or at court he -thought perpetually of Caister, and how, when his duties allowed, he -would settle down on his father’s land and live in a great house of his -own building. - -The gigantic structure of Caister Castle was in progress not so many -miles away when the little Pastons were children. John Paston, the -father, had charge of some part of the business, and the children -listened, as soon as they could listen at all, to talk of stone and -building, of barges gone to London and not yet returned, of the -twenty-six private chambers, of the hall and chapel; of foundations, -measurements, and rascally work-people. Later, in 1454, when the work -was finished and Sir John had come to spend his last years at Caister, -they may have seen for themselves the mass of treasure that was stored -there; the tables laden with gold and silver plate; the wardrobes -stuffed with gowns of velvet and satin and cloth of gold, with hoods and -tippets and beaver hats and leather jackets and velvet doublets; and how -the very pillow-cases on the beds were of green and purple silk. There -were tapestries everywhere. The beds were laid and the bedrooms hung -with tapestries representing sieges, hunting and hawking, men fishing, -archers shooting, ladies playing on their harps, dallying with ducks, or -a giant “bearing the leg of a bear in his hand”. Such were the fruits of -a well-spent life. To buy land, to build great houses, to stuff these -houses full of gold and silver plate (though the privy might well be in -the bedroom), was the proper aim of mankind. Mr. and Mrs. Paston spent -the greater part of their energies in the same exhausting occupation. -For since the passion to acquire was universal, one could never rest -secure in one’s possessions for long. The outlying parts of one’s -property were in perpetual jeopardy. The Duke of Norfolk might covet -this manor, the Duke of Suffolk that. Some trumped-up excuse, as for -instance that the Pastons were bondmen, gave them the right to seize the -house and batter down the lodges in the owner’s absence. And how could -the owner of Paston and Mauteby and Drayton and Gresham be in five or -six places at once, especially now that Caister Castle was his, and he -must be in London trying to get his rights recognised by the King? The -King was mad too, they said; did not know his own child, they said; or -the King was in flight; or there was civil war in the land. Norfolk was -always the most distressed of counties and its country gentlemen the -most quarrelsome of mankind. Indeed, had Mrs. Paston chosen, she could -have told her children how when she was a young woman a thousand men -with bows and arrows and pans of burning fire had marched upon Gresham -and broken the gates and mined the walls of the room where she sat -alone. But much worse things than that had happened to women. She -neither bewailed her lot nor thought herself a heroine. The long, long -letters which she wrote so laboriously in her clear cramped hand to her -husband, who was (as usual) away, make no mention of herself. The sheep -had wasted the hay. Heyden’s and Tuddenham’s men were out. A dyke had -been broken and a bullock stolen. They needed treacle badly, and really -she must have stuff for a dress. - -But Mrs. Paston did not talk about herself. - -Thus the little Pastons would see their mother writing or dictating page -after page, hour after hour, long, long letters, but to interrupt a -parent who writes so laboriously of such important matters would have -been a sin. The prattle of children, the lore of the nursery or -schoolroom, did not find its way into these elaborate communications. -For the most part her letters are the letters of an honest bailiff to -his master, explaining, asking advice, giving news, rendering accounts. -There was robbery and manslaughter; it was difficult to get in the -rents; Richard Calle had gathered but little money; and what with one -thing and another Margaret had not had time to make out, as she should -have done, the inventory of the goods which her husband desired. Well -might old Agnes, surveying her son’s affairs rather grimly from a -distance, counsel him to contrive it so that “ye may have less to do in -the world; your father said. In little business lieth much rest. This -world is but a thoroughfare, and full of woe; and when we depart -therefrom, right nought bear with us but our good deeds and ill.” - -The thought of death would thus come upon them in a clap. Old Fastolf, -cumbered with wealth and property, had his vision at the end of Hell -fire, and shrieked aloud to his executors to distribute alms, and see -that prayers were said “in perpetuum”, so that his soul might escape the -agonies of purgatory. William Paston, the judge, was urgent too that the -monks of Norwich should be retained to pray for his soul “for ever”. The -soul was no wisp of air, but a solid body capable of eternal suffering, -and the fire that destroyed it was as fierce as any that burnt on mortal -grates. For ever there would be monks and the town of Norwich, and for -ever the Chapel of Our Lady in the town of Norwich. There was something -matter-of-fact, positive, and enduring in their conception both of life -and of death. - -With the plan of existence so vigorously marked out, children of course -were well beaten, and boys and girls taught to know their places. They -must acquire land; but they must obey their parents. A mother would -clout her daughter’s head three times a week and break the skin if she -did not conform to the laws of behaviour. Agnes Paston, a lady of birth -and breeding, beat her daughter Elizabeth. Margaret Paston, a -softer-hearted woman, turned her daughter out of the house for loving -the honest bailiff Richard Calle. Brothers would not suffer their -sisters to marry beneath them, and “sell candle and mustard in -Framlingham”. The fathers quarrelled with the sons, and the mothers, -fonder of their boys than of their girls, yet bound by all law and -custom to obey their husbands, were torn asunder in their efforts to -keep the peace. With all her pains, Margaret failed to prevent rash acts -on the part of her eldest son John, or the bitter words with which his -father denounced him. He was a “drone among bees”, the father burst out, -“which labour for gathering honey in the fields, and the drone doth -naught but taketh his part of it”. He treated his parents with -insolence, and yet was fit for no charge of responsibility abroad. - -But the quarrel was ended, very shortly, by the death (22nd May 1466) of -John Paston, the father, in London. The body was brought down to -Bromholm to be buried. Twelve poor men trudged all the way bearing -torches beside it. Alms were distributed; masses and dirges were said. -Bells were rung. Great quantities of fowls, sheep, pigs, eggs, bread, -and cream were devoured, ale and wine drunk, and candles burnt. Two -panes were taken from the church windows to let out the reek of the -torches. Black cloth was distributed, and a light set burning on the -grave. But John Paston, the heir, delayed to make his father’s -tombstone. - -He was a young man, something over twenty-four years of age. The -discipline and the drudgery of a country life bored him. When he ran -away from home, it was, apparently, to attempt to enter the King’s -household. Whatever doubts, indeed, might be cast by their enemies on -the blood of the Pastons, Sir John was unmistakably a gentleman. He had -inherited his lands; the honey was his that the bees had gathered with -so much labour. He had the instincts of enjoyment rather than of -acquisition, and with his mother’s parsimony was strangely mixed -something of his father’s ambition. Yet his own indolent and luxurious -temperament took the edge from both. He was attractive to women, liked -society and tournaments, and court life and making bets, and sometimes, -even, reading books. And so life, now that John Paston was buried, -started afresh upon rather a different foundation. There could be little -outward change indeed. Margaret still ruled the house. She still ordered -the lives of the younger children as she had ordered the lives of the -elder. The boys still needed to be beaten into book-learning by their -tutors, the girls still loved the wrong men and must be married to the -right. Rents had to be collected; the interminable lawsuit for the -Fastolf property dragged on. Battles were fought; the roses of York and -Lancaster alternately faded and flourished. Norfolk was full of poor -people seeking redress for their grievances, and Margaret worked for her -son as she had worked for her husband, with this significant change -only, that now, instead of confiding in her husband, she took the advice -of her priest. - -But inwardly there was a change. It seems at last as if the hard outer -shell had served its purpose and something sensitive, appreciative, and -pleasure-loving had formed within. At any rate Sir John, writing to his -brother John at home, strayed sometimes from the business on hand to -crack a joke, to send a piece of gossip, or to instruct him, knowingly -and even subtly, upon the conduct of a love affair. Be “as lowly to the -mother as ye list, but to the maid not too lowly, nor that ye be too -glad to speed, nor too sorry to fail. And I shall always be your herald -both here, if she come hither, and at home, when I come home, which I -hope hastily within XI. days at the furthest.” And then a hawk was to be -bought, a hat, or new silk laces sent down to John in Norfolk, -prosecuting his suit, flying his hawks, and attending with considerable -energy and not too nice a sense of honesty to the affairs of the Paston -estates. - -The lights had long since burnt out on John Paston’s grave. But still -Sir John delayed; no tomb replaced them. He had his excuses; what with -the business of the lawsuit, and his duties at Court, and the -disturbance of the civil wars, his time was occupied and his money -spent. But perhaps something strange had happened to Sir John himself, -and not only to Sir John dallying in London, but to his sister Margery -falling in love with the bailiff, and to Walter making Latin verses at -Eton, and to John flying his hawks at Paston. Life was a little more -various in its pleasures. They were not quite so sure as the elder -generation had been of the rights of man and of the dues of God, of the -horrors of death, and of the importance of tombstones. Poor Margaret -Paston scented the change and sought uneasily, with the pen which had -marched so stiffly through so many pages, to lay bare the root of her -troubles. It was not that the lawsuit saddened her; she was ready to -defend Caister with her own hands if need be, “though I cannot well -guide nor rule soldiers”, but there was something wrong with the family -since the death of her husband and master. Perhaps her son had failed in -his service to God; he had been too proud or too lavish in his -expenditure; or perhaps he had shown too little mercy to the poor. -Whatever the fault might be, she only knew that Sir John spent twice as -much money as his father for less result; that they could scarcely pay -their debts without selling land, wood, or household stuff (“It is a -death to me to think if it”); while every day people spoke ill of them -in the country because they left John Paston to lie without a tombstone. -The money that might have bought it, or more land, and more goblets and -more tapestry, was spent by Sir John on clocks and trinkets, and upon -paying a clerk to copy out Treatises upon Knighthood and other such -stuff. There they stood at Paston—eleven volumes, with the poems of -Lydgate and Chaucer among them, diffusing a strange air into the gaunt, -comfortless house, inviting men to indolence and vanity, distracting -their thoughts from business, and leading them not only to neglect their -own profit but to think lightly of the sacred dues of the dead. - -For sometimes, instead of riding off on his horse to inspect his crops -or bargain with his tenants, Sir John would sit, in broad daylight, -reading. There, on the hard chair in the comfortless room with the wind -lifting the carpet and the smoke stinging his eyes, he would sit reading -Chaucer, wasting his time, dreaming—or what strange intoxication was it -that he drew from books? Life was rough, cheerless, and disappointing. -A whole year of days would pass fruitlessly in dreary business, like -dashes of rain on the window pane. There was no reason in it as there -had been for his father; no imperative need to establish a family and -acquire an important position for children who were not born, or if -born, had no right to bear their father’s name. But Lydgate’s poems or -Chaucer’s, like a mirror in which figures move brightly, silently, and -compactly, showed him the very skies, fields, and people whom he knew, -but rounded and complete. Instead of waiting listlessly for news from -London or piecing out from his mother’s gossip some country tragedy of -love and jealousy, here, in a few pages, the whole story was laid before -him. And then as he rode or sat at table he would remember some -description or saying which bore upon the present moment and fixed it, -or some string of words would charm him, and putting aside the pressure -of the moment, he would hasten home to sit in his chair and learn the -end of the story. - - -To learn the end of the story—Chaucer can still make us wish to do -that. He has pre-eminently that story-teller’s gift, which is almost the -rarest gift among writers at the present day. Nothing happens to us as -it did to our ancestors; events are seldom important; if we recount -them, we do not really believe in them; we have perhaps things of -greater interest to say, and for these reasons natural story-tellers -like Mr. Garnett, whom we must distinguish from self-conscious -story-tellers like Mr. Masefield, have become rare. For the -story-teller, besides his indescribable zest for facts, must tell his -story craftily, without undue stress or excitement, or we shall swallow -it whole and jumble the parts together; he must let us stop, give us -time to think and look about us, yet always be persuading us to move on. -Chaucer was helped to this to some extent by the time of his birth; and -in addition he had another advantage over the moderns which will never -come the way of English poets again. England was an unspoilt country. -His eyes rested on a virgin land, all unbroken grass and wood except for -the small towns and an occasional castle in the building. No villa roofs -peered through Kentish tree-tops; no factory chimney smoked on the -hillside. The state of the country, considering how poets go to Nature, -how they use her for their images and their contrasts even when they do -not describe her directly, is a matter of some importance. Her -cultivation or her savagery influences the poet far more profoundly than -the prose writer. To the modern poet, with Birmingham, Manchester, and -London the size they are, the country is the sanctuary of moral -excellence in contrast with the town which is the sink of vice. It is a -retreat, the haunt of modesty and virtue, where men go to hide and -moralise. There is something morbid, as if shrinking from human contact, -in the nature worship of Wordsworth, still more in the microscopic -devotion which Tennyson lavished upon the petals of roses and the buds -of lime trees. But these were great poets. In their hands, the country -was no mere jeweller’s shop, or museum of curious objects to be -described, even more curiously, in words. Poets of smaller gift, since -the view is so much spoilt, and the garden or the meadow must replace -the barren heath and the precipitous mountain-side, are now confined to -little landscapes, to birds’ nests, to acorns with every wrinkle drawn -to the life. The wider landscape is lost. - -But to Chaucer the country was too large and too wild to be altogether -agreeable. He turned instinctively, as if he had painful experience of -their nature, from tempests and rocks to the bright May day and the -jocund landscape, from the harsh and mysterious to the gay and definite. -Without possessing a tithe of the virtuosity in word-painting which is -the modern inheritance, he could give, in a few words, or even, when we -come to look, without a single word of direct description, the sense of -the open air. - - -And se the fresshe floures how they sprynge - - -—that is enough. - -Nature, uncompromising, untamed, was no looking-glass for happy faces, -or confessor of unhappy souls. She was herself; sometimes, therefore, -disagreeable enough and plain, but always in Chaucer’s pages with the -hardness and the freshness of an actual presence. Soon, however, we -notice something of greater importance than the gay and picturesque -appearance of the mediaeval world—the solidity which plumps it out, the -conviction which animates the characters. There is immense variety in -the _Canterbury Tales_, and yet, persisting underneath, one consistent -type. Chaucer has his world; he has his young men; he has his young -women. If one met them straying in Shakespeare’s world one would know -them to be Chaucer’s, not Shakespeare’s. He wants to describe a girl, -and this is what she looks like: - - -Ful semely hir wimpel pinched was, -Hir nose tretys; hir eyen greye as glas; -Hir mouth ful smal, and ther-to soft and reed; -But sikerly she hadde a fair foreheed; -It was almost a spanne brood, I trowe; -For, hardily, she was nat undergrowe. - - -Then he goes on to develop her; she was a girl, a virgin, cold in her -virginity: - - -I am, thou woost, yet of thy companye, -A mayde, and love hunting and venerye, -And for to walken in the wodes wilde, -And noght to been a wyf and be with childe. - - -Next he bethinks him how - - -Discreet she was in answering alway; -And though she had been as wise as Pallas -No countrefeted termes hadde she -To seme wys; but after hir degree -She spak, and alle hir wordes more and lesse -Souninge in vertu and in gentillesse. - - -Each of these quotations, in fact, comes from a different Tale, but they -are parts, one feels, of the same personage, whom he had in mind, -perhaps unconsciously, when he thought of a young girl, and for this -reason, as she goes in and out of the _Canterbury Tales_ bearing -different names, she has a stability which is only to be found where the -poet has made up his mind about young women, of course, but also about -the world they live in, its end, its nature, and his own craft and -technique, so that his mind is free to apply its force fully to its -object. It does not occur to him that his Griselda might be improved or -altered. There is no blur about her, no hesitation; she proves nothing; -she is content to be herself. Upon her, therefore, the mind can rest -with that unconscious ease which allows it, from hints and suggestions, -to endow her with many more qualities than are actually referred to. -Such is the power of conviction, a rare gift, a gift shared in our day -by Joseph Conrad in his earlier novels, and a gift of supreme -importance, for upon it the whole weight of the building depends. Once -believe in Chaucer’s young men and women and we have no need of -preaching or protest. We know what he finds good, what evil; the less -said the better. Let him get on with his story, paint knights and -squires, good women and bad, cooks, shipmen, priests, and we will supply -the landscape, give his society its belief, its standing towards life -and death, and make of the journey to Canterbury a spiritual pilgrimage. - -This simple faithfulness to his own conceptions was easier then than now -in one respect at least, for Chaucer could write frankly where we must -either say nothing or say it slyly. He could sound every note in the -language instead of finding a great many of the best gone dumb from -disuse, and thus, when struck by daring fingers, giving off a loud -discordant jangle out of keeping with the rest. Much of Chaucer—a few -lines perhaps in each of the Tales—is improper and gives us as we read -it the strange sensation of being naked to the air after being muffled -in old clothing. And, as a certain kind of humour depends upon being -able to speak without self-consciousness of the parts and functions of -the body, so with the advent of decency literature lost the use of one -of its limbs. It lost its power to create the Wife of Bath, Juliet’s -nurse, and their recognisable though already colourless relation, Moll -Flanders. Sterne, from fear of coarseness, is forced into indecency. He -must be witty, not humorous. He must hint instead of speaking outright. -Nor can we believe, with Mr. Joyce’s _Ulysses_ before us, that laughter -of the old kind will ever be heard again. - - -But, lord Christ! When that it remembreth me -Up-on my yowthe, and on my Iolitee, -It tikleth me aboute myn herte rote. -Unto this day it doth myn herte bote -That I have had my world as in my tyme. - - -The sound of that old woman’s voice is still. - -But there is another and more important reason for the surprising -brightness, the still effective merriment of the _Canterbury Tales_. -Chaucer was a poet; but he never flinched from the life that was being -lived at the moment before his eyes. A farmyard, with its straw, its -dung, its cocks and its hens is not (we have come to think) a poetic -subject; poets seem either to rule out the farmyard entirely or to -require that it shall be a farmyard in Thessaly and its pigs of -mythological origin. But Chaucer says outright: - - -Three large sowes hadde she, and namo, -Three kyn, and eek a sheep that highte Malle; - - -or again, - - -A yard she hadde, enclosed al aboute -With stikkes, and a drye ditch with-oute. - - -He is unabashed and unafraid. He will always get close up to his -object—an old man’s chin— - - -With thikke bristles of his berde unsofte, -Lyk to the skin of houndfish, sharp as brere; - - -or an old man’s neck— - - -The slakke skin aboute his nekke shaketh -Whyl that he sang; - - -and he will tell you what his characters wore, how they looked, what -they ate and drank, as if poetry could handle the common facts of this -very moment of Tuesday, the sixteenth day of April, 1387, without -dirtying her hands. If he withdraws to the time of the Greeks or the -Romans, it is only that his story leads him there. He has no desire to -wrap himself round in antiquity, to take refuge in age, or to shirk the -associations of common grocer’s English. - -Therefore when we say that we know the end of the journey, it is hard to -quote the particular lines from which we take our knowledge. He fixed -his eyes upon the road before him, not upon the world to come. He was -little given to abstract contemplation. He deprecated, with peculiar -archness, any competition with the scholars and divines: - - -The answere of this I lete to divynis, -But wel I woot, that in this world grey pyne is. - -What is this world? What asketh men to have? -Now with his love, now in the colde grave -Allone, withouten any companye, - - -he asks, or ponders - - -O cruel goddes, that governe -This world with binding of your worde eterne, -And wryten in the table of athamaunt -Your parlement, and your eterne graunt, -What is mankinde more un-to yow holde -Than is the sheepe, that rouketh in the folde? - - -Questions press upon him; he asks questions, but he is too true a poet -to answer them; he leaves them unsolved, uncramped by the solution of -the moment, thus fresh for the generations that come after him. In his -life, too, it would be impossible to write him down a man of this party -or of that, a democrat or an aristocrat. He was a staunch churchman, but -he laughed at priests. He was an able public servant and a courtier, but -his views upon sexual morality were extremely lax. He sympathised with -poverty, but did nothing to improve the lot of the poor. It is safe to -say that not a single law has been framed or one stone set upon another -because of anything that Chaucer said or wrote; and yet, as we read him, -we are of course absorbing morality at every pore. For among writers -there are two kinds: there are the priests who take you by the hand and -lead you straight up to the mystery; there are the laymen who imbed -their doctrines in flesh and blood and make a complete model of the -world without excluding the bad or laying stress upon the good. -Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley are among the priests; they give us -text after text to be hung upon the wall, saying after saying to be laid -upon the heart like an amulet against disaster— - - -Farewell, farewell, the heart that lives alone - -He prayeth best that loveth best -All things both great and small - - -—such lines of exhortation and command spring to memory instantly. But -Chaucer lets us go our ways doing the ordinary things with the ordinary -people. His morality lies in the way men and women behave to each other. -We see them eating, drinking, laughing, and making love, and come to -feel without a word being said what their standards are and so are -steeped through and through with their morality. There can be no more -forcible preaching than this where all actions and passions are -represented, and instead of being solemnly exhorted we are left to stray -and stare and make out a meaning for ourselves. It is the morality of -ordinary intercourse, the morality of the novel, which parents and -librarians rightly judge to be far more persuasive than the morality of -poetry. - -And so, when we shut Chaucer, we feel that without a word being said the -criticism is complete; what we are saying, thinking, reading, doing has -been commented upon. Nor are we left merely with the sense, powerful -though that is, of having been in good company and got used to the ways -of good society. For as we have jogged through the real, the unadorned -country-side, with first one good fellow cracking his joke or singing -his song and then another, we know that though this world resembles, it -is not in fact our daily world. It is the world of poetry. Everything -happens here more quickly and more intensely, and with better order than -in life or in prose; there is a formal elevated dullness which is part -of the incantation of poetry; there are lines speaking half a second in -advance what we were about to say, as if we read our thoughts before -words cumbered them; and lines which we go back to read again with that -heightened quality, that enchantment which keeps them glittering in the -mind long afterwards. And the whole is held in its place, and its -variety and divagations ordered by the power which is among the most -impressive of all—the shaping power, the architect’s power. It is the -peculiarity of Chaucer, however, that though we feel at once this -quickening, this enchantment, we cannot prove it by quotation. From most -poets quotation is easy and obvious; some metaphor suddenly flowers; -some passage breaks off from the rest. But Chaucer is very equal, very -even-paced, very unmetaphorical. If we take six or seven lines in the -hope that the quality will be contained in them it has escaped. - - -My lord, ye woot that in my fadres place, -Ye dede me strepe out of my povre wede, -And richely me cladden, o your grace -To yow broghte I noght elles, out of drede, -But feyth and nakedness and maydenhede. - - -In its place that seemed not only memorable and moving but fit to set -beside striking beauties. Cut out and taken separately it appears -ordinary and quiet. Chaucer, it seems, has some art by which the most -ordinary words and the simplest feelings when laid side by side make -each other shine; when separated lose their lustre. Thus the pleasure he -gives us is different from the pleasure that other poets give us, -because it is more closely connected with what we have ourselves felt or -observed. Eating, drinking and fine weather, the May, cocks and hens, -millers, old peasant women, flowers—there is a special stimulus in -seeing all these common things so arranged that they affect us as poetry -affects us, and are yet bright, sober, precise as we see them out of -doors. There is a pungency in this unfigurative language; a stately and -memorable beauty in the undraped sentences which follow each other like -women so slightly veiled that you see the lines of their bodies as they -go— - - -And she set down hir water pot anon -Biside the threshold in an oxe’s stall. - - -And then, as the procession takes its way, tranquilly, beautifully, out -from behind peeps the face of Chaucer, grinning, malicious, in league -with all foxes, donkeys, and hens, to mock the pomp and ceremonies of -life—witty, intellectual, French, at the same time based upon a broad -bottom of English humour. - - -So Sir John read his Chaucer in the comfortless room with the wind -blowing and the smoke stinging, and left his father’s tombstone unmade. -But no book, no tomb, had power to hold him long. He was one of those -ambiguous characters who haunt the boundary line where one age merges in -another and are not able to inhabit either. At one moment he was all for -buying books cheap; next he was off to France and told his mother, “My -mind is now not most upon books”. In his own house, where his mother -Margaret was perpetually making out inventories or confiding in Gloys -the priest, he had no peace or comfort. There was always reason on her -side; she was a brave woman, for whose sake one must put up with the -priest’s insolence and choke down one’s rage when the grumbling broke -into open abuse, and “Thou proud priest” and “Thou proud Squire” were -bandied angrily about the room. All this, with the discomforts of life -and the weakness of his own character, drove him to loiter in pleasanter -places, to put off coming, to put off writing, to put off, year after -year, the making of his father’s tombstone. - -Yet John Paston had now lain for twelve years under the bare ground. The -Prior of Bromholm sent word that the grave cloth was in tatters, and he -had tried to patch it himself. Worse still, for a proud woman like -Margaret Paston, the country people murmured at the Pastons’ lack of -piety, and other families she heard, of no greater standing than theirs, -spent money in pious restoration in the very church where her husband -lay unremembered. At last, turning from tournaments and Chaucer and -Mistress Anne Hault, Sir John bethought him of a piece of cloth of gold -which had been used to cover his father’s hearse and might now be sold -to defray the expenses of his tomb. Margaret had it in safe keeping; she -had hoarded it and cared for it, and spent twenty marks on its repair. -She grudged it; but there was no help for it. She sent it him, still -distrusting his intentions or his power to put them into effect. “If you -sell it to any other use,” she wrote, “by my troth I shall never trust -you while I live.” - -But this final act, like so many that Sir John had undertaken in the -course of his life, was left undone. A dispute with the Duke of Suffolk -in the year 1479 made it necessary for him to visit London in spite of -the epidemic of sickness that was abroad; and there, in dirty lodgings, -alone, busy to the end with quarrels, clamorous to the end for money, -Sir John died and was buried at Whitefriars in London. He left a natural -daughter; he left a considerable number of books; but his father’s tomb -was still unmade. - -The four thick volumes of the Paston letters, however, swallow up this -frustrated man as the sea absorbs a raindrop. For, like all collections -of letters, they seem to hint that we need not care overmuch for the -fortunes of individuals. The family will go on whether Sir John lives or -dies. It is their method to heap up in mounds of insignificant and often -dismal dust the innumerable trivialities of daily life, as it grinds -itself out, year after year. And then suddenly they blaze up; the day -shines out, complete, alive, before our eyes. It is early morning and -strange men have been whispering among the women as they milk. It is -evening, and there in the churchyard Warne’s wife bursts out against old -Agnes Paston: “All the devils of Hell draw her soul to Hell.” Now it is -the autumn in Norfolk and Cecily Dawne comes whining to Sir John for -clothing. “Moreover, Sir, liketh it your mastership to understand that -winter and cold weather draweth nigh and I have few clothes but of your -gift.” There is the ancient day, spread out before us, hour by hour. - -But in all this there is no writing for writing’s sake; no use of the -pen to convey pleasure or amusement or any of the million shades of -endearment and intimacy which have filled so many English letters since. -Only occasionally, under stress of anger for the most part, does -Margaret Paston quicken into some shrewd saw or solemn curse. “Men cut -large thongs here out of other men’s leather. . . . We beat the bushes -and other men have the birds. . . . Haste reweth . . . which is to my -heart a very spear.” That is her eloquence and that her anguish. Her -sons, it is true, bend their pens more easily to their will. They jest -rather stiffly; they hint rather clumsily; they make a little scene like -a rough puppet show of the old priest’s anger and give a phrase or two -directly as they were spoken in person. But when Chaucer lived he must -have heard this very language, matter of fact, unmetaphorical, far -better fitted for narrative than for analysis, capable of religious -solemnity or of broad humour, but very stiff material to put on the lips -of men and women accosting each other face to face. In short it is easy -to see, from the Paston letters, why Chaucer wrote not _Lear_ or _Romeo -and Juliet_, but the _Canterbury Tales_. - -Sir John was buried; and John the younger brother succeeded in his turn. -The Paston letters go on; life at Paston continues much the same as -before. Over it all broods a sense of discomfort and nakedness; of -unwashed limbs thrust into splendid clothing; of tapestry blowing on the -draughty walls; of the bedroom with its privy; of winds sweeping -straight over land unmitigated by hedge or town; of Caister Castle -covering with solid stone six acres of ground, and of the plain-faced -Pastons indefatigably accumulating wealth, treading out the roads of -Norfolk, and persisting with an obstinate courage which does them -infinite credit in furnishing the bareness of England. - - -[Footnote 1: _The Paston Letters_, edited by Dr. James -Gairdner (1904), 4 vols.] - - - - -_On Not Knowing Greek_ - - -For it is vain and foolish to talk of Knowing Greek, since in our -ignorance we should be at the bottom of any class of schoolboys, since -we do not know how the words sounded, or where precisely we ought to -laugh, or how the actors acted, and between this foreign people and -ourselves there is not only difference of race and tongue but a -tremendous breach of tradition. All the more strange, then, is it that -we should wish to know Greek, try to know Greek, feel for ever drawn -back to Greek, and be for ever making up some notion of the meaning of -Greek, though from what incongruous odds and ends, with what slight -resemblance to the real meaning of Greek, who shall say? - -It is obvious in the first place that Greek literature is the impersonal -literature. Those few hundred years that separate John Paston from -Plato, Norwich from Athens, make a chasm which the vast tide of European -chatter can never succeed in crossing. When we read Chaucer, we are -floated up to him insensibly on the current of our ancestors’ lives, and -later, as records increase and memories lengthen, there is scarcely a -figure which has not its nimbus of association, its life and letters, -its wife and family, its house, its character, its happy or dismal -catastrophe. But the Greeks remain in a fastness of their own. Fate has -been kind there too. She has preserved them from vulgarity, Euripides -was eaten by dogs; Æschylus killed by a stone; Sappho leapt from a -cliff. We know no more of them than that. We have their poetry, and that -is all. - -But that is not, and perhaps never can be, wholly true. Pick up any play -by Sophocles, read— - - -Son of him who led our hosts at Troy of old, son of -Agamemnon, - - -and at once the mind begins to fashion itself surroundings. It makes -some background, even of the most provisional sort, for Sophocles; it -imagines some village, in a remote part of the country, near the sea. -Even nowadays such villages are to be found in the wilder parts of -England, and as we enter them we can scarcely help feeling that here, in -this cluster of cottages, cut off from rail or city, are all the -elements of a perfect existence. Here is the Rectory; here the Manor -house, the farm and the cottages; the church for worship, the club for -meeting, the cricket field for play. Here life is simply sorted out into -its main elements. Each man and woman has his work; each works for the -health or happiness of others. And here, in this little community, -characters become part of the common stock; the eccentricities of the -clergyman are known; the great ladies’ defects of temper; the -blacksmith’s feud with the milkman, and the loves and matings of the -boys and girls. Here life has cut the same grooves for centuries; -customs have arisen; legends have attached themselves to hilltops and -solitary trees, and the village has its history, its festivals, and its -rivalries. - -It is the climate that is impossible. If we try to think of Sophocles -here, we must annihilate the smoke and the damp and the thick wet mists. -We must sharpen the lines of the hills. We must imagine a beauty of -stone and earth rather than of woods and greenery. With warmth and -sunshine and months of brilliant, fine weather, life of course is -instantly changed; it is transacted out of doors, with the result, known -to all who visit Italy, that small incidents are debated in the street, -not in the sitting-room, and become dramatic; make people voluble; -inspire in them that sneering, laughing, nimbleness of wit and tongue -peculiar to the Southern races, which has nothing in common with the -slow reserve, the low half-tones, the brooding introspective melancholy -of people accustomed to live more than half the year indoors. - -That is the quality that first strikes us in Greek literature, the -lightning-quick, sneering, out-of-doors manner. It is apparent in the -most august as well as in the most trivial places. Queens and Princesses -in this very tragedy by Sophocles stand at the door bandying words like -village women, with a tendency, as one might expect, to rejoice in -language, to split phrases into slices, to be intent on verbal victory. -The humour of the people was not good natured like that of our postmen -and cabdrivers. The taunts of men lounging at the street corners had -something cruel in them as well as witty. There is a cruelty in Greek -tragedy which is quite unlike our English brutality: Is not Pentheus, -for example, that highly respectable man, made ridiculous in the -_Bacchæ_ before he is destroyed? In fact, of course, these Queens and -Princesses were out of doors, with the bees buzzing past them, shadows -crossing them, and the wind taking their draperies. They were speaking -to an enormous audience rayed round them on one of those brilliant -southern days when the sun is so hot and yet the air so exciting. The -poet, therefore, had to bethink him, not of some theme which could be -read for hours by people in privacy, but of something emphatic, -familiar, brief, that would carry, instantly and directly, to an -audience of seventeen thousand people, perhaps, with ears and eyes eager -and attentive, with bodies whose muscles would grow stiff if they sat -too long without diversion. Music and dancing he would need, and -naturally would choose one of those legends, like our Tristram and -Iseult, which are known to every one in outline, so that a great fund of -emotion is ready prepared, but can be stressed in a new place by each -new poet. - -Sophocles would take the old story of Electra, for instance, but would -at once impose his stamp upon it. Of that, in spite of our weakness and -distortion, what remains visible to us? That his genius was of the -extreme kind in the first place; that he chose a design which, if it -failed, would show its failure in gashes and ruin, not in the gentle -blurring of some insignificant detail; which, if it succeeded, would cut -each stroke to the bone, would stamp each finger-print in marble. His -Electra stands before us like a figure so tightly bound that she can -only move an inch this way, an inch that. But each movement must tell to -the utmost, or, bound as she is, denied the relief of all hints, -repetitions, suggestions, she will be nothing but a dummy, tightly -bound. Her words in crisis are, as a matter of fact, bare; mere cries of -despair, joy, hate - - -οἲ ‘γὼ τάλαιν’, ὄλωλα τῇδ’ ὲν ἡμέρᾀ. -παῖσον, εἰ σθένεις, διπλῆν. - - -But these cries give angle and outline to the play. It is thus, with a -thousand differences of degree, that in English literature Jane Austen -shapes a novel. There comes a moment—“I will dance with you,” says -Emma—which rises higher than the rest, which, though not eloquent in -itself, or violent, or made striking by beauty of language, has the -whole weight of the book behind it. In Jane Austen, too, we have the -same sense, though the ligatures are much less tight, that her figures -are bound, and restricted to a few definite movements. She, too, in her -modest, everyday prose, chose the dangerous art where one slip means -death. - -But it is not so easy to decide what it is that gives these cries of -Electra in her anguish their power to cut and wound and excite. It is -partly that we know her, that we have picked up from little turns and -twists of the dialogue hints of her character, of her appearance, which, -characteristically, she neglected; of something suffering in her, -outraged and stimulated to its utmost stretch of capacity, yet, as she -herself knows (“my behaviour is unseemly and becomes me ill”), blunted -and debased by the horror of her position, an unwed girl made to witness -her mother’s vileness and denounce it in loud, almost vulgar, -clamour to the world at large. It is partly, too, that we know in -the same way that Clytemnestra is no unmitigated villainess. -“δεινὸν τὸ τίκτειν ἐστίν,” she says—“there is a strange power in -motherhood”. It is no murderess, violent and unredeemed, whom Orestes -kills within the house, and Electra bids him utterly destroy—“strike -again”. No; the men and women standing out in the sunlight before the -audience on the hillside were alive enough, subtle enough, not mere -figures, or plaster casts of human beings. - -Yet it is not because we can analyse them into feelings that they -impress us. In six pages of Proust we can find more complicated and -varied emotions than in the whole of the _Electra_. But in the _Electra_ -or in the _Antigone_ we are impressed by something different, by -something perhaps more impressive—by heroism itself, by fidelity -itself. In spite of the labour and the difficulty it is this that draws -us back and back to the Greeks; the stable, the permanent, the original -human being is to be found there. Violent emotions are needed to rouse -him into action, but when thus stirred by death, by betrayal, by some -other primitive calamity, Antigone and Ajax and Electra behave in the -way in which we should behave thus struck down; the way in which -everybody has always behaved; and thus we understand them more easily -and more directly than we understand the characters in the _Canterbury -Tales_. These are the originals, Chaucer’s the varieties of the human -species. - -It is true, of course, that these types of the original man or woman, -these heroic Kings, these faithful daughters, these tragic Queens who -stalk through the ages always planting their feet in the same places, -twitching their robes with the same gestures, from habit not from -impulse, are among the greatest bores and the most demoralising -companions in the world. The plays of Addison, Voltaire, and a host of -others are there to prove it. But encounter them in Greek. Even in -Sophocles, whose reputation for restraint and mastery has filtered down -to us from the scholars, they are decided, ruthless, direct. A fragment -of their speech broken off would, we feel, colour oceans and oceans of -the respectable drama. Here we meet them before their emotions have been -worn into uniformity. Here we listen to the nightingale whose song -echoes through English literature singing in her own Greek tongue. For -the first time Orpheus with his lute makes men and beasts follow him. -Their voices ring out clear and sharp; we see the hairy tawny bodies at -play in the sunlight among the olive trees, not posed gracefully on -granite plinths in the pale corridors of the British Museum. And then -suddenly, in the midst of all this sharpness and compression, Electra, -as if she swept her veil over her face and forbade us to think of her -any more, speaks of that very nightingale: “that bird distraught with -grief, the messenger of Zeus. Ah, queen of sorrow, Niobe, thee I deem -divine—thee; who evermore weepest in thy rocky tomb”. - -And as she silences her own complaint, she perplexes us again with the -insoluble question of poetry and its nature, and why, as she speaks -thus, her words put on the assurance of immortality. For they are Greek; -we cannot tell how they sounded; they ignore the obvious sources of -excitement; they owe nothing of their effect to any extravagance of -expression, and certainly they throw no light upon the speaker’s -character or the writer’s. But they remain, something that has been -stated and must eternally endure. - -Yet in a play how dangerous this poetry, this lapse from the particular -to the general must of necessity be, with the actors standing there in -person, with their bodies and their faces passively waiting to be made -use of! For this reason the later plays of Shakespeare, where there is -more of poetry than of action, are better read than seen, better -understood by leaving out the actual body than by having the body, with -all its associations and movements, visible to the eye. The intolerable -restrictions of the drama could be loosened, however, if a means could -be found by which what was general and poetic, comment, not action, -could be freed without interrupting the movement of the whole. It is -this that the choruses supply; the old men or women who take no active -part in the drama, the undifferentiated voices who sing like birds in -the pauses of the wind; who can comment, or sum up, or allow the poet to -speak himself or supply, by contrast, another side to his conception. -Always in imaginative literature, where characters speak for themselves -and the author has no part, the need of that voice is making itself -felt. For though Shakespeare (unless we consider that his fools and -madmen supply the part) dispensed with the chorus, novelists are always -devising some substitute—Thackeray speaking in his own person, Fielding -coming out and addressing the world before his curtain rises. So to -grasp the meaning of the play the chorus is of the utmost importance. -One must be able to pass easily into those ecstasies, those wild and -apparently irrelevant utterances, those sometimes obvious and -commonplace statements, to decide their relevance or irrelevance, and -give them their relation to the play as a whole. - -We must “be able to pass easily”; but that of course is exactly what we -cannot do. For the most part the choruses, with all their obscurities, -must be spelt out and their symmetry mauled. But we can guess that -Sophocles used them not to express something outside the action of the -play, but to sing the praises of some virtue, or the beauties of some -place mentioned in it. He selects what he wishes to emphasise and sings -of white Colonus and its nightingale, or of love unconquered in fight. -Lovely, lofty, and serene his choruses grow naturally out of his -situations, and change, not the point of view, but the mood. In -Euripides, however, the situations are not contained within themselves; -they give off an atmosphere of doubt, of suggestion, of questioning; but -if we look to the choruses to make this plain we are often baffled -rather than instructed. At once in the _Bacchæ_ we are in the world of -psychology and doubt; the world where the mind twists facts and changes -them and makes the familiar aspects of life appear new and questionable. -What is Bacchus, and who are the Gods, and what is man’s duty to them, -and what the rights of his subtle brain? To these questions the chorus -makes no reply, or replies mockingly, or speaks darkly as if the -straitness of the dramatic form had tempted Euripides to violate it in -order to relieve his mind of its weight. Time is so short and I have so -much to say, that unless you will allow me to place together two -apparently unrelated statements and trust to you to pull them together, -you must be content with a mere skeleton of the play I might have given -you. Such is the argument. Euripides therefore suffers less than -Sophocles and less than Æschylus from being read privately in a room, -and not seen on a hillside in the sunshine. He can be acted in the mind; -he can comment upon the questions of the moment; more than the others he -will vary in popularity from age to age. - -If then in Sophocles the play is concentrated in the figures themselves, -and in Euripides is to be retrieved from flashes of poetry and questions -far flung and unanswered, Æschylus makes these little dramas (the -_Agamemnon_ has 1663 lines; _Lear_ about 2600), tremendous by stretching -every phrase to the utmost, by sending them floating forth in metaphors, -by bidding them rise up and stalk eyeless and majestic through the -scene. To understand him it is not so necessary to understand Greek as -to understand poetry. It is necessary to take that dangerous leap -through the air without the support of words which Shakespeare also asks -of us. For words, when opposed to such a blast of meaning, must give -out, must be blown astray, and only by collecting in companies convey -the meaning which each one separately is too weak to express. Connecting -them in a rapid flight of the mind we know instantly and instinctively -what they mean, but could not decant that meaning afresh into any other -words. There is an ambiguity which is the mark of the highest poetry; we -cannot know exactly what it means. Take this from the Agamemnon for -instance— - - -ὀμμάτων δ ἐν ἀχηνίαις ἔρρει πᾶσ’ Ἀφροδίτα. - - -The meaning is just on the far side of language. It is the meaning which -in moments of astonishing excitement and stress we perceive in our minds -without words; it is the meaning that Dostoevsky (hampered as he was by -prose and as we are by translation) leads us to by some astonishing run -up the scale of emotions and points at but cannot indicate; the meaning -that Shakespeare succeeds in snaring. - -Æschylus thus will not give, as Sophocles gives, the very words that -people might have spoken, only so arranged that they have in some -mysterious way a general force, a symbolic power, nor like Euripides -will he combine incongruities and thus enlarge his little space, as a -small room is enlarged by mirrors in odd corners. By the bold and running -use of metaphor he will amplify and give us, not the thing itself, but -the reverberation and reflection which, taken into his mind, the thing -has made; close enough to the original to illustrate it, remote enough -to heighten, enlarge, and make splendid. - -For none of these dramatists had the license which belongs to the -novelist, and, in some degree, to all writers of printed books, of -modelling their meaning with an infinity of slight touches which can -only be properly applied by reading quietly, carefully, and sometimes -two or three times over. Every sentence had to explode on striking the -ear, however slowly and beautifully the words might then descend, and -however enigmatic might their final purport be. No splendour or richness -of metaphor could have saved the _Agamemnon_ if either images or -allusions of the subtlest or most decorative had got between us and the -naked cry - - -ὀτοτοτοῖ πόποι δᾶ. ὢ ’πολλον, ὢ ’πολλον. - - -Dramatic they had to be at whatever cost. - -But winter fell on these villages, darkness and extreme cold descended -on the hillside. There must have been some place indoors where men -could retire, both in the depths of winter and in the summer heats, -where they could sit and drink, where they could lie stretched at their -ease, where they could talk. It is Plato, of course, who reveals the -life indoors, and describes how, when a party of friends met and had -eaten not at all luxuriously and drunk a little wine, some handsome boy -ventured a question, or quoted an opinion, and Socrates took it up, -fingered it, turned it round, looked at it this way and that, swiftly -stripped it of its inconsistencies and falsities and brought the whole -company by degrees to gaze with him at the truth. It is an exhausting -process; to contract painfully upon the exact meaning of words; to judge -what each admission involves; to follow intently, yet critically, the -dwindling and changing of opinion as it hardens and intensifies into -truth. Are pleasure and good the same? Can virtue be taught? Is virtue -knowledge? The tired or feeble mind may easily lapse as the remorseless -questioning proceeds; but no one, however weak, can fail, even if he -does not learn more from Plato, to love knowledge better. For as the -argument mounts from step to step, Protagoras yielding, Socrates pushing -on, what matters is not so much the end we reach as our manner of -reaching it. That all can feel—the indomitable honesty, the courage, -the love of truth which draw Socrates and us in his wake to the summit -where, if we too may stand for a moment, it is to enjoy the greatest -felicity of which we are capable. - -Yet such an expression seems ill fitted to describe the state of mind of -a student to whom, after painful argument, the truth has been revealed. -But truth is various; truth comes to us in different disguises; it is -not with the intellect alone that we perceive it. It is a winter’s -night; the tables are spread at Agathon’s house; the girl is playing the -flute; Socrates has washed himself and put on sandals; he has stopped in -the hall; he refuses to move when they send for him. Now Socrates has -done; he is bantering Alcibiades; Alcibiades takes a fillet and binds it -round “this wonderful fellow’s head”. He praises Socrates. “For he cares -not for mere beauty, but despises more than any one can imagine all -external possessions, whether it be beauty or wealth or glory, or any -other thing for which the multitude felicitates the possessor. He -esteems these things and us who honour them, as nothing, and lives among -men, making all the objects of their admiration the playthings of his -irony. But I know not if any one of you has ever seen the divine images -which are within, when he has been opened and is serious. I have seen -them, and they are so supremely beautiful, so golden, divine, and -wonderful, that everything which Socrates commands surely ought to be -obeyed even like the voice of a God.” All this flows over the arguments -of Plato—laughter and movement; people getting up and going out; the -hour changing; tempers being lost; jokes cracked; the dawn rising. -Truth, it seems, is various; Truth is to be pursued with all our -faculties. Are we to rule out the amusements, the tendernesses, the -frivolities of friendship because we love truth? Will truth be quicker -found because we stop our ears to music and drink no wine, and sleep -instead of talking through the long winter’s night? It is not to the -cloistered disciplinarian mortifying himself in solitude that we are to -turn, but to the well-sunned nature, the man who practises the art of -living to the best advantage, so that nothing is stunted but some things -are permanently more valuable than others. - -So in these dialogues we are made to seek truth with every part of us. -For Plato, of course, had the dramatic genius. It is by means of that, -by an art which conveys in a sentence or two the setting and the -atmosphere, and then with perfect adroitness insinuates itself into the -coils of the argument without losing its liveliness and grace, and then -contracts to bare statement, and then, mounting, expands and soars in -that higher air which is generally reached only by the more extreme -measures of poetry—it is this art which plays upon us in so many ways -at once and brings us to an exultation of mind which can only be reached -when all the powers are called upon to contribute their energy to the -whole. - -But we must beware. Socrates did not care for “mere beauty”, by which he -meant, perhaps, beauty as ornament. A people who judged as much as the -Athenians did by ear, sitting out-of-doors at the play or listening to -argument in the market-place, were far less apt than we are to break off -sentences and appreciate them apart from the context. For them there -were no Beauties of Hardy, Beauties of Meredith, Sayings from George -Eliot. The writer had to think more of the whole and less of the detail. -Naturally, living in the open, it was not the lip or the eye that struck -them, but the carriage of the body and the proportions of its parts. -Thus when we quote and extract we do the Greeks more damage than we do -the English. There is a bareness and abruptness in their literature -which grates upon a taste accustomed to the intricacy and finish of -printed books. We have to stretch our minds to grasp a whole devoid of -the prettiness of detail or the emphasis of eloquence. Accustomed to -look directly and largely rather than minutely and aslant, it was safe -for them to step into the thick of emotions which blind and bewilder an -age like our own. In the vast catastrophe of the European war our -emotions had to be broken up for us, and put at an angle from us, before -we could allow ourselves to feel them in poetry or fiction. The only -poets who spoke to the purpose spoke in the sidelong, satiric manner of -Wilfrid Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. It was not possible for them to be -direct without being clumsy; or to speak simply of emotion without being -sentimental. But the Greeks could say, as if for the first time, “Yet -being dead they have not died”. They could say, “If to die nobly is the -chief part of excellence, to us out of all men Fortune gave this lot; -for hastening to set a crown of freedom on Greece we lie possessed of -praise that grows not old”. They could march straight up, with their -eyes open; and thus fearlessly approached, emotions stand still and -suffer themselves to be looked at. - -But again (the question comes back and back), Are we reading Greek as it -was written when we say this? When we read these few words cut on a -tombstone, a stanza in a chorus, the end or the opening of a dialogue of -Plato’s, a fragment of Sappho, when we bruise our minds upon some -tremendous metaphor in the _Agamemnon_ instead of stripping the branch -of its flowers instantly as we do in reading _Lear_—are we not reading -wrongly? losing our sharp sight in the haze of associations? reading -into Greek poetry not what they have but what we lack? Does not the -whole of Greece heap itself behind every line of its literature? They -admit us to a vision of the earth unravaged, the sea unpolluted, the -maturity, tried but unbroken, of mankind. Every word is reinforced by a -vigour which pours out of olive-tree and temple and the bodies of the -young. The nightingale has only to be named by Sophocles and she sings; -the grove has only to be called ἄβατον, “untrodden”, and we -imagine the twisted branches and the purple violets. Back and back we -are drawn to steep ourselves in what, perhaps, is only an image of the -reality, not the reality itself, a summer’s day imagined in the heart of -a northern winter. Chief among these sources of glamour and perhaps -misunderstanding is the language. We can never hope to get the whole -fling of a sentence in Greek as we do in English. We cannot hear it, now -dissonant, now harmonious, tossing sound from line to line across a -page. We cannot pick up infallibly one by one all those minute signals -by which a phrase is made to hint, to turn, to live. Nevertheless it is -the language that has us most in bondage; the desire for that which -perpetually lures us back. First there is the compactness of the -expression. Shelley takes twenty-one words in English to translate -thirteen words of Greek. - -πᾶς γοῦν ποιητὴς γίγνεται, κἂν ἄμουσος ᾖ τὸ πρίν, οὗ ἂν Ἕρως -ἅψηται - -. . . For every one, even if before he were ever so undisciplined, -becomes a poet as soon as he is touched by love. - - -Every ounce of fat has been pared off, leaving the flesh firm. Then, -spare and bare as it is, no language can move more quickly, dancing, -shaking, all alive, but controlled. Then there are the words themselves -which, in so many instances, we have made expressive to us of our own -emotions, _thalassa, thanatos, anthos, aster_—to take the first that -come to hand; so clear, so hard, so intense, that to speak plainly yet -fittingly without blurring the outline or clouding the depths Greek is -the only expression. It is useless, then, to read Greek in translations. -Translators can but offer us a vague equivalent; their language is -necessarily full of echoes and associations. Professor Mackail says -“wan”, and the age of Burne-Jones and Morris is at once evoked. Nor can -the subtler stress, the flight and the fall of the words, be kept even -by the most skilful of scholars— - - -. . . thee, who evermore weepest in thy rocky tomb - - -is not - - -ἅτ’ ἐν τάφῳ πετραίῳ, -αἰ, δακρύεις. - - -Further, in reckoning the doubts and difficulties there is this -important problem—Where are we to laugh in reading Greek? There is a -passage in the _Odyssey_ where laughter begins to steal upon us, but if -Homer were looking we should probably think it better to control our -merriment. To laugh instantly it is almost necessary (though -Aristophanes may supply us with an exception) to laugh in English. -Humour, after all, is closely bound up with a sense of the body. When we -laugh at the humour of Wycherley, we are laughing with the body of that -burly rustic who was our common ancestor on the village green. The -French, the Italians, the Americans, who derive physically from so -different a stock, pause, as we pause in reading Homer, to make sure -that they are laughing in the right place, and the pause is fatal. Thus -humour is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue, and when -we turn from Greek to Elizabethan literature it seems, after a long -silence, as if our great age were ushered in by a burst of laughter. - -These are all difficulties, sources of misunderstanding, of distorted -and romantic, of servile and snobbish passion. Yet even for the -unlearned some certainties remain. Greek is the impersonal literature; -it is also the literature of masterpieces. There are no schools; no -forerunners; no heirs. We cannot trace a gradual process working in many -men imperfectly until it expresses itself adequately at last in one. -Again, there is always about Greek literature that air of vigour which -permeates an “age”, whether it is the age of Æschylus, or Racine, or -Shakespeare. One generation at least in that fortunate time is blown on -to be writers to the extreme; to attain that unconsciousness which means -that the consciousness is stimulated to the highest extent; to surpass -the limits of small triumphs and tentative experiments. Thus we have -Sappho with her constellations of adjectives, Plato daring extravagant -flights of poetry in the midst of prose; Thucydides, constricted and -contracted; Sophocles gliding like a shoal of trout smoothly and -quietly, apparently motionless, and then with a flicker of fins off and -away; while in the _Odyssey_ we have what remains the triumph of -narrative, the clearest and at the same time the most romantic story of -the fortunes of men and women. - -The _Odyssey_ is merely a story of adventure, the instinctive -story-telling of a sea-faring race. So we may begin it, reading quickly -in the spirit of children wanting amusement to find out what happens -next. But here is nothing immature; here are full-grown people, crafty, -subtle, and passionate. Nor is the world itself a small one, since the -sea which separates island from island has to be crossed by little -hand-made boats and is measured by the flight of the sea-gulls. It is -true that the islands are not thickly populated, and the people, though -everything is made by hand, are not closely kept at work. They have had -time to develop a very dignified, a very stately society, with an -ancient tradition of manners behind it, which makes every relation at -once orderly, natural, and full of reserve. Penelope crosses the room; -Telemachus goes to bed; Nausicaa washes her linen; and their actions -seem laden with beauty because they do not know that they are beautiful, -have been born to their possessions, are no more self-conscious than -children, and yet, all those thousands of years ago, in their little -islands, know all that is to be known. With the sound of the sea in -their ears, vines, meadows, rivulets about them, they are even more -aware than we are of a ruthless fate. There is a sadness at the back of -life which they do not attempt to mitigate. Entirely aware of their own -standing in the shadow, and yet alive to every tremor and gleam of -existence, there they endure, and it is to the Greeks that we turn when -we are sick of the vagueness, of the confusion, of the Christianity and -its consolations, of our own age. - - - - -_The Elizabethan Lumber -Room_ - - -These magnificent volumes[2] are not often, perhaps, read through. Part -of their charm consists in the fact that Hakluyt is not so much a book -as a great bundle of commodities loosely tied together, an emporium, a -lumber room strewn with ancient sacks, obsolete nautical instruments, -huge bales of wool, and little bags of rubies and emeralds. One is for -ever untying this packet here, sampling that heap over there, wiping the -dust off some vast map of the world, and sitting down in semi-darkness -to snuff the strange smells of silks and leathers and ambergris, while -outside tumble the huge waves of the uncharted Elizabethan sea. - -For this jumble of seeds, silks, unicorns’ horns, elephants’ teeth, -wool, common stones, turbans, and bars of gold, these odds and ends of -priceless value and complete worthlessness, were the fruit of -innumerable voyages, traffics, and discoveries to unknown lands in the -reign of Queen Elizabeth. The expeditions were manned by “apt young men” -from the West country, and financed in part by the great Queen herself. -The ships, says Froude, were no bigger than modern yachts. There in the -river by Greenwich the fleet lay gathered, close to the Palace. “The -Privy council looked out of the windows of the court . . . the ships -thereupon discharge their ordnance . . . and the mariners they shouted -in such sort that the sky rang again with the noise thereof.” Then, as -the ships swung down the tide, one sailor after another walked the -hatches, climbed the shrouds, stood upon the mainyards to wave his -friends a last farewell. Many would come back no more. For directly -England and the coast of France were beneath the horizon, the ships -sailed into the unfamiliar; the air had its voices, the sea its lions and -serpents, its evaporations of fire and tumultuous whirlpools. But God too -was very close; the clouds but sparely hid the divinity Himself; the limbs -of Satan were almost visible. Familiarly the English sailors pitted their -God against the God of the Turks, who “can speake never a word for -dulnes, much lesse can he helpe them in such an extremitie. . . . -But howsoever their God behaved himself, our God showed himself a God -indeed. . .” God was as near by sea as by land, said Sir Humphrey -Gilbert, riding through the storm. Suddenly one light disappeared; Sir -Humphrey Gilbert had gone beneath the waves; when morning came, they -sought his ship in vain. Sir Hugh Willoughby sailed to discover the -North-West Passage and made no return. The Earl of Cumberland’s men, -hung up by adverse winds off the coast of Cornwall for a fortnight, -licked the muddy water off the deck in agony. And sometimes a ragged and -worn-out man came knocking at the door of an English country house and -claimed to be the boy who had left it years ago to sail the seas. “Sir -William his father, and my lady his mother knew him not to be their son, -until they found a secret mark, which was a wart upon one of his knees.” -But he had with him a black stone, veined with gold, or an ivory tusk, -or a silver ingot, and urged on the village youth with talk of gold -strewn over the land as stones are strewn in the fields of England. One -expedition might fail, but what if the passage to the fabled land of -uncounted riches lay only a little further up the coast? What if the -known world was only the prelude to some more splendid panorama? When, -after the long voyage, the ships dropped anchor in the great river of -the Plate and the men went exploring through the undulating lands, -startling grazing herds of deer, seeing the limbs of savages between the -trees, they filled their pockets with pebbles that might be emeralds or -sand that might be gold; or sometimes, rounding a headland, they saw, -far off, a string of savages slowly descending to the beach bearing on -their heads and linking their shoulders together with heavy burdens for -the Spanish King. - -These are the fine stories used effectively all through the West country -to decoy “the apt young men” lounging by the harbour-side to leave their -nets and fish for gold. But the voyagers were sober merchants into the -bargain, citizens with the good of English trade and the welfare of -English work-people at heart. The captains are reminded how necessary it -is to find a market abroad for English wool; to discover the herb from -which blue dyes are made; above all to make inquiry as to the methods of -producing oil, since all attempts to make it from radish seed have -failed. They are reminded of the misery of the English poor, whose -crimes, brought about by poverty, make them “daily consumed by the -gallows”. They are reminded how the soil of England had been enriched by -the discoveries of travellers in the past; how Dr. Linaker brought seeds -of the damask rose and tulipas, and how beasts and plants and herbs, -“without which our life were to be said barbarous”, have all come to -England gradually from abroad. In search of markets and of goods, of the -immortal fame success would bring them, the apt young men set sail for -the North, and were left, a little company of isolated Englishmen -surrounded by snow and the huts of savages, to make what bargains they -could and pick up what knowledge they might before the ships returned in -the summer to fetch them home again. There they endured, an isolated -company, burning on the rim of the dark. One of them, carrying a charter -from his company in London, went inland as far as Moscow, and there saw -the Emperor “sitting in his chair of estate with his crown on his head, -and a staff of goldsmiths’ work in his left hand”. All the ceremony that -he saw is carefully written out, and the sight upon which the English -merchant first set eyes has the brilliancy of a Roman vase dug up and -stood for a moment in the sun, until, exposed to the air, seen by -millions of eyes, it dulls and crumbles away. There, all these -centuries, on the outskirts of the world, the glories of Moscow, the -glories of Constantinople have flowered unseen. The Englishman was -bravely dressed for the occasion, led “three fair mastiffs in coats of -red cloth”, and carried a letter from Elizabeth “the paper whereof did -smell most fragrantly of camphor and ambergris, and the ink of perfect -musk”. And sometimes, since trophies from the amazing new world were -eagerly awaited at home, together with unicorns’ horns and lumps of -ambergris and the fine stories of the engendering of whales and -“debates” of elephants and dragons whose blood, mixed, congealed into -vermilion, a living sample would be sent, a live savage caught somewhere -off the coast of Labrador, taken to England, and shown about like a wild -beast. Next year they brought him back, and took a woman savage on board -to keep him company. When they saw each other they blushed; they blushed -profoundly, but the sailors, though they noted it, knew not why. Later -the two savages set up house together on board ship, she attending to -his wants, he nursing her in sickness. But, as the sailors noted again, -the savages lived together in perfect chastity. - -All this, the new words, the new ideas, the waves, the savages, the -adventures, found their way naturally into the plays which were being -acted on the banks of the Thames. There was an audience quick to seize -upon the coloured and the high-sounding; to associate those - - -frigates bottom’d with rich Sethin planks, -Topt with the lofty firs of Lebanon - - -with the adventures of their own sons and brothers abroad. The Verneys, -for example, had a wild boy who had gone as pirate, turned Turk, and -died out there, sending back to Claydon to be kept as relics of him some -silk, a turban, and a pilgrim’s staff. A gulf lay between the spartan -domestic housecraft of the Paston women and the refined tastes of the -Elizabethan Court ladies, who, grown old, says Harrison, spent their -time reading histories, or “writing volumes of their own, or translating -of other men’s into our English and Latin tongue”, while the younger -ladies played the lute and the citharne and spent their leisure in the -enjoyment of music. Thus, with singing and with music, springs into -existence the characteristic Elizabethan extravagance; the dolphins and -lavoltas of Greene; the hyperbole, more surprising in a writer so terse -and muscular, of Ben Jonson. Thus we find the whole of Elizabethan -literature strewn with gold and silver; with talk of Guiana’s rarities, -and references to that America—“O my America! my new-foundland”—which -was not merely a land on the map, but symbolised the unknown territories -of the soul. So, over the water, the imagination of Montaigne brooded in -fascination upon savages, cannibals, society, and government. - -But the mention of Montaigne suggests that though the influence of the -sea and the voyages, of the lumber-room crammed with sea beasts and -horns and ivory and old maps and nautical instruments, helped to inspire -the greatest age of English poetry, its effects were by no means so -beneficial upon English prose. Rhyme and metre helped the poets to keep -the tumult of their perceptions in order. But the prose writer, without -these restrictions, accumulated clauses, petered out in interminable -catalogues, tripped and stumbled over the convolutions of his own rich -draperies. How little Elizabethan prose was fit for its office, how -exquisitely French prose was already adapted, can be seen by comparing -a passage from Sidney’s _Defense of Poesie_ with one from Montaigne’s -Essays. - - -He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which must blur the margent -with interpretations, and load the memory with doubtfulness: but he -cometh to you with words set in delightful proportion, either -accompanied with, or prepared for the well enchanting Skill of Music, -and with a tale (forsooth) he cometh unto you, with a tale which holdeth -children from play, and old men from the Chimney corner; and pretending -no more, doth intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue; -even as the child is often brought to take most wholesome things by -hiding them in such other as have a pleasant taste: which if one should -begin to tell them the nature of the _Aloës_ or _Rhubarbarum_ they -should receive, would sooner take their physic at their ears than at -their mouth, so is it in men (most of which are childish in the best -things, till they be cradled in their graves) glad they will be to hear -the tales of Hercules. . . . - - -And so it runs on for seventy-six words more. Sidney’s prose is an -uninterrupted monologue, with sudden flashes of felicity and splendid -phrases, which lends itself to lamentations and moralities, to long -accumulations and catalogues, but is never quick, never colloquial, -unable to grasp a thought closely and firmly, or to adapt itself -flexibly and exactly to the chops and changes of the mind. Compared with -this, Montaigne is master of an instrument which knows its own powers -and limitations, and is capable of insinuating itself into crannies and -crevices which poetry can never reach; of cadences different but no less -beautiful; capable of subtleties and intensities which Elizabethan prose -entirely ignores. He is considering the way in which certain of the -ancients met death: - - -. . . ils l’ont faicte couler et glisser parmy la lascheté de leurs -occupations accoustumées entre des garses et bons compaignons; nul -propos de consolation, nulle mention de testament, nulle affectation -ambitieuse de constance, nul discours de leur condition future; mais -entre les jeux, les festins, facecies, entretiens communs et populaires, -et la musique, et des vers amoureux. - - -An age seems to separate Sidney from Montaigne. The English compared -with the French are as boys compared with men. - -But the Elizabethan prose writers, if they have the formlessness of -youth have, too, its freshness and audacity. In the same essay Sidney -shapes language, masterfully and easily, to his liking; freely and -naturally reaches his hand for a metaphor. To bring this prose to -perfection (and Dryden’s prose is very near perfection) only the -discipline of the stage was necessary and the growth of -self-consciousness. It is in the plays, and especially in the comic -passages of the plays, that the finest Elizabethan prose is to be found. -The stage was the nursery where prose learnt to find its feet. For on -the stage people had to meet, to quip and crank, to suffer -interruptions, to talk of ordinary things. - - -_Cler_. A box of her autumnal face, her pieced beauty! there’s no man -can be admitted till she be ready now-a-days, till she has painted, and -perfumed, and washed, and scoured, but the boy here; and him she wipes -her oiled lips upon, like a sponge. I have made a song (I pray thee hear -it) on the subject. [Page sings] - - -Still to be neat, still to be drest &c. - -_True_. And I am clearly on the other side: I love a good dressing -before any beauty o’ the world. O, a woman is then like a delicate -garden; nor is there one kind of it; she may vary every hour; take often -counsel of her glass, and choose the best. If she have good ears, show -them; good hair, lay it out; good legs, wear short clothes; a good hand, -discover it often: practise any art to mend breath, cleanse teeth, -repair eyebrows; paint and profess it. - - -So the talk runs in Ben Jonson’s _Silent Woman_, knocked into shape by -interruptions, sharpened by collisions, and never allowed to settle into -stagnancy or swell into turbidity. But the publicity of the stage and -the perpetual presence of a second person were hostile to that growing -consciousness of one’s self, that brooding in solitude over the -mysteries of the soul, which, as the years went by, sought expression -and found a champion in the sublime genius of Sir Thomas Browne. His -immense egotism has paved the way for all psychological novelists, -autobiographers, confession-mongers, and dealers in the curious shades -of our private life. He it was who first turned from the contacts of men -with men to their lonely life within. “The world that I regard is -myself; it is the microcosm of my own frame that I cast mine eye on; for -the other I use it but like my globe, and turn it round sometimes for my -recreation.” All was mystery and darkness as the first explorer walked -the catacombs swinging his lanthorn. “I feel sometimes a hell within -myself; Lucifer keeps his court in my breast; Legion is revived in me.” -In these solitudes there were no guides and no companions. “I am in the -dark to all the world, and my nearest friends behold me but in a cloud.” -The strangest thoughts and imaginings have play with him as he goes -about his work, outwardly the most sober of mankind and esteemed the -greatest physician in Norwich. He has wished for death. He has doubted -all things. What if we are asleep in this world and the conceits of life -are as mere dreams? The tavern music, the Ave Mary bell, the broken pot -that the workman has dug out of the field—at the sight and sound of -them he stops dead, as if transfixed by the astonishing vista that opens -before his imagination. “We carry with us the wonders we seek without -us; there is all Africa and her prodigies in us.” A halo of wonder -encircles everything that he sees; he turns his light gradually upon the -flowers and insects and grasses at his feet so as to disturb nothing in -the mysterious processes of their existence. With the same awe, mixed -with a sublime complacency, he records the discovery of his own -qualities and attainments. He was charitable and brave and averse from -nothing. He was full of feeling for others and merciless upon himself. -“For my conversation, it is like the sun’s, with all men, and with a -friendly aspect to good and bad.” He knows six languages, the laws, the -customs and policies of several states, the names of all the -constellations and most of the plants of his country, and yet, so -sweeping is his imagination, so large the horizon in which he sees this -little figure walking that “methinks I do not know so many as when I did -but know a hundred, and had scarcely ever simpled further than -Cheapside”. - -He is the first of the autobiographers. Swooping and soaring at the -highest altitudes he stoops suddenly with loving particularity upon the -details of his own body. His height was moderate, he tells us, his eyes -large and luminous; his skin dark but constantly suffused with blushes. -He dressed very plainly. He seldom laughed. He collected coins, kept -maggots in boxes, dissected the lungs of frogs, braved the stench of the -spermaceti whale, tolerated Jews, had a good word for the deformity of -the toad, and combined a scientific and sceptical attitude towards most -things with an unfortunate belief in witches. In short, as we say when -we cannot help laughing at the oddities of people we admire most, he was -a character, and the first to make us feel that the most sublime -speculations of the human imagination are issued from a particular man, -whom we can love. In the midst of the solemnities of the Urn Burial we -smile when he remarks that afflictions induce callosities. The smile -broadens to laughter as we mouth out the splendid pomposities, the -astonishing conjectures of the _Religio Medici_. Whatever he writes is -stamped with his own idiosyncrasy, and we first become conscious of -impurities which hereafter stain literature with so many freakish -colours that, however hard we try, make it difficult to be certain -whether we are looking at a man or his writing. Now we are in the -presence of sublime imagination; now rambling through one of the finest -lumber rooms in the world—a chamber stuffed from floor to ceiling with -ivory, old iron, broken pots, urns, unicorns’ horns, and magic glasses -full of emerald lights and blue mystery. - - -[Footnote 2: _Hakluyf’s Collection of the Early Voyages, Travels, -and Discoveries of the English Nation_, five volumes, 4 to, 1810.] - - - - -_Notes on an Elizabethan -Play_ - - -There are, it must be admitted, some highly formidable tracts in English -literature, and chief among them that jungle, forest, and wilderness -which is the Elizabethan drama. For many reasons, not here to be -examined, Shakespeare stands out, Shakespeare who has had the light on -him from his day to ours, Shakespeare who towers highest when looked at -from the level of his own contemporaries. But the plays of the lesser -Elizabethans—Greene, Dekker, Peele, Chapman, Beaumont and Fletcher,—to -adventure into that wilderness is for the ordinary reader an ordeal, an -upsetting experience which plies him with questions, harries him with -doubts, alternately delights and vexes him with pleasures and pains. For -we are apt to forget, reading, as we tend to do, only the masterpieces -of a bygone age how great a power the body of a literature possesses to -impose itself: how it will not suffer itself to be read passively, but -takes us and reads us; flouts our preconceptions; questions principles -which we had got into the habit of taking for granted, and, in fact, -splits us into two parts as we read, making us, even as we enjoy, yield -our ground or stick to our guns. - -At the outset in reading an Elizabethan play we are overcome by the -extraordinary discrepancy between the Elizabethan view of reality and -our own. The reality to which we have grown accustomed, is, speaking -roughly, based upon the life and death of some knight called Smith, who -succeeded his father in the family business of pitwood importers, timber -merchants and coal exporters, was well known in political, temperance, -and church circles, did much for the poor of Liverpool, and died last -Wednesday of pneumonia while on a visit to his son at Muswell Hill. That -is the world we know. That is the reality which our poets and novelists -have to expound and illuminate. Then we open the first Elizabethan play -that comes to hand and read how - - -I once did see -In my young travels through Armenia -An angry unicorn in his full career -Charge with too swift a foot a jeweller -That watch’d him for the treasure of his brow -And ere he could get shelter of a tree -Nail him with his rich antlers to the earth. - - -Where is Smith, we ask, where is Liverpool? And the groves of -Elizabethan drama echo “Where?” Exquisite is the delight, sublime the -relief of being set free to wander in the land of the unicorn and the -jeweller among dukes and grandees, Gonzaloes and Bellimperias, who spend -their lives in murder and intrigue, dress up as men if they are women, -as women if they are men, see ghosts, run mad, and die in the greatest -profusion on the slightest provocation, uttering as they fall -imprecations of superb vigour or elegies of the wildest despair. But -soon the low, the relentless voice, which if we wish to identify it we -must suppose typical of a reader fed on modern English literature, and -French and Russian, asks why, then, with all this to stimulate and -enchant these old plays are for long stretches of time so intolerably -dull? Is it not that literature, if it is to keep us on the alert -through five acts or thirty-two chapters must somehow be based on Smith, -have one toe touching Liverpool, take off into whatever heights it -pleases from reality? We are not so purblind as to suppose that a man -because his name is Smith and he lives at Liverpool is therefore “real”. -We know indeed that this reality is a chameleon, quality, the fantastic -becoming as we grow used to it often the closest to the truth, the sober -the furthest from it, and nothing proving a writer’s greatness more than -his capacity to consolidate his scene by the use of what, until he -touched them, seemed wisps of cloud and threads of gossamer. Our -contention merely is that there is a station, somewhere in mid-air, -whence Smith and Liverpool can be seen to the best advantage; that the -great artist is the man who knows where to place himself above the -shifting scenery; that while he never loses sight of Liverpool he never -sees it in the wrong perspective. The Elizabethans bore us, then, -because their Smiths are all changed to dukes, their Liverpools to -fabulous islands and palaces in Genoa. Instead of keeping a proper poise -above life they soar miles into the empyrean, where nothing is visible -for long hours at a time but clouds at their revelry, and a cloud -landscape is not ultimately satisfactory to human eyes. The Elizabethans -bore us because they suffocate our imaginations rather than set them to -work. - -Still, though potent enough, the boredom of an Elizabethan play is of a -different quality altogether from the boredom which a nineteenth-century -play, a Tennyson or a Henry Taylor play, inflicts. The riot of images, -the violent volubility of language, all that cloys and satiates in the -Elizabethans yet appears to be drawn up with a roar as a feeble fire is -sucked up by a newspaper. There is, even in the worst, an intermittent -bawling vigour which gives us the sense in our quiet arm-chairs of -ostlers and orange-girls catching up the lines, flinging them back, -hissing or stamping applause. But the deliberate drama of the Victorian -age is evidently written in a study. It has for audience ticking clocks -and rows of classics bound in half morocco. There is no stamping, no -applause. It does not, as, with all its faults, the Elizabethan audience -did, leaven the mass with fire. Rhetorical and bombastic, the lines are -flung and hurried into existence and reach the same impromptu -felicities, have the same lip-moulded profusion and unexpectedness, -which speech sometimes achieves, but seldom in our day the deliberate, -solitary pen. Indeed half the work of the dramatists one feels was done -in the Elizabethan age by the public. - -Against that, however, is to be set the fact that the influence of the -public was in many respects detestable. To its door we must lay the -greatest infliction that Elizabethan drama puts upon us—the plot; the -incessant, improbable, almost unintelligible convolutions which -presumably gratified the spirit of an excitable and unlettered public -actually in the playhouse, but only confuse and fatigue a reader with -the book before him. Undoubtedly something must happen; undoubtedly a -play where nothing happens is an impossibility. But we have a right to -demand (since the Greeks have proved that it is perfectly possible) that -what happens shall have an end in view. It shall agitate great emotions; -bring into existence memorable scenes; stir the actors to say what could -not be said without this stimulus. Nobody can fail to remember the plot -of the _Antigone_, because what happens is so closely bound up with the -emotions of the actors that we remember the people and the plot at one -and the same time. But who can tell us what happens in the _White -Devil_, or the _Maid’s Tragedy_, except by remembering the story apart -from the emotions which it has aroused? As for the lesser Elizabethans, -like Greene and Kyd, the complexities of their plots are so great, and -the violence which those plots demand so terrific, that the actors -themselves are obliterated and emotions which, according to our -convention at least, deserve the most careful investigation, the most -delicate analysis, are clean sponged off the slate. And the result is -inevitable. Outside Shakespeare and perhaps Ben Jonson, there are no -characters in Elizabethan drama, only violences whom we know so little -that we can scarcely care what becomes of them. Take any hero or heroine -in those early plays—Bellimperia in the _Spanish Tragedy_ will serve as -well as another—and can we honestly say that we care a jot for the -unfortunate lady who runs the whole gamut of human misery to kill -herself in the end? No more than for an animated broomstick, we must -reply, and in a work dealing with men and women the prevalence of -broomsticks is a drawback. But the Spanish Tragedy is admittedly a crude -forerunner, chiefly valuable because such primitive efforts lay bare the -formidable framework which greater dramatists could modify, but had to -use. Ford, it is claimed, is of the school of Stendhal and of Flaubert; -Ford is a psychologist. Ford is an analyst. “This man”, says Mr. -Havelock Ellis, “writes of women not as a dramatist nor as a lover, but -as one who has searched intimately and felt with instinctive sympathy -the fibres of their hearts.” - -The play—_’Tis pity she’s a Whore_—upon which this judgement is -chiefly based shows us the whole nature of Annabella spun from pole to -pole in a series of tremendous vicissitudes. First, her brother tells -her that he loves her; next she confesses her love for him; next finds -herself with child by him; next forces herself to marry Soranzo; next is -discovered; next repents; finally is killed, and it is her lover and -brother who kills her. To trace the trail of feelings which such crises -and calamities might be expected to breed in a woman of ordinary -sensibility might have filled volumes. A dramatist of course has no -volumes to fill. He is forced to contract. Even so, he can illumine; he -can reveal enough for us to guess the rest. But what is it that we know -without using microscopes and splitting hairs about the character of -Annabella? Gropingly we make out that she is a spirited girl, with her -defiance of her husband when he abuses her, her snatches of Italian -song, her ready wit, her simple glad love-making. But of character as we -understand the word there is no trace. We do not know how she reaches -her conclusions, only that she has reached them. Nobody describes her. -She is always at the height of her passion, never at its approach. -Compare her with Anna Karenina. The Russian woman is flesh and blood, -nerves and temperament, has heart, brain, body and mind where the -English girl is flat and crude as a face painted on a playing card; she -is without depth, without range, without intricacy. But as we say this -we know that we have missed something. We have let the meaning of the -play slip through our hands. We have ignored the emotion which has been -accumulating because it has accumulated in places where we have not -expected to find it. We have been comparing the play with prose, and the -play, after all, is poetry. - -The play is poetry we say, and the novel prose. Let us attempt to -obliterate detail, and place the two before us side by side, feeling, so -far as we can, the angles and edges of each, recalling each, so far as -we are able, as a whole. Then, at once, the prime differences emerge; -the long leisurely accumulated novel; the little contracted play; the -emotion all split up, dissipated and then woven together, slowly and -gradually massed into a whole, in the novel; the emotion concentrated, -generalised, heightened in the play. What moments of intensity, what -phrases of astonishing beauty the play shot at us! - - -O, my lords, -I but deceived your eyes with antic gesture, -When one news straight came huddling on another -Of death! and death! and death! still I danced forward. - - -or - - -You have oft for these two lips -Neglected cassia or the natural sweets -Of the spring-violet: they are not yet much wither’d. - - -With all her reality, Anna Karenina could never say - - -“You have oft, for these two lips -Neglected cassia”. - - -Some of the most profound of human emotions are therefore beyond her -reach. The extremes of passion are not for the novelist; the perfect -marriages of sense and sound are not for him; he must tame his swiftness -to sluggardry; keep his eyes on the ground not on the sky: suggest by -description, not reveal by illumination. Instead of singing - - -Lay a garland on my hearse -Of the dismal yew; -Maidens, willow branches bear; -Say I died true, - - -he must enumerate the chrysanthemums fading on the grave and the -undertakers’ men snuffling past in their four-wheelers. How then can we -compare this lumbering and lagging art with poetry? Granted all the -little dexterities by which the novelist makes us know the individual -and recognise the real, the dramatist goes beyond the single and the -separate, shows us not Annabella in love, but love itself; not Anna -Karenina throwing herself under the train, but ruin and death and the - - -. . . soul, like a ship in a black storm, -. . . driven, I know not whither. - - -So with pardonable impatience we might exclaim as we shut our -Elizabethan play. But what then is the exclamation with which we close -_War and Peace_? Not one of disappointment; we are not left lamenting the -superficiality, upbraiding the triviality of the novelist’s art. Rather -we are made more than ever aware of the inexhaustible richness of human -sensibility. Here, in the play, we recognise the general; here, in the -novel, the particular. Here we gather all our energies into a bunch and -spring. Here we extend and expand and let come slowly in from all -quarters deliberate impressions, accumulated messages. The mind is so -saturated with sensibility, language so inadequate to its experience, -that far from ruling off one form of literature or decreeing its -inferiority to others we complain that they are still unable to keep -pace with the wealth of material, and wait impatiently the creation of -what may yet be devised to liberate us of the enormous burden of the -unexpressed. - -Thus, in spite of dullness, bombast, rhetoric, and confusion we still -read the lesser Elizabethans, still find ourselves adventuring in the -land of the jeweller and the unicorn. The familiar factories of -Liverpool fade into thin air and we scarcely recognise any likeness -between the knight who imported timber and died of pneumonia at Muswell -Hill and the Armenian Duke who fell like a Roman on his sword while the -owl shrieked in the ivy and the Duchess gave birth to a still-born babe -’mongst women howling. To join those territories and recognise the same -man in different disguises we have to adjust and revise. But make the -necessary alterations in perspective, draw in those filaments of -sensibility which the moderns have so marvellously developed, use -instead the ear and the eye which the moderns have so basely starved, -hear words as they are laughed and shouted, not as they are printed in -black letters on the page, see before your eyes the changing faces and -living bodies of men and women, put yourself, in short, into a -different, but not more elementary stage of your reading development and -then the true merits of Elizabethan drama will assert themselves. The -power of the whole is undeniable. Theirs, too, is the word-coining -genius, as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping. -Theirs is that broad humour based upon the nakedness of the body, which, -however arduously the public spirited may try, is impossible, since the -body is draped. Then at the back of this, imposing not unity but some -sort of stability, is what we may briefly call a sense of the presence -of the Gods. He would be a bold critic who should attempt to impose any -creed upon the swarm and variety of the Elizabethan dramatists, and yet -it implies some timidity if we take it for granted that a whole -literature with common characteristics is a mere evaporation of high -spirits, a money-making enterprise, a fluke of the mind which, owing to -favourable circumstances, came off successfully. Even in the jungle and -the wilderness the compass still points. - - -“Lord, Lord, that I were dead!” - - -they are for ever crying. - - -O thou soft natural death that art joint-twin -To sweetest slumber—— - - -The pageant of the world is marvellous, but the pageant of the world -is vanity. - - -glories -Of human greatness are but pleasing dreams -And shadows soon decaying: on the stage -Of my mortality my youth hath acted -Some scenes of vanity—— - - -To die and be quit of it all is their desire; the bell -that tolls throughout the drama is death and disenchantment. - - -All life is but a wandering to find home, -When we’re gone, we’re there. - - -Ruin, weariness, death, perpetually death, stand grimly to confront the -other presence of Elizabethan drama which is life: life compact of -frigates, fir trees and ivory, of dolphins and the juice of July -flowers, of the milk of unicorns and panthers’ breath, of ropes of -pearl, brains of peacocks and Cretan wine. To this, life at its most -reckless and abundant, they reply - - -Man is a tree that hath no top in cares, -No root in comforts; all his power to live -Is given to no end but t’ have power to grieve. - - -It is this echo flung back and back from the other side of the play -which, if it has not the name, still has the effect of the presence of -the Gods. - -So we ramble through the jungle, forest, and wilderness of Elizabethan -drama. So we consort with Emperors and clowns, jewellers and unicorns, -and laugh and exult and marvel at the splendour and humour and fantasy -of it all. A noble rage consumes us when the curtain falls; we are bored -too, and nauseated by the wearisome old tricks and florid bombast. A -dozen deaths of full-grown men and women move us less than the suffering -of one of Tolstoi’s flies. Wandering in the maze of the impossible and -tedious story suddenly some passionate intensity seizes us; some -sublimity exalts, or some melodious snatch of song enchants. It is a -world full of tedium and delight; pleasure and curiosity, of extravagant -laughter, poetry, and splendour. But gradually it comes over us, what -then are we being denied? What is it that we are coming to want so -persistently that unless we get it instantly we must seek elsewhere? It -is solitude. There is no privacy here. Always the door opens and some -one comes in. All is shared, made visible, audible, dramatic. Meanwhile, -as if tired with company, the mind steals off to muse in solitude; to -think, not to act; to comment, not to share; to explore its own -darkness, not the bright-lit-up surfaces of others. It turns to Donne, -to Montaigne, to Sir Thomas Browne—the keepers of the keys of solitude. - - - - -_Montaigne_ - - -Once at Bar-le-Duc Montaigne saw a portrait which René, King of Sicily, -had painted of himself, and asked, “Why is it not, in like manner, -lawful for every one to draw himself with a pen, as he did with a -crayon?” Off-hand one might reply, Not only is it lawful, but nothing -could be easier. Other people may evade us, but our own features are -almost too familiar. Let us begin. And then, when we attempt the task, -the pen falls from our fingers; it is a matter of profound, mysterious, -and overwhelming difficulty. - -After all, in the whole of literature, how many people have succeeded in -drawing themselves with a pen? Only Montaigne and Pepys and Rousseau -perhaps. The _Religio Medici_ is a coloured glass through which darkly -one sees racing stars and a strange and turbulent soul. A bright -polished mirror reflects the face of Boswell peeping between other -people’s shoulders in the famous biography. But this talking of oneself, -following one’s own vagaries, giving the whole map, weight, colour, and -circumference of the soul in its confusion, its variety, its -imperfection—this art belonged to one man only: to Montaigne. As the -centuries go by, there is always a crowd before that picture, gazing -into its depths, seeing their own faces reflected in it, seeing more the -longer they look, never being able to say quite what it is that they -see. New editions testify to the perennial fascination. Here is the -Navarre Society in England reprinting in five fine volumes[3] Cotton’s -translation; while in France the firm of Louis Conard is issuing the -complete works of Montaigne with the various readings in an edition to -which Dr. Armaingaud has devoted a long lifetime of research. - -To tell the truth about oneself, to discover oneself near at hand, is -not easy. - - -We hear of but two or three of the ancients who have beaten this road -[said Montaigne]. No one since has followed the track; ’tis a rugged -road, more so than it seems, to follow a pace so rambling and uncertain, -as that of the soul; to penetrate the dark profundities of its intricate -internal windings; to choose and lay hold of so many little nimble -motions; ’tis a new and extraordinary undertaking, and that withdraws us -from the common and most recommended employments of the world. - - -There is, in the first place, the difficulty of expression. We all -indulge in the strange, pleasant process called thinking, but when it -comes to saying, even to some one opposite, what we think, then how -little we are able to convey! The phantom is through the mind and out of -the window before we can lay salt on its tail, or slowly sinking and -returning to the profound darkness which it has lit up momentarily with -a wandering light. Face, voice, and accent eke out our words and impress -their feebleness with character in speech. But the pen is a rigid -instrument; it can say very little; it has all kinds of habits and -ceremonies of its own. It is dictatorial too: it is always making -ordinary men into prophets, and changing the natural stumbling trip of -human speech into the solemn and stately march of pens. It is for this -reason that Montaigne stands out from the legions of the dead with such -irrepressible vivacity. We can never doubt for an instant that his book -was himself. He refused to teach; he refused to preach; he kept on -saying that he was just like other people. All his effort was to write -himself down, to communicate, to tell the truth, and that is a “rugged -road, more than it seems”. - -For beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme -difficulty of being oneself. This soul, or life within us, by no means -agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what -she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people -say. Other people, for instance, long ago made up their minds that old -invalidish gentlemen ought to stay at home and edify the rest of us by -the spectacle of their connubial fidelity. The soul of Montaigne said, -on the contrary, that it is in old age that one ought to travel, and -marriage, which, rightly, is very seldom founded on love, is apt to -become, towards the end of life, a formal tie better broken up. Again -with politics, statesmen are always praising the greatness of Empire, -and preaching the moral duty of civilising the savage. But look at the -Spanish in Mexico, cried Montaigne in a burst of rage. “So many cities -levelled with the ground, so many nations exterminated . . . and the -richest and most beautiful part of the world turned upside down for the -traffic of pearl and pepper! Mechanic victories!” And then when the -peasants came and told him that they had found a man dying of wounds and -deserted him for fear lest justice might incriminate them, Montaigne -asked: - - -What could I have said to these people? ’Tis certain that this office of -humanity would have brought them into trouble. . . . There is nothing so -much, nor so grossly, nor so ordinarily faulty as the laws. - - -Here the soul, getting restive, is lashing out at the more palpable -forms of Montaigne’s great bugbears, convention and ceremony. But watch -her as she broods over the fire in the inner room of that tower which, -though detached from the main building, has so wide a view over the -estate. Really she is the strangest creature in the world, far from -heroic, variable as a weathercock, “bashful, insolent; chaste, lustful; -prating, silent; laborious, delicate; ingenious, heavy; melancholic, -pleasant; lying, true; knowing, ignorant; liberal, covetous, and -prodigal”—in short, so complex, so indefinite, corresponding so little -to the version which does duty for her in public, that a man might spend -his life merely in trying to run her to earth. The pleasure of the -pursuit more than rewards one for any damage that it may inflict upon -one’s worldly prospects. The man who is aware of himself is henceforward -independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he -is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness. -He alone lives, while other people, slaves of ceremony, let life slip -past them in a kind of dream. Once conform, once do what other people do -because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and -faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; -dull, callous, and indifferent. - -Surely then, if we ask this great master of the art of life to tell us -his secret, he will advise us to withdraw to the inner room of our tower -and there turn the pages of books, pursue fancy after fancy as they -chase each other up the chimney, and leave the government of the world -to others. Retirement and contemplation—these must be the main elements -of his prescription. But no; Montaigne is by no means explicit. It is -impossible to extract a plain answer from that subtle, half smiling, -half melancholy man, with the heavy-lidded eyes and the dreamy, -quizzical expression. The truth is that life in the country, with one’s -books and vegetables and flowers, is often extremely dull. He could -never see that his own green peas were so much better than other -people’s. Paris was the place he loved best in the whole world—“jusques -à ses verrues et à ses tâches”. As for reading, he could seldom read -any book for more than an hour at a time, and his memory was so bad that -he forgot what was in his mind as he walked from one room to another. -Book learning is nothing to be proud of, and as for the achievements of -science, what do they amount to? He had always mixed with clever men, -and his father had a positive veneration for them, but he had observed -that, though they have their fine moments, their rhapsodies, their -visions, the cleverest tremble on the verge of folly. Observe yourself: -one moment you are exalted; the next a broken glass puts your nerves on -edge. All extremes are dangerous. It is best to keep in the middle of -the road, in the common ruts, however muddy. In writing choose the -common words; avoid rhapsody and eloquence—yet, it is true, poetry is -delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry. - -It appears, then, that we are to aim at a democratic simplicity. We may -enjoy our room in the tower, with the painted walls and the commodious -bookcases, but down in the garden there is a man digging who buried his -father this morning, and it is he and his like who live the real life -and speak the real language. There is certainly an element of truth in -that. Things are said very finely at the lower end of the table. There -are perhaps more of the qualities that matter among the ignorant than -among the learned. But again, what a vile thing the rabble is! “the -mother of ignorance, injustice, and inconstancy. Is it reasonable that -the life of a wise man should depend upon the judgment of fools?” Their -minds are weak, soft and without power of resistance. They must be told -what it is expedient for them to know. It is not for them to face facts -as they are. The truth can only be known by the well-born soul—“l’âme -bien née”. Who, then, are these well-born souls, whom we would imitate, -if only Montaigne would enlighten us more precisely? - -But no. “Je n’enseigne poinct; je raconte.” After all, how could he -explain other people’s souls when he could say nothing “entirely simply -and solidly, without confusion or mixture, in one word”, about his own, -when indeed it became daily more and more in the dark to him? One -quality or principle there is perhaps—that one must not lay down rules. -The souls whom one would wish to resemble, like Étienne de La Boétie, -for example, are always the supplest. “C’est estre, mais ce n’est pas -vivre, que de se tenir attaché et obligé par nécessité à un seul -train.” The laws are mere conventions, utterly unable to keep touch with -the vast variety and turmoil of human impulses; habits and customs are a -convenience devised for the support of timid natures who dare not allow -their souls free play. But we, who have a private life and hold it -infinitely the dearest of our possessions, suspect nothing so much as an -attitude. Directly we begin to protest, to attitudinise, to lay down -laws, we perish. We are living for others, not for ourselves. We must -respect those who sacrifice themselves in the public service, load them -with honours, and pity them for allowing, as they must, the inevitable -compromise; but for ourselves let us fly fame, honour, and all offices -that put us under an obligation to others. Let us simmer over our -incalculable cauldron, our enthralling confusion, our hotch-potch of -impulses, our perpetual miracle—for the soul throws up wonders every -second. Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is -death; conformity is death: let us say what comes into our heads, repeat -ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and -follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or -thinks or says. For nothing matters except life; and, of course, order. - -This freedom, then, which is the essence of our being, has to be -controlled. But it is difficult to see what power we are to invoke to -help us, since every restraint of private opinion or public law has been -derided, and Montaigne never ceases to pour scorn upon the misery, the -weakness, the vanity of human nature. Perhaps, then, it will be well to -turn to religion to guide us? “Perhaps” is one of his favourite -expressions; “perhaps” and “I think” and all those words which qualify -the rash assumptions of human ignorance. Such words help one to muffle -up opinions which it would be highly impolitic to speak outright. For -one does not say everything; there are some things which at present it -is advisable only to hint. One writes for a very few people, who -understand. Certainly, seek the Divine guidance by all means, but -meanwhile there is, for those who live a private life, another monitor, -an invisible censor within, “un patron au dedans”, whose blame is much -more to be dreaded than any other because he knows the truth; nor is -there anything sweeter than the chime of his approval. This is the judge -to whom we must submit; this is the censor who will help us to achieve -that order which is the grace of a well-born soul. For “C’est une vie -exquise, celle qui se maintient en ordre jusques en son privé”. But he -will act by his own light; by some internal balance will achieve that -precarious and everchanging poise which, while it controls, in no way -impedes the soul’s freedom to explore and experiment. Without other -guide, and without precedent, undoubtedly it is far more difficult to -live well the private life than the public. It is an art which each must -learn separately, though there are, perhaps, two or three men, like -Homer, Alexander the Great, and Epaminondas among the ancients, and -Étienne de La Boétie among the moderns, whose example may help us. But -it is an art; and the very material in which it works is variable and -complex and infinitely mysterious—human nature. To human nature we must -keep close. “. . . il faut vivre entre les vivants”. We must dread any -eccentricity or refinement which cuts us off from our fellow-beings. -Blessed are those who chat easily with their neighbours about their -sport or their buildings or their quarrels, and honestly enjoy the talk -of carpenters and gardeners. To communicate is our chief business; -society and friendship our chief delights; and reading, not to acquire -knowledge, not to earn a living, but to extend our intercourse beyond -our own time and province. Such wonders there are in the world; halcyons -and undiscovered lands, men with dogs’ heads and eyes in their chests, -and laws and customs, it may well be, far superior to our own. Possibly -we are asleep in this world; possibly there is some other which is -apparent to beings with a sense which we now lack. - -Here then, in spite of all contradictions and of all qualifications, is -something definite. These essays are an attempt to communicate a soul. -On this point at least he is explicit. It is not fame that he wants; it -is not that men shall quote him in years to come; he is setting up no -statue in the market-place; he wishes only to communicate his soul. -Communication is health; communication is truth; communication is -happiness. To share is our duty; to go down boldly and bring to light -those hidden thoughts which are the most diseased; to conceal nothing; -to pretend nothing; if we are ignorant to say so; if we love our friends -to let them know it. - - -“. . . car, comme je scay par une trop certaine expérience, il n’est -aucune si douce consolation en la perte de nos amis que celle que nous -aporte la science de n’avoir rien oublié à leur dire et d’avoir eu -avec eux une parfaite et entière communication.” - - -There are people who, when they travel, wrap themselves up “se -défendans de la contagion d’un air incogneu” in silence and suspicion. -When they dine they must have the same food they get at home. Every -sight and custom is bad unless it resembles those of their own village. -They travel only to return. That is entirely the wrong way to set about -it. We should start without any fixed idea where we are going to spend -the night, or when we propose to come back; the journey is everything. -Most necessary of all, but rarest good fortune, we should try to find -before we start some man of our own sort who will go with us and to whom -we can say the first thing that comes into our heads. For pleasure has -no relish unless we share it. As for the risks—that we may catch cold -or get a headache—it is always worth while to risk a little illness for -the sake of pleasure. “Le plaisir est des principales espèces du -profit.” Besides if we do what we like, we always do what is good for -us. Doctors and wise men may object, but let us leave doctors and wise -men to their own dismal philosophy. For ourselves, who are ordinary men -and women, let us return thanks to Nature for her bounty by using every -one of the senses she has given us; vary our state as much as possible; -turn now this side, now that, to the warmth, and relish to the full -before the sun goes down the kisses of youth and the echoes of a -beautiful voice singing Catullus. Every season is likeable, and wet days -and fine, red wine and white, company and solitude. Even sleep, that -deplorable curtailment of the joy of life, can be full of dreams; and -the most common actions—a walk, a talk, solitude in one’s own -orchard—can be enhanced and lit up by the association of the mind. -Beauty is everywhere, and beauty is only two fingers’ breadth from -goodness. So, in the name of health and sanity, let us not dwell on the -end of the journey. Let death come upon us planting our cabbages, or on -horseback, or let us steal away to some cottage and there let strangers -close our eyes, for a servant sobbing or the touch of a hand would break -us down. Best of all, let death find us at our usual occupations, among -girls and good fellows who make no protests, no lamentations; let him -find us “parmy les jeux, les festins, faceties, entretiens communs et -populaires, et la musique, et des vers amoureux”. But enough of death; -it is life that matters. - -It is life that emerges more and more clearly as these essays reach not -their end, but their suspension in full career. It is life that becomes -more and more absorbing as death draws near, one’s self, one’s soul, -every fact of existence: that one wears silk stockings summer and -winter; puts water in one’s wine; has one’s hair cut after dinner; must -have glass to drink from; has never worn spectacles; has a loud voice; -carries a switch in one’s hand; bites one’s tongue; fidgets with one’s -feet; is apt to scratch one’s ears; likes meat to be high; rubs one’s -teeth with a napkin (thank God, they are good!); must have curtains to -one’s bed; and, what is rather curious, began by liking radishes, then -disliked them, and now likes them again. No fact is too little to let it -slip through one’s fingers and besides the interest of facts themselves, -there is the strange power we have of changing facts by the force of the -imagination. Observe how the soul is always casting her own lights and -shadows; makes the substantial hollow and the frail substantial; fills -broad daylight with dreams; is as much excited by phantoms as by -reality; and in the moment of death sports with a trifle. Observe, too, -her duplicity, her complexity. She hears of a friend’s loss and -sympathises, and yet has a bitter-sweet malicious pleasure in the -sorrows of others. She believes; at the same time she does not believe. -Observe her extraordinary susceptibility to impressions, especially in -youth. A rich man steals because his father kept him short of money as a -boy. This wall one builds not for oneself, but because one’s father -loved building. In short the soul is all laced about with nerves and -sympathies which affect her every action, and yet, even now in 1580, no -one has any clear knowledge—such cowards we are, such lovers of the -smooth conventional ways—how she works or what she is except that of -all things she is the most mysterious, and one’s self the greatest -monster and miracle in the world. “. . . plus je me hante et connois, -plus ma difformité m’estonne, moins je m’entens en moy.” Observe, -observe perpetually, and, so long as ink and paper exist, “sans cesse et -sans travail” Montaigne will write. - -But there remains one final question which, if we could make him look up -from his enthralling occupation, we should like to put to this great -master of the art of life. In these extraordinary volumes of short and -broken, long and learned, logical and contradictory statements, we have -heard the very pulse and rhythm of the soul, beating day after day, year -after year through a veil which, as time goes on, fines itself almost to -transparency. Here is some one who succeeded in the hazardous enterprise -of living; who served his country and lived retired; was landlord, -husband, father; entertained kings, loved women, and mused for hours -alone over old books. By means of perpetual experiment and observation -of the subtlest he achieved at last a miraculous adjustment of all these -wayward parts that constitute the human soul. He laid hold of the beauty -of the world with all his fingers. He achieved happiness. If he had had -to live again, he said, he would have lived the same life over. But, as -we watch with absorbed interest the enthralling spectacle of a soul -living openly beneath our eyes, the question frames itself, Is pleasure -the end of all? Whence this overwhelming interest in the nature of the -soul? Why this overmastering desire to communicate with others? Is the -beauty of this world enough, or is there, elsewhere, some explanation of -the mystery? To this what answer can there be? There is none. There is -only one more question: “Que scais-je?” - - -[Footnote 3: _Essays of Montaigne_, translated by Charles Cotton, -5 vols. The Navarre Society, £6: 6s. net] - - - - -_The Duchess of Newcastle_[4] - - -“. . . All I desire is fame”, wrote Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of -Newcastle. And while she lived her wish was granted. Garish in her -dress, eccentric in her habits, chaste in her conduct, coarse in her -speech, she succeeded during her lifetime in drawing upon herself the -ridicule of the great and the applause of the learned. But the last -echoes of that clamour have now all died away; she lives only in the few -splendid phrases that Lamb scattered upon her tomb; her poems, her -plays, her philosophies, her orations, her discourses—all those folios -and quartos in which, she protested, her real life was shrined—moulder -in the gloom of public libraries, or are decanted into tiny thimbles -which hold six drops of their profusion. Even the curious student, -inspired by the words of Lamb, quails before the mass of her mausoleum, -peers in, looks about him, and hurries out again, shutting the door. - -But that hasty glance has shown him the outlines of a memorable figure. -Born (it is conjectured) in 1624, Margaret was the youngest child of a -Thomas Lucas, who died when she was an infant, and her upbringing was -due to her mother, a lady of remarkable character, of majestic grandeur -and beauty “beyond the ruin of time”. “She was very skilful in leases, -and setting of lands and court keeping, ordering of stewards, and the -like affairs.” The wealth which thus accrued she spent, not on marriage -portions, but on generous and delightful pleasures, “out of an opinion -that if she bred us with needy necessity it might chance to create in us -sharking qualities”. Her eight sons and daughters were never beaten, but -reasoned with, finely and gayly dressed, and allowed no conversation -with servants, not because they are servants but because servants “are -for the most part ill-bred as well as meanly born”. The daughters were -taught the usual accomplishments “rather for formality than for -benefit”, it being their mother’s opinion that character, happiness, and -honesty were of greater value to a woman than fiddling and singing, or -“the prating of several languages”. - -Already Margaret was eager to take advantage of such indulgence to -gratify certain tastes. Already she liked reading better than -needlework, dressing and “inventing fashions” better than reading, and -writing best of all. Sixteen paper books of no title, written in -straggling letters, for the impetuosity of her thought always outdid the -pace of her fingers, testify to the use she made of her mother’s -liberality. The happiness of their home life had other results as well. -They were a devoted family. Long after they were married, Margaret -noted, these handsome brothers and sisters, with their well-proportioned -bodies, their clear complexions, brown hair, sound teeth, “tunable -voices”, and plain way of speaking, kept themselves “in a flock -together”. The presence of strangers silenced them. But when they were -alone, whether they walked in Spring Gardens or Hyde Park, or had music, -or supped in barges upon the water, their tongues were loosed and they -made “very merry amongst themselves, . . . judging, condemning, -approving, commending, as they thought good”. - -The happy family life had its effect upon Margaret’s character. As a -child, she would walk for hours alone, musing and contemplating and -reasoning with herself of “everything her senses did present”. She took -no pleasure in activity of any kind. Toys did not amuse her, and she -could neither learn foreign languages nor dress as other people did. Her -great pleasure was to invent dresses for herself, which nobody else was -to copy, “for”, she remarks, “I always took delight in a singularity, -even in accoutrements of habits”. - -Such a training, at once so cloistered and so free, should have bred a -lettered old maid, glad of her seclusion, and the writer perhaps of some -volume of letters or translations from the classics, which we should -still quote as proof of the cultivation of our ancestresses. But there -was a wild streak in Margaret, a love of finery and extravagance and -fame, which was for ever upsetting the orderly arrangements of nature. -When she heard that the Queen, since the outbreak of the Civil War, had -fewer maids-of-honour than usual, she had “a great desire” to become one -of them. Her mother let her go against the judgement of the rest of the -family, who, knowing that she had never left home and had scarcely been -beyond their sight, justly thought that she might behave at Court to her -disadvantage. “Which indeed I did,” Margaret confessed; “for I was so -bashful when I was out of my mother’s, brothers’, and sisters’ sight -that . . . I durst neither look up with my eyes, nor speak, nor be any -way sociable, insomuch as I was thought a natural fool.” The courtiers -laughed at her; and she retaliated in the obvious way. People were -censorious; men were jealous of brains in a woman; women suspected -intellect in their own sex; and what other lady, she might justly ask, -pondered as she walked on the nature of matter and whether snails have -teeth? But the laughter galled her, and she begged her mother to let her -come home. This being refused, wisely as the event turned out, she -stayed on for two years (1643–45), finally going with the Queen to -Paris, and there, among the exiles who came to pay their respects to the -Court, was the Marquis of Newcastle. To the general amazement, the -princely nobleman, who had led the King’s forces to disaster with -indomitable courage but little skill, fell in love with the shy, silent, -strangely dressed maid-of-honour. It was not “amorous love, but honest, -honourable love”, according to Margaret. She was no brilliant match; she -had gained a reputation for prudery and eccentricity. What, then, could -have made so great a nobleman fall at her feet? The onlookers were full -of derision, disparagement, and slander. “I fear”, Margaret wrote to the -Marquis, “others foresee we shall be unfortunate, though we see it not -ourselves, or else there would not be such pains to untie the knot of -our affections.” Again, “Saint Germains is a place of much slander, and -thinks I send too often to you”. “Pray consider”, she warned him, “that -I have enemies.” But the match was evidently perfect. The Duke, with his -love of poetry and music and play-writing, his interest in philosophy, -his belief “that nobody knew or could know the cause of anything”, his -romantic and generous temperament, was naturally drawn to a woman who -wrote poetry herself, was also a philosopher of the same way of -thinking, and lavished upon him not only the admiration of a -fellow-artist, but the gratitude of a sensitive creature who had been -shielded and succoured by his extraordinary magnanimity. “He did -approve”, she wrote, “of those bashful fears which many condemned, . . . -and though I did dread marriage and shunned men’s company as much as I -could, yet I . . . had not the power to refuse him.” She kept him -company during the long years of exile; she entered with sympathy, if -not with understanding, into the conduct and acquirements of those -horses which he trained to such perfection that the Spaniards crossed -themselves and cried “Miraculo!” as they witnessed their corvets, -voltoes, and pirouettes; she believed that the horses even made a -“trampling action” for joy when he came into the stables; she pleaded -his cause in England during the Protectorate; and, when the Restoration -made it possible for them to return to England, they lived together in -the depths of the country in the greatest seclusion and perfect -contentment, scribbling plays, poems, philosophies, greeting each -other’s works with raptures of delight, and confabulating doubtless upon -such marvels of the natural world as chance threw their way. They were -laughed at by their contemporaries; Horace Walpole sneered at them. But -there can be no doubt that they were perfectly happy. - -For now Margaret could apply herself uninterruptedly to her writing. She -could devise fashions for herself and her servants. She could scribble -more and more furiously with fingers that became less and less able to -form legible letters. She could even achieve the miracle of getting her -plays acted in London and her philosophies humbly perused by men of -learning. There they stand, in the British Museum, volume after volume, -swarming with a diffused, uneasy, contorted vitality. Order, continuity, -the logical development of her argument are all unknown to her. No fears -impede her. She has the irresponsibility of a child and the arrogance of -a Duchess. The wildest fancies come to her, and she canters away on -their backs. We seem to hear her, as the thoughts boil and bubble, -calling to John, who sat with a pen in his hand next door, to come -quick, “John, John, I conceive!” And down it goes—whatever it may be; -sense or nonsense; some thought on women’s education—“Women live like -Bats or Owls, labour like Beasts, and die like Worms, . . . the best -bred women are those whose minds are civilest”; some speculation that -had struck her perhaps walking that afternoon alone—why “hogs have the -measles”, why “dogs that rejoice swing their tails”, or what the stars -are made of, or what this chrysalis is that her maid has brought her, -and she keeps warm in a corner of her room. On and on, from subject to -subject she flies, never stopping to correct, “for there is more -pleasure in making than in mending”, talking aloud to herself of all -those matters that filled her brain to her perpetual diversion—of wars, -and boarding-schools, and cutting down trees, of grammar and morals, of -monsters and the British, whether opium in small quantities is good for -lunatics, why it is that musicians are mad. Looking upwards, she -speculates still more ambitiously upon the nature of the moon, and if -the stars are blazing jellies; looking downwards she wonders if the -fishes know that the sea is salt; opines that our heads are full of -fairies, “dear to God as we are”; muses whether there are not other -worlds than ours, and reflects that the next ship may bring us word of a -new one. In short, “we are in utter darkness”. Meanwhile, what a rapture -is thought! - -As the vast books appeared from the stately retreat at Welbeck the usual -censors made the usual objections, and had to be answered, despised, or -argued with, as her mood varied, in the preface to every work. They -said, among other things, that her books were not her own, because she -used learned terms, and “wrote of many matters outside her ken”. She -flew to her husband for help, and he answered, characteristically, that -the Duchess “had never conversed with any professed scholar in learning -except her brother and myself”. The Duke’s scholarship, moreover, was of -a peculiar nature. “I have lived in the great world a great while, and -have thought of what has been brought to me by the senses, more than was -put into me by learned discourse; for I do not love to be led by the -nose, by authority, and old authors; _ipse dixit_ will not serve my -turn.” And then she takes up the pen and proceeds, with the importunity -and indiscretion of a child, to assure the world that her ignorance is -of the finest quality imaginable. She has only seen Des Cartes and -Hobbes, not questioned them; she did indeed ask Mr. Hobbes to dinner, -but he could not come; she often does not listen to a word that is said -to her; she does not know any French, though she lived abroad for five -years; she has only read the old philosophers in Mr. Stanley’s account -of them; of Des Cartes she has read but half of his work on Passion; and -of Hobbes only “the little book called _De Cive_”, all of which is -infinitely to the credit of her native wit, so abundant that outside -succour pained it, so honest that it would not accept help from others. -It was from the plain of complete ignorance, the untilled field of her -own consciousness, that she proposed to erect a philosophic system that -was to oust all others. The results were not altogether happy. Under the -pressure of such vast structures, her natural gift, the fresh and -delicate fancy which had led her in her first volume to write charmingly -of Queen Mab and fairyland, was crushed out of existence. - - -The palace of the Queen wherein she dwells, -Its fabric’s built all of hodmandod shells; -The hangings of a Rainbow made that’s thin, -Shew wondrous fine, when one first enters in; -The chambers made of Amber that is clear, -Do give a fine sweet smell, if fire be near; -Her bed a cherry stone, is carved throughout, -And with a butterfly’s wing hung about; -Her sheets are of the skin of Dove’s eyes made -Where on a violet bud her pillow’s laid. - - -So she could write when she was young. But her fairies, if they survived -at all, grew up into hippopotami. Too generously her prayer was granted: - - -Give me the free and noble style, -Which seems uncurb’d, though it be wild. - - -She became capable of involutions, and contortions and conceits of which -the following is among the shortest, but not the most terrific: - - -The human head may be likened to a town: -The mouth when full, begun -Is market day, when empty, market’s done; -The city conduct, where the water flows, -Is with two spouts, the nostrils and the nose. - - -She similised, energetically, incongruously, eternally; the sea became a -meadow, the sailors shepherds, the mast a maypole. The fly was the bird -of summer, trees were senators, houses ships, and even the fairies, whom -she loved better than any earthly thing, except the Duke, are changed -into blunt atoms and sharp atoms, and take part in some of those -horrible manœuvres in which she delighted to marshal the universe. -Truly, “my Lady Sanspareille hath a strange spreading wit”. Worse still, -without an atom of dramatic power, she turned to play-writing. It was a -simple process. The unwieldy thoughts which turned and tumbled within -her were christened Sir Golden Riches, Moll Meanbred, Sir Puppy Dogman, -and the rest, and sent revolving in tedious debate upon the parts of the -soul, or whether virtue is better than riches, round a wise and learned -lady who answered their questions and corrected their fallacies at -considerable length in tones which we seem to have heard before. - -Sometimes, however, the Duchess walked abroad. She would issue out in -her own proper person, dressed in a thousand gems and furbelows, to -visit the houses of the neighbouring gentry. Her pen made instant report -of these excursions. She recorded how Lady C. R. “did beat her husband -in a public assembly”; Sir F. Ο. “I am sorry to hear hath undervalued -himself so much below his birth and wealth as to marry his -kitchen-maid”; “Miss P. I. has become a sanctified soul, a spiritual -sister, she has left curling her hair, black patches are become -abominable to her, laced shoes and Galoshoes are steps to pride—she -asked me what posture I thought was the best to be used in prayer”. Her -answer was probably unacceptable. “I shall not rashly go there again”, -she says of one such “gossip-making”. She was not, we may hazard, a -welcome guest or an altogether hospitable hostess. She had a way of -“bragging of myself” which frightened visitors so that they left, nor -was she sorry to see them go. Indeed, Welbeck was the best place for -her, and her own company the most congenial, with the amiable Duke -wandering in and out, with his plays and his speculations, always ready -to answer a question or refute a slander. Perhaps it was this solitude -that led her, chaste as she was in conduct, to use language which in -time to come much perturbed Sir Egerton Brydges. She used, he -complained, “expressions and images of extraordinary coarseness as -flowing from a female of high rank brought up in courts”. He forgot that -this particular female had long ceased to frequent the Court; she -consorted chiefly with fairies; and her friends were among the dead. -Naturally, then, her language was coarse. Nevertheless, though her -philosophies are futile, and her plays intolerable, and her verses -mainly dull, the vast bulk of the Duchess is leavened by a vein of -authentic fire. One cannot help following the lure of her erratic and -lovable personality as it meanders and twinkles through page after page. -There is something noble and Quixotic and high-spirited, as well as -crack-brained and bird-witted, about her. Her simplicity is so open; her -intelligence so active; her sympathy with fairies and animals so true -and tender. She has the freakishness of an elf, the irresponsibility of -some non-human creature, its heartlessness, and its charm. And although -“they”, those terrible critics who had sneered and jeered at her ever -since, as a shy girl, she had not dared look her tormentors in the face -at Court, continued to mock, few of her critics, after all, had the wit -to trouble about the nature of the universe, or cared a straw for the -sufferings of the hunted hare, or longed, as she did, to talk to some -one “of Shakespeare’s fools”. Now, at any rate, the laugh is not all on -their side. - -But laugh they did. When the rumour spread that the crazy Duchess was -coming up from Welbeck to pay her respects at Court, people crowded the -streets to look at her, and the curiosity of Mr. Pepys twice brought him -to wait in the Park to see her pass. But the pressure of the crowd about -her coach was too great. He could only catch a glimpse of her in her -silver coach with her footmen all in velvet, a velvet cap on her head, -and her hair about her ears. He could only see for a moment between the -white curtains the face of “a very comely woman”, and on she drove -through the crowd of staring Cockneys, all pressing to catch a glimpse -of that romantic lady, who stands in the picture at Welbeck, with large -melancholy eyes, and something fastidious and fantastic in her bearing, -touching a table with the tips of long pointed fingers in the calm -assurance of immortal fame. - - -[Footnote 4: _The Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, Etc._, -edited by C. H. Firth; _Poems and Fancies_, by the Duchess of Newcastle; -_The World’s Olio; Orations of divers Sorts Accommodated to Divers -Places; Female Orations; Plays; Philosophical Letters_, etc., etc.] - - - - -_Rambling Round Evelyn_ - - -Should you wish to make sure that your birthday will be celebrated three -hundred years hence, your best course is undoubtedly to keep a diary. -Only first be certain that you have the courage to lock your genius in a -private book and the humour to gloat over a fame that will be yours only -in the grave. For the good diarist writes either for himself alone or -for a posterity so distant that it can safely hear every secret and -justly weigh every motive. For such an audience there is need neither of -affectation nor of restraint. Sincerity is what they ask, detail, -volume; skill with the pen comes in conveniently, but brilliance is not -necessary; genius is a hindrance even; and should you know your business -and do it manfully, posterity will let you off mixing with great men, -reporting famous affairs, or having lain with the first ladies in the -land. - -The diary, for whose sake we are remembering the three hundredth -anniversary of the birth of John Evelyn,[5] is a case in point. It is -sometimes composed like a memoir, sometimes jotted down like a calendar; -but he never used its pages to reveal the secrets of his heart, and all -that he wrote might have been read aloud in the evening with a calm -conscience to his children. If we wonder, then, why we still trouble to -read what we must consider the uninspired work of a good man we have to -confess, first that diaries are always diaries, books, that is, that we -read in convalescence, on horseback, in the grip of death; second, that -this reading, about which so many fine things have been said, is for the -most part mere dreaming and idling; lying in a chair with a book; -watching the butterflies on the dahlias; a profitless occupation which -no critic has taken the trouble to investigate, and on whose behalf only -the moralist can find a good word to say. For he will allow it to be an -innocent employment; and happiness, he will add, though derived from -trivial sources, has probably done more to prevent human beings from -changing their religions and killing their kings than either philosophy -or the pulpit. - -It may be well, indeed, before reading much further in Evelyn’s book, to -decide where it is that our modern view of happiness differs from his. -Ignorance, surely, ignorance is at the bottom of it; his ignorance, and -our comparative erudition. No one can read the story of Evelyn’s foreign -travels without envying in the first place his simplicity of mind, in -the second his activity. To take a simple example of the difference -between us—that butterfly will sit motionless on the dahlia while the -gardener trundles his barrow past it, but let him flick the wings with -the shadow of a rake, and off it flies, up it goes, instantly on the -alert. So, we may reflect, a butterfly sees but does not hear; and here -no doubt we are much on a par with Evelyn. But as for going into the -house to fetch a knife and with that knife dissecting a Red Admiral’s -head, as Evelyn would have done, no sane person in the twentieth century -would entertain such a project for a second. Individually we may know as -little as Evelyn, but collectively we know so much that there is little -incentive to venture on private discoveries. We seek the encyclopædia, -not the scissors; and know in two minutes not only more than was known -to Evelyn in his lifetime, but that the mass of knowledge is so vast -that it is scarcely worth while to possess a single crumb. Ignorant, yet -justly confident that with his own hands he might advance not merely his -private knowledge but the knowledge of mankind, Evelyn dabbled in all -the arts and sciences, ran about the Continent for ten years, gazed with -unflagging gusto upon hairy women and rational dogs, and drew inferences -and framed speculations which are now only to be matched by listening to -the talk of old women round the village pump. The moon, they say, is so -much larger than usual this autumn that no mushrooms will grow, and the -carpenter’s wife will be brought to bed of twins. So Evelyn, Fellow of -the Royal Society, a gentleman of the highest culture and intelligence, -carefully noted all comets and portents, and thought it a sinister omen -when a whale came up the Thames. In 1658, too, a whale had been seen. -“That year died Cromwell.” Nature, it seems, was determined to stimulate -the devotion of her seventeenth-century admirers by displays of violence -and eccentricity from which she now refrains. There were storms, floods, -and droughts; the Thames frozen hard; comets flaring in the sky. If a -cat so much as kittened in Evelyn’s bed the kitten was inevitably gifted -with eight legs, six ears, two bodies, and two tails. - -But to return to happiness. It sometimes appears that if there is an -insoluble difference between our ancestors and ourselves it is that we -draw our happiness from different sources. We rate the same things at -different values. Something of this we may ascribe to their ignorance -and our knowledge. But are we to suppose that ignorance alters the -nerves and the affections? Are we to believe that it would have been an -intolerable penance for us to live familiarly with the Elizabethans? -Should we have found it necessary to leave the room because of -Shakespeare’s habits, and to have refused Queen Elizabeth’s invitation -to dinner? Perhaps so. For Evelyn was a sober man of unusual refinement, -and yet he pressed into a torture chamber as we crowd to see the lions -fed. - - -. . . they first bound his wrists with a strong rope or small cable, and -one end of it to an iron ring made fast to the wall about four feet from -the floor, and then his feet with another cable, fastened about five -feet farther than his utmost length to another ring on the floor of the -room. Thus suspended, and yet lying but aslant, they slid a horse of -wood under the rope which bound his feet, which so exceedingly stiffened -it, as severed the fellow’s joints in miserable sort, drawing him out at -length in an extraordinary manner, he having only a pair of linen -drawers upon his naked body . . . - - -And so on. Evelyn watched this to the end, and then remarked that “the -spectacle was so uncomfortable that I was not able to stay the sight of -another”, as we might say that the lions growl so loud and the sight of -raw meat is so unpleasant that we will now visit the penguins. Allowing -for his discomfort, there is enough discrepancy between his view of pain -and ours to make us wonder whether we see any fact with the same eyes, -marry any woman from the same motives, or judge any conduct by the same -standards. To sit passive when muscles tore and bones cracked, not to -flinch when the wooden horse was raised higher and the executioner -fetched a horn and poured two buckets of water down the man’s throat, to -suffer this iniquity on a suspicion of robbery which the man denied—all -this seems to put Evelyn in one of those cages where we still mentally -seclude the riff-raff of Whitechapel. Only it is obvious that we have -somehow got it wrong. If we could maintain that our susceptibility to -suffering and love of justice were proof that all our humane instincts -were as highly developed as these, then we could say that the world -improves, and we with it. But let us get on with the diary. - -In 1652, when it seemed that things had settled down unhappily enough, -“all being entirely in the rebels’ hands”, Evelyn returned to England -with his wife, his Tables of Veins and Arteries, his Venetian glass and -the rest of his curiosities, to lead the life of a country gentleman of -strong Royalist sympathies at Deptford. What with going to church and -going to town, settling his accounts and planting his garden—“I planted -the orchard at Sayes Court; new moon, wind west”—his time was spent -much as ours is. But there was one difference which it is difficult to -illustrate by a single quotation, because the evidence is scattered all -about in little insignificant phrases. The general effect of them is -that he used his eyes. The visible world was always close to him. The -visible world has receded so far from us that to hear all this talk of -buildings and gardens, statues and carving, as if the look of things -assailed one out of doors as well as in, and were not confined to a few -small canvases hung upon the wall, seems strange. No doubt there are a -thousand excuses for us; but hitherto we have been finding excuses for -him. Wherever there was a picture to be seen by Julio Romano, Polydore, -Guido, Raphael, or Tintoretto, a finely-built house, a prospect, or a -garden nobly designed, Evelyn stopped his coach to look at it, and -opened his diary to record his opinion. On August 27 Evelyn, with Dr. -Wren and others, was in St. Paul’s surveying “the general decay of that -ancient and venerable church”; held with Dr. Wren another judgement from -the rest; and had a mind to build it with “a noble cupola, a form of -church building not as yet known in England but of wonderful grace”, in -which Dr. Wren concurred. Six days later the Fire of London altered -their plans. It was Evelyn again who, walking by himself, chanced to -look in at the window of “a poor solitary thatched house in a field in -our parish”, there saw a young man carving at a crucifix, was overcome -with an enthusiasm which does him the utmost credit, and carried -Grinling Gibbons and his carving to Court. - -Indeed, it is all very well to be scrupulous about the sufferings of -worms and sensitive to the dues of servant girls, but how pleasant also -if, with shut eyes, one could call up street after street of beautiful -houses. A flower is red; the apples rosy-gilt in the afternoon sun; a -picture has charm, especially as it displays the character of a -grandfather and dignifies a family descended from such a scowl; but -these are scattered fragments—little relics of beauty in a world that -has grown indescribably drab. To our charge of cruelty Evelyn might well -reply by pointing to Bayswater and the purlieus of Clapham; and if he -should assert that nothing now has character or conviction, that no -farmer in England sleeps with an open coffin at his bedside to remind -him of death, we could not retort effectually offhand. True, we like the -country. Evelyn never looked at the sky. - -But to return. After the Restoration Evelyn emerged in full possession -of a variety of accomplishments which in our time of specialists seems -remarkable enough. He was employed on public business; he was Secretary -to the Royal Society; he wrote plays and poems; he was the first -authority upon trees and gardens in England; he submitted a design for -the rebuilding of London; he went into the question of smoke and its -abatement—the lime trees in St. James’s Park being, it is said, the -result of his cogitations; he was commissioned to write a history of the -Dutch war—in short, he completely outdid the Squire of “The Princess”, -whom in many respects he anticipated— - - -A lord of fat prize oxen and of sheep, -A raiser of huge melons and of pine, -A patron of some thirty charities, -A pamphleteer on guano and on grain, -A quarter sessions chairman abler none. - - -All that he was, and shared with Sir Walter another characteristic which -Tennyson does not mention. He was, we cannot help suspecting, something -of a bore, a little censorious, a little patronising, a little too sure -of his own merits, and a little obtuse to those of other people. Or what -is the quality, or absence of quality, that checks our sympathies -partly, perhaps, it is due to some inconsistency which it would be harsh -to call by so strong a name as hypocrisy. Though he deplored the vices -of his age he could never keep away from the centre of them. “The -luxurious dallying and profaneness” of the Court, the sight of “Mrs. -Nelly” looking over her garden wall and holding “very familiar -discourse” with King Charles on the green walk below, caused him acute -disgust; yet he could never decide to break with the Court and retire to -“my poor but quiet villa”, which was of course the apple of his eye and -one of the show-places in England. Then, though he loved his daughter -Mary, his grief at her death did not prevent him from counting the -number of empty coaches drawn by six horses apiece that attended her -funeral. His women friends combined virtue with beauty to such an extent -that we can hardly credit them with wit into the bargain. Poor Mrs. -Godolphin at least, whom he celebrated in a sincere and touching -biography, “loved to be at funerals” and chose habitually “the dryest -and leanest morsels of meat”, which may be the habits of an angel but do -not present her friendship with Evelyn in an alluring light. But it is -Pepys who sums up our case against Evelyn; Pepys who said of him after -a long morning’s entertainment: “In fine a most excellent person he is -and must be allowed a little for a little conceitedness; but he may well -be so, being a man so much above others”. The words exactly hit the -mark, “A most excellent person he was”; but a little conceited. - -Pepys it is who prompts us to another reflection, inevitable, -unnecessary, perhaps unkind. Evelyn was no genius. His writing is opaque -rather than transparent; we see no depths through it, nor any very -secret movements of mind or heart. He can neither make us hate a -regicide nor love Mrs. Godolphin beyond reason. But he writes a diary; -and he writes it supremely well. Even as we drowse, somehow or other the -bygone gentleman sets up, through three centuries, a perceptible tingle -of communication, so that without laying stress on anything in -particular, stopping to dream, stopping to laugh, stopping merely to -look, we are yet taking notice all the time. His garden for example—how -delightful is his disparagement of it, and how acid his criticism of the -gardens of others! Then, we may be sure, the hens at Sayes Court laid -the very best eggs in England, and when the Tsar drove a wheelbarrow -through his hedge what a catastrophe it was, and we can guess how Mrs. -Evelyn dusted and polished, and how Evelyn himself grumbled, and how -punctilious and efficient and trustworthy he was, how prone to give -advice, how ready to read his own works aloud, and how affectionate, -withal, lamenting bitterly but not effusively, for the man with the -long-drawn sensitive face was never that, the death of the little -prodigy Richard, and recording how “after evening prayers was my child -buried near the rest of his brothers—my very dear children.” He was not -an artist; no phrases linger in the mind; no paragraphs build themselves -up in memory; but as an artistic method this of going on with the day’s -story circumstantially, bringing in people who will never be mentioned -again, leading up to crises which never take place, introducing Sir -Thomas Browne but never letting him speak, has its fascination. All -through his pages good men, bad men, celebrities, nonentities are coming -into the room and going out again. The greater number we scarcely -notice; the door shuts upon them and they disappear. But now and again -the sight of a vanishing coat-tail suggests more than a whole figure -sitting still in a full light. They have struck no attitude, arranged no -mantle. Little they think that for three hundred years and more they -will be looked at in the act of jumping a gate, or observing, like the -old Marquis of Argyle, that the turtle doves in the aviary are owls. Our -eyes wander from one to the other; our affections settle here or -there—on hot-tempered Captain Wray, for instance, who was choleric, had -a dog that killed a goat, was for shooting the goat’s owner, was for -shooting his horse when it fell down a precipice; on Mr. Saladine; on -Mr. Saladine’s beautiful daughter; on Captain Wray lingering at Geneva -to make love to Mr. Saladine’s daughter; on Evelyn himself most of all, -grown old, walking in his garden at Wotton, his sorrows smoothed out, -his grandson doing him credit, the Latin quotations falling pat from his -lips, his trees flourishing, and the butterflies flying and flaunting on -his dahlias too. - - -[Footnote 5: Written in 1920.] - - - - -_Defoe_[6] - - -The fear which attacks the recorder of centenaries lest he should find -himself measuring a diminishing spectre and forced to foretell its -approaching dissolution is not only absent in the case of _Robinson -Crusoe_ but the mere thought of it is ridiculous. It may be true that -_Robinson Crusoe_ is two hundred years of age upon the twenty-fifth of -April 1919, but far from raising the familiar speculations as to whether -people now read it and will continue to read it, the effect of the -bi-centenary is to make us marvel that _Robinson Crusoe_, the perennial -and immortal, should have been in existence so short a time as that. The -book resembles one of the anonymous productions of the race itself -rather than the effort of a single mind; and as for celebrating its -centenary we should as soon think of celebrating the centenaries of -Stonehenge itself. Something of this we may attribute to the fact that -we have all had _Robinson Crusoe_ read aloud to us as children, and were -thus much in the same state of mind towards Defoe and his story that the -Greeks were in towards Homer. It never occurred to us that there was -such a person as Defoe, and to have been told that _Robinson Crusoe_ was -the work of a man with a pen in his hand would either have disturbed us -unpleasantly or meant nothing at all. The impressions of childhood are -those that last longest and cut deepest. It still seems that the name of -Daniel Defoe has no right to appear upon the title-page of _Robinson -Crusoe_, and if we celebrate the bi-centenary of the book we are making -a slightly unnecessary allusion to the fact that, like Stonehenge, it is -still in existence. - -The great fame of the book has done its author some injustice; for while -it has given him a kind of anonymous glory it has obscured the fact that -he was a writer of other works which, it is safe to assert, were not -read aloud to us as children. Thus when the Editor of the _Christian -World_ in the year 1870 appealed to “the boys and girls of England” to -erect a monument upon the grave of Defoe, which a stroke of lightning -had mutilated, the marble was inscribed to the memory of the author of -_Robinson Crusoe_. No mention was made of _Moll Flanders_. Considering -the topics which are dealt with in that book, and in _Roxana, Captain -Singleton, Colonel Jack_ and the rest, we need not be surprised, though -we may be indignant, at the omission. We may agree with Mr. Wright, the -biographer of Defoe, that these “are not works for the drawing-room -table”. But unless we consent to make that useful piece of furniture the -final arbiter of taste, we must deplore the fact that their superficial -coarseness, or the universal celebrity of _Robinson Crusoe_, has led -them to be far less widely famed than they deserve. On any monument -worthy of the name of monument the names of _Moll Flanders_ and -_Roxana_, at least, should be carved as deeply as the name of Defoe. -They stand among the few English novels which we can call indisputably -great. The occasion of the bi-centenary of their more famous companion -may well lead us to consider in what their greatness, which has so much -in common with his, may be found to consist. - -Defoe was an elderly man when he turned novelist, many years the -predecessor of Richardson and Fielding, and one of the first indeed to -shape the novel and launch it on its way. But it is unnecessary to -labour the fact of his precedence, except that he came to his -novel-writing with certain conceptions about the art which he derived -partly from being himself one of the first to practise it. The novel had -to justify its existence by telling a true story and preaching a sound -moral. “This supplying a story by invention is certainly a most -scandalous crime,” he wrote. “It is a sort of lying that makes a great -hole in the heart, in which by degrees a habit of lying enters in.” -Either in the preface or in the text of each of his works, therefore, he -takes pains to insist that he has not used his invention at all but has -depended upon facts, and that his purpose has been the highly moral -desire to convert the vicious or to warn the innocent. Happily these -were principles that tallied very well with his natural disposition and -endowments. Facts had been drilled into him by sixty years of varying -fortunes before he turned his experience to account in fiction. “I have -some time ago summed up the Scenes of my life in this distich,” he -wrote: - - -No man has tasted differing fortunes more, -And thirteen times I have been rich and poor. - - -He had spent eighteen months in Newgate and talked with thieves, -pirates, highwaymen, and coiners before he wrote the history of Moll -Flanders. But to have facts thrust upon you by dint of living and -accident is one thing; to swallow them voraciously and retain the -imprint of them indelibly, is another. It is not merely that Defoe knew -the stress of poverty and had talked with the victims of it, but that -the unsheltered life, exposed to circumstances and forced to shift for -itself, appealed to him imaginatively as the right matter for his art. -In the first pages of each of his great novels he reduces his hero or -heroine to such a state of unfriended misery that their existence must -be a continued struggle, and their survival at all the result of luck -and their own exertions. Moll Flanders was born in Newgate of a criminal -mother; Captain Singleton was stolen as a child and sold to the gipsies; -Colonel Jack, though “born a gentleman, was put ’prentice to a -pickpocket”; Roxana starts under better auspices, but, having married at -fifteen, she sees her husband go bankrupt and is left with five children -in “a condition the most deplorable that words can express”. - -Thus each of these boys and girls has the world to begin and the battle -to fight for himself. The situation thus created was entirely to Defoe’s -liking. From her very birth or with half a year’s respite at most, Moll -Flanders, the most notable of them, is goaded by “that worst of devils, -poverty”, forced to earn her living as soon as she can sew, driven from -place to place, making no demands upon her creator for the subtle -domestic atmosphere which he was unable to supply, but drawing upon him -for all he knew of strange people and customs. From the outset the -burden of proving her right to exist is laid upon her. She has to depend -entirely upon her own wits and judgement, and to deal with each -emergency as it arises by a rule-of-thumb morality which she has forged -in her own head. The briskness of the story is due partly to the fact -that having transgressed the accepted laws at a very early age she has -henceforth the freedom of the outcast. The one impossible event is that -she should settle down in comfort and security. But from the first the -peculiar genius of the author asserts itself, and avoids the obvious -danger of the novel of adventure. He makes us understand that Moll -Flanders was a woman on her own account and not only material for a -succession of adventures. In proof of this she begins, as Roxana also -begins, by falling passionately, if unfortunately, in love. That she -must rouse herself and marry some one else and look very closely to her -settlements and prospects is no slight upon her passion, but to be laid -to the charge of her birth; and, like all Defoe’s women, she is a person -of robust understanding. Since she makes no scruple of telling lies when -they serve her purpose, there is something undeniable about her truth -when she speaks it. She has no time to waste upon the refinements of -personal affection; one tear is dropped, one moment of despair allowed, -and then “on with the story”. She has a spirit that loves to breast the -storm. She delights in the exercise of her own powers. When she -discovers that the man she has married in Virginia is her own brother -she is violently disgusted; she insists upon leaving him; but as soon as -she sets foot in Bristol, “I took the diversion of going to Bath, for as -I was still far from being old so my humour, which was always gay, -continued so to an extreme”. Heartless she is not, nor can any one -charge her with levity; but life delights her, and a heroine who lives -has us all in tow. Moreover, her ambition has that slight strain of -imagination in it which puts it in the category of the noble passions. -Shrewd and practical of necessity, she is yet haunted by a desire for -romance and for the quality which to her perception makes a man a -gentleman. “It was really a true gallant spirit he was of, and it was -the more grievous to me. ’Tis something of relief even to be undone by a -man of honour rather than by a scoundrel,” she writes when she had -misled a highwayman as to the extent of her fortune. It is in keeping -with this temper that she should be proud of her final partner because -he refuses to work when they reach the plantations but prefers hunting, -and that she should take pleasure in buying him wigs and silver-hilted -swords “to make him appear, as he really was, a very fine gentleman”. -Her very love of hot weather is in keeping, and the passion with which -she kissed the ground that her son had trod on, and her noble tolerance -of every kind of fault so long as it is not “complete baseness of -spirit, imperious, cruel, and relentless when uppermost, abject and -low-spirited when down”. For the rest of the world she has nothing but -good-will. - -Since the list of the qualities and graces of this seasoned old sinner -is by no means exhausted we can well understand how it was that Borrow’s -apple-woman on London Bridge called her “blessed Mary” and valued her -book above all the apples on her stall; and that Borrow, taking the book -deep into the booth, read till his eyes ached. But we dwell upon such -signs of character only by way of proof that the creator of Moll -Flanders was not, as he has been accused of being, a mere journalist and -literal recorder of facts with no conception of the nature of -psychology. It is true that his characters take shape and substance of -their own accord, as if in despite of the author and not altogether to -his liking. He never lingers or stresses any point of subtlety or -pathos, but presses on imperturbably as if they came there without his -knowledge. A touch of imagination, such as that when the Prince sits by -his son’s cradle and Roxana observes how “he loved to look at it when it -was asleep”, seems to mean much more to us than to him. After the -curiously modern dissertation upon the need of communicating matters of -importance to a second person lest, like the thief in Newgate, we should -talk of it in our sleep, he apologises for his digression. He seems to -have taken his characters so deeply into his mind that he lived them -without exactly knowing how; and, like all unconscious artists, he -leaves more gold in his work than his own generation was able to bring -to the surface. - -The interpretation that we put on his characters might therefore well -have puzzled him. We find for ourselves meanings which he was careful to -disguise even from himself. Thus it comes about that we admire Moll -Flanders far more than we blame her. Nor can we believe that Defoe had -made up his mind as to the precise degree of her guilt, or was unaware -that in considering the lives of the abandoned he raised many deep -questions and hinted, if he did not state, answers quite at variance -with his professions of belief. From the evidence supplied by his essay -upon the “Education of Women” we know that he had thought deeply and -much in advance of his age upon the capacities of women, which he rated -very high, and the injustice done to them, which he rated very harsh. - - -I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in the -world, considering us as a civilised and a Christian country, that we -deny the advantages of learning to women. We reproach the sex every day -with folly and impertinence; which I am confident, had they the -advantages of education equal to us, they would be guilty of less than -ourselves. - - -The advocates of women’s rights would hardly care, perhaps, to claim -Moll Flanders and Roxana among their patron saints; and yet it is clear -that Defoe not only intended them to speak some very modern doctrines -upon the subject, but placed them in circumstances where their peculiar -hardships are displayed in such a way as to elicit our sympathy. -Courage, said Moll Flanders, was what women needed, and the power to -“stand their ground”; and at once gave practical demonstration of the -benefits that would result. Roxana, a lady of the same profession, -argues more subtly against the slavery of marriage. She “had started a -new thing in the world” the merchant told her; “it was a way of arguing -contrary to the general practise”. But Defoe is the last writer to be -guilty of bald preaching. Roxana keeps our attention because she is -blessedly unconscious that she is in any good sense an example to her -sex and is thus at liberty to own that part of her argument is “of an -elevated strain which was really not in my thoughts at first, at all”. -The knowledge of her own frailties and the honest questioning of her own -motives, which that knowledge begets, have the happy result of keeping -her fresh and human when the martyrs and pioneers of so many problem -novels have shrunken and shrivelled to the pegs and props of their -respective creeds. - -But the claim of Defoe upon our admiration does not rest upon the fact -that he can be shown to have anticipated some of the views of Meredith, -or to have written scenes which (the odd suggestion occurs) might have -been turned into plays by Ibsen. Whatever his ideas upon the position of -women, they are an incidental result of his chief virtue, which is that -he deals with the important and lasting side of things and not with the -passing and trivial. He is often dull. He can imitate the matter-of-fact -precision of a scientific traveller until we wonder that his pen could -trace or his brain conceive what has not even the excuse of truth to -soften its dryness. He leaves out the whole of vegetable nature, and a -large part of human nature. All this we may admit, though we have to -admit defects as grave in many writers whom we call great. But that does -not impair the peculiar merit of what remains. Having at the outset -limited his scope and confined his ambitions he achieves a truth of -insight which is far rarer and more enduring than the truth of fact -which he professed to make his aim. Moll Flanders and her friends -recommended themselves to him not because they were, as we should say, -“picturesque”; nor, as he affirmed, because they were examples of evil -living by which the public might profit. It was their natural veracity, -bred in them by a life of hardship, that excited his interest. For them -there were no excuses; no kindly shelter obscured their motives. Poverty -was their taskmaster. Defoe did not pronounce more than a judgement of -the lips upon their failings. But their courage and resource and -tenacity delighted him. He found their society full of good talk, and -pleasant stories, and faith in each other, and morality of a home-made -kind. Their fortunes had that infinite variety which he praised and -relished and beheld with wonder in his own life. These men and women, -above all, were free to talk openly of the passions and desires which -have moved men and women since the beginning of time, and thus even now -they keep their vitality undiminished. There is a dignity in everything -that is looked at openly. Even the sordid subject of money, which plays -so large a part in their histories, becomes not sordid but tragic when -it stands not for ease and consequence but for honour, honesty and life -itself. You may object that Defoe is humdrum, but never that he is -engrossed with petty things. - -He belongs, indeed, to the school of the great plain writers, whose work -is founded upon a knowledge of what is most persistent, though not most -seductive, in human nature. The view of London from Hungerford Bridge, -grey, serious, massive, and full of the subdued stir of traffic and -business, prosaic if it were not for the masts of the ships and the -towers and domes of the city, brings him to mind. The tattered girls -with violets in their hands at the street corners, and the old -weather-beaten women patiently displaying their matches and bootlaces -beneath the shelter of arches, seem like characters from his books. He -is of the school of Crabbe, and of Gissing, and not merely a fellow -pupil in the same stern place of learning, but its founder and master. - - -[Footnote 6: Written in 1919.] - - - - -_Addison_[7] - - -In July, 1843, Lord Macaulay pronounced the opinion that Joseph Addison -had enriched our literature with compositions “that will live as long as -the English language”. But when Lord Macaulay pronounced an opinion it -was not merely an opinion. Even now, at a distance of seventy-six years, -the words seem to issue from the mouth of the chosen representative of -the people. There is an authority about them, a sonority, a sense of -responsibility, which put us in mind of a Prime Minister making a -proclamation on behalf of a great empire rather than of a journalist -writing about a deceased man of letters for a magazine. The article upon -Addison is, indeed, one of the most vigorous of the famous essays. -Florid, and at the same time extremely solid, the phrases seem to build -up a monument, at once square and lavishly festooned with ornament, -which should serve Addison for shelter so long as one stone of -Westminster Abbey stands upon another. Yet, though we may have read and -admired this particular essay times out of number (as we say when we -have read anything three times over), it has never occurred to us, -strangely enough, to believe that it is true. That is apt to happen to -the admiring reader of Macaulay’s essays. While delighting in their -richness, force, and variety, and finding every judgement, however -emphatic, proper in its place, it seldom occurs to us to connect these -sweeping assertions and undeniable convictions with anything so minute -as a human being. So it is with Addison. “If we wish”, Macaulay writes, -“to find anything more vivid than Addison’s best portraits, we must go -either to Shakespeare or to Cervantes”. “We have not the least doubt -that if Addison had written a novel on an extensive plan it would have -been superior to any that we possess.” His essays, again, “fully entitle -him to the rank of a great poet”; and, to complete the edifice, we have -Voltaire proclaimed “the prince of buffoons”, and together with Swift -forced to stoop so low that Addison takes rank above them both as a -humorist. - -Examined separately, such flourishes of ornament look grotesque enough, -but in their place—such is the persuasive power of design—they are -part of the decoration; they complete the monument. Whether Addison or -another is interred within, it is a very fine tomb. But now that two -centuries have passed since the real body of Addison was laid by night -under the Abbey floor, we are, through no merit of our own, partially -qualified to test the first of the flourishes on that fictitious -tombstone to which, though it may be empty, we have done homage, in a -formal kind of way, these sixty-seven years. The compositions of Addison -will live as long as the English language. Since every moment brings -proof that our mother tongue is more lusty and lively than sorts with -complete sedateness or chastity, we need only concern ourselves with the -vitality of Addison. Neither lusty nor lively is the adjective we should -apply to the present condition of the _Tatler_ and the _Spectator_. To -take a rough test, it is possible to discover how many people in the -course of a year borrow Addison’s works from the public library, and a -particular instance affords us the not very encouraging information that -during nine years two people yearly take out the first volume of the -_Spectator_. The second volume is less in request than the first. The -inquiry is not a cheerful one. From certain marginal comments and pencil -marks it seems that these rare devotees seek out only the famous -passages and, as their habit is, score what we are bold enough to -consider the least admirable phrases. No; if Addison lives at all, it is -not in the public libraries. It is in libraries that are markedly -private, secluded, shaded by lilac trees and brown with folios, that he -still draws his faint, regular breath. If any man or woman is going to -solace himself with a page of Addison before the June sun is out of the -sky to-day, it is in some such pleasant retreat as this. - -Yet all over England at intervals, perhaps wide ones, we may be sure -that there are people engaged in reading Addison, whatever the year or -season. For Addison is very well worth reading. The temptation to read -Pope on Addison, Macaulay on Addison, Thackeray on Addison, Johnson on -Addison rather than Addison himself is to be resisted, for you will -find, if you study the _Tatler_ and the _Spectator_, glance at _Cato_, -and run through the remainder of the six moderate-sized volumes, that -Addison is neither Pope’s Addison nor anybody else’s Addison, but a -separate, independent individual still capable of casting a clear-cut -shape of himself upon the consciousness, turbulent and distracted as it -is, of nineteen hundred and nineteen. It is true that the fate of the -lesser shades is always a little precarious. They are so easily obscured -or distorted. It seems so often scarcely worth while to go through the -cherishing and humanising process which is necessary to get into touch -with a writer of the second class who may, after all, have little to -give us. The earth is crusted over them; their features are obliterated, -and perhaps it is not a head of the best period that we rub clean in the -end, but only the chip of an old pot. The chief difficulty with the -lesser writers, however, is not only the effort. It is that our -standards have changed. The things that they like are not the things -that we like; and as the charm of their writing depends much more upon -taste than upon conviction, a change of manners is often quite enough to -put us out of touch altogether. That is one of the most troublesome -barriers between ourselves and Addison. He attached great importance to -certain qualities. He had a very precise notion of what we are used to -call “niceness” in man or woman. He was extremely fond of saying that -men ought not to be atheists, and that women ought not to wear large -petticoats. This directly inspires in us not so much a sense of distaste -as a sense of difference. Dutifully, if at all, we strain our -imaginations to conceive the kind of audience to whom these precepts -were addressed. The _Tatler_ was published in 1709; the _Spectator_ a -year or two later. What was the state of England at that particular -moment? Why was Addison so anxious to insist upon the necessity of a -decent and cheerful religious belief? Why did he so constantly, and in -the main kindly, lay stress upon the foibles of women and their reform? -Why was he so deeply impressed with the evils of party government? Any -historian will explain; but it is always a misfortune to have to call in -the services of any historian. A writer should give us direct certainty; -explanations are so much water poured into the wine. As it is, we can -only feel that these counsels are addressed to ladies in hoops and -gentlemen in wigs—a vanished audience which has learnt its lesson and -gone its way and the preacher with it. We can only smile and marvel and -perhaps admire the clothes. - -And that is not the way to read. To be thinking that dead people -deserved these censures and admired this morality, judged the eloquence, -which we find so frigid, sublime, the philosophy to us so superficial, -profound, to take a collector’s joy in such signs of antiquity, is to -treat literature as if it were a broken jar of undeniable age but -doubtful beauty, to be stood in a cabinet behind glass doors. The charm -which still makes _Cato_ very readable is much of this nature. When -Syphax exclaims, - - -So, where our wide Numidian wastes extend, -Sudden, th’ impetuous hurricanes descend, -Wheel through the air, in circling eddies play, -Tear up the sands, and sweep whole plains away, -The helpless traveller, with wild surprise, -Sees the dry desert all around him rise, -And smother’d in the dusty whirlwind dies, - - -we cannot help imagining the thrill in the crowded theatre, the feathers -nodding emphatically on the ladies’ heads, the gentlemen leaning forward -to tap their canes, and every one exclaiming to his neighbour how vastly -fine it is and crying “Bravo!” But how can we be excited? And so with -Bishop Hurd and his notes—his “finely observed”, his “wonderfully -exact, both in the sentiment and expression”, his serene confidence that -when “the present humour of idolising Shakespeare is over”, the time will -come when _Cato_ is “supremely admired by all candid and judicious -critics”. This is all very amusing and productive of pleasant fancies, -both as to the faded frippery of our ancestors’ minds and the bold -opulence of our own. But it is not the intercourse of equals, let alone -that other kind of intercourse, which as it makes us contemporary with -the author, persuades us that his object is our own. Occasionally in -_Cato_ one may pick up a few lines that are not obsolete; but for the -most part the tragedy which Dr. Johnson thought “unquestionably the -noblest production of Addison’s genius” has become collector’s -literature. - -Perhaps most readers approach the essays also with some suspicion as to -the need of condescension in their minds. The question to be asked is -whether Addison, attached as he was to certain standards of gentility, -morality, and taste, has not become one of those people of exemplary -character and charming urbanity who must never be talked to about -anything more exciting than the weather. We have some slight suspicion -that the _Spectator_ and the _Tatler_ are nothing but talk, couched in -perfect English, about the number of fine days this year compared with -the number of wet the year before. The difficulty of getting on to equal -terms with him is shown by the little fable which he introduces into one -of the early numbers of the _Tatler_, of “a young gentleman, of moderate -understanding, but great vivacity, who . . . had got a little smattering -of knowledge, just enough to make an atheist or a freethinker, but not a -philosopher, or a man of sense”. This young gentleman visits his father -in the country, and proceeds “to enlarge the narrowness of the country -notions; in which he succeeded so well, that he had seduced the butler -by his table-talk, and staggered his eldest sister. . . . ’Till one day, -talking of his setting dog . . . said ‘he did not question but Tray was -as immortal as any one of the family’; and in the heat of the argument -told his father, that for his own part, ‘he expected to die like a dog’. -Upon which, the old man, starting up in a very great passion, cried out, -‘Then, sirrah, you shall live like one’; and taking his cane in his -hand, cudgelled him out of his system. This had so good an effect upon -him, that he took up from that day, fell to reading good books, and is -now a bencher in the Middle-Temple.” There is a good deal of Addison in -that story: his dislike of “dark and uncomfortable prospects”; his -respect for “principles which are the support, happiness, and glory of -all public societies, as well as private persons”; his solicitude for -the butler; and his conviction that to read good books and become a -bencher in the Middle Temple is the proper end for a very vivacious -young gentleman. This Mr. Addison married a countess, “gave his little -senate laws”, and, sending for young Lord Warwick, made that famous -remark about seeing how a Christian can die which has fallen upon such -evil days that our sympathies are with the foolish, and perhaps fuddled, -young peer rather than with the frigid gentleman, not too far gone for a -last spasm of self-complacency, upon the bed. - -Let us rub off such incrustations, so far as they are due to the -corrosion of Pope’s wit or the deposit of mid-Victorian lachrymosity, -and see what, for us in our time, remains. In the first place, there -remains the not despicable virtue, after two centuries of existence, of -being readable. Addison can fairly lay claim to that; and then, slipped -in on the tide of the smooth, well-turned prose, are little eddies, -diminutive waterfalls, agreeably diversifying the polished surface. We -begin to take note of whims, fancies, peculiarities on the part of the -essayist which light up the prim, impeccable countenance of the moralist -and convince us that, however tightly he may have pursed his lips, his -eyes are very bright and not so shallow after all. He is alert to his -finger tips. Little muffs, silver garters, fringed gloves draw his -attention; he observes with a keen, quick glance, not unkindly, and full -rather of amusement than of censure. To be sure, the age was rich in -follies. Here were coffee-houses packed with politicians talking of -Kings and Emperors and letting their own small affairs go to ruin. -Crowds applauded the Italian opera every night without understanding a -word of it. Critics discoursed of the unities. Men gave a thousand -pounds for a handful of tulip roots. As for women—or “the fair sex”, as -Addison liked to call them—their follies were past counting. He did his -best to count them, with a loving particularity which roused the ill -humour of Swift. But he did it very charmingly, with a natural relish -for the task, as the following passage shows: - - -I consider woman as a beautiful romantic animal, that may be adorned -with furs and feathers, pearls and diamonds, ores and silks. The lynx -shall cast its skin at her feet to make her a tippet; the peacock, -parrot, and swan, shall pay contributions to her muff; the sea shall be -searched for shells, and the rocks for gems; and every part of nature -furnish out its share towards the embellishment of a creature that is -the most consummate work of it. All this I shall indulge them in; but as -for the petticoat I have been speaking of, I neither can nor will allow -it. - - -In all these matters Addison was on the side of sense and taste and -civilisation. Of that little fraternity, often so obscure and yet so -indispensable, who in every age keep themselves alive to the importance -of art and letters and music, watching, discriminating, denouncing and -delighting, Addison was one—distinguished and strangely contemporary -with ourselves. It would have been, so one imagines, a great pleasure to -take him a manuscript; a great enlightenment, as well as a great honour, -to have his opinion. In spite of Pope, one fancies that his would have -been criticism of the best order, open-minded and generous to novelty, -and yet, in the final resort, unfaltering in its standards. The boldness -which is a proof of vigour is shown by his defence of “Chevy Chase”. He -had so clear a notion of what he meant by the “very spirit and soul of -fine writing” as to track it down in an old barbarous ballad or -rediscover it in “that divine work” “Paradise Lost”. Moreover, far from -being a connoisseur only of the still, settled beauties of the dead, he -was aware of the present; a severe critic of its “Gothic taste”, -vigilant in protecting the rights and honours of the language, and all -in favour of simplicity and quiet. Here we have the Addison of Will’s -and Button’s, who, sitting late into the night and drinking more than -was good for him, gradually overcame his taciturnity and began to talk. -Then he “chained the attention of every one to him”. “Addison’s -conversation”, said Pope, “had something in it more charming than I have -found in any other man.” One can well believe it, for his essays at -their best preserve the very cadence of easy yet exquisitely modulated -conversation—the smile checked before it has broadened into laughter, -the thought lightly turned from frivolity or abstraction, the ideas -springing, bright, new, various, with the utmost spontaneity. He seems -to speak what comes into his head, and is never at the trouble of -raising his voice. But he has described himself in the character of the -lute better than any one can do it for him. - - -The lute is a character directly opposite to the drum, that sounds very -finely by itself, or in a very small concert. Its notes are exquisitely -sweet, and very low, easily drowned in a multitude of instruments, and -even lost among a few, unless you give a particular attention to it. A -lute is seldom heard in a company of more than five, whereas a drum will -show itself to advantage in an assembly of 500. The lutanists, -therefore, are men of a fine genius, uncommon reflection, great -affability, and esteemed chiefly by persons of a good taste, who are the -only proper judges of so delightful and soft a melody. - - -Addison was a lutanist. No praise, indeed, could be less appropriate -than Lord Macaulay’s. To call Addison on the strength of his essays a -great poet, or to prophesy that if he had written a novel on an -extensive plan it would have been “superior to any that we possess”, is -to confuse him with the drums and trumpets; it is not merely to -overpraise his merits, but to overlook them. Dr. Johnson superbly, and, -as his manner is, once and for all has summed up the quality of -Addison’s poetic genius: - - -His poetry is first to be considered; of which it must be confessed that -it has not often those felicities of diction which give lustre to -sentiments, or that vigour of sentiment that animates diction; there is -little of ardour, vehemence, or transport; there is very rarely the -awfulness of grandeur, and not very often the splendour of elegance. He -thinks justly; but he thinks faintly. - - -The Sir Roger de Coverley papers are those which have the most -resemblance, on the surface, to a novel. But their merit consists in the -fact that they do not adumbrate, or initiate, or anticipate anything; -they exist, perfect, complete, entire in themselves. To read them as if -they were a first hesitating experiment containing the seed of greatness -to come is to miss the peculiar point of them. They are studies done -from the outside by a quiet spectator. When read together they compose a -portrait of the Squire and his circle all in characteristic -positions—one with his rod, another with his hounds—but each can be -detached from the rest without damage to the design or harm to himself. -In a novel, where each chapter gains from the one before it or adds to -the one that follows it, such separations would be intolerable. The -speed, the intricacy, the design, would be mutilated. These particular -qualities are perhaps lacking, but nevertheless Addison’s method has -great advantages. Each of these essays is very highly finished. The -characters are defined by a succession of extremely neat, clean strokes. -Inevitably, where the sphere is so narrow—an essay is only three or -four pages in length—there is not room for great depth or intricate -subtlety. Here, from the _Spectator_, is a good example of the witty and -decisive manner in which Addison strikes out a portrait to fill the -little frame: - - -Sombrius is one of these sons of sorrow. He thinks himself obliged in -duty to be sad and disconsolate. He looks on a sudden fit of laughter as -a breach of his baptismal vow. An innocent jest startles him like -blasphemy. Tell him of one who is advanced to a title of honour, he -lifts up his hands and eyes; describe a public ceremony, he shakes his -head; shew him a gay equipage, he blesses himself. All the little -ornaments of life are pomps and vanities. Mirth is wanton, and wit -profane. He is scandalized at youth for being lively, and at childhood -for being playful. He sits at a christening, or at a marriage-feast, as -at a funeral; sighs at the conclusion of a merry story, and grows devout -when the rest of the company grow pleasant. After all Sombrius is a -religious man, and would have behaved himself very properly, had he -lived when Christianity was under a general persecution. - - -The novel is not a development from that model, for the good reason that -no development along these lines is possible. Of its kind such a -portrait is perfect; and when we find, scattered up and down the -_Spectator_ and the _Tatler_, numbers of such little masterpieces with -fancies and anecdotes in the same style, some doubt as to the narrowness -of such a sphere becomes inevitable. The form of the essay admits of its -own particular perfection; and if anything is perfect the exact -dimensions of its perfection become immaterial. One can scarcely settle -whether, on the whole, one prefers a raindrop to the River Thames. When -we have said all that we can say against them—that many are dull, -others superficial, the allegories faded, the piety conventional, the -morality trite—there still remains the fact that the essays of Addison -are perfect essays. Always at the highest point of any art there comes a -moment when everything seems in a conspiracy to help the artist, and his -achievement becomes a natural felicity on his part of which he seems, to -a later age, half-unconscious. So Addison, writing day after day, essay -after essay, knew instinctively and exactly how to do it. Whether it was -a high thing, or whether it was a low thing, whether an epic is more -profound or a lyric more passionate, undoubtedly it is due to Addison -that prose is now prosaic—the medium which makes it possible for people -of ordinary intelligence to communicate their ideas to the world. -Addison is the respectable ancestor of an innumerable progeny. Pick up -the first weekly journal and the article upon the “Delights of Summer” -or the “Approach of Age” will show his influence. But it will also show, -unless the name of Mr. Max Beerbohm, our solitary essayist, is attached -to it, that we have lost the art of writing essays. What with our views -and our virtues, our passions and profundities, the shapely silver drop, -that held the sky in it and so many bright little visions of human life, -is now nothing but a hold—all knobbed with luggage packed in a hurry. -Even so, the essayist will make an effort, perhaps without knowing it, -to write like Addison. - -In his temperate and reasonable way Addison more than once amused -himself with speculations as to the fate of his writings. He had a just -idea of their nature and value. “I have new-pointed all the batteries of -ridicule”, he wrote. Yet, because so many of his darts had been directed -against ephemeral follies, “absurd fashions, ridiculous customs, and -affected forms of speech”, the time would come, in a hundred years, -perhaps, when his essays, he thought, would be “like so many pieces of -old plate, where the weight will be regarded, but the fashion lost”. Two -hundred years have passed; the plate is worn smooth; the pattern almost -rubbed out; but the metal is pure silver. - - -[Footnote 7: Written in 1919.] - - - - -_The Lives of the Obscure_ - - -Five shillings, perhaps, will secure a life subscription to this faded, -out-of-date, obsolete library, which with a little help from the rates, -is chiefly subsidised from the shelves of clergymen’s widows, and -country gentlemen inheriting more books than their wives like to dust. -In the middle of the wide airy room, with windows that look to the sea -and let in the shouts of men crying pilchards for sale on the cobbled -street below, a row of vases stands, in which specimens of the local -flowers droop, each with its name inscribed beneath. The elderly, the -marooned, the bored, drift from newspaper to newspaper, or sit holding -their heads over back numbers of _The Illustrated London News_ and the -_Wesleyan Chronicle_. No one has spoken aloud here since the room was -opened in 1854. The obscure sleep on the walls, slouching against each -other as if they were too drowsy to stand upright. Their backs are -flaking off; their titles often vanished. Why disturb their sleep? Why -re-open those peaceful graves, the librarian seems to ask, peering over -his spectacles, and resenting the duty, which indeed has become -laborious, of retrieving from among those nameless tombstones Nos. 1763, -1080, and 606. - - - - -I - -THE TAYLORS AND THE EDGEWORTHS - - -For one likes romantically to feel oneself a deliverer advancing with -lights across the waste of years to the rescue of some stranded ghost—a -Mrs. Pilkington, a Rev. Henry Elman, a Mrs. Ann Gilbert—waiting, -appealing, forgotten, in the growing gloom. Possibly they hear one -coming. They shuffle, they preen, they bridle. Old secrets well up to -their lips. The divine relief of communication will soon again be -theirs. The dust shifts and Mrs. Gilbert—but the contact with life is -instantly salutary. Whatever Mrs. Gilbert may be doing, she is not -thinking about us. Far from it. Colchester, about the year 1800, was for -the young Taylors, as Kensington had been for their mother, “a very -Elysium”. There were the Strutts, the Hills, the Stapletons; there was -poetry, philosophy, engraving. For the young Taylors were brought up to -work hard, and if, after a long day’s toil upon their father’s pictures, -they slipped round to dine with the Strutts they had a right to their -pleasure. Already they had won prizes in Darton and Harvey’s pocketbook. -One of the Strutts knew James Montgomery, and there was talk, at those -gay parties, with the Moorish decorations and all the cats—for old Ben -Strutt was a bit of a character: did not communicate; would not let his -daughters eat meat, so no wonder they died of consumption—there was -talk of printing a joint volume to be called _The Associate Minstrels_, -to which James, if not Robert himself, might contribute. The Stapletons -were poetical, too. Moira and Bithia would wander over the old town wall -at Balkerne Hill reading poetry by moonlight. Perhaps there was a little -too much poetry in Colchester in 1800. Looking back in the middle of a -prosperous and vigorous life, Ann had to lament many broken careers, -much unfulfilled promise. The Stapletons died young, perverted, -miserable; Jacob, with his “dark, scorn-speaking countenance”, who had -vowed that he would spend the night looking for Ann’s lost bracelet in -the street, disappeared, “and I last heard of him vegetating among the -ruins of Rome—himself too much a ruin”; as for the Hills, their fate -was worst of all. To submit to public baptism was flighty, but to marry -Captain M.! Anybody could have warned pretty Fanny Hill against Captain -M. Yet off she drove with him in his fine phaeton. For years nothing -more was heard of her. Then one night, when the Taylors had moved to -Ongar and old Mr. and Mrs. Taylor were sitting over the fire, thinking -how, as it was nine o’clock, and the moon was full, they ought, -according to their promise, to look at it and think of their absent -children, there came a knock at the door. Mrs. Taylor went down to open -it. But who was this sad, shabby-looking woman outside? “Oh, don’t you -remember the Strutts and the Stapletons, and how you warned me against -Captain M.?” cried Fanny Hill, for it was Fanny Hill—poor Fanny Hill, -all worn and sunk; poor Fanny Hill, that used to be so sprightly. She -was living in a lone house not far from the Taylors, forced to drudge -for her husband’s mistress, for Captain M. had wasted all her fortune, -ruined all her life. - -Ann married Mr. G., of course—of course. The words toll persistently -through these obscure volumes. For in the vast world to which the memoir -writers admit us there is a solemn sense of something unescapable, of a -wave gathering beneath the frail flotilla and carrying it on. One thinks -of Colchester in 1800. Scribbling verses, reading Montgomery—so they -begin; the Hills, the Stapletons, the Strutts disperse and disappear as -one knew they would; but here, after long years, is Ann still -scribbling, and at last here is the poet Montgomery himself in her very -house, and she begging him to consecrate her child to poetry by just -holding him in his arms, and he refusing (for he is a bachelor), but -taking her for a walk, and they hear the thunder, and she thinks it the -artillery, and he says in a voice which she will never, never forget: -“Yes! The artillery of Heaven!” It is one of the attractions of the -unknown, their multitude, their vastness; for, instead of keeping their -identity separate, as remarkable people do, they seem to merge into one -another, their very boards and title-pages and frontispieces dissolving, -and their innumerable pages melting into continuous years so that we can -lie back and look up into the fine mist-like substance of countless -lives, and pass unhindered from century to century, from life to life. -Scenes detach themselves. We watch groups. Here is young Mr. Elman -talking to Miss Biffen at Brighton. She has neither arms nor legs; a -footman carries her in and out. She teaches miniature painting to his -sister. Then he is in the stage coach on the road to Oxford with Newman. -Newman says nothing. Elman nevertheless reflects that he has known all -the great men of his time. And so back and so forwards, he paces -eternally the fields of Sussex until, grown to an extreme old age, there -he sits in his Rectory thinking of Newman, thinking of Miss Biffen, and -making—it is his great consolation—string bags for missionaries. And -then? Go on looking. Nothing much happens. But the dim light is -exquisitely refreshing to the eyes. Let us watch little Miss Frend -trotting along the Strand with her father. They meet a man with very -bright eyes. “Mr. Blake,” says Mr. Frend. It is Mrs. Dyer who pours out -tea for them in Clifford’s Inn. Mr. Charles Lamb has just left the room. -Mrs. Dyer says she married George because his washerwoman cheated him -so. What do you think George paid for his shirts, she asks? Gently, -beautifully, like the clouds of a balmy evening, obscurity once more -traverses the sky, an obscurity which is not empty but thick with the -star dust of innumerable lives. And suddenly there is a rift in it, and -we see a wretched little packet-boat pitching off the Irish coast in the -middle of the nineteenth-century. There is an unmistakable air of 1840 -about the tarpaulins and the hairy monsters in sou’westers lurching and -spitting over the sloping decks, yet treating the solitary young woman -who stands in shawl and poke bonnet gazing, gazing, not without -kindness. No, no, no! She will not leave the deck. She will stand there -till it is quite dark, thank you! “Her great love of the sea . . . drew -this exemplary wife and mother every now and then irresistibly away from -home. No one but her husband knew where she had gone, and her children -learnt only later in life that on these occasions, when suddenly she -disappeared for a few days, she was taking short sea voyages . . .” a -crime which she expiated by months of work among the Midland poor. Then -the craving would come upon her, would be confessed in private to her -husband, and off she stole again—the mother of Sir George Newnes. - -One would conclude that human beings were happy, endowed with such -blindness to fate, so indefatigable an interest in their own activities, -were it not for those sudden and astonishing apparitions staring in at -us, all taut and pale in their determination never to be forgotten, men -who have just missed fame, men who have passionately desired -redress—men like Haydon, and Mark Pattison, and the Rev. Blanco White. -And in the whole world there is probably but one person who looks up for -a moment and tries to interpret the menacing face, the furious beckoning -fist, before, in the multitude of human affairs, fragments of faces, -echoes of voices, flying coat-tails, and bonnet strings disappearing -down the shrubbery walks, one’s attention is distracted for ever. What -is that enormous wheel, for example, careering downhill in Berkshire in -the eighteenth-century? It runs faster and faster; suddenly a youth -jumps out from within; next moment it leaps over the edge of a chalk pit -and is dashed to smithereens. This is Edgeworth’s doing—Richard Lovell -Edgeworth, we mean, the portentous bore. - -For that is the way he has come down to us in his two volumes of -memoirs—Byron’s bore, Day’s friend, Maria’s father, the man who almost -invented the telegraph, and did, in fact, invent machines for cutting -turnips, climbing walls, contracting on narrow bridges and lifting their -wheels over obstacles—a man meritorious, industrious, advanced, but -still, as we investigate his memoirs, mainly a bore. Nature endowed him -with irrepressible energy. The blood coursed through his veins at least -twenty times faster than the normal rate. His face was red, round, -vivacious. His brain raced. His tongue never stopped talking. He had -married four wives and had nineteen children, including the novelist -Maria. Moreover, he had known every one and done everything. His energy -burst open the most secret doors and penetrated to the most private -apartments. His wife’s grandmother, for instance, disappeared -mysteriously every day. Edgeworth blundered in upon her and found her, -with her white locks flowing and her eyes streaming, in prayer before a -crucifix. She was a Roman Catholic then, but why a penitent? He found -out somehow that her husband had been killed in a duel, and she had -married the man who killed him. “The consolations of religion are fully -equal to its terrors,” Dick Edgeworth reflected as he stumbled out -again. Then there was the beautiful young woman in the castle among the -forests of Dauphiny. Half paralysed, unable to speak above a whisper, -there she lay when Edgeworth broke in and found her reading. Tapestries -flapped on the castle walls; fifty thousand bats—“odious animals whose -stench is uncommonly noisome”—hung in clusters in the caves beneath. -None of the inhabitants understood a word she said. But to the -Englishman she talked for hour after hour about books and politics and -religion. He listened; no doubt he talked. He sat dumbfounded. But what -could one do for her? Alas, one must leave her lying among the tusks, -and the old men, and the cross-bows, reading, reading, reading. For -Edgeworth was employed in turning the Rhone from its course. He must get -back to his job. One reflection he would make. “I determined on steadily -persevering in the cultivation of my understanding.” - -He was impervious to the romance of the situations in which he found -himself. Every experience served only to fortify his character. He -reflected, he observed, he improved himself daily. You can improve, Mr. -Edgeworth used to tell his children, every day of your life. “He used to -say that with this power of improving they might in time be anything, -and without it in time they would be nothing.” Imperturbable, -indefatigable, daily increasing in sturdy self-assurance, he has the -gift of the egoist. He brings out, as he bustles and bangs on his way, -the diffident, shrinking figures who would otherwise be drowned in -darkness. The aged lady, whose private penance he disturbed, is only one -of a series of figures who start up on either side of his progress, -mute, astonished, showing us in a way that is even now unmistakable, -their amazement at this well-meaning man who bursts in upon them at -their studies and interrupts their prayers. We see him through their -eyes; we see him as he does not dream of being seen. What a tyrant he -was to his first wife! How intolerably she suffered! But she never -utters a word. It is Dick Edgeworth who tells her story in complete -ignorance that he is doing anything of the kind. “It was a singular -trait of character in my wife,” he observes, “who had never shown any -uneasiness at my intimacy with Sir Francis Delaval, that she should take -a strong dislike to Mr. Day. A more dangerous and seductive companion -than the one, or a more moral and improving companion than the other, -could not be found in England.” It was, indeed, very singular. - -For the first Mrs. Edgeworth was a penniless girl, the daughter of a -ruined country gentleman, who sat over his fire picking cinders from the -hearth and throwing them into the grate, while from time to time he -ejaculated “Hein! Heing!” as yet another scheme for making his fortune -came into his head. She had had no education. An itinerant -writing-master had taught her to form a few words. When Dick Edgeworth -was an undergraduate and rode over from Oxford she fell in love with him -and married him in order to escape the poverty and the mystery and the -dirt, and to have a husband and children like other women. But with what -result? Gigantic wheels ran downhill with the bricklayer’s son inside -them. Sailing carriages took flight and almost wrecked four stage -coaches. Machines did cut turnips, but not very efficiently. Her little -boy was allowed to roam the country like a poor man’s son, bare-legged, -untaught. And Mr. Day, coming to breakfast and staying to dinner, argued -incessantly about scientific principles and the laws of nature. - -But here we encounter one of the pitfalls of this nocturnal rambling -among forgotten worthies. It is so difficult to keep, as we must with -highly authenticated people, strictly to the facts. It is so difficult -to refrain from making scenes which, if the past could be recalled, -might perhaps be found lacking in accuracy. With a character like Thomas -Day, in particular, whose history surpasses the bounds of the credible, -we find ourselves oozing amazement, like a sponge which has absorbed so -much that it can retain no more but fairly drips. Certain scenes have -the fascination which belongs rather to the abundance of fiction than to -the sobriety of fact. For instance, we conjure up all the drama of poor -Mrs. Edgeworth’s daily life; her bewilderment, her loneliness, her -despair, how she must have wondered whether any one really wanted -machines to climb walls, and assured the gentlemen that turnips were -better cut simply with a knife, and so blundered and floundered and been -snubbed that she dreaded the almost daily arrival of the tall young man -with his pompous, melancholy face, marked by the smallpox, his profusion -of uncombed black hair, and his finical cleanliness of hands and person. -He talked fast, fluently, incessantly, for hours at a time about -philosophy and nature, and M. Rousseau. Yet it was her house; she had to -see to his meals, and, though he ate as though he were half asleep, his -appetite was enormous. But it was no use complaining to her husband. -Edgeworth said, “She lamented about trifles.” He went on to say: “The -lamenting of a female with whom we live does not render home -delightful.” And then, with his obtuse open-mindedness, he asked her -what she had to complain of? Did he ever leave her alone? In the five or -six years of their married life he had slept from home not more than -five or six times. Mr. Day could corroborate that. Mr. Day corroborated -everything that Mr. Edgeworth said. He egged him on with his -experiments. He told him to leave his son without education. He did not -care a rap what the people of Henley said. In short, he was at the -bottom of all the absurdities and extravagances which made Mrs. -Edgeworth’s life a burden to her. - -Yet let us choose another scene—one of the last that poor Mrs. -Edgeworth was to behold. She was returning from Lyons, and Mr. Day was -her escort. A more singular figure, as he stood on the deck of the -packet which took them to Dover, very tall, very upright, one finger in -the breast of his coat, letting the wind blow his hair out, dressed -absurdly, though in the height of fashion, wild, romantic, yet at the -same time authoritative and pompous, could scarcely be imagined; and -this strange creature, who loathed women, was in charge of a lady who -was about to become a mother, had adopted two orphan girls, and had set -himself to win the hand of Miss Elizabeth Sneyd by standing between -boards for six hours daily in order to learn to dance. Now and again he -pointed his toe with rigid precision; then, waking from the congenial -dream into which the dark clouds, the flying waters, and the shadow of -England upon the horizon had thrown him, he rapped out an order in the -smart, affected tones of a man of the world. The sailors stared, but -they obeyed. There was something sincere about him, something proudly -indifferent to what you thought; yes, something comforting and humane, -too, so that Mrs. Edgeworth for her part was determined never to laugh -at him again. But men were strange; life was difficult, and with a sigh -of bewilderment, perhaps of relief, poor Mrs. Edgeworth landed at Dover, -was brought to bed of a daughter, and died. - -Day meanwhile proceeded to Lichfield. Elizabeth Sneyd, of course, -refused him—gave a great cry, people said; exclaimed that she had loved -Day the blackguard, but hated Day the gentleman, and rushed from the -room. And then, they said, a terrible thing happened. Mr. Day, in his -rage, bethought him of the orphan, Sabrina Sydney, whom he had bred to -be his wife; visited her at Sutton Coldfield; flew into a passion at the -sight of her; fired a pistol at her skirts, poured melted sealing wax -over her arms, and boxed her ears. “No; I could never have done that,” -Mr. Edgeworth used to say, when people described the scene. And whenever -to the end of his life he thought of Thomas Day he fell silent. So -great, so passionate, so inconsistent—his life had been a tragedy, and -in thinking of his friend, the best friend he had ever had, Richard -Edgeworth fell silent. - -It is almost the only occasion upon which silence is recorded of him. To -muse, to repent, to contemplate were foreign to his nature. His wife and -friends and children are silhouetted with extreme vividness upon a broad -disc of interminable chatter. Upon no other background could we realise -so clearly the sharp fragment of his first wife, or the shades and -depths which make up the character, at once humane and brutal, advanced -and hidebound of the inconsistent philosopher, Thomas Day. But his power -is not limited to people; landscapes, groups, societies seem, even as he -describes them, to split off from him, to be projected away, so that we -are able to run just ahead of him and anticipate his coming. They are -brought out all the more vividly by the extreme incongruity which so -often marks his comment and stamps his presence; they live with a -peculiar beauty, fantastic, solemn, mysterious, in contrast with -Edgeworth, who is none of these things. In particular, he brings before -us a garden in Cheshire, the garden of a parsonage, an ancient but -commodious parsonage. - -One pushed through a white gate and found oneself in a grass court, -small but well kept, with roses growing in the hedges and grapes hanging -from the walls. But what, in the name of wonder, were those objects in -the middle of the grass plot? Through the dusk of an autumn evening -there shone out an enormous white globe. Round it at various distances -were others of different sizes—the planets and their satellites, it -seemed. But who could have placed them there, and why? The house was -silent; the windows shut; nobody was stirring. Then, furtively peeping -from behind a curtain, appeared for a second the face of an elderly man, -handsome, dishevelled, distraught. It vanished. - -In some mysterious way, human beings inflict their own vagaries upon -nature. Moths and birds must have flitted more silently through the -little garden; over everything must have brooded the same fantastic -peace. Then, red-faced, garrulous, inquisitive, in burst Richard Lovell -Edgeworth. He looked at the globes; he satisfied himself that they were -of “accurate design and workmanlike construction”. He knocked at the -door. He knocked and knocked. No one came. At length, as his impatience -was overcoming him, slowly the latch was undone, gradually the door was -opened; a clergyman, neglected, unkempt, but still a gentleman, stood -before him. Edgeworth named himself, and they retired to a parlour -littered with books and papers and valuable furniture now fallen to -decay. At last, unable to control his curiosity any longer, Edgeworth -asked what were the globes in the garden? Instantly the clergyman -displayed extreme agitation. It was his son who had made them, he -exclaimed; a boy of genius, a boy of the greatest industry, and of -virtue and acquirements far beyond his age. But he had died. His wife -had died. Edgeworth tried to turn the conversation, but in vain. The -poor man rushed on passionately, incoherently about his son, his genius, -his death. “It struck me that his grief had injured his understanding,” -said Edgeworth, and he was becoming more and more uncomfortable when the -door opened and a girl of fourteen or fifteen, entering with a tea-tray -in her hand, suddenly changed the course of his host’s conversation. -Indeed, she was beautiful; dressed in white; her nose a shade too -prominent, perhaps—but no, her proportions were exquisitely right. “She -is a scholar and an artist!” the clergyman exclaimed as she left the -room. But why did she leave the room? If she was his daughter why did -she not preside at the tea-table? Was she his mistress? Who was she? And -why was the house in this state of litter and decay? Why was the front -door locked? Why was the clergyman apparently a prisoner, and what was -his secret story? Questions began to crowd into Edgeworth’s head as he -sat drinking his tea; but he could only shake his head and make one last -reflection, “I feared that something was not right,” as he shut the -white wicket gate behind him, and left alone for ever in the untidy -house among the planets and their satellites, the mad clergyman and the -lovely girl. - - - - -II - -LAETITIA PILKINGTON - - -Let us bother the librarian once again. Let us ask him to reach down, -dust, and hand over to us that little brown book over there, the Memoirs -of Mrs. Pilkington, three volumes bound in one, printed by Peter Hoey in -Dublin, MDCCLXXVI. The deepest obscurity shades her retreat; the dust -lies heavy on her tomb—one board is loose, that is to say, and nobody -has read her since early in the last century when a reader, presumably a -lady, whether disgusted by her obscenity or stricken by the hand of -death, left off in the middle and marked her place with a faded list of -goods and groceries. If ever a woman wanted a champion, it is obviously -Laetitia Pilkington. Who then was she? - -Can you imagine a very extraordinary cross between Moll Flanders and -Lady Ritchie, between a rolling and rollicking woman of the town and a -lady of breeding and refinement? Laetitia Pilkington (1712–1759) was -something of the sort—shady, shifty, adventurous, and yet, like -Thackeray’s daughter, like Miss Mitford, like Madame de Sévigné and -Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth, so imbued with the old traditions of -her sex that she wrote, as ladies talk, to give pleasure. Throughout her -_Memoirs_, we can never forget that it is her wish to entertain, her -unhappy fate to sob. Dabbing her eyes and controlling her anguish, she -begs us to forgive an odious breach of manners which only the suffering -of a lifetime, the intolerable persecutions of Mr. P——n, the -malignant, she must say the h——h, spite of Lady C——t can excuse. -For who should know better than the Earl of Killmallock’s -great-granddaughter that it is the part of a lady to hide her -sufferings? Thus Laetitia is in the great tradition of English women of -letters. It is her duty to entertain; it is her instinct to conceal. -Still, though her room near the Royal Exchange is threadbare, and the -table is spread with old play-bills instead of a cloth, and the butter -is served in a shoe, and Mr. Worsdale has used the teapot to fetch small -beer that very morning, still she presides, still she entertains. Her -language is a trifle coarse, perhaps. But who taught her English? The -great Doctor Swift. - -In all her wanderings, which were many and in her failings, which were -great, she looked back to those early Irish days when Swift had pinched -her into propriety of speech. He had beaten her for fumbling at a -drawer: he had daubed her cheeks with burnt cork to try her temper; he -had bade her pull off her shoes and stockings and stand against the -wainscot and let him measure her. At first she had refused; then she had -yielded. “Why,” said the Dean, “I suspected you had either broken -Stockings or foul toes, and in either case should have delighted to -expose you.” Three feet two inches was all she measured, he declared, -though, as Laetitia complained, the weight of Swift’s hand on her head -had made her shrink to half her size. But she was foolish to complain. -Probably she owed her intimacy to that very fact—she was only three -feet two. Swift had lived, a lifetime among the giants; now there was a -charm in dwarfs. He took the little creature into his library. “‘Well,’ -said he, ‘I have brought you here to show you all the Money I got when I -was in the Ministry, but don’t steal any of it.’ ‘I won’t, indeed. Sir,’ -said I; so he opened a Cabinet, and showed me a whole parcel of empty -drawers. ‘Bless me,’ says he, ‘the Money is flown.’” There was a charm -in her surprise; there was a charm in her humility. He could beat her -and bully her, make her shout when he was deaf, force her husband to -drink the lees of the wine, pay their cab fares, stuff guineas into a -piece of gingerbread, and relent surprisingly, as if there were -something grimly pleasing to him in the thought of so foolish a midget -setting up to have a life and a mind of her own. For with Swift she was -herself; it was the effect of his genius. She had to pull off her -stockings if he told her to. So, though his satire terrified her, and -she found it highly unpleasant to dine at the Deanery and see him -watching, in the great glass which hung before him for that purpose, the -butler stealing beer at the sideboard, she knew that it was a privilege -to walk with him in his garden; to hear him talk of Mr. Pope and quote -Hudibras; and then be hustled back in the rain to save coach hire, and -then to sit chatting in the parlour with Mrs. Brent, the housekeeper, -about the Dean’s oddity and charity, and how the sixpence he saved on -the coach he gave to the lame old man who sold gingerbread at the -corner, while the Dean dashed up the front stairs and down the back so -violently that she was afraid he would fall and hurt himself. - -But memories of great men are no infallible specific. They fall upon the -race of life like beams from a lighthouse. They flash, they shock, they -reveal, they vanish. To remember Swift was of little avail to Laetitia -when the troubles of life came thick about her. Mr. Pilkington left her -for Widow W—rr—n. Her father—her dear father—died. The sheriff’s -officers insulted her. She was deserted in an empty house with two -children to provide for. The tea chest was secured, the garden gate -locked, and the bills left unpaid. And still she was young and -attractive and gay, with an inordinate passion for scribbling verses and -an incredible hunger for reading books. It was this that was her -undoing. The book was fascinating and the hour late. The gentleman would -not lend it, but would stay till she had finished. They sat in her -bedroom. It was highly indiscreet, she owned. Suddenly twelve watchmen -broke through the kitchen window, and Mr. Pilkington appeared with a -cambric handkerchief tied about his neck. Swords were drawn and heads -broken. As for her excuse, how could one expect Mr. Pilkington and the -twelve watchmen to believe that? Only reading! Only sitting up late to -finish a new book! Mr. Pilkington and the watchmen interpreted the -situation as such men would. But lovers of learning, she is persuaded, -will understand her passion and deplore its consequences. - -And now what was she to do? Reading had played her false, but still she -could write. Ever since she could form her letters, indeed, she had -written, with incredible speed and considerable grace, odes, addresses, -apostrophes to Miss Hoadley, to the Recorder of Dublin, to Dr. -Delville’s place in the country. “Hail, happy Delville, blissful seat!” -“Is there a man whose fixed and steady gaze——”—the verses flowed -without the slightest difficulty on the slightest occasion. Now, -therefore, crossing to England, she set up, as her advertisement had it, -to write letters upon any subject, except the law, for twelve pence -ready money, and no trust given. She lodged opposite White’s Chocolate -House, and there, in the evening, as she watered her flowers on the -leads, the noble gentlemen in the window across the road drank her -health, sent her over a bottle of burgundy; and later she heard old -Colonel——crying, “Poke after me, my lord, poke after me,” as he -shepherded the D—— of M—lb—gh up her dark stairs. That lovely -gentleman, who honoured his title by wearing it, kissed her, -complimented her, opened his pocketbook, and left her with a banknote -for fifty pounds upon Sir Francis Child. Such tributes stimulated her -pen to astonishing outbursts of impromptu gratitude. If, on the other -hand, a gentleman refused to buy or a lady hinted impropriety, this same -flowery pen writhed and twisted in agonies of hate and vituperation. -“Had I said that your F——r died Blaspheming the Almighty”, one of her -accusations begins, but the end is unprintable. Great ladies were -accused of every depravity, and the clergy, unless their taste in poetry -was above reproach, suffered an incessant castigation. Mr. Pilkington, -she never forgot, was a clergyman. - -Slowly but surely the Earl of Killmallock’s great-granddaughter -descended in the social scale. From St. James’s Street and its noble -benefactors she migrated to Green Street to lodge with Lord Stair’s -_valet de chambre_ and his wife, who washed for persons of distinction. -She, who had dallied with dukes, was glad for company’s sake to take a -hand at quadrille with footmen and laundresses and Grub Street writers, -who, as they drank porter, sipped green tea, and smoked tobacco, told -stories of the utmost scurrility about their masters and mistresses. The -spiciness of their conversation made amends for the vulgarity of their -manners. From them Laetitia picked up those anecdotes of the great which -sprinkled her pages with dashes and served her purpose when subscribers -failed and landladies grew insolent. Indeed, it was a hard life—to -trudge to Chelsea in the snow wearing nothing but a chintz gown and be -put off with a beggarly half-crown by Sir Hans Sloane; next to tramp to -Ormond Street and extract two guineas from the odious Dr. Meade, which, -in her glee, she tossed in the air and lost in a crack of the floor; to -be insulted by footmen; to sit down to a dish of boiling water because -her landlady must not guess that a pinch of tea was beyond her means. -Twice on moonlight nights, with the lime trees in flower, she wandered -in St. James’s Park and contemplated suicide in Rosamond’s Pond. Once, -musing among the tombs in Westminster Abbey, the door was locked on her, -and she had to spend the night in the pulpit wrapped in a carpet from -the Communion Table to protect herself from the assaults of rats. “I -long to listen to the young-ey’d cherubims!” she exclaimed. But a very -different fate was in store for her. In spite of Mr. Colley Cibber, and -Mr. Richardson, who supplied her first with gilt-edged notepaper and -then with baby linen, those harpies, her landladies, after drinking her -ale, devouring her lobsters, and failing often for years at a time to -comb their hair, succeeded in driving Swift’s friend, and the Earl’s -great-granddaughter, to be imprisoned with common debtors in the -Marshalsea. - -Bitterly she cursed her husband who had made her a lady of adventure -instead of what nature intended, “a harmless household dove”. More and -more wildly she ransacked her brains for anecdotes, memories, scandals, -views about the bottomless nature of the sea, the inflammable character -of the earth—anything that would fill a page and earn her a guinea. She -remembered that she had eaten plovers’ eggs with Swift. “Here, Hussey,” -said he, “is a Plover’s egg. King William used to give crowns apiece for -them. . . .” Swift never laughed, she remembered. He used to suck in his -cheeks instead of laughing. And what else could she remember? A great -many gentlemen, a great many landladies; how the window was thrown up -when her father died, and her sister came downstairs with the -sugar-basin, laughing. All had been bitterness and struggle, except that -she had loved Shakespeare, known Swift, and kept through all the shifts -and shades of an adventurous career a gay spirit, something of a lady’s -breeding, and the gallantry which, at the end of her short life, led her -to crack her joke and enjoy her duck with death at her heart and duns at -her pillow. - - - - -III - -MISS ORMEROD[8] - - -The trees stood massively in all their summer foliage spotted and -grouped upon a meadow which sloped gently down from the big white house. -There were unmistakable signs of the year 1835 both in the trees and in -the sky, for modern trees are not nearly so voluminous as these ones, -and the sky of those days had a kind of pale diffusion in its texture -which was different from the more concentrated tone of the skies we -know. - -Mr. George Ormerod stepped from the drawing-room window of Sedbury -House, Gloucestershire, wearing a tall furry hat and white trousers -strapped under his instep; he was closely, though deferentially, -followed by a lady wearing a yellow-spotted dress over a crinoline, and -behind her, singly and arm in arm, came nine children in nankeen jackets -and long white drawers. They were going to see the water let out of a -pond. - -The youngest child, Eleanor, a little girl with a pale face, rather -elongated features, and black hair, was left by herself in the -drawing-room, a large sallow apartment with pillars, two chandeliers, -for some reason enclosed in holland bags, and several octagonal tables -some of inlaid wood and others of greenish malachite. At one of these -little Eleanor Ormerod was seated in a high chair. - -“Now, Eleanor,” said her mother, as the party assembled for the -expedition to the pond, “here are some pretty beetles. Don’t touch the -glass. Don’t get down from your chair, and when we come back little -George will tell you all about it.” - -So saying, Mrs. Ormerod placed a tumbler of water containing about half -a dozen great water grubs in the middle of the malachite table, at a -safe distance from the child, and followed her husband down the slope of -old-fashioned turf towards a cluster of extremely old-fashioned sheep; -opening, directly she stepped on to the terrace, a tiny parasol of -bottle green silk with a bottle green fringe, though the sky was like -nothing so much as a flock bed covered with a counterpane of white -dimity. - -The plump pale grubs gyrated slowly round and round in the tumbler. So -simple an entertainment must surely soon have ceased to satisfy. Surely -Eleanor would shake the tumbler, upset the grubs, and scramble down from -her chair. Why, even a grown person can hardly watch those grubs -crawling down the glass wall, then floating to the surface, without a -sense of boredom not untinged with disgust. But the child sat perfectly -still. Was it her custom, then, to be entertained by the gyrations of -grubs? Her eyes were reflective, even critical. But they shone with -increasing excitement. She beat one hand upon the edge of the table. -What was the reason? One of the grubs had ceased to float: he lay at the -bottom; the rest, descending, proceeded to tear him to pieces. - -“And how has little Eleanor enjoyed herself?” asked Mr. Ormerod, in -rather a deep voice, stepping into the room and with a slight air of -heat and of fatigue upon his face. - -“Papa,” said Eleanor, almost interrupting her father in her eagerness to -impart her observation, “I saw one of the grubs fall down and the rest -came and ate him!” - -“Nonsense, Eleanor,” said Mr. Ormerod. “You are not telling the truth.” -He looked severely at the tumbler in which the beetles were still -gyrating as before. - -“Papa, it was true!” - -“Eleanor, little girls are not allowed to contradict their fathers,” -said Mrs. Ormerod, coming in through the window, and closing her green -parasol with a snap. - -“Let this be a lesson,” Mr. Ormerod began, signing to the other children -to approach, when the door opened, and the servant announced, - -“Captain Fenton.” - -Captain Fenton “was at times thought to be tedious in his recurrence to -the charge of the Scots Greys in which he had served at the battle of -Waterloo.” - - -But what is this crowd gathered round the door of the George Hotel in -Chepstow? A faint cheer rises from the bottom of the hill. Up comes the -mail coach, horses steaming, panels mud-splashed. “Make way! Make way!” -cries the ostler and the vehicle dashes into the courtyard, pulls up -sharp before the door. Down jumps the coachman, the horses are led off, -and a fine team of spanking greys is harnessed with incredible speed in -their stead. Upon all this—coachman, horses, coach, and passengers—the -crowd looked with gaping admiration every Wednesday evening all through -the year. But to-day, the twelfth of March, 1852, as the coachman -settled his rug, and stretched his hands for the reins, he observed that -instead of being fixed upon him, the eyes of the people of Chepstow -darted this way and that. Heads were jerked. Arms flung out. Here a hat -swooped in a semi-circle. Off drove the coach almost unnoticed. As it -turned the corner all the outside passengers craned their necks, and one -gentleman rose to his feet and shouted, “There! there! there!” before he -was bowled into eternity. It was an insect—a red-winged insect. Out the -people of Chepstow poured into the high road; down the hill they ran; -always the insect flew in front of them; at length by Chepstow Bridge a -young man, throwing his bandanna over the blade of an oar, captured it -alive and presented it to a highly respectable elderly gentleman who now -came puffing upon the scene—Samuel Budge, doctor, of Chepstow. By -Samuel Budge it was presented to Miss Ormerod; by her sent to a -professor at Oxford. And he, declaring it “a fine specimen of the rose -underwinged locust” added the gratifying information that it “was the -first of the kind to be captured so far west.” - - -And so, at the age of twenty-four Miss Eleanor Ormerod was thought the -proper person to receive the gift of a locust. - -When Eleanor Ormerod appeared at archery meetings and croquet -tournaments young men pulled their whiskers and young ladies looked -grave. It was so difficult to make friends with a girl who could talk of -nothing but black beetles and earwigs—“Yes, that’s what she likes, -isn’t it queer?—Why, the other day Ellen, Mama’s maid, heard from Jane, -who’s under-kitchenmaid at Sedbury House, that Eleanor tried to boil a -beetle in the kitchen saucepan and he wouldn’t die, and swam round and -round, and she got into a terrible state and sent the groom all the way -to Gloucester to fetch chloroform—all for an insect, my dear!—and she -gives the cottagers shillings to collect beetles for her—and she spends -hours in her bedroom cutting them up—and she climbs trees like a boy to -find wasps’ nests—oh, you can’t think what they don’t say about her in -the village—for she does look so odd, dressed anyhow, with that great -big nose and those bright little eyes, so like a caterpillar herself, I -always think—but of course she’s wonderfully clever and very good, too, -both of them. Georgiana has a lending library for the cottagers, and -Eleanor never misses a service—but there she is—that short pale girl -in the large bonnet. Do go and talk to her, for I’m sure I’m too stupid, -but you’d find plenty to say—” But neither Fred nor Arthur, Henry nor -William found anything to say— - - -“. . . probably the lecturer would have been equally well pleased -had none of her own sex put in an appearance.” - -This comment upon a lecture delivered in the year 1889 throws some -light, perhaps, upon archery meetings in the ’fifties. - - -It being nine o’clock on a February night some time about 1862 all the -Ormerods were in the library; Mr. Ormerod making architectural designs -at a table; Mrs. Ormerod lying on a sofa making pencil drawings upon -grey paper; Eleanor making a model of a snake to serve as a paper -weight; Georgiana making a copy of the font in Tidenham Church; some of -the others examining books with beautiful illustrations; while at -intervals someone rose, unlocked the wire book case, took down a volume -for instruction or entertainment, and perused it beneath the chandelier. - -Mr. Ormerod required complete silence for his studies. His word was law, -even to the dogs, who, in the absence of their master, instinctively -obeyed the eldest male person in the room. Some whispered colloquy there -might be between Mrs. Ormerod and her daughters— - -“The draught under the pew was really worse than ever this morning, -Mama—” - -“And we could only unfasten the latch in the chancel because Eleanor -happened to have her ruler with her—” - -“—hm—m—m. Dr. Armstrong—Hm—m—m—” - -“—Anyhow things aren’t as bad with us as they are at Kinghampton. They -say Mrs. Briscoe’s Newfoundland dog follows her right up to the chancel -rails when she takes the sacrament—” - -“And the turkey is still sitting on its eggs in the pulpit.” - -—“The period of incubation for a turkey is between three and four -weeks”—said Eleanor, thoughtfully looking up from her cast of the snake -and forgetting, in the interest of her subject, to speak in a whisper. - -“Am I to be allowed no peace in my own house?” Mr. Ormerod exclaimed -angrily, rapping with his ruler on the table, upon which Mrs. Ormerod -half shut one eye and squeezed a little blob of Chinese white on to her -high light, and they remained silent until the servants came in, when -everyone, with the exception of Mrs. Ormerod, fell on their knees. For -she, poor lady, suffered from a chronic complaint and left the family -party forever a year or two later, when the green sofa was moved into -the corner, and the drawings given to her nieces in memory of her. But -Mr. Ormerod went on making architectural drawings at nine p.m. every -night (save on Sundays when he read a sermon) until he too lay upon the -green sofa, which had not been used since Mrs. Ormerod lay there, but -still looked much the same. “We deeply felt the happiness of ministering -to his welfare,” Miss Ormerod wrote, “for he would not hear of our -leaving him for even twenty-four hours and he objected to visits from my -brothers excepting occasionally for a short time. They, not being used -to the gentle ways necessary for an aged invalid, worried him . . . the -Thursday following, the 9th October, 1873, he passed gently away at the -mature age of eighty-seven years.” Oh, graves in country -churchyards—respectable burials—mature old gentlemen—D.C.L., LL.D., -F.R.S., F.S.A.—lots of letters come after your names, but lots of women -are buried with you! - - -There remained the Hessian Fly and the Bot—mysterious insects! Not, one -would have thought, among God’s most triumphant creations, and yet—if -you see them under a microscope!—the Bot, obese, globular, obscene; -the Hessian, booted, spurred, whiskered, cadaverous. Next slip under the -glass an innocent grain; behold it pock-marked and livid; or take this -strip of hide, and note those odious pullulating lumps—well, what does -the landscape look like then? - -The only palatable object for the eye to rest on in acres of England is -a lump of Paris Green. But English people won’t use microscopes; you -can’t make them use Paris Green either—or if they do, they let it -drip. Dr. Ritzema Bos is a great stand-by. For they won’t take a woman’s -word. And indeed, though for the sake of the Ox Warble one must stretch -a point, there are matters, questions of stock infestation, things one -has to go into—things a lady doesn’t even like to see, much less -discuss, in print—“these, I say, I intend to leave entirely to the -Veterinary surgeons. My brother—oh, he’s dead now—a very good man—for -whom I collected wasps’ nests—lived at Brighton and wrote about -wasps—he, I say, wouldn’t let me learn anatomy, never liked me to do -more than take sections of teeth.” - -Ah, but Eleanor, the Bot and the Hessian have more power over you than -Mr. Edward Ormerod himself. Under the microscope you clearly perceive -that these insects have organs, orifices, excrement; they do, most -emphatically, copulate. Escorted on the one side by the Bos or Warble, -on the other by the Hessian Fly, Miss Ormerod advanced statelily, if -slowly, into the open. Never did her features show more sublime than -when lit up by the candour of her avowal. “This is excrement; these, -though Ritzema Bos is positive to the contrary, are the generative -organs of the male. I’ve proved it.” Upon her head the hood of Edinburgh -most fitly descended; pioneer of purity even more than of Paris Green. - - -“If you’re sure I’m not in your way,” said Miss Lipscomb unstrapping her -paint box and planting her tripod firmly in the path, “—I’ll try to get -a picture of those lovely hydrangeas against the sky—What flowers you -have in Penzance!” - -The market gardener crossed his hands on his hoe, slowly twined a piece -of bass round his finger, looked at the sky, said something about the -sun, also about the prevalence of lady artists, and then, with a nod of -his head, observed sententiously that it was to a lady that he owed -everything he had. - -“Ah?” said Miss Lipscomb, flattered, but already much occupied with her -composition. - -“A lady with a queer-sounding name,” said Mr. Pascoe, “but that’s the -lady I’ve called my little girl after—I don’t think there’s such -another in Christendom.” - -Of course it was Miss Ormerod, equally of course Miss Lipscomb was the -sister of Miss Ormerod’s family doctor; and so she did no sketching that -morning, but left with a handsome bunch of grapes instead—for every -flower had drooped, ruin had stared him in the face—he had written, not -believing one bit what they told him—to the lady with the queer name, -back there came a book “In-ju-ri-ous In-sects,” with the page turned -down, perhaps by her very hand, also a letter which he kept at home -under the clock, but he knew every word by heart, since it was due to -what she said there that he wasn’t a ruined man—and the tears ran down -his face and Miss Lipscomb, clearing a space on the lodging-house table, -wrote the whole story to her brother. - -“The prejudice against Paris Green certainly seems to be dying down,” -said Miss Ormerod when she read it.—“But now,” she sighed rather -heavily, being no longer young and much afflicted with the gout, “now -it’s the sparrows.” - -One might have thought that _they_ would have left her alone—innocent -dirt-grey birds, taking more than their share of the breakfast crumbs, -otherwise inoffensive. But once you look through a microscope—once you -see the Hessian and the Bot as they really are—there’s no peace for an -elderly lady pacing her terrace on a fine May morning. For example, why, -when there are crumbs enough for all, do only the sparrows get them? Why -not swallows or martins? Why—oh, here come the servants for prayers— - -“Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against -us. . . . For thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory, for -ever and ever. Amen—” - -“The Times, ma’am—” - -“Thank you, Dixon. . . . The Queen’s birthday! We must drink her -Majesty’s health in the old white port, Dixon. Home Rule—tut—tut—tut. -All that madman Gladstone. My father would have thought the world was -coming to an end, and I’m not at all sure that it isn’t. I must talk to -Dr. Lipscomb—” - -Yet all the time in the tail of her eye she saw myriads of sparrows, and -retiring to the study proclaimed in a pamphlet of which 36,000 copies -were gratuitously distributed that the sparrow is a pest. - -“When he eats an insect,” she said to her sister Georgians, “which -isn’t often, it’s one of the few insects that one wants to keep—one of -the very few,” she added with a touch of acidity natural to one whose -investigations have all tended to the discredit of the insect race. - -“But there’ll be some very unpleasant consequences to face,” she -concluded—“Very unpleasant indeed.” - -Happily the port was now brought in, the servants assembled; and Miss -Ormerod, rising to her feet, gave the toast “Her Blessed Majesty.” She -was extremely loyal, and moreover she liked nothing better than a glass -of her father’s old white port. She kept his pigtail, too, in a box. - -Such being her disposition it went hard with her to analyse the -sparrow’s crop, for the sparrow she felt, symbolises something of the -homely virtue of English domestic life, and to proclaim it stuffed with -deceit was disloyal to much that she, and her fathers before her, held -dear. Sure enough the clergy—the Rev. J. E. Walker—denounced her for -her brutality; “God Save the Sparrow!” exclaimed the Animal’s Friend; -and Miss Carrington, of the Humanitarian League, replied in a leaflet -described by Miss Ormerod as “spirity, discourteous, and inaccurate.” - -“Well,” said Miss Ormerod to her sister, “it did me no harm before to be -threatened to be shot at, also hanged in effigy, and other little -attentions.” - -“Still it was very disagreeable, Eleanor—more disagreeable I believe, -to me than to you,” said Georgiana. Soon Georgiana died. She had however -finished the beautiful series of insect diagrams at which she worked -every morning in the dining-room and they were presented to Edinburgh -University. But Eleanor was never the same woman after that. - -Dear forest fly—flour moths—weevils—grouse and cheese -flies—beetles—foreign correspondents—eel worms—ladybirds—wheat -midges—resignation from the Royal Agricultural Society—gall -mites—boot beetles—Announcement of honorary degree to be -conferred—feelings of appreciation and anxiety—paper on wasps—last -annual report warnings of serious illness—proposed pension—gradual -loss of strength—Finally Death. - -That is life, so they say. - - -“It does no good to keep people waiting for an answer,” sighed Miss -Ormerod, “though I don’t feel as able as I did since that unlucky -accident at Waterloo. And no one realises what the strain of the work -is—often I’m the only lady in the room, and the gentlemen so learned, -though I’ve always found them most helpful, most generous in every way. -But I’m growing old. Miss Hartwell, that’s what it is. That’s what led -me to be thinking of this difficult matter of flour infestation in the -middle of the road so that I didn’t see the horse until he had poked his -nose into my ear. . . . Then there’s this nonsense about a pension. What -could possess Mr. Barron to think of such a thing? I should feel -inexpressibly lowered if I accepted a pension. Why, I don’t altogether -like writing LL.D. after my name, though Georgie would have liked it. -All I ask is to be let go on in my own quiet way. Now where is Messrs. -Langridge’s sample? We must take that first. ‘Gentlemen, I have examined -your sample and find . . .’” - -“If any one deserves a thorough good rest it’s you. Miss Ormerod,” said -Dr. Lipscomb, who had grown a little white over the ears. “I should say -the farmers of England ought to set up a statue to you, bring offerings -of corn and wine—make you a kind of Goddess, eh—what was her name?” - -“Not a very shapely figure for a Goddess,” said Miss Ormerod with a -little laugh. “I should enjoy the wine though. You’re not going to cut -me off my one glass of port surely?” - -“You must remember,” said Dr. Lipscomb, shaking his head, “how much your -life means to others.” - -“Well, I don’t know about that,” said Miss Ormerod, pondering a little. -“To be sure, I’ve chosen my epitaph. ‘She introduced Paris Green into -England,’ and there might be a word or two about the Hessian fly—that, -I do believe, was a good piece of work.” - -“No need to think about epitaphs yet,” said Dr. Lipscomb. - -“Our lives are in the hands of the Lord,” said Miss Ormerod simply. - -Dr. Lipscomb bent his head and looked out of the window. Miss Ormerod -remained silent. - -“English entomologists care little or nothing for objects of practical -importance,” she exclaimed suddenly. “Take this question of flour -infestation—I can’t say how many grey hairs that hasn’t grown me.” - -“Figuratively speaking. Miss Ormerod,” said Dr. Lipscomb, for her hair -was still raven black. - -“Well, I do believe all good work is done in concert,” Miss Ormerod -continued. “It is often a great comfort to me to think that.” - -“It’s beginning to rain,” said Dr. Lipscomb. “How will your enemies like -that, Miss Ormerod?” - -“Hot or cold, wet or dry, insects always flourish!” cried Miss Ormerod, -energetically sitting up in bed. - - -“Old Miss Ormerod is dead,” said Mr. Drummond, opening The Times on -Saturday, July 20th, 1901. - -“Old Miss Ormerod?” asked Mrs. Drummond. - - -[Footnote 8: Founded upon the Life of Eleanor Ormerod, by Robert -Wallace Murray. 1904.] - - - - -_Jane Austen_ - - -It is probable that if Miss Cassandra Austen had had her way, we should -have had nothing of Jane Austen’s except her novels. To her elder sister -alone did she write freely; to her alone she confided her hopes and, if -rumour is true, the one great disappointment of her life; but when Miss -Cassandra Austen grew old, and the growth of her sister’s fame made her -suspect that a time might come when strangers would pry and scholars -speculate, she burnt, at great cost to herself, every letter that could -gratify their curiosity, and spared only what she judged too trivial to -be of interest. - -Hence our knowledge of Jane Austen is derived from a little gossip, a -few letters, and her books. As for the gossip, gossip which has survived -its day is never despicable; with a little rearrangement it suits our -purpose admirably. For example, Jane “is not at all pretty and very -prim, unlike a girl of twelve . . . Jane is whimsical and affected,” -says little Philadelphia Austen of her cousin. Then we have Mrs. -Mitford, who knew the Austens as girls and thought Jane “the prettiest, -silliest, most affected, husband-hunting butterfly she ever remembers”. -Next, there is Miss Mitford’s anonymous friend “who visits her now [and] -says that she has stiffened into the most perpendicular, precise, -taciturn piece of ‘single blessedness’ that ever existed, and that, -until _Pride and Prejudice_ showed what a precious gem was hidden in -that unbending case, she was no more regarded in society than a poker or -firescreen. . . . The case is very different now,” the good lady goes on; -“she is still a poker—but a poker of whom everybody is afraid. . . . -A wit, a delineator of character, who does not talk is terrific -indeed!” On the other side, of course, there are the Austens, a race -little given to panegyric of themselves, but nevertheless, they say, her -brothers “were very fond and very proud of her. They were attached to -her by her talents, her virtues, and her engaging manners, and each -loved afterwards to fancy a resemblance in some niece or daughter of his -own to the dear sister Jane, whose perfect equal they yet never expected -to see.” Charming but perpendicular, loved at home but feared by -strangers, biting of tongue but tender of heart—these contrasts are by -no means incompatible, and when we turn to the novels we shall find -ourselves stumbling there too over the same complexities in the writer. - -To begin with, that prim little girl whom Philadelphia found so unlike a -child of twelve, whimsical and affected, was soon to be the authoress of -an astonishing and unchildish story, _Love and Friendship_,[9] which, -incredible though it appears, was written at the age of fifteen. It was -written, apparently, to amuse the schoolroom; one of the stories in the -same book is dedicated with mock solemnity to her brother; another is -neatly illustrated with water-colour heads by her sister. There are -jokes which, one feels, were family property; thrusts of satire, which -went home because all little Austens made mock in common of fine ladies -who “sighed and fainted on the sofa”. - -Brothers and sisters must have laughed when Jane read out loud her last -hit at the vices which they all abhorred. “I die a martyr to my grief -for the loss of Augustius. One fatal swoon has cost me my life. Beware -of Swoons, Dear Laura. . . . Run mad as often as you chuse, but do not -faint. . . .” And on she rushed, as fast as she could write and quicker -than she could spell, to tell the incredible adventures of Laura and -Sophia, of Philander and Gustavus, of the gentleman who drove a coach -between Edinburgh and Stirling every other day, of the theft of the -fortune that was kept in the table drawer, of the starving mothers and -the sons who acted Macbeth. Undoubtedly, the story must have roused the -schoolroom to uproarious laughter. And yet, nothing is more obvious than -that this girl of fifteen, sitting in her private corner of the common -parlour, was writing not to draw a laugh from brother and sisters, and -not for home consumption. She was writing for everybody, for nobody, for -our age, for her own; in other words, even at that early age Jane Austen -was writing. One hears it in the rhythm and shapeliness and severity of -the sentences. “She was nothing more than a mere good tempered, civil, -and obliging young woman; as such we could scarcely dislike her—she was -only an object of contempt.” Such a sentence is meant to outlast the -Christmas holidays. Spirited, easy, full of fun, verging with freedom -upon sheer nonsense,—_Love and Friendship_ is all that, but what is -this note which never merges in the rest, which sounds distinctly and -penetratingly all through the volume? It is the sound of laughter. The -girl of fifteen is laughing, in her corner, at the world. - -Girls of fifteen are always laughing. They laugh when Mr. Binney helps -himself to salt instead of sugar. They almost die of laughing when old -Mrs. Tomkins sits down upon the cat. But they are crying the moment -after. They have no fixed abode from which they see that there is -something eternally laughable in human nature, some quality in men and -women that for ever excites our satire. They do not know that Lady -Greville who snubs, and poor Maria who is snubbed, are permanent -features of every ball-room. But Jane Austen knew it from her birth -upwards. One of those fairies who perch upon cradles must have taken her -a flight through the world directly she was born. When she was laid in -the cradle again she knew not only what the world looked like, but had -already chosen her kingdom. She had agreed that if she might rule over -that territory, she would covet no other. Thus at fifteen she had few -illusions about other people and none about herself. Whatever she writes -is finished and turned and set in its relation, not to the parsonage, -but to the universe. She is impersonal; she is inscrutable. When the -writer, Jane Austen, wrote down in the most remarkable sketch in the -book a little of Lady Greville’s conversation, there is no trace of -anger at the snub which the clergyman’s daughter, Jane Austen, once -received. Her gaze passes straight to the mark, and we know precisely -where, upon the map of human nature, that mark is. We know because Jane -Austen kept to her compact; she never trespassed beyond her boundaries. -Never, even at the emotional age of fifteen, did she round upon herself -in shame, obliterate a sarcasm in a spasm of compassion, or blur an -outline in a mist of rhapsody. Spasms and rhapsodies, she seems to have -said, pointing with her stick, end _there_; and the boundary line is -perfectly distinct. But she does not deny that moons and mountains and -castles exist—on the other side. She has even one romance of her own. -It is for the Queen of Scots. She really admired her very much. “One of -the first characters in the world,” she called her, “a bewitching -Princess whose only friend was then the Duke of Norfolk, and whose only -ones now Mr. Whitaker, Mrs. Lefroy, Mrs. Knight and myself.” With these -words her passion is neatly circumscribed, and rounded with a laugh. It -is amusing to remember in what terms the young Brontës wrote, not very -much later, in their northern parsonage, about the Duke of Wellington. - -The prim little girl grew up. She became “the prettiest, silliest, most -affected husband-hunting butterfly” Mrs. Mitford ever remembered, and, -incidentally, the authoress of a novel called _Pride and Prejudice_, -which, written stealthily under cover of a creaking door, lay for many -years unpublished. A little later, it is thought, she began another -story, _The Watsons_, and being for some reason dissatisfied with it, -left it unfinished. Unfinished and unsuccessful, it may throw more light -upon its writer’s genius than the polished masterpiece blazing in -universal fame. Her difficulties are more apparent in it, and the method -she took to overcome them less artfully concealed. To begin with, the -stiffness and the bareness of the first chapters prove that she was one -of those writers who lay their facts out rather baldly in the first -version and then go back and back and back and cover them with flesh and -atmosphere. How it would have been done we cannot say—by what -suppressions and insertions and artful devices. But the miracle would -have been accomplished; the dull history of fourteen years of family -life would have been converted into another of those exquisite and -apparently effortless introductions; and we should never have guessed -what pages of preliminary drudgery Jane Austen forced her pen to go -through. Here we perceive that she was no conjuror after all. Like other -writers, she had to create the atmosphere in which her own peculiar -genius could bear fruit. Here she fumbles; here she keeps us waiting. -Suddenly, she has done it; now things can happen as she likes things to -happen. The Edwards’ are going to the ball. The Tomlinsons’ carriage is -passing; she can tell us that Charles is “being provided with his gloves -and told to keep them on”; Tom Musgrove retreats to a remote corner with -a barrel of oysters and is famously snug. Her genius is freed and -active. At once our senses quicken; we are possessed with the peculiar -intensity which she alone can impart. But of what is it all composed? Of -a ball in a country town; a few couples meeting and taking hands in an -assembly room; a little eating and drinking; and for catastrophe, a boy -being snubbed by one young lady and kindly treated by another. There is -no tragedy and no heroism. Yet for some reason the little scene is -moving out of all proportion to its surface solemnity. We have been made -to see that if Emma acted so in the ball-room, how considerate, how -tender, inspired by what sincerity of feeling she would have shown -herself in those graver crises of life which, as we watch her, come -inevitably before our eyes. Jane Austen is thus a mistress of much -deeper emotion than appears upon the surface. She stimulates us to -supply what is not there. What she offers is, apparently, a trifle, yet -is composed of something that expands in the reader’s mind and endows -with the most enduring form of life scenes which are outwardly trivial. -Always the stress is laid upon character. How, we are made to wonder, -will Emma behave when Lord Osborne and Tom Musgrove make their call at -five minutes before three, just as Mary is bringing in the tray and the -knife-case? It is an extremely awkward situation. The young men are -accustomed to much greater refinement. Emma may prove herself ill-bred, -vulgar, a nonentity. The turns and twists of the dialogue keep us on the -tenterhooks of suspense. Our attention is half upon the present moment, -half upon the future. And when, in the end, Emma behaves in such a way -as to vindicate our highest hopes of her, we are moved as if we had been -made witnesses of a matter of the highest importance. Here, indeed, in -this unfinished and in the main inferior story are all the elements of -Jane Austen’s greatness. It has the permanent quality of literature. -Think away the surface animation, the likeness to life, and there -remains to provide a deeper pleasure, an exquisite discrimination of -human values. Dismiss this too from the mind and one can dwell with -extreme satisfaction upon the more abstract art which, in the ball-room -scene, so varies the emotions and proportions the parts that it is -possible to enjoy it, as one enjoys poetry, for itself, and not as a -link which carries the story this way and that. - -But the gossip says of Jane Austen that she was perpendicular, precise, -and taciturn—“a poker of whom everybody is afraid”. Of this too there -are traces; she could be merciless enough; she is one of the most -consistent satirists in the whole of literature. Those first angular -chapters of _The Watsons_ prove that hers was not a prolific genius; she -had not, like Emily Brontë, merely to open the door to make herself -felt. Humbly and gaily she collected the twigs and straws out of which -the nest was to be made and placed them neatly together. The twigs and -straws were a little dry and a little dusty in themselves. There was the -big house and the little house; a tea party, a dinner party, and an -occasional picnic; life was hedged in by valuable connections and -adequate incomes; by muddy roads, wet feet, and a tendency on the part -of the ladies to get tired; a little money supported it, a little -consequence, and the education commonly enjoyed by upper middle-class -families living in the country. Vice, adventure, passion were left -outside. But of all this prosiness, of all this littleness, she evades -nothing, and nothing is slurred over. Patiently and precisely she tells -us how they “made no stop anywhere till they reached Newbury, where a -comfortable meal, uniting dinner and supper, wound up the enjoyments and -fatigues of the day”. Nor does she pay to conventions merely the tribute -of lip homage; she believes in them besides accepting them. When she is -describing a clergyman, like Edmund Bertram, or a sailor, in particular, -she appears debarred by the sanctity of his office from the free use of -her chief tool, the comic genius, and is apt therefore to lapse into -decorous panegyric or matter-of-fact description. But these are -exceptions; for the most part her attitude recalls the anonymous ladies’ -ejaculation—“A wit, a delineator of character, who does not talk is -terrific indeed!” She wishes neither to reform nor to annihilate; she is -silent; and that is terrific indeed. One after another she creates her -fools, her prigs, her worldlings, her Mr. Collins’, her Sir Walter -Elliotts, her Mrs. Bennetts. She encircles them with the lash of a -whip-like phrase which, as it runs round them, cuts out their -silhouettes for ever. But there they remain; no excuse is found for them -and no mercy shown them. Nothing remains of Julia and Maria Bertram when -she has done with them; Lady Bertram is left “sitting and calling to Pug -and trying to keep him from the flower beds” eternally. A divine justice -is meted out; Dr. Grant, who begins by liking his goose tender, ends by -bringing on “apoplexy and death, by three great institutionary dinners -in one week”. Sometimes it seems as if her creatures were born merely to -give Jane Austen the supreme delight of slicing their heads off. She is -satisfied; she is content; she would not alter a hair on anybody’s head, -or move one brick or one blade of grass in a world which provides her -with such exquisite delight. - -Nor, indeed, would we. For even if the pangs of outraged vanity, or the -heat of moral wrath, urged us to improve away a world so full of spite, -pettiness, and folly, the task is beyond our powers. People are like -that—the girl of fifteen knew it; the mature woman proves it. At this -very moment some Lady Bertram finds it almost too trying to keep Pug -from the flower beds; she sends Chapman to help Miss Fanny, a little -late. The discrimination is so perfect, the satire so just that, -consistent though it is, it almost escapes our notice. No touch of -pettiness, no hint of spite, rouses us from our contemplation. Delight -strangely mingles with our amusement. Beauty illumines these fools. - -That elusive quality is indeed often made up of very different parts, -which it needs a peculiar genius to bring together. The wit of Jane -Austen has for partner the perfection of her taste. Her fool is a fool, -her snob is a snob, because he departs from the model of sanity and -sense which she has in mind, and conveys to us unmistakably even while -she makes us laugh. Never did any novelist make more use of an -impeccable sense of human values. It is against the disc of an unerring -heart, an unfailing good taste, an almost stern morality, that she shows -up those deviations from kindness, truth, and sincerity which are among -the most delightful things in English literature. She depicts a Mary -Crawford in her mixture of good and bad entirely by this means. She lets -her rattle on against the clergy, or in favour of a baronetage and ten -thousand a year with all the ease and spirit possible; but now and again -she strikes one note of her own, very quietly, but in perfect tune, and -at once all Mary Crawford’s chatter, though it continues to amuse, rings -flat. Hence the depth, the beauty, the complexity of her scenes. From -such contrasts there comes a beauty, a solemnity even which are not only -as remarkable as her wit, but an inseparable part of it. In _The -Watsons_ she gives us a foretaste of this power; she makes us wonder why -an ordinary act of kindness, as she describes it, becomes so full of -meaning. In her masterpieces, the same gift is brought to perfection. -Here is nothing out of the way; it is midday in Northamptonshire; a dull -young man is talking to rather a weakly young woman on the stairs as -they go up to dress for dinner, with housemaids passing. But, from -triviality, from commonplace, their words become suddenly full of -meaning, and the moment for both one of the most memorable in their -lives. It fills itself; it shines; it glows; it hangs before us, deep, -trembling, serene for a second; next, the housemaid passes, and this -drop in which all the happiness of life has collected gently subsides -again to become part of the ebb and flow of ordinary existence. - -What more natural then, with this insight into their profundity, than -that Jane Austen should have chosen to write of the trivialities of day -to day existence, of parties, picnics, and country dances? No -“suggestions to alter her style of writing” from the Prince Regent or -Mr. Clarke could tempt her; no romance, no adventure, no politics or -intrigue could hold a candle to life on a country house staircase as she -saw it. Indeed, the Prince Regent and his librarian had run their heads -against a very formidable obstacle; they were trying to tamper with an -incorruptible conscience, to disturb an infallible discretion. The child -who formed her sentences so finely when she was fifteen never ceased to -form them, and never wrote for the Prince Regent or his Librarian, but -for the world at large. She knew exactly what her powers were, and what -material they were fitted to deal with as material should be dealt with -by a writer, whose standard of finality was high. There were impressions -that lay outside her province; emotions that by no stretch or artifice -could be properly coated and covered by her own resources. For example, -she could not make a girl talk enthusiastically of banners and chapels. -She could not throw herself wholeheartedly into a romantic moment. She -had all sorts of devices for evading scenes of passion. Nature and its -beauties she approached in a sidelong way of her own. She describes a -beautiful night without once mentioning the moon. Nevertheless, as we -read the few formal phrases about “the brilliancy of an unclouded night -and the contrast of the deep shade of the woods” the night is at once as -“solemn, and soothing, and lovely” as she tells us, quite simply, that -it was. - -The balance of her gifts was singularly perfect. Among her finished -novels there are no failures, and among her many chapters few that sink -markedly below the level of the others. But, after all, she died at the -age of forty-two. She died at the height of her powers. She was still -subject to those changes which often make the final period of a writer’s -career the most interesting of all. Vivacious, irrepressible, gifted -with an invention of great vitality, there can be no doubt that she -would have written more, had she lived, and it is tempting to consider -whether she would not have written differently. The boundaries were -marked; moons, mountains, and castles lay on the other side. But was she -not sometimes tempted to trespass for a minute? Was she not beginning, -in her own gay and brilliant manner, to contemplate a little voyage of -discovery? - -Let us take _Persuasion_, the last completed novel, and look by its -light at the books she might have written had she lived. There is a -peculiar beauty and a peculiar dullness in _Persuasion_. The dullness is -that which so often marks the transition stage between two different -periods. The writer is a little bored. She has grown too familiar with -the ways of her world; she no longer notes them freshly. There is an -asperity in her comedy which suggests that she has almost ceased to be -amused by the vanities of a Sir Walter or the snobbery of a Miss -Elliott. The satire is harsh, and the comedy crude. She is no longer so -freshly aware of the amusements of daily life. Her mind is not -altogether on her object. But, while we feel that Jane Austen has done -this before, and done it better, we also feel that she is trying to do -something which she has never yet attempted. There is a new element in -_Persuasion_, the quality, perhaps, that made Dr. Whewell fire up and -insist that it was “the most beautiful of her works”. She is beginning -to discover that the world is larger, more mysterious, and more romantic -than she had supposed. We feel it to be true of herself when she says of -Anne: “She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned -romance as she grew older—the natural sequel of an unnatural -beginning”. She dwells frequently upon the beauty and the melancholy of -nature, upon the autumn where she had been wont to dwell upon the -spring. She talks of the “influence so sweet and so sad of autumnal -months in the country”. She marks “the tawny leaves and withered -hedges”. “One does not love a place the less because one has suffered in -it”, she observes. But it is not only in a new sensibility to nature -that we detect the change. Her attitude to life itself is altered. She -is seeing it, for the greater part of the book, through the eyes of a -woman who, unhappy herself, has a special sympathy for the happiness and -unhappiness of others, which, until the very end, she is forced to -comment upon in silence. Therefore the observation is less of facts and -more of feelings than is usual. There is an expressed emotion in the -scene at the concert and in the famous talk about woman’s constancy -which proves not merely the biographical fact that Jane Austen had -loved, but the æsthetic fact that she was no longer afraid to say so. -Experience, when it was of a serious kind, had to sink very deep, and to -be thoroughly disinfected by the passage of time, before she allowed -herself to deal with it in fiction. But now, in 1817, she was ready. -Outwardly, too, in her circumstances, a change was imminent. Her fame -had grown very slowly. “I doubt”, wrote Mr. Austen Leigh, “whether it -would be possible to mention any other author of note whose personal -obscurity was so complete.” Had she lived a few more years only, all -that would have been altered. She would have stayed in London, dined -out, lunched out, met famous people, made new friends, read, travelled, -and carried back to the quiet country cottage a hoard of observations to -feast upon at leisure. - -And what effect would all this have had upon the six novels that Jane -Austen did not write? She would not have written of crime, of passion, -or of adventure. She would not have been rushed by the importunity of -publishers or the flattery of friends into slovenliness or insincerity. -But she would have known more. Her sense of security would have been -shaken. Her comedy would have suffered. She would have trusted less -(this is already perceptible in _Persuasion_) to dialogue and more to -reflection to give us a knowledge of her characters. Those marvellous -little speeches which sum up, in a few minutes’ chatter, all that we -need in order to know an Admiral Croft or a Mrs. Musgrove for ever, that -shorthand, hit-or-miss method which contains chapters of analysis and -psychology, would have become too crude to hold all that she now -perceived of the complexity of human nature. She would have devised a -method, clear and composed as ever, but deeper and more suggestive, for -conveying not only what people say, but what they leave unsaid; not only -what they are, but what life is. She would have stood farther away from -her characters, and seen them more as a group, less as individuals. Her -satire, while it played less incessantly, would have been more stringent -and severe. She would have been the forerunner of Henry James and of -Proust—but enough. Vain are these speculations: the most perfect artist -among women, the writer whose books are immortal, died “just as she was -beginning to feel confidence in her own success”. - - -[Footnote 9: _Love and Friendship_, Chatto and Windus.] - - - - -_Modern Fiction_ - - -In making any survey, even the freest and loosest, of modern fiction it -is difficult not to take it for granted that the modern practice of the -art is somehow an improvement upon the old. With their simple tools and -primitive materials, it might be said, Fielding did well and Jane Austen -even better, but compare their opportunities with ours! Their -masterpieces certainly have a strange air of simplicity. And yet the -analogy between literature and the process, to choose an example, of -making motor cars scarcely holds good beyond the first glance. It is -doubtful whether in the course of the centuries, though we have learnt -much about making machines, we have learnt anything about making -literature. We do not come to write better; all that we can be said to -do is to keep moving, now a little in this direction, now in that, but -with a circular tendency should the whole course of the track be viewed -from a sufficiently lofty pinnacle. It need scarcely be said that we -make no claim to stand, even momentarily, upon that vantage ground. On -the flat, in the crowd, half blind with dust, we look back with envy to -those happier warriors, whose battle is won and whose achievements wear -so serene an air of accomplishment that we can scarcely refrain from -whispering that the fight was not so fierce for them as for us. It is -for the historian of literature to decide; for him to say if we are now -beginning or ending or standing in the middle of a great period of prose -fiction, for down in the plain little is visible. We only know that -certain gratitudes and hostilities inspire us; that certain paths seem -to lead to fertile land, others to the dust and the desert; and of this -perhaps it may be worth while to attempt some account. - -Our quarrel, then, is not with the classics, and if we speak of -quarrelling with Mr. Wells, Mr. Bennett, and Mr. Galsworthy it is partly -that by the mere fact of their existence in the flesh their work has a -living, breathing, every day imperfection which bids us take what -liberties with it we choose. But it is also true that, while we thank -them for a thousand gifts, we reserve our unconditional gratitude for -Mr. Hardy, for Mr. Conrad, and in a much lesser degree for the Mr. -Hudson, of _The Purple Land, Green Mansions_, and _Far Away and Long -Ago_. Mr. Wells, Mr. Bennett, and Mr. Galsworthy have excited so many -hopes and disappointed them so persistently that our gratitude largely -takes the form of thanking them for having shown us what they might have -done but have not done; what we certainly could not do, but as -certainly, perhaps, do not wish to do. No single phrase will sum up the -charge or grievance which we have to bring against a mass of work so -large in its volume and embodying so many qualities, both admirable and -the reverse. If we tried to formulate our meaning in one word we should -say that these three writers are materialists. It is because they are -concerned not with the spirit but with the body that they have -disappointed us, and left us with the feeling that the sooner English -fiction turns its back upon them, as politely as may be, and marches, if -only into the desert, the better for its soul. Naturally, no single word -reaches the centre of three separate targets. In the case of Mr. Wells -it falls notably wide of the mark. And yet even with him it indicates to -our thinking the fatal alloy in his genius, the great clod of clay that -has got itself mixed up with the purity of his inspiration. But Mr. -Bennett is perhaps the worst culprit of the three, inasmuch as he is by -far the best workman. He can make a book so well constructed and solid -in its craftsmanship that it is difficult for the most exacting of -critics to see through what chink or crevice decay can creep in. There -is not so much as a draught between the frames of the windows, or a -crack in the boards. And yet—if life should refuse to live there? That -is a risk which the creator of _The Old Wives’ Tale_, George Cannon, -Edwin Clayhanger, and hosts of other figures, may well claim to have -surmounted. His characters live abundantly, even unexpectedly, but it -remains to ask how do they live, and what do they live for? More and -more they seem to us, deserting even the well-built villa in the Five -Towns, to spend their time in some softly padded first-class railway -carriage, pressing bells and buttons innumerable; and the destiny to -which they travel so luxuriously becomes more and more unquestionably an -eternity of bliss spent in the very best hotel in Brighton. It can -scarcely be said of Mr. Wells that he is a materialist in the sense that -he takes too much delight in the solidity of his fabric. His mind is too -generous in its sympathies to allow him to spend much time in making -things shipshape and substantial. He is a materialist from sheer -goodness of heart, taking upon his shoulders the work that ought to have -been discharged by Government officials, and in the plethora of his -ideas and facts scarcely having leisure to realise, or forgetting to -think important, the crudity and coarseness of his human beings. Yet -what more damaging criticism can there be both of his earth and of his -Heaven than that they are to be inhabited here and hereafter by his -Joans and his Peters? Does not the inferiority of their natures tarnish -whatever institutions and ideals may be provided for them by the -generosity of their creator? Nor, profoundly though we respect the -integrity and humanity of Mr. Galsworthy, shall we find what we seek in -his pages. - -If we fasten, then, one label on all these books, on which is one word -materialists, we mean by it that they write of unimportant things; that -they spend immense skill and immense industry making the trivial and the -transitory appear the true and the enduring. - -We have to admit that we are exacting, and, further, that we find it -difficult to justify our discontent by explaining what it is that we -exact. We frame our question differently at different times. But it -reappears most persistently as we drop the finished novel on the crest -of a sigh—Is it worth while? What is the point of it all? Can it be -that owing to one of those little deviations which the human spirit -seems to make from time to time Mr. Bennett has come down with his -magnificent apparatus for catching life just an inch or two on the wrong -side? Life escapes; and perhaps without life nothing else is worth -while. It is a confession of vagueness to have to make use of such a -figure as this, but we scarcely better the matter by speaking, as -critics are prone to do, of reality. Admitting the vagueness which -afflicts all criticism of novels, let us hazard the opinion that for us -at this moment the form of fiction most in vogue more often misses than -secures the thing we seek. Whether we call it life or spirit, truth or -reality, this, the essential thing, has moved off, or on, and refuses to -be contained any longer in such ill-fitting vestments as we provide. -Nevertheless, we go on perseveringly, conscientiously, constructing our -two and thirty chapters after a design which more and more ceases to -resemble the vision in our minds. So much of the enormous labour of -proving the solidity, the likeness to life, of the story is not merely -labour thrown away but labour misplaced to the extent of obscuring and -blotting out the light of the conception. The writer seems constrained, -not by his own free will but by some powerful and unscrupulous tyrant -who has him in thrall to provide a plot, to provide comedy, tragedy, -love, interest, and an air of probability embalming the whole so -impeccable that if all his figures were to come to life they would find -themselves dressed down to the last button of their coats in the fashion -of the hour. The tyrant is obeyed; the novel is done to a turn. But -sometimes, more and more often as time goes by, we suspect a momentary -doubt, a spasm of rebellion, as the pages fill themselves in the -customary way. Is life like this? Must novels be like this? - -Look within and life, it seems, is very far from being “like this”. -Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind -receives a myriad impressions—trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or -engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an -incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape -themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls -differently from of old; the moment of importance came not here but -there; so that if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could -write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon -his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no -comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted -style, and perhaps not a single button sewn on as the Bond Street -tailors would have it. Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically -arranged; but a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding -us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not the task of -the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed -spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little -mixture of the alien and external as possible? We are not pleading -merely for courage and sincerity; we are suggesting that the proper -stuff of fiction is a little other than custom would have us believe it. - -It is, at any rate, in some such fashion as this that we seek to define -the quality which distinguishes the work of several young writers, among -whom Mr. James Joyce is the most notable, from that of their -predecessors. They attempt to come closer to life, and to preserve more -sincerely and exactly what interests and moves them, even if to do so -they must discard most of the conventions which are commonly observed by -the novelist. Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the -order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected -and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon -the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life exists more -fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought -small. Any one who has read _The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_ -or, what promises to be a far more interesting work, _Ulysses_,[10] now -appearing in the _Little Review_, will have hazarded some theory of this -nature as to Mr. Joyce’s intention. On our part, with such a fragment -before us, it is hazarded rather than affirmed; but whatever the -intention of the whole there can be no question but that it is of the -utmost sincerity and that the result, difficult or unpleasant as we may -judge it, is undeniably important. In contrast with those whom we have -called materialists Mr. Joyce is spiritual; he is concerned at all costs -to reveal the flickerings of that innermost flame which flashes its -messages through the brain, and in order to preserve it he disregards -with complete courage whatever seems to him adventitious, whether it be -probability, or coherence or any other of these signposts which for -generations have served to support the imagination of a reader when -called upon to imagine what he can neither touch nor see. The scene in -the cemetery, for instance, with its brilliancy, its sordidity, its -incoherence, its sudden lightning flashes of significance, does -undoubtedly come so close to the quick of the mind that, on a first -reading at any rate, it is difficult not to acclaim a masterpiece. If we -want life itself here, surely we have it. Indeed, we find ourselves -fumbling rather awkwardly if we try to say what else we wish, and for -what reason a work of such originality yet fails to compare, for we must -take high examples, with _Youth_ or _The Mayor of Casterbridge_. It -fails because of the comparative poverty of the writer’s mind, we might -say simply and have done with it. But it is possible to press a little -further and wonder whether we may not refer our sense of being in a -bright yet narrow room, confined and shut in, rather than enlarged and -set free, to some limitation imposed by the method as well as by the -mind. Is it the method that inhibits the creative power? Is it due to -the method that we feel neither jovial nor magnanimous, but centred in a -self which, in spite of its tremor of susceptibility, never embraces or -creates what is outside itself and beyond? Does the emphasis laid, -perhaps didactically, upon indecency, contribute to the effect of -something angular and isolated? Or is it merely that in any effort of -such originality it is much easier, for contemporaries especially, to -feel what it lacks than to name what it gives? In any case it is a -mistake to stand outside examining “methods”. Any method is right, every -method is right, that expresses what we wish to express, if we are -writers; that brings us closer to the novelist’s intention if we are -readers. This method has the merit of bringing us closer to what we were -prepared to call life itself; did not the reading of _Ulysses_ suggest -how much of life is excluded or ignored, and did it not come with a -shock to open _Tristram Shandy_ or even _Pendennis_ and be by them -convinced that there are not only other aspects of life, but more -important ones into the bargain. - -However this may be, the problem before the novelist at present, as we -suppose it to have been in the past, is to contrive means of being free -to set down what he chooses. He has to have the courage to say that what -interests him is no longer “this” but “that”: out of “that” alone must -he construct his work. For the moderns “that”, the point of interest, -lies very likely in the dark places of psychology. At once, therefore, -the accent falls a little differently; the emphasis is upon something -hitherto ignored; at once a different outline of form becomes necessary, -difficult for us to grasp, incomprehensible to our predecessors. No one -but a modern, perhaps no one but a Russian, would have felt the interest -of the situation which Tchekov has made into the short story which he -calls “Gusev”. Some Russian soldiers lie ill on board a ship which is -taking them back to Russia. We are given a few scraps of their talk and -some of their thoughts; then one of them dies and is carried away; the -talk goes on among the others for a time, until Gusev himself dies, and -looking “like a carrot or a radish” is thrown overboard. The emphasis is -laid upon such unexpected places that at first it seems as if there were -no emphasis at all; and then, as the eyes accustom themselves to -twilight and discern the shapes of things in a room we see how complete -the story is, how profound, and how truly in obedience to his vision -Tchekov has chosen this, that, and the other, and placed them together -to compose something new. But it is impossible to say “this is comic”, -or “that is tragic”, nor are we certain, since short stories, we have -been taught, should be brief and conclusive, whether this, which is -vague and inconclusive, should be called a short story at all. - -The most elementary remarks upon modern English fiction can hardly avoid -some mention of the Russian influence, and if the Russians are mentioned -one runs the risk of feeling that to write of any fiction save theirs is -waste of time. If we want understanding of the soul and heart where else -shall we find it of comparable profundity? If we are sick of our own -materialism the least considerable of their novelists has by right of -birth a natural reverence for the human spirit. “Learn to make yourself -akin to people. . . . But let this sympathy be not with the mind—for it -is easy with the mind—but with the heart, with love towards them.” In -every great Russian writer we seem to discern the features of a saint, -if sympathy for the sufferings of others, love towards them, endeavour -to reach some goal worthy of the most exacting demands of the spirit -constitute saintliness. It is the saint in them which confounds us with -a feeling of our own irreligious triviality, and turns so many of our -famous novels to tinsel and trickery. The conclusions of the Russian -mind, thus comprehensive and compassionate, are inevitably, perhaps, of -the utmost sadness. More accurately indeed we might speak of the -inconclusiveness of the Russian mind. It is the sense that there is no -answer, that if honestly examined life presents question after question -which must be left to sound on and on after the story is over in -hopeless interrogation that fills us with a deep, and finally it may be -with a resentful, despair. They are right perhaps; unquestionably they -see further than we do and without our gross impediments of vision. But -perhaps we see something that escapes them, or why should this voice of -protest mix itself with our gloom? The voice of protest is the voice of -another and an ancient civilisation which seems to have bred in us the -instinct to enjoy and fight rather than to suffer and understand. -English fiction from Sterne to Meredith bears witness to our natural -delight in humour and comedy, in the beauty of earth, in the activities -of the intellect, and in the splendour of the body. But any deductions -that we may draw from the comparison of two fictions so immeasurably far -apart are futile save indeed as they flood us with a view of the -infinite possibilities of the art and remind us that there is no limit -to the horizon, and that nothing—no “method”, no experiment, even of -the wildest—is forbidden, but only falsity and pretence. “The proper -stuff of fiction” does not exist; everything is the proper stuff of -fiction, every feeling, every thought; every quality of brain and spirit -is drawn upon; no perception comes amiss. And if we can imagine the art -of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly -bid us break her and bully her, as well as honour and love her, for so -her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured. - - -[Footnote 10: Written April 1919.] - - - - -_Jane Eyre and -Wuthering Heights_[11] - - -Of the hundred years that have passed since Charlotte Brontë was born, -she, the centre now of so much legend, devotion, and literature, lived -but thirty-nine. It is strange to reflect how different those legends -might have been had her life reached the ordinary human span. She might -have become, like some of her famous contemporaries, a figure familiarly -met with in London and elsewhere, the subject of pictures and anecdotes -innumerable, the writer of many novels, of memoirs possibly, removed -from us well within the memory of the middle-aged in all the splendour -of established fame. She might have been wealthy, she might have been -prosperous. But it is not so. When we think of her we have to imagine -some one who had no lot in our modern world; we have to cast our minds -back to the ’fifties of the last century, to a remote parsonage upon the -wild Yorkshire moors. In that parsonage, and on those moors, unhappy and -lonely, in her poverty and her exaltation, she remains for ever. - -These circumstances, as they affected her character, may have left their -traces on her work. A novelist, we reflect, is bound to build up his -structure with much very perishable material which begins by lending it -reality and ends by cumbering it with rubbish. As we open _Jane Eyre_ -once more we cannot stifle the suspicion that we shall find her world of -imagination as antiquated, mid-Victorian, and out of date as the -parsonage on the moor, a place only to be visited by the curious, only -preserved by the pious. So we open _Jane Eyre_; and in two pages every -doubt is swept clean from our minds. - - -Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left -were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from -the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of -my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered -a pale blank of mist and cloud; near, a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat -shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and -lamentable blast. - - -There is nothing there more perishable than the moor itself, or more -subject to the sway of fashion than the “long and lamentable blast”. Nor -is this exhilaration short-lived. It rushes us through the entire -volume, without giving us time to think, without letting us lift our -eyes from the page. So intense is our absorption that if some one moves -in the room the movement seems to take place not there but up in -Yorkshire. The writer has us by the hand, forces us along her road, -makes us see what she sees, never leaves us for a moment or allows us to -forget her.[12] At the end we are steeped through and through with the -genius, the vehemence, the indignation of Charlotte Brontë. Remarkable -faces, figures of strong outline and gnarled feature have flashed upon -us in passing; but it is through her eyes that we have seen them. Once -she is gone, we seek for them in vain. Think of Rochester and we have to -think of Jane Eyre. Think of the moor, and again, there is Jane Eyre. -Think of the drawing-room, even, those “white carpets on which seemed -laid brilliant garlands of flowers”, that “pale Parian mantelpiece” with -its Bohemia glass of “ruby red” and the “general blending of snow and -fire”—what is all that except Jane Eyre? - -The drawbacks of being Jane Eyre are not far to seek. Always to be a -governess and always to be in love is a serious limitation in a world -which is full, after all, of people who are neither one nor the other. -The characters of a Jane Austen or of a Tolstoi have a million facets -compared with these. They live and are complex by means of their effect -upon many different people who serve to mirror them in the round. They -move hither and thither whether their creators watch them or not, and -the world in which they live seems to us an independent world which we -can visit, now that they have created it, by ourselves. Thomas Hardy is -more akin to Charlotte Brontë in the power of his personality and the -narrowness of his vision. But the differences are vast. As we read _Jude -the Obscure_ we are not rushed to a finish; we brood and ponder and -drift away from the text in plethoric trains of thought which build up -round the characters an atmosphere of question and suggestion of which -they are themselves, as often as not, unconscious. Simple peasants as -they are, we are forced to confront them with destinies and questionings -of the hugest import, so that often it seems as if the most important -characters in a Hardy novel are those which have no names. Of this -power, of this speculative curiosity, Charlotte Brontë has no trace. -She does not attempt to solve the problems of human life; she is even -unaware that such problems exist; all her force, and it is the more -tremendous for being constricted, goes into the assertion, “I love”, “I -hate”, “I suffer”. - -For the self-centred and self-limited writers have a power denied the -more catholic and broad-minded. Their impressions are close packed and -strongly stamped between their narrow walls. Nothing issues from their -minds which has not been marked with their own impress. They learn -little from other writers, and what they adopt they cannot assimilate. -Both Hardy and Charlotte Brontë appear to have founded their styles -upon a stiff and decorous journalism. The staple of their prose is -awkward and unyielding. But both with labour and the most obstinate -integrity by thinking every thought until it has subdued words to -itself, have forged for themselves a prose which takes the mould of -their minds entire; which has, into the bargain, a beauty, a power, a -swiftness of its own. Charlotte Brontë, at least, owed nothing to the -reading of many books. She never learnt the smoothness of the -professional writer, or acquired his ability to stuff and sway his -language as he chooses. “I could never rest in communication with -strong, discreet, and refined minds, whether male or female,” she -writes, as any leader-writer in a provincial journal might have written; -but gathering fire and speed goes on in her own authentic voice “till I -had passed the outworks of conventional reserve and crossed the -threshold of confidence, and won a place by their hearts’ very -hearthstone”. It is there that she takes her seat; it is the red and -fitful glow of the heart’s fire which illumines her page. In other -words, we read Charlotte Brontë not for exquisite observation of -character—her characters are vigorous and elementary; not for -comedy—hers is grim and crude; not for a philosophic view of life—hers -is that of a country parson’s daughter; but for her poetry. Probably -that is so with all writers who have, as she has, an overpowering -personality, who, as we should say in real life, have only to open the -door to make themselves felt. There is in them some untamed ferocity -perpetually at war with the accepted order of things which makes them -desire to create instantly rather than to observe patiently. This very -ardour, rejecting half shades and other minor impediments, wings its way -past the daily conduct of ordinary people and allies itself with their -more inarticulate passions. It makes them poets, or, if they choose to -write in prose, intolerant of its restrictions. Hence it is that both -Emily and Charlotte are always invoking the help of nature. They both -feel the need of some more powerful symbol of the vast and slumbering -passions in human nature than words or actions can convey. It is with a -description of a storm that Charlotte ends her finest novel _Villette_. -“The skies hang full and dark—a wrack sails from the west; the clouds -cast themselves into strange forms.” So she calls in nature to describe -a state of mind which could not otherwise be expressed. But neither of -the sisters observed nature accurately as Dorothy Wordsworth observed -it, or painted it minutely as Tennyson painted it. They seized those -aspects of the earth which were most akin to what they themselves felt -or imputed to their characters, and so their storms, their moors, their -lovely spaces of summer weather are not ornaments applied to decorate a -dull page or display the writer’s powers of observation—they carry on -the emotion and light up the meaning of the book. - -The meaning of a book, which lies so often apart from what happens and -what is said and consists rather in some connection which things in -themselves different have had for the writer, is necessarily hard to -grasp. Especially this is so when, like the Brontës, the writer is -poetic, and his meaning inseparable from his language, and itself rather -a mood than a particular observation. _Wuthering Heights_ is a more -difficult book to understand than _Jane Eyre_, because Emily was a -greater poet than Charlotte. When Charlotte wrote she said with -eloquence and splendour and passion “I love”, “I hate”, “I suffer”. Her -experience, though more intense, is on a level with our own. But there -is no “I” in _Wuthering Heights_. There are no governesses. There are no -employers. There is love, but it is not the love of men and women. Emily -was inspired by some more general conception. The impulse which urged -her to create was not her own suffering or her own injuries. She looked -out upon a world cleft into gigantic disorder and felt within her the -power to unite it in a book. That gigantic ambition is to be felt -throughout the novel—a struggle, half thwarted but of superb -conviction, to say something through the mouths of her characters which -is not merely “I love” or “I hate”, but “we, the whole human race” and -“you, the eternal powers . . .” the sentence remains unfinished. It is -not strange that it should be so; rather it is astonishing that she can -make us feel what she had it in her to say at all. It surges up in the -half-articulate words of Catherine Earnshaw, “If all else perished and -_he_ remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained and -he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger; I -should not seem part of it”. It breaks out again in the presence of the -dead. “I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel -an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter—the eternity they -have entered—where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its -sympathy and joy in its fulness.” It is this suggestion of power -underlying the apparitions of human nature, and lifting them up into the -presence of greatness that gives the book its huge stature among other -novels. But it was not enough for Emily Brontë to write a few lyrics, -to utter a cry, to express a creed. In her poems she did this once and -for all, and her poems will perhaps outlast her novel. But she was -novelist as well as poet. She must take upon herself a more laborious -and a more ungrateful task. She must face the fact of other existences, -grapple with the mechanism of external things, build up, in recognisable -shape, farms and houses and report the speeches of men and women who -existed independently of herself. And so we reach these summits of -emotion not by rant or rhapsody but by hearing a girl sing old songs to -herself as she rocks in the branches of a tree; by watching the moor -sheep crop the turf; by listening to the soft wind breathing through the -grass. The life at the farm with all its absurdities and its -improbability is laid open to us. We are given every opportunity of -comparing _Wuthering Heights_ with a real farm and Heathcliff with a -real man. How, we are allowed to ask, can there be truth or insight or -the finer shades of emotion in men and women who so little resemble what -we have seen ourselves? But even as we ask it we see in Heathcliff the -brother that a sister of genius might have seen; he is impossible we -say, but nevertheless no boy in literature has so vivid an existence as -his. So it is with the two Catherines; never could women feel as they do -or act in their manner, we say. All the same, they are the most lovable -women in English fiction. It is as if she could tear up all that we know -human beings by, and fill these unrecognisable transparences with such a -gust of life that they transcend reality. Hers, then, is the rarest of -all powers. She could free life from its dependence on facts; with a few -touches indicate the spirit of a face so that it needs no body; by -speaking of the moor make the wind blow and the thunder roar. - - -[Footnote 11: Written in 1916.] - -[Footnote 12: Charlotte and Emily Brontë had much the same sense of -colour. “. . . we saw—ah! it was beautiful—a splendid place carpeted -with crimson, and crimson-covered chairs and tables, and a pure white -ceiling bordered by gold, a shower of glass drops hanging in silver -chains from the centre, and shimmering with little soft tapers” -(_Wuthering Heights_). Yet it was merely a very pretty drawing-room, and -within it a boudoir, both spread with white carpets, on which seemed -laid brilliant garlands of flowers; both ceiled with snowy mouldings of -white grapes and vine leaves, beneath which glowed in rich contrast -crimson couches and ottomans; while the ornaments on the pale Parian -mantelpiece were of sparkling Bohemia glass, ruby red; and between the -windows large mirrors repeated the general blending of snow and fire.] - - - - -_George Eliot_ - - -To read George Eliot attentively is to become aware how little one knows -about her. It is also to become aware of the credulity, not very -creditable to one’s insight, with which, half consciously and partly -maliciously, one had accepted the late Victorian version of a deluded -woman who held phantom sway over subjects even more deluded than -herself. At what moment, and by what means her spell was broken it is -difficult to ascertain. Some people attribute it to the publication of -her _Life_. Perhaps George Meredith, with his phrase about the -“mercurial little showman” and the “errant woman” on the daïs, gave -point and poison to the arrows of thousands incapable of aiming them so -accurately, but delighted to let fly. She became one of the butts for -youth to laugh at, the convenient symbol of a group of serious people -who were all guilty of the same idolatry and could be dismissed with the -same scorn. Lord Acton had said that she was greater than Dante; Herbert -Spencer exempted her novels, as if they were not novels, when he banned -all fiction from the London Library. She was the pride and paragon of -her sex. Moreover, her private record was not more alluring than her -public. Asked to describe an afternoon at the Priory, the story-teller -always intimated that the memory of those serious Sunday afternoons had -come to tickle his sense of humour. He had been so much alarmed by the -grave lady in her low chair; he had been so anxious to say the -intelligent thing. Certainly, the talk had been very serious, as a note -in the fine clear hand of the great novelist bore witness. It was dated -on the Monday morning, and she accused herself of having spoken without -due forethought of Marivaux when she meant another; but no doubt, she -said, her listener had already supplied the correction. Still, the -memory of talking about Marivaux to George Eliot on a Sunday afternoon -was not a romantic memory. It had faded with the passage of the years. -It had not become picturesque. - -Indeed, one cannot escape the conviction that the long, heavy face with -its expression of serious and sullen and almost equine power has stamped -itself depressingly upon the minds of people who remember George Eliot, -so that it looks out upon them from her pages. Mr. Gosse has lately -described her as he saw her driving through London in a victoria— - - -a large, thick-set sybil, dreamy and immobile, whose massive features, -somewhat grim when seen in profile, were incongruously bordered by a -hat, always in the height of Paris fashion, which in those days commonly -included an immense ostrich feather. - - -Lady Ritchie, with equal skill, has left a more intimate indoor -portrait: - - -She sat by the fire in a beautiful black satin gown, with a green shaded -lamp on the table beside her, where I saw German books lying and -pamphlets and ivory paper-cutters. She was very quiet and noble, with -two steady little eyes and a sweet voice. As I looked I felt her to be a -friend, not exactly a personal friend, but a good and benevolent -impulse. - - -A scrap of her talk is preserved. “We ought to respect our influence,” -she said. “We know by our own experience how very much others affect our -lives, and we must remember that we in turn must have the same effect -upon others.” Jealously treasured, committed to memory, one can imagine -recalling the scene, repeating the words, thirty years later and -suddenly, for the first time, bursting into laughter. - -In all these records one feels that the recorder, even when he was in -the actual presence, kept his distance and kept his head, and never read -the novels in later years with the light of a vivid, or puzzling, or -beautiful personality dazzling in his eyes. In fiction, where so much of -personality is revealed, the absence of charm is a great lack; and her -critics, who have been, of course, mostly of the opposite sex, have -resented, half consciously perhaps, her deficiency in a quality which is -held to be supremely desirable in women. George Eliot was not charming; -she was not strongly feminine; she had none of those eccentricities and -inequalities of temper which give to so many artists the endearing -simplicity of children. One feels that to most people, as to Lady -Ritchie, she was “not exactly a personal friend, but a good and -benevolent impulse”. But if we consider these portraits more closely we -shall find that they are all the portraits of an elderly celebrated -woman, dressed in black satin, driving in her victoria, a woman who has -been through her struggle and issued from it with a profound desire to -be of use to others, but with no wish for intimacy, save with the little -circle who had known her in the days of her youth. We know very little -about the days of her youth; but we do know that the culture, the -philosophy, the fame, and the influence were all built upon a very -humble foundation—she was the grand-daughter of a carpenter. - -The first volume of her life is a singularly depressing record. In it we -see her raising herself with groans and struggles from the intolerable -boredom of petty provincial society (her father had risen in the world -and become more middle class, but less picturesque) to be the assistant -editor of a highly intellectual London review, and the esteemed -companion of Herbert Spencer. The stages are painful as she reveals them -in the sad soliloquy in which Mr. Cross condemned her to tell the story -of her life. Marked in early youth as one “sure to get something up very -soon in the way of a clothing club”, she proceeded to raise funds for -restoring a church by making a chart of ecclesiastical history; and that -was followed by a loss of faith which so disturbed her father that he -refused to live with her. Next came the struggle with the translation of -Strauss, which, dismal and “soul-stupefying” in itself, can scarcely -have been made less so by the usual feminine tasks of ordering a -household and nursing a dying father, and the distressing conviction, to -one so dependent upon affection, that by becoming a blue-stocking she -was forfeiting her brother’s respect. “I used to go about like an owl,” -she said, “to the great disgust of my brother.” “Poor thing,” wrote a -friend who saw her toiling through Strauss with a statue of the risen -Christ in front of her, “I do pity her sometimes, with her pale sickly -face and dreadful headaches, and anxiety, too, about her father.” Yet, -though we cannot read the story without a strong desire that the stages -of her pilgrimage might have been made, if not more easy, at least more -beautiful, there is a dogged determination in her advance upon the -citadel of culture which raises it above our pity. Her development was -very slow and very awkward, but it had the irresistible impetus behind -it of a deep-seated and noble ambition. Every obstacle at length was -thrust from her path. She knew every one. She read everything. Her -astonishing intellectual vitality had triumphed. Youth was over, but -youth had been full of suffering. Then, at the age of thirty-five, at -the height of her powers, and in the fullness of her freedom, she made -the decision which was of such profound moment to her and still matters -even to us, and went to Weimar, alone with George Henry Lewes. - -The books which followed so soon after her union testify in the fullest -manner to the great liberation which had come to her with personal -happiness. In themselves they provide us with a plentiful feast. Yet at -the threshold of her literary career one may find in some of the -circumstances of her life influences that turned her mind to the past, -to the country village, to the quiet and beauty and simplicity of -childish memories and away from herself and the present. We understand -how it was that her first book was _Scenes of Clerical Life_, and not -_Middlemarch_. Her union with Lewes had surrounded her with affection, -but in view of the circumstances and of the conventions it had also -isolated her. “I wish it to be understood,” she wrote in 1857, “that I -should never invite any one to come and see me who did not ask for the -invitation.” She had been “cut off from what is called the world”, she -said later, but she did not regret it. By becoming thus marked, first by -circumstances and later, inevitably, by her fame, she lost the power to -move on equal terms unnoted among her kind; and the loss for a novelist -was serious. Still, basking in the light and sunshine of _Scenes of -Clerical Life_, feeling the large mature mind spreading itself with a -luxurious sense of freedom in the world of her “remotest past”, to speak -of loss seems inappropriate. Everything to such a mind was gain. All -experience filtered down through layer after layer of perception and -reflection, enriching and nourishing. The utmost we can say, in -qualifying her attitude towards fiction by what little we know of her -life, is that she had taken to heart certain lessons not usually learnt -early, if learnt at all, among which, perhaps, the most branded upon her -was the melancholy virtue of tolerance; her sympathies are with the -everyday lot, and play most happily in dwelling upon the homespun of -ordinary joys and sorrows. She has none of that romantic intensity which -is connected with a sense of one’s own individuality, unsated and -unsubdued, cutting its shape sharply upon the background of the world. -What were the loves and sorrows of a snuffy old clergyman, dreaming over -his whisky, to the fiery egotism of Jane Eyre? The beauty of those first -books, _Scenes of Clerical Life_, _Adam Bede_, _The Mill on the Floss_, is -very great. It is impossible to estimate the merit of the Poysers, the -Dodsons, the Gilfils, the Bartons, and the rest with all their -surroundings and dependencies, because they have put on flesh and blood -and we move among them, now bored, now sympathetic, but always with that -unquestioning acceptance of all that they say and do, which we accord to -the great originals only. The flood of memory and humour which she pours -so spontaneously into one figure, one scene after another, until the -whole fabric of ancient rural England is revived, has so much in common -with a natural process that it leaves us with little consciousness that -there is anything to criticise. We accept; we feel the delicious warmth -and release of spirit which the great creative writers alone procure for -us. As one comes back to the books after years of absence they pour out, -even against our expectation, the same store of energy and heat, so that -we want more than anything to idle in the warmth as in the sun beating -down from the red orchard wall. If there is an element of unthinking -abandonment in thus submitting to the humours of Midland farmers and -their wives, that, too, is right in the circumstances. We scarcely wish -to analyse what we feel to be so large and deeply human. And when we -consider how distant in time the world of Shepperton and Hayslope is, -and how remote the minds of farmer and agricultural labourers from those -of most of George Eliot’s readers, we can only attribute the ease and -pleasure with which we ramble from house to smithy, from cottage parlour -to rectory garden, to the fact that George Eliot makes us share their -lives, not in a spirit of condescension or of curiosity, but in a spirit -of sympathy. She is no satirist. The movement of her mind was too slow -and cumbersome to lend itself to comedy. But she gathers in her large -grasp a great bunch of the main elements of human nature and groups them -loosely together with a tolerant and wholesome understanding which, as -one finds upon re-reading, has not only kept her figures fresh and free, -but has given them an unexpected hold upon our laughter and tears. There -is the famous Mrs. Poyser. It would have been easy to work her -idiosyncrasies to death, and, as it is, perhaps, George Eliot gets her -laugh in the same place a little too often. But memory, after the book -is shut, brings out, as sometimes in real life, the details and -subtleties which some more salient characteristic has prevented us from -noticing at the time. We recollect that her health was not good. There -were occasions upon which she said nothing at all. She was patience -itself with a sick child. She doted upon Totty. Thus one can muse and -speculate about the greater number of George Eliot’s characters and -find, even in the least important, a roominess and margin where those -qualities lurk which she has no call to bring from their obscurity. - -But in the midst of all this tolerance and sympathy there are, even in -the early books, moments of greater stress. Her humour has shown itself -broad enough to cover a wide range of fools and failures, mothers and -children, dogs and flourishing midland fields, farmers, sagacious or -fuddled over their ale, horse-dealers, inn-keepers, curates, and -carpenters. Over them all broods a certain romance, the only romance -that George Eliot allowed herself—the romance of the past. The books -are astonishingly readable and have no trace of pomposity or pretence. -But to the reader who holds a large stretch of her early work in view it -will become obvious that the mist of recollection gradually withdraws. -It is not that her power diminishes, for, to our thinking, it is at its -highest in the mature _Middlemarch_, the magnificent book which with all -its imperfections is one of the few English novels written for grown-up -people. But the world of fields and farms no longer contents her. In -real life she had sought her fortunes elsewhere; and though to look back -into the past was calming and consoling, there are, even in the early -works, traces of that troubled spirit, that exacting and questioning and -baffled presence who was George Eliot herself. In _Adam Bede_ there is a -hint of her in Dinah. She shows herself far more openly and completely -in Maggie in _The Mill on the Floss_. She is Janet in _Janet’s -Repentance_, and Romola, and Dorothea seeking wisdom and finding one -scarcely knows what in marriage with Ladislaw. Those who fall foul of -George Eliot do so, we incline to think, on account of her heroines; and -with good reason; for there is no doubt that they bring out the worst of -her, lead her into difficult places, make her self-conscious, didactic, -and occasionally vulgar. Yet if you could delete the whole sisterhood -you would leave a much smaller and a much inferior world, albeit a world -of greater artistic perfection and far superior jollity and comfort. In -accounting for her failure, in so far as it was a failure, one -recollects that she never wrote a story until she was thirty-seven, and -that by the time she was thirty-seven she had come to think of herself -with a mixture of pain and something like resentment. For long she -preferred not to think of herself at all. Then, when the first flush of -creative energy was exhausted and self-confidence had come to her, she -wrote more and more from the personal standpoint, but she did so without -the unhesitating abandonment of the young. Her self-consciousness is -always marked when her heroines say what she herself would have said. -She disguised them in every possible way. She granted them beauty and -wealth into the bargain; she invented, more improbably, a taste for -brandy. But the disconcerting and stimulating fact remained that she was -compelled by the very power of her genius to step forth in person upon -the quiet bucolic scene. - -The noble and beautiful girl who insisted upon being born into the Mill -on the Floss is the most obvious example of the ruin which a heroine can -strew about her. Humour controls her and keeps her lovable so long as -she is small and can be satisfied by eloping with the gipsies or -hammering nails into her doll; but she develops; and before George Eliot -knows what has happened she has a full-grown woman on her hands -demanding what neither gipsies nor dolls, nor St. Ogg’s itself is -capable of giving her. First Philip Wakem is produced, and later Stephen -Guest. The weakness of the one and the coarseness of the other have -often been pointed out; but both, in their weakness and coarseness, -illustrate not so much George Eliot’s inability to draw the portrait of -a man, as the uncertainty, the infirmity, and the fumbling which shook -her hand when she had to conceive a fit mate for a heroine. She is in -the first place driven beyond the home world she knew and loved, and -forced to set foot in middle-class drawing-rooms where young men sing -all the summer morning and young women sit embroidering smoking-caps for -bazaars. She feels herself out of her element, as her clumsy satire of -what she calls “good society” proves. - - -Good society has its claret and its velvet carpets, its dinner -engagements six weeks deep, its opera, and its faery ball rooms . . . -gets its science done by Faraday and its religion by the superior clergy -who are to be met in the best houses; how should it have need of belief -and emphasis? - - -There is no trace of humour or insight there, but only the -vindictiveness of a grudge which we feel to be personal in its origin. -But terrible as the complexity of our social system is in its demands -upon the sympathy and discernment of a novelist straying across the -boundaries, Maggie Tulliver did worse than drag George Eliot from her -natural surroundings. She insisted upon the introduction of the great -emotional scene. She must love; she must despair; she must be drowned -clasping her brother in her arms. The more one examines the great -emotional scenes the more nervously one anticipates the brewing and -gathering and thickening of the cloud which will burst upon our heads at -the moment of crisis in a shower of disillusionment and verbosity. It is -partly that her hold upon dialogue, when it is not dialect, is slack; -and partly that she seems to shrink with an elderly dread of fatigue -from the effort of emotional concentration. She allows her heroines to -talk too much. She has little verbal felicity. She lacks the unerring -taste which chooses one sentence and compresses the heart of the scene -within that. “Whom are you going to dance with?” asked Mr. Knightley, at -the Westons’ ball. “With you, if you will ask me,” said Emma; and she -has said enough. Mrs. Casaubon would have talked for an hour and we -should have looked out of the window. - -Yet, dismiss the heroines without sympathy, confine George Eliot to the -agricultural world of her “remotest past”, and you not only diminish her -greatness but lose her true flavour. That greatness is here we can have -no doubt. The width of the prospect, the large strong outlines of the -principal features, the ruddy light of the early books, the searching -power and reflective richness of the later tempt us to linger and -expatiate beyond our limits. But it is upon the heroines that we would -cast a final glance. “I have always been finding out my religion since I -was a little girl,” says Dorothea Casaubon. “I used to pray so much—now -I hardly ever pray. I try not to have desires merely for myself. . . .” -She is speaking for them all. That is their problem. They cannot live -without religion, and they start out on the search for one when they are -little girls. Each has the deep feminine passion for goodness, which -makes the place where she stands in aspiration and agony the heart of -the book—still and cloistered like a place of worship, but that she no -longer knows to whom to pray. In learning they seek their goal; in the -ordinary tasks of womanhood; in the wider service of their kind. They do -not find what they seek, and we cannot wonder. The ancient consciousness -of woman, charged with suffering and sensibility, and for so many ages -dumb, seems in them to have brimmed and overflowed and uttered a demand -for something—they scarcely know what—for something that is perhaps -incompatible with the facts of human existence. George Eliot had far too -strong an intelligence to tamper with those facts, and too broad a -humour to mitigate the truth because it was a stern one. Save for the -supreme courage of their endeavour, the struggle ends, for her heroines, -in tragedy, or in a compromise that is even more melancholy. But their -story is the incomplete version of the story of George Eliot herself. -For her, too, the burden and the complexity of womanhood were not -enough; she must reach beyond the sanctuary and pluck for herself the -strange bright fruits of art and knowledge. Clasping them as few women -have ever clasped them, she would not renounce her own inheritance—the -difference of view, the difference of standard—nor accept an -inappropriate reward. Thus we behold her, a memorable figure, -inordinately praised and shrinking from her fame, despondent, reserved, -shuddering back into the arms of love as if there alone were -satisfaction and, it might be, justification, at the same time reaching -out with “a fastidious yet hungry ambition” for all that life could -offer the free and inquiring mind and confronting her feminine -aspirations with the real world of men. Triumphant was the issue for -her, whatever it may have been for her creations, and as we recollect -all that she dared and achieved, how with every obstacle against -her—sex and health and convention—she sought more knowledge and more -freedom till the body, weighted with its double burden, sank worn out, -we must lay upon her grave whatever we have it in our power to bestow of -laurel and rose. - - - - -_The Russian Point of View_ - - -Doubtful as we frequently are whether either the French or the -Americans, who have so much in common with us, can yet understand -English literature, we must admit graver doubts whether, for all their -enthusiasm, the English can understand Russian literature. Debate might -protract itself indefinitely as to what we mean by “understand”. -Instances will occur to everybody of American writers in particular who -have written with the highest discrimination of our literature and of -ourselves; who have lived a lifetime among us, and finally have taken -legal steps to become subjects of King George. For all that, have they -understood us, have they not remained to the end of their days -foreigners? Could any one believe that the novels of Henry James were -written by a man who had grown-up in the society which he describes, or -that his criticism of English writers was written by a man who had read -Shakespeare without any sense of the Atlantic Ocean and two or three -hundred years on the far side of it separating his civilisation -from ours? A special acuteness and detachment, a sharp angle of -vision the foreigner will often achieve; but not that absence of -self-consciousness, that ease and fellowship and sense of common values -which make for intimacy, and sanity, and the quick give and take of -familiar intercourse. - -Not only have we all this to separate us from Russian literature, but a -much more serious barrier—the difference of language. Of all those who -feasted upon Tolstoi, Dostoevsky, and Tchekov during the past twenty -years, not more than one or two perhaps have been able to read them in -Russian. Our estimate of their qualities has been formed by critics who -have never read a word of Russian, or seen Russia, or even heard the -language spoken by natives; who have had to depend, blindly and -implicitly, upon the work of translators. - -What we are saying amounts to this, then, that we have judged a whole -literature stripped of its style. When you have changed every word in a -sentence from Russian to English, have thereby altered the sense a -little, the sound, weight, and accent of the words in relation to each -other completely, nothing remains except a crude and coarsened version -of the sense. Thus treated, the great Russian writers are like men -deprived by an earthquake or a railway accident not only of all their -clothes, but also of something subtler and more important—their -manners, the idiosyncrasies of their characters. What remains is, as the -English have proved by the fanaticism of their admiration, something -very powerful and very impressive, but it is difficult to feel sure, in -view of these mutilations, how far we can trust ourselves not to impute, -to distort, to read into them an emphasis which is false. - -They have lost their clothes, we say, in some terrible catastrophe, for -some such figure as that describes the simplicity, the humanity, -startled out of all effort to hide and disguise its instincts, which -Russian literature, whether it is due to translation, or to some more -profound cause, makes upon us. We find these qualities steeping it -through, as obvious in the lesser writers as in the greater. “Learn to -make yourselves akin to people. I would even like to add: make yourself -indispensable to them. But let this sympathy be not with the mind—for -it is easy with the mind—but with the heart, with love towards them.” -“From the Russian,” one would say instantly, wherever one chanced on -that quotation. The simplicity, the absence of effort, the assumption -that in a world bursting with misery the chief call upon us is to -understand our fellow-sufferers, “and not with the mind—for it is easy -with the mind—but with the heart”—this is the cloud which broods above -the whole of Russian literature, which lures us from our own parched -brilliancy and scorched thoroughfares to expand in its shade—and of -course with disastrous results. We become awkward and self-conscious; -denying our own qualities, we write with an affectation of goodness and -simplicity which is nauseating in the extreme. We cannot say “Brother” -with simple conviction. There is a story by Mr. Galsworthy in which one -of the characters so addresses another (they are both in the depths of -misfortune). Immediately everything becomes strained and affected. The -English equivalent for “Brother” is “Mate”—a very different word, with -something sardonic in it, an indefinable suggestion of humour. Met -though they are in the depths of misfortune the two Englishmen who thus -accost each other will, we are sure, find a job, make their fortunes, -spend the last years of their lives in luxury, and leave a sum of money -to prevent poor devils from calling each other “Brother” on the -Embankment. But it is common suffering, rather than common happiness, -effort, or desire that produces the sense of brotherhood. It is the -“deep sadness” which Dr. Hagberg Wright finds typical of the Russian -people that creates their literature. - -A generalisation of this kind will, of course, even if it has some -degree of truth when applied to the body of literature, be changed -profoundly when a writer of genius sets to work on it. At once other -questions arise. It is seen that an “attitude” is not simple; it is -highly complex. Men reft of their coats and their manners, stunned by a -railway accident, say hard things, harsh things, unpleasant things, -difficult things, even if they say them with the abandonment and -simplicity which catastrophe has bred in them. Our first impressions of -Tchekov are not of simplicity but of bewilderment. What is the point of -it, and why does he make a story out of this? we ask as we read story -after story. A man falls in love with a married woman, and they part and -meet, and in the end are left talking about their position and by what -means they can be free from “this intolerable bondage”. - -“‘How? How?’ he asked, clutching his head. . . . And it seemed as though -in a little while the solution would be found and then a new and -splendid life would begin.” That is the end. A postman drives a student -to the station and all the way the student tries to make the postman -talk, but he remains silent. Suddenly the postman says unexpectedly, -“It’s against the regulations to take any one with the post.” And he -walks up and down the platform with a look of anger on his face. “With -whom was he angry? Was it with people, with poverty, with the autumn -nights?” Again, that story ends. - -But is it the end, we ask? We have rather the feeling that we have -overrun our signals; or it is as if a tune had stopped short without the -expected chords to close it. These stories are inconclusive, we say, and -proceed to frame a criticism based upon the assumption that stories -ought to conclude in a way that we recognise. In so doing we raise the -question of our own fitness as readers. Where the tune is familiar and -the end emphatic—lovers united, villains discomfited, intrigues -exposed—as it is in most Victorian fiction, we can scarcely go wrong, -but where the tune is unfamiliar and the end a note of interrogation or -merely the information that they went on talking, as it is in Tchekov, -we need a very daring and alert sense of literature to make us hear the -tune, and in particular those last notes which complete the harmony. -Probably we have to read a great many stories before we feel, and the -feeling is essential to our satisfaction, that we hold the parts -together, and that Tchekov was not merely rambling disconnectedly, but -struck now this note, now that with intention, in order to complete his -meaning. - -We have to cast about in order to discover where the emphasis in these -strange stories rightly comes. Tchekov’s own words give us a lead in the -right direction. “. . . such a conversation as this between us”, he -says, “would have been unthinkable for our parents. At night they did -not talk, but slept sound; we, our generation, sleep badly, are -restless, but talk a great deal, and are always trying to settle whether -we are right or not.” Our literature of social satire and psychological -finesse both sprang from that restless sleep, that incessant talking; -but after all, there is an enormous difference between Tchekov and Henry -James, between Tchekov and Bernard Shaw. Obviously—but where does it -arise? Tchekov, too, is aware of the evils and injustices of the social -state; the condition of the peasants appals him, but the reformer’s zeal -is not his—that is not the signal for us to stop. The mind interests -him enormously; he is a most subtle and delicate analyst of human -relations. But again, no; the end is not there. Is it that he is -primarily interested not in the soul’s relation with other souls, but -with the soul’s relation to health—with the soul’s relation to -goodness? These stories are always showing us some affectation, pose, -insincerity. Some woman has got into a false relation; some man has been -perverted by the inhumanity of his circumstances. The soul is ill; the -soul is cured; the soul is not cured. Those are the emphatic points in -his stories. - -Once the eye is used to these shades, half the “conclusions” of fiction -fade into thin air; they show like transparences with a light behind -them—gaudy, glaring, superficial. The general tidying up of the last -chapter, the marriage, the death, the statement of values so sonorously -trumpeted forth, so heavily underlined, become of the most rudimentary -kind. Nothing is solved, we feel; nothing is rightly held together. On -the other hand, the method which at first seemed so casual, -inconclusive, and occupied with trifles, now appears the result of an -exquisitely original and fastidious taste, choosing boldly, arranging -infallibly, and controlled by an honesty for which we can find no match -save among the Russians themselves. There may be no answer to these -questions, but at the same time let us never manipulate the evidence so -as to produce something fitting, decorous, agreeable to our vanity. This -may not be the way to catch the ear of the public; after all, they are -used to louder music, fiercer measures; but as the tune sounded, so he -has written it. In consequence, as we read these little stories about -nothing at all, the horizon widens; the soul gains an astonishing sense -of freedom. - -In reading Tchekov we find ourselves repeating the word “soul” again and -again. It sprinkles his pages. Old drunkards use it freely; “. . . you -are high up in the service, beyond all reach, but haven’t real soul, my -dear boy . . . there’s no strength in it.” Indeed, it is the soul that -is the chief character in Russian fiction. Delicate and subtle in -Tchekov, subject to an infinite number of humours and distempers, it is -of greater depth and volume in Dostoevsky, liable to violent diseases -and raging fevers, but still the predominant concern. Perhaps that is -why it needs so great an effort on the part of an English reader to read -_The Brothers Karamazov_ or _The Possessed_ a second time. The “soul” is -alien to him. It is even antipathetic. It has little sense of humour and -no sense of comedy. It is formless. It has slight connection with the -intellect. It is confused, diffuse, tumultuous, incapable, it seems, of -submitting to the control of logic or the discipline of poetry. The -novels of Dostoevsky are seething whirlpools, gyrating sandstorms, -waterspouts which hiss and boil and suck us in. They are composed purely -and wholly of the stuff of the soul. Against our wills we are drawn in, -whirled round, blinded, suffocated, and at the same time filled with a -giddy rapture. Out of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading. We -open the door and find ourselves in a room full of Russian generals, the -tutors of Russian generals, their step-daughters and cousins and crowds -of miscellaneous people who are all talking at the tops of their voices -about their most private affairs. But where are we? Surely it is the -part of a novelist to inform us whether we are in an hotel, a flat, or -hired lodging. Nobody thinks of explaining. We are souls, tortured, -unhappy souls, whose only business it is to talk, to reveal, to confess, -to draw up at whatever rending of flesh and nerve those crabbed sins -which crawl on the sand at the bottom of us. But, as we listen, our -confusion slowly settles. A rope is flung to us; we catch hold of a -soliloquy; holding on by the skin of our teeth, we are rushed through -the water; feverishly, wildly, we rush on and on, now submerged, now in -a moment of vision understanding more than we have ever understood -before, and receiving such revelations as we are wont to get only from -the press of life at its fullest. As we fly we pick it all up—the names -of the people, their relationships, that they are staying in an hotel at -Roulettenburg, that Polina is involved in an intrigue with the Marquis -de Grieux—but what unimportant matters these are compared with the -soul! It is the soul that matters, its passion, its tumult, its -astonishing medley of beauty and vileness. And if our voices suddenly -rise into shrieks of laughter, or if we are shaken by the most violent -sobbing, what more natural?—it hardly calls for remark. The pace at -which we are living is so tremendous that sparks must rush off our -wheels as we fly. Moreover, when the speed is thus increased and the -elements of the soul are seen, not separately in scenes of humour or -scenes of passion as our slower English minds conceive them, but -streaked, involved, inextricably confused, a new panorama of the human -mind is revealed. The old divisions melt into each other. Men are at the -same time villains and saints; their acts are at once beautiful and -despicable. We love and we hate at the same time. There is none: of that -precise division between good and bad to which we are used. Often those -for whom we feel most affection are the greatest criminals, and the most -abject sinners move us to the strongest admiration as well as love. - -Dashed to the crest of the waves, bumped and battered on the stones at -the bottom, it is difficult for an English reader to feel at ease. The -process to which he is accustomed in his own literature is reversed. If -we wished to tell the story of a General’s love affair (and we should -find it very difficult in the first place not to laugh at a General), we -should begin with his house; we should solidify his surroundings. Only -when all was ready should we attempt to deal with the General himself. -Moreover, it is not the samovar but the teapot that rules in England; -time is limited; space crowded; the influence of other points of view, -of other books, even of other ages, makes itself felt. Society is sorted -out into lower, middle, and upper classes, each with its own traditions, -its own manners, and, to some extent, its own language. Whether he -wishes it or not, there is a constant pressure upon an English novelist -to recognise these barriers, and, in consequence, order is imposed on -him and some kind of form; he is inclined to satire rather than to -compassion, to scrutiny of society rather than understanding of -individuals themselves. - -No such restraints were laid on Dostoevsky. It is all the same to him -whether you are noble or simple, a tramp or a great lady. Whoever you -are, you are the vessel of this perplexed liquid, this cloudy, yeasty, -precious stuff, the soul. The soul is not restrained by barriers. It -overflows, it floods, it mingles with the souls of others. The simple -story of a bank clerk who could not pay for a bottle of wine spreads, -before we know what is happening, into the lives of his father-in-law -and the five mistresses whom his father-in-law treated abominably, and -the postman’s life, and the charwoman’s, and the Princesses’ who lodged -in the same block of flats; for nothing is outside Dostoevsky’s -province; and when he is tired, he does not stop, he goes on. He cannot -restrain himself. Out it tumbles upon us, hot, scalding, mixed, -marvellous, terrible, oppressive—the human soul. - -There remains the greatest of all novelists—for what else can we call -the author of _War and Peace_? Shall we find Tolstoi, too, alien, -difficult, a foreigner? Is there some oddity in his angle of vision -which, at any rate until we have become disciples and so lost our -bearings, keeps us at arm’s length in suspicion and bewilderment? From -his first words we can be sure of one thing at any rate—here is a man -who sees what we see, who proceeds, too, as we are accustomed to -proceed, not from the inside outwards, but from the outside inwards. -Here is a world in which the postman’s knock is heard at eight o’clock, -and people go to bed between ten and eleven. Here is a man, too, who is -no savage, no child of nature; he is educated; he has had every sort of -experience. He is one of those born aristocrats who have used their -privileges to the full. He is metropolitan, not suburban. His senses, -his intellect, are acute, powerful, and well nourished. There is -something proud and superb in the attack of such a mind and such a body -upon life. Nothing seems to escape him. Nothing glances off him -unrecorded. Nobody, therefore, can so convey the excitement of sport, -the beauty of horses, and all the fierce desirability of the world to -the senses of a strong young man. Every twig, every feather sticks to -his magnet. He notices the blue or red of a child’s frock; the way a -horse shifts its tail; the sound of a cough; the action of a man trying -to put his hands into pockets that have been sewn up. And what his -infallible eye reports of a cough or a trick of the hands his infallible -brain refers to something hidden in the character so that we know his -people, not only by the way they love and their views on politics and -the immortality of the soul, but also by the way they sneeze and choke. -Even in a translation we feel that we have been set on a mountain-top -and had a telescope put into our hands. Everything is astonishingly -clear and absolutely sharp. Then, suddenly, just as we are exulting, -breathing deep, feeling at once braced and purified, some -detail—perhaps the head of a man—comes at us out of the picture in an -alarming way, as if extruded by the very intensity of its life. -“Suddenly a strange thing happened to me: first I ceased to see what was -around me; then his face seemed to vanish till only the eyes were left, -shining over against mine; next the eyes seemed to be in my own head, -and then all became confused—I could see nothing and was forced to shut -my eyes, in order to break loose from the feeling of pleasure and fear -which his gaze was producing in me. . . .” Again and again we share -Masha’s feelings in _Family Happiness_. One shuts one’s eyes to escape -the feeling of pleasure and fear. Often it is pleasure that is -uppermost. In this very story there are two descriptions, one of a girl -walking in a garden at night with her lover, one of a newly married -couple prancing down their drawing-room, which so convey the feeling of -intense happiness that we shut the book to feel it better. But always -there is an element of fear which makes us, like Masha, wish to escape -from the gaze which Tolstoi fixes on us. Does it arise from the sense, -which in real life might harass us, that such happiness as he describes -is too intense to last, that we are on the edge of disaster? Or is it -not that the very intensity of our pleasure is somehow questionable and -forces us to ask, with Pozdnyshev in the Kreutzer Sonata, “But why -live?” Life dominates Tolstoi as the soul dominates Dostoevsky. There is -always at the centre of all the brilliant and flashing petals of the -flower this scorpion, “Why live?” There is always at the centre of the -book some Olenin, or Pierre, or Levin who gathers into himself all -experience, turns the world round between his fingers, and never ceases -to ask even as he enjoys it, what is the meaning of it, and what should -be our aims. It is not the priest who shatters our desires most -effectively; it is the man who has known them, and loved them himself. -When he derides them, the world indeed turns to dust and ashes beneath -our feet. Thus fear mingles with our pleasure, and of the three great -Russian writers, it is Tolstoi who most enthralls us and most repels. - -But the mind takes its bias from the place of its birth, and no doubt, -when it strikes upon a literature so alien as the Russian, flies off at -a tangent far from the truth. - - - - -_Outlines_ - - -I - -MISS MITFORD - - -Speaking truthfully, _Mary Russell Mitford and Her Surroundings_ is not -a good book. It neither enlarges the mind nor purifies the heart. There -is nothing in it about Prime Ministers and not very much about Miss -Mitford. Yet, as one is setting out to speak the truth, one must own -that there are certain books which can be read without the mind and -without the heart, but still with considerable enjoyment. To come to the -point, the great merit of these scrapbooks, for they can scarcely be -called biographies, is that they license mendacity. One cannot believe -what Miss Hill says about Miss Mitford, and thus one is free to invent -Miss Mitford for oneself. Not for a second do we accuse Miss Hill of -telling lies. That infirmity is entirely ours. For example: “Alresford -was the birthplace of one who loved nature as few have loved her, and -whose writings ‘breathe the air of the hayfields and the scent of the -hawthorn boughs’, and seem to waft to us ‘the sweet breezes that blow -over ripened cornfields and daisied meadows’.” It is perfectly true that -Miss Mitford was born at Alresford, and yet, when it is put like that, -we doubt whether she was ever born at all. Indeed she was, says Miss -Hill; she was born “on the 16th December, 1787. ‘A pleasant house in -truth it was,’ Miss Mitford writes. ‘The breakfast-room . . . was a -lofty and spacious apartment.’” So Miss Mitford was born in the -breakfast-room about eight-thirty on a snowy morning between the -Doctor’s second and third cups of tea. “Pardon me,” said Mrs. Mitford, -turning a little pale, but not omitting to add the right quantity of -cream to her husband’s tea, “I feel . . .” That is the way in which -Mendacity begins. There is something plausible and even ingenious in her -approaches. The touch about the cream, for instance, might be called -historical, for it is well known that when Mary won £20,000 in the -Irish lottery, the Doctor spent it all upon Wedgwood china, the winning -number being stamped upon the soup plates in the middle of an Irish -harp, the whole being surmounted by the Mitford arms, and encircled by -the motto of Sir John Bertram, one of William the Conqueror’s knights, -from whom the Mitfords claimed descent. “Observe,” says Mendacity, “with -what an air the Doctor drinks his tea, and how she, poor lady, contrives -to curtsey as she leaves the room.” Tea? I inquire, for the Doctor, -though a fine figure of a man, is already purple and profuse, and foams -like a crimson cock over the frill of his fine laced shirt. “Since the -ladies have left the room,” Mendacity begins, and goes on to make up a -pack of lies with the sole object of proving that Dr. Mitford kept a -mistress in the purlieus of Reading and paid her money on the pretence -that he was investing it in a new method of lighting and heating houses -invented by the Marquis de Chavannes. It came to the same thing in the -end—to the King’s Bench Prison, that is to say; but instead of allowing -us to recall the literary and historical associations of the place, -Mendacity wanders off to the window and distracts us again by the -platitudinous remark that it is still snowing. There is something very -charming in an ancient snowstorm. The weather has varied almost as much -in the course of generations as mankind. The snow of those days was more -formally shaped and a good deal softer than the snow of ours, just as an -eighteenth-century cow was no more like our cows than she was like the -florid and fiery cows of Elizabethan pastures. Sufficient attention has -scarcely been paid to this aspect of literature, which, it cannot be -denied, has its importance. - -Our brilliant young men might do worse, when in search of a subject, -than devote a year or two to cows in literature, snow in literature, the -daisy in Chaucer and in Coventry Patmore. At any rate, the snow falls -heavily. The Portsmouth mail-coach has already lost its way; several -ships have foundered, and Margate pier has been totally destroyed. At -Hatfield Peveral twenty sheep have been buried, and though one supports -itself by gnawing wurzels which it has found near it, there is grave -reason to fear that the French king’s coach has been blocked on the road -to Colchester. It is now the 16th of February, 1808. - -Poor Mrs. Mitford! Twenty-one years ago she left the breakfast-room, and -no news has yet been received of her child. Even Mendacity is a little -ashamed of itself, and, picking up _Mary Russell Mitford and Her -Surroundings_, assures us that everything will come right if we possess -ourselves in patience. The French king’s coach was on its way to -Bocking; at Bocking lived Lord and Lady Charles Murray-Aynsley; and Lord -Charles was shy. Lord Charles had always been shy. Once when Mary -Mitford was five years old—sixteen years, that is, before the sheep -were lost and the French king went to Bocking—Mary “threw him into an -agony of blushing by running up to his chair in mistake for that of my -papa”. He had indeed to leave the room. Miss Hill, who, somewhat -strangely, finds the society of Lord and Lady Charles pleasant, does not -wish to quit it without “introducing an incident in connection with them -which took place in the month of February, 1808”. But is Miss Mitford -concerned in it? we ask, for there must be an end of trifling. To some -extent, that is to say, Lady Charles was a cousin of the Mitfords, and -Lord Charles was shy. Mendacity is quite ready to deal with “the -incident” even on these terms; but, we repeat, we have had enough of -trifling. Miss Mitford may not be a great woman; for all we know she was -not even a good one; but we have certain responsibilities as a reviewer -which we are not going to evade. - -There is, to begin with, English literature. A sense of the beauty of -nature has never been altogether absent, however much the cow may change -from age to age, from English poetry. Nevertheless, the difference -between Pope and Wordsworth in this respect is very considerable. -_Lyrical Ballads_ was published in 1798; _Our Village_ in 1824. One -being in verse and the other in prose, it is not necessary to labour a -comparison which contains, however, not only the elements of justice, -but the seeds of many volumes. Like her great predecessor, Miss Mitford -much preferred the country to the town; and thus, perhaps, it may not be -inopportune to dwell for a moment upon the King of Saxony, Mary Anning, -and the ichthyosaurus. Let alone the fact that Mary Anning and Mary -Mitford had a Christian name in common, they are further connected by -what can scarcely be called a fact, but may, without hazard, be called a -probability. Miss Mitford was looking for fossils at Lyme Regis only -fifteen years before Mary Anning found one. The King of Saxony visited -Lyme in 1844, and seeing the head of an ichthyosaurus in Mary Anning’s -window, asked her to drive to Pinny and explore the rocks. While they -were looking for fossils, an old woman seated herself in the King’s -coach—was she Mary Mitford? Truth compels us to say that she was not; -but there is no doubt, and we are not trifling when we say it, that Mary -Mitford often expressed a wish that she had known Mary Anning, and it is -singularly unfortunate to have to state that she never did. For we have -reached the year 1844; Mary Mitford is fifty-seven years of age, and so -far, thanks to Mendacity and its trifling ways, all we know of her is -that she did not know Mary Anning, had not found an ichthyosaurus, had -not been out in a snowstorm, and had not seen the King of France. - -It is time to wring the creature’s neck, and begin again at the very -beginning. - -What considerations, then, had weight with Miss Hill when she decided to -write _Mary Russell Mitford and Her Surroundings_? Three emerge from the -rest, and may be held of paramount importance. In the first place. Miss -Mitford was a lady; in the second, she was born in the year 1787; and in -the third, the stock of female characters who lend themselves to -biographic treatment by their own sex is, for one reason or another, -running short. For instance, little is known of Sappho, and that little -is not wholly to her credit. Lady Jane Grey has merit, but is undeniably -obscure. Of George Sand, the more we know the less we approve. George -Eliot was led into evil ways which not all her philosophy can excuse. -The Brontës, however highly we rate their genius, lacked that -indefinable something which marks the lady; Harriet Martineau was an -atheist; Mrs. Browning was a married woman; Jane Austen, Fanny Burney, -and Maria Edgeworth have been done already; so that, what with one thing -and another, Mary Russell Mitford is the only woman left. - -There is no need to labour the extreme importance of the date when we -see the word “surroundings” on the back, of a book. Surroundings, as -they are called, are invariably eighteenth-century surroundings. When we -come, as of course we do, to that phrase which relates how “as we looked -upon the steps leading down from the upper room, we fancied we saw the -tiny figure jumping from step to step”, it would be the grossest outrage -upon our sensibilities to be told that those steps were Athenian, -Elizabethan, or Parisian. They were, of course, eighteenth-century -steps, leading down from the old panelled room into the shady garden, -where, tradition has it, William Pitt played marbles, or, if we like to -be bold, where on still summer days we can almost fancy that we hear the -drums of Bonaparte on the coast of France. Bonaparte is the limit of the -imagination on one side, as Monmouth is on the other; it would be fatal -if the imagination took to toying with Prince Albert or sporting with -King John. But fancy knows her place, and there is no need to labour the -point that her place is the eighteenth-century. The other point is more -obscure. One must be a lady. Yet what that means, and whether we like -what it means, may both be doubtful. If we say that Jane Austen was a -lady and that Charlotte Brontë was not one, we do as much as need be -done in the way of definition, and commit ourselves to neither side. - -It is undoubtedly because of their reticence that Miss Hill is on the -side of the ladies. They sigh things off and they smile things off, but -they never seize the silver table by the legs or dash the teacups on the -floor. It is in many ways a great convenience to have a subject who can -be trusted to live a long life without once raising her voice. Sixteen -years is a considerable stretch of time, but of a lady it is enough to -say, “Here Mary Mitford passed sixteen years of her life and here she -got to know and love not only their own beautiful grounds but also every -turn of the surrounding shady lanes.” Her loves were vegetable, and her -lanes were shady. Then, of course, she was educated at the school where -Jane Austen and Mrs. Sherwood had been educated. She visited Lyme Regis, -and there is mention of the Cobb. She saw London from the top of St. -Paul’s, and London was much smaller then than it is now. She changed -from one charming house to another, and several distinguished literary -gentlemen paid her compliments and came to tea. When the dining-room -ceiling fell down it did not fall on her head, and when she took a -ticket in a lottery she did win the prize. If in the foregoing sentences -there are any words of more than two syllables, it is our fault and not -Miss Hill’s; and to do that writer justice, there are not many whole -sentences in the book which are neither quoted from Miss Mitford nor -supported by the authority of Mr. Crissy. - -But how dangerous a thing is life! Can one be sure that anything not -wholly made of mahogany will to the very end stand empty in the sun? -Even cupboards have their secret springs, and when, inadvertently we are -sure, Miss Hill touches this one, out, terrible to relate, topples a -stout old gentleman. In plain English, Miss Mitford had a father. There -is nothing actually improper in that. Many women have had fathers. But -Miss Mitford’s father was kept in a cupboard; that is to say, he was not -a nice father. Miss Hill even goes so far as to conjecture that when “an -imposing procession of neighbours and friends” followed him to the -grave, “we cannot help thinking that this was more to show sympathy and -respect for Miss Mitford than from special respect for him”. Severe as -the judgement is, the gluttonous, bibulous, amorous old man did -something to deserve it. The less said about him the better. Only, if -from your earliest childhood your father has gambled and speculated, -first with your mother’s fortune, then with your own, spent your -earnings, driven you to earn more, and spent that too; if in old age he -has lain upon a sofa and insisted that fresh air is bad for daughters, -if, dying at length, he has left debts that can only be paid by selling -everything you have or sponging upon the charity of friends—then even a -lady sometimes raises her voice. Miss Mitford herself spoke out once. -“It was grief to go; there I had toiled and striven and tasted as deeply -of bitter anxiety, of fear, and of hope as often falls to the lot of -woman.” What language for a lady to use! for a lady, too, who owns a -teapot. There is a drawing of the teapot at the bottom of the page. But -it is now of no avail; Miss Mitford has smashed it to smithereens. That -is the worst of writing about ladies; they have fathers as well as -teapots. On the other hand, some pieces of Dr. Mitford’s Wedgwood dinner -service are still in existence, and a copy of Adam’s Geography, which -Mary won as a prize at school, is “in our temporary possession”. If -there is nothing improper in the suggestion, might not the next book be -devoted entirely to them? - - - - -II - -DR. BENTLEY - - -As we saunter through those famous courts where Dr. Bentley once reigned -supreme we sometimes catch sight of a figure hurrying on its way to -Chapel or Hall which, as it disappears, draws our thoughts -enthusiastically after it. For that man, we are told, has the whole of -Sophocles at his finger-ends; knows Homer by heart; reads Pindar as we -read the _Times_; and spends his life, save for these short excursions -to eat and pray, wholly in the company of the Greeks. It is true that -the infirmities of our education prevent us from appreciating his -emendations as they deserve; his life’s work is a sealed book to us; -none the less, we treasure up the last flicker of his black gown, and -feel as if a bird of Paradise had flashed by us, so bright is his -spirit’s raiment, and in the murk of a November evening we had been -privileged to see it winging its way to roost in fields of amaranth and -beds of moly. Of all men, great scholars are the most mysterious, the -most august. Since it is unlikely that we shall ever be admitted to -their intimacy, or see much more of them than a black gown crossing a -court at dusk, the best we can do is to read their lives—for example, -the _Life of Dr. Bentley_ by Bishop Monk. - -There we shall find much that is odd and little that is reassuring. The -greatest of our scholars, the man who read Greek as the most expert of -us read English not merely with an accurate sense of meaning and grammar -but with a sensibility so subtle and widespread that he perceived -relations and suggestions of language which enabled him to fetch up from -oblivion lost lines and inspire new life into the little fragments that -remained, the man who should have been steeped in beauty (if what they -say of the Classics is true) as a honey-pot is ingrained with sweetness -was, on the contrary, the most quarrelsome of mankind. - -“I presume that there are not many examples of an individual who has -been a party in six distinct suits before the Court of King’s Bench -within the space of three years”, his biographer remarks; and adds that -Bentley won them all. It is difficult to deny his conclusion that though -Dr. Bentley might have been a first-rate lawyer or a great soldier “such -a display suited any character rather than that of a learned and -dignified clergyman”. Not all these disputes, however, sprung from his -love of literature. The charges against which he had to defend himself -were directed against him as Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He -was habitually absent from chapel; his expenditure upon building and -upon his household was excessive; he used the college seal at meetings -which did not consist of the statutable number of sixteen, and so on. In -short, the career of the Master of Trinity was one continuous series of -acts of aggression and defiance, in which Dr. Bentley treated the -Society of Trinity College as a grown man might treat an importunate -rabble of street boys. Did they dare to hint that the staircase at the -Lodge which admitted four persons abreast was quite wide enough?—did -they refuse to sanction his expenditure upon a new one? Meeting them in -the Great Court one evening after chapel he proceeded urbanely to -question them. They refused to budge. Whereupon, with a sudden -alteration of colour and voice, Bentley demanded whether “they had -forgotten his rusty sword?” Mr. Michael Hutchinson and some others, upon -whose backs the weight of that weapon would have first descended, -brought pressure upon their seniors. The bill for £350 was paid and -their preferment secured. But Bentley did not wait for this act of -submission to finish his staircase. - -So it went on, year after year. Nor was the arrogance of his behaviour -always justified by the splendour or utility of the objects he had in -view—the creation of the Backs, the erection of an observatory, the -foundation of a laboratory. More trivial desires were gratified with the -same tyranny. Sometimes he wanted coal; sometimes bread and ale; and -then Madame Bentley, sending her servant with a snuff-box in token of -authority, got from the butteries at the expense of the college a great -deal more of these commodities than the college thought that Dr. Bentley -ought to require. Again, when he had four pupils to lodge with him who -paid him handsomely for their board, it was drawn from the College, at -the command of the snuff-box, for nothing. The principles of “delicacy -and good feeling” which the Master might have been expected to observe -(great scholar as he was, steeped in the wine of the classics) went for -nothing. His argument that the “few College loaves” upon which the four -young patricians were nourished were amply repaid by the three sash -windows which he had put into their rooms at his own expense failed to -convince the Fellows. And when, on Trinity Sunday 1719, the Fellows -found the famous College ale not to their liking, they were scarcely -satisfied when the butler told them that it had been brewed by the -Master’s orders, from the Master’s malt, which was stored in the -Master’s granary, and though damaged by “an insect called the weevil” -had been paid for at the very high rates which the Master demanded. - -Still these battles over bread and beer are trifles and domestic trifles -at that. His conduct in his profession will throw more light upon our -inquiry. For, released from brick and building, bread and beer, -patricians and their windows, it may be found that he expanded in the -atmosphere of Homer, Horace, and Manilius, and proved in his study the -benign nature of those influences which have been wafted down to us -through the ages. But there the evidence is even less to the credit of -the dead languages. He acquitted himself magnificently, all agree, in -the great controversy about the letters of Phalaris. His temper was -excellent and his learning prodigious. But that triumph was succeeded by -a series of disputes which force upon us the extraordinary spectacle of -men of learning and genius, of authority and divinity, brawling about -Greek and Latin texts, and calling each other names for all the world -like bookies on a racecourse or washerwomen in a back street. For this -vehemence of temper and virulence of language were not confined to -Bentley alone; they appear unhappily characteristic of the profession as -a whole. Early in life, in the year 1691, a quarrel was fastened upon -him by his brother chaplain Hody for writing Malelas, not as Hody -preferred, Malela. A controversy in which Bentley displayed learning and -wit, and Hody accumulated endless pages of bitter argument against the -letter _s_ ensued. Hody was worsted, and “there is too much reason to -believe, that the offence given by this trivial cause was never -afterwards healed”. Indeed, to mend a line was to break a friendship. -James Gronovius of Leyden—“homunculus eruditione mediocri, ingenio -nullo”, as Bentley called him—attacked Bentley for ten years because -Bentley had succeeded in correcting a fragment of Callimachus where he -had failed. - -But Gronovius was by no means the only scholar who resented the success -of a rival with a rancour that grey hairs and forty years spent in -editing the classics failed to subdue. In all the chief towns of Europe -lived men like the notorious de Pauw of Utrecht, “a person who has -justly been considered the pest and disgrace of letters”, who, when a -new theory or new edition appeared, banded themselves together to deride -and humiliate the scholar. . . all his writings. Bishop Monk remarks of -de Pauw, “prove him to be devoid of candour, good faith, good manners, -and every gentlemanly feeling: and while he unites all the defects and -bad qualities that were ever found in a critic or commentator, he adds -one peculiar to himself, an incessant propensity to indecent allusions.” -With such tempers and such habits it is not strange that the scholars of -those days sometimes ended lives made intolerable by bitterness, -poverty, and neglect by their own hands, like Johnson, who after a -lifetime spent in the detection of minute errors of construction, went -mad and drowned himself in the meadows near Nottingham. On May 20, 1712, -Trinity College was shocked to find that the professor of Hebrew, Dr. -Sike, had hanged himself “some time this evening, before candlelight, in -his sash”. When Kuster died, it was reported that he, too, had killed -himself. And so, in a sense, he had. For when his body was opened “there -was found a cake of sand along the lower region of his belly. This, I -take it, was occasioned by his sitting nearly double, and writing on a -very low table, surrounded with three or four circles of books placed on -the ground, which was the situation we usually found him in.” The minds -of poor schoolmasters, like John Ker of the dissenting Academy, who had -had the high gratification of dining with Dr. Bentley at the Lodge, when -the talk fell upon the use of the word _equidem_, were so distorted by a -lifetime of neglect and study that they went home, collected all uses of -the word _equidem_ which contradicted the Doctor’s opinion, returned to -the Lodge, anticipating in their simplicity a warm welcome, met the -Doctor issuing to dine with the Archbishop of Canterbury, followed him -down the street in spite of his indifference and annoyance, and, being -refused even a word of farewell, went home to brood over their injuries -and wait the day of revenge. - -But the bickerings and animosities of the smaller fry were magnified, -not obliterated, by the Doctor himself in the conduct of his own -affairs. The courtesy and good temper which he had shown in his early -controversies had worn away. “. . . a course of violent animosities and -the indulgence of unrestrained indignation for many years had impaired -both his taste and judgement in controversy”, and he condescended, -though the subject in dispute was the Greek Testament, to call his -antagonist “maggot”, “vermin”, “gnawing rat”, and “cabbage head”, to -refer to the darkness of his complexion, and to insinuate that his wits -were crazed, which charge he supported by dwelling on the fact that his -brother, a clergyman, wore a beard to his girdle. - -Violent, pugnacious, and unscrupulous. Dr. Bentley survived these storms -and agitations, and remained, though suspended from his degrees and -deprived of his mastership, seated at the Lodge imperturbably. Wearing a -broad-brimmed hat indoors to protect his eyes, smoking his pipe, -enjoying his port, and expounding to his friends his doctrine of the -digamma, Bentley lived those eighty years which, he said, were long -enough “to read everything which was worth reading”, “Et tunc”, he -added, in his peculiar manner. - - -Et tunc magna mei sub terris ibit imago. - - -A small square stone marked his grave in Trinity College, but the -Fellows refused to record upon it the fact that he had been their -Master. - -But the strangest sentence in this strange story has yet to be written, -and Bishop Monk writes it as if it were a commonplace requiring no -comment. “For a person who was neither a poet, nor possessed of poetical -taste to venture upon such a task was no common presumption.” The task -was to detect every slip of language in _Paradise Lost_, and all -instances of bad taste and incorrect imagery. The result was notoriously -lamentable. Yet in what, we may ask, did it differ from those in which -Bentley was held to have acquitted himself magnificently? And if Bentley -was incapable of appreciating the poetry of Milton, how can we accept -his verdict upon Horace and Homer? And if we cannot trust implicitly to -scholars, and if the study of Greek is supposed to refine the manners -and purify the soul—but enough. Our scholar has returned from Hall; his -lamp is lit; his studies are resumed; and it is time that our profane -speculations should have an end. Besides, all this happened many, many -years ago. - - - - -III - -LADY DOROTHY NEVILL - - -She had stayed, in a humble capacity, for a week in the ducal household. -She had seen the troops of highly decorated human beings descending in -couples to eat, and ascending in couples to bed. She had, -surreptitiously, from a gallery, observed the Duke himself dusting the -miniatures in the glass cases, while the Duchess let her crochet fall -from her hands as if in utter disbelief that the world had need of -crochet. From an upper window she had seen, as far as eye could reach, -gravel paths swerving round isles of greenery and losing themselves in -little woods designed to shed the shade without the severity of forests; -she had watched the ducal carriage bowling in and out of the prospect, -and returning a different way from the way it went. And what was her -verdict? “A lunatic asylum.” - -It is true that she was a lady’s-maid, and that Lady Dorothy Nevill, had -she encountered her on the stairs, would have made an opportunity to -point out that that is a very different thing from being a lady. - - -My mother never failed to point out the folly of work-women, shop-girls, -and the like calling each other “Ladies”. All this sort of thing seemed -to her to be mere vulgar humbug, and she did not fail to say so. - - -What can we point out to Lady Dorothy Nevill? that with all her -advantages she had never learned to spell? that she could not write a -grammatical sentence? that she lived for eighty-seven years and did -nothing but put food into her mouth and slip gold through her fingers? -But delightful though it is to indulge in righteous indignation, it is -misplaced if we agree with the lady’s-maid that high birth is a form of -congenital insanity, that the sufferer merely inherits the diseases of -his ancestors, and endures them, for the most part very stoically, in -one of those comfortably padded lunatic asylums which are known, -euphemistically, as the stately homes of England. - -Moreover, the Walpoles are not ducal. Horace Walpole’s mother was a Miss -Shorter; there is no mention of Lady Dorothy’s mother in the present -volume, but her great-grandmother was Mrs. Oldfield the actress, and, to -her credit, Lady Dorothy was “exceedingly proud” of the fact. Thus she -was not an extreme case of aristocracy; she was confined rather to a -bird-cage than to an asylum; through the bars she saw people walking at -large, and once or twice she made a surprising little flight into the -open air. A gayer, brighter, more vivacious specimen of the caged tribe -can seldom have existed; so that one is forced at times to ask whether -what we call living in a cage is not the fate that wise people, -condemned to a single sojourn upon earth, would choose. To be at large -is, after all, to be shut out; to waste most of life in accumulating the -money to buy and the time to enjoy what the Lady Dorothys find -clustering and glowing about their cradles when their eyes first -open—as hers opened in the year 1826 at number eleven Berkeley Square. -Horace Walpole had lived there. Her father, Lord Orford, gambled it away -in one night’s play the year after she was born. But Wolterton Hall, in -Norfolk, was full of carving and mantelpieces, and there were rare trees -in the garden, and a large and famous lawn. No novelist could wish a -more charming and even romantic environment in which to set the story of -two little girls, growing up, wild yet secluded, reading Bossuet with -their governess, and riding out on their ponies at the head of the -tenantry on polling day. Nor can one deny that to have had the author of -the following letter among one’s ancestors would have been a source of -inordinate pride. It is addressed to the Norwich Bible Society, which -had invited Lord Orford to become its president: - - -I have long been addicted to the Gaming Table. I have lately taken to -the Turf. I fear I frequently blaspheme. But I have never distributed -religious tracts. All this was known to you and your Society. -Notwithstanding which you think me a fit person to be your president. -God forgive your hypocrisy. - - -It was not Lord Orford who was in the cage on that occasion. But, alas! -Lord Orford owned another country house, Ilsington Hall, in Dorsetshire, -and there Lady Dorothy came in contact first with the mulberry tree, and -later with Mr. Thomas Hardy; and we get our first glimpse of the bars. -We do not pretend to the ghost of an enthusiasm for Sailors’ Homes in -general; no doubt mulberry trees are much nicer to look at; but when it -comes to calling people “vandals” who cut them down to build houses, and -to having footstools made from the wood, and to carving upon those -footstools inscriptions which testify that “often and often has King -George III. taken his tea” under this very footstool, then we want to -protest—“Surely you must mean Shakespeare?” But as her subsequent -remarks upon Mr. Hardy tend to prove, Lady Dorothy does not mean -Shakespeare. She “warmly appreciated” the works of Mr. Hardy, and used -to complain “that the county families were too stupid to appreciate his -genius at its proper worth”. George the Third drinking his tea; the -county families failing to appreciate Mr. Hardy: Lady Dorothy is -undoubtedly behind the bars. - -Yet no story more aptly illustrates the barrier which we perceive -hereafter between Lady Dorothy and the outer world than the story of -Charles Darwin and the blankets. Among her recreations Lady Dorothy made -a hobby of growing orchids, and thus got into touch with “the great -naturalist”. Mrs. Darwin, inviting her to stay with them, remarked with -apparent simplicity that she had heard that people who moved much in -London society were fond of being tossed in blankets. “I am afraid,” her -letter ended, “we should hardly be able to offer you anything of that -sort.” Whether in fact the necessity of tossing Lady Dorothy in a -blanket had been seriously debated at Down, or whether Mrs. Darwin -obscurely hinted her sense of some incongruity between her husband and -the lady of the orchids, we do not know. But we have a sense of two -worlds in collision; and it is not the Darwin world that emerges in -fragments. More and more do we see Lady Dorothy hopping from perch to -perch, picking at groundsel here, and at hempseed there, indulging in -exquisite trills and roulades, and sharpening her beak against a lump of -sugar in a large, airy, magnificently equipped bird-cage. The cage was -full of charming diversions. Now she illuminated leaves which had been -macerated to skeletons; now she interested herself in improving the -breed of donkeys; next she took up the cause of silkworms, almost -threatened Australia with a plague of them, and “actually succeeded in -obtaining enough silk to make a dress”; again she was the first to -discover that wood, gone green with decay, can be made, at some expense, -into little boxes; she went into the question of funguses and -established the virtues of the neglected English truffle; she imported -rare fish; spent a great deal of energy in vainly trying to induce -storks and Cornish choughs to breed in Sussex; painted on china; -emblazoned heraldic arms, and, attaching whistles to the tails of -pigeons, produced wonderful effects “as of an aerial orchestra” when -they flew through the air. To the Duchess of Somerset belongs the credit -of investigating the proper way of cooking guinea-pigs; but Lady Dorothy -was one of the first to serve up a dish of these little creatures at -luncheon in Charles Street. - -But all the time the door of the cage was ajar. Raids were made into -what Mr. Nevill calls “Upper Bohemia”; from which Lady Dorothy returned -with “authors, journalists, actors, actresses, or other agreeable and -amusing people”. Lady Dorothy’s judgement is proved by the fact that -they seldom misbehaved, and some indeed became quite domesticated, and -wrote her “very gracefully turned letters”. But once or twice she made a -flight beyond the cage herself. “These horrors”, she said, alluding to -the middle class, “are so clever and we are so stupid; but then look how -well they are educated, while our children learn nothing but how to -spend their parents’ money!” She brooded over the fact. Something was -going wrong. She was too shrewd and too honest not to lay the blame -partly at least upon her own class. “I suppose she can just about read?” -she said of one lady calling herself cultured; and of another, “She is -indeed curious and well adapted to open bazaars.” But to our thinking -her most remarkable flight took place a year or two before her death, in -the Victoria and Albert Museum: - - -I do so agree with you, she wrote—though I ought not to say so—that -the upper class are very—I don’t know what to say—but they seem to -take no interest in anything—but golfing, etc. One day I was at the -Victoria and Albert Museum, just a few sprinkles of legs, for I am sure -they looked too frivolous to have bodies and souls attached to them—but -what softened the sight to my eyes were 2 little Japs poring over each -article with a handbook . . . our bodies, of course, giggling and -looking at nothing. Still worse, not one soul of the higher class -visible: in fact I never heard of any one of them knowing of the place, -and for this we are spending millions—it is all too painful. - - -It was all too painful, and the guillotine, she felt, loomed ahead. That -catastrophe she was spared, for who could wish to cut off the head of a -pigeon with a whistle attached to its tail? But if the whole bird-cage -had been overturned and the aerial orchestra sent screaming and -fluttering through the air, we can be sure, as Mr. Joseph Chamberlain -told her, that her conduct would have been “a credit to the British -aristocracy”. - - - - -IV - -ARCHBISHOP THOMSON - - -The origin of Archbishop Thomson was obscure. His great-uncle “may -reasonably be supposed” to have been “an ornament to the middle -classes”. His aunt married a gentleman who was present at the murder of -Gustavus III. of Sweden; and his father met his death at the age of -eighty-seven by treading on a cat in the early hours of the morning. The -physical vigour which this anecdote implies was combined in the -Archbishop with powers of intellect which promised success in whatever -profession he adopted. At Oxford it seemed likely that he would devote -himself to philosophy or science. While reading for his degree he found -time to write the _Outlines of the Laws of Thought_, which “immediately -became a recognised text-book for Oxford classes”. But though poetry, -philosophy, medicine, and the law held out their temptations he put such -thoughts aside, or never entertained them, having made up his mind from -the first to dedicate himself to Divine service. The measure of his -success in the more exalted sphere is attested by the following facts: -Ordained deacon in 1842 at the age of twenty-three, he became Dean and -Bursar of Queen’s College, Oxford, in 1845; Provost in 1855, Bishop of -Gloucester and Bristol in 1861, and Archbishop of York in 1862. Thus at -the early age of forty-three he stood next in rank to the Archbishop of -Canterbury himself; and it was commonly though erroneously expected that -he would in the end attain to that dignity also. - -It is a matter of temperament and belief whether you read this list with -respect or with boredom; whether you look upon an archbishop’s hat as a -crown or as an extinguisher. If, like the present reviewer, you are -ready to hold the simple faith that the outer order corresponds to the -inner—that a vicar is a good man, a canon a better man, and an -archbishop the best man of all—you will find the study of the -Archbishop’s life one of extreme fascination. He has turned aside from -poetry and philosophy and law, and specialised in virtue. He has -dedicated himself to the service of the Divine. His spiritual -proficiency has been such that he has developed from deacon to dean, -from dean to bishop, and from bishop to archbishop in the short space of -twenty years. As there are only two archbishops in the whole of England -the inference seems to be that he is the second best man in England; his -hat is the proof of it. Even in a material sense his hat was one of the -largest; it was larger than Mr. Gladstone’s; larger than Thackeray’s; -larger than Dickens’; it was in fact, so his hatter told him and we are -inclined to agree, an “eight full”. Yet he began much as other men -begin. He struck an undergraduate in a fit of temper and was rusticated; -he wrote a text-book of logic and rowed a very good oar. But after he -was ordained his diary shows that the specialising process had begun. He -thought a great deal about the state of his soul; about “the monstrous -tumour of Simony”; about Church reform; and about the meaning of -Christianity. “Self-renunciation,” he came to the conclusion, “is the -foundation of Christian Religion and Christian Morals. . . . The highest -wisdom is that which can enforce and cultivate this self-renunciation. -Hence (against Cousin) I hold that religion is higher far than -philosophy.” There is one mention of chemists and capillarity, but -science and philosophy were, even at this early stage, in danger of -being crowded out. Soon the diary takes a different tone. “He seems,” -says his biographer, “to have had no time for committing his thoughts to -paper”; he records his engagements only, and he dines out almost every -night. Sir Henry Taylor, whom he met at one of these parties, described -him as “simple, solid, good, capable, and pleasing”. Perhaps it was his -solidity combined with his “eminently scientific” turn of mind, his -blandness as well as his bulk, that impressed some of these great people -with the confidence that in him the Church had found a very necessary -champion. His “brawny logic” and massive frame seemed to fit him to -grapple with a task that taxed the strongest—how, that is, to reconcile -the scientific discoveries of the age with religion, and even prove them -“some of its strongest witnesses for the truth”. If any one could do -this Thomson could; his practical ability, unhampered by any mystical or -dreaming tendency, had already proved itself in the conduct of the -business affairs of his College. From Bishop he became almost instantly -Archbishop; and in becoming Archbishop he became Primate of England, -Governor of the Charterhouse and King’s College, London, patron of one -hundred and twenty livings, with the Archdeaconries of York, Cleveland, -and the East Riding in his gift, and the Canonries and Prebends in York -Minster. Bishopthorpe itself was an enormous palace; he was -immediately faced by the “knotty question” of whether to buy all the -furniture—“much of it only poor stuff”—or to furnish the house anew, -which would cost a fortune. Moreover there were seven cows in the park; -but these, perhaps, were counterbalanced by nine children in the -nursery. Then the Prince and Princess of Wales came to stay, and the -Archbishop took upon himself the task of furnishing the Princess’s -apartments. He went up to London and bought eight Moderator lamps, two -Spanish figures holding candles, and reminded himself of the necessity -of buying “soap for Princess”. But meanwhile far more serious matters -claimed every ounce of his strength. Already he had been exhorted to -“wield the sure lance of your brawny logic against the sophistries” of -the authors of _Essays and Reviews_, and had responded in a work called -_Aids to Faith_. Near at hand the town of Sheffield, with its large -population of imperfectly educated working men, was a breeding ground of -scepticism and discontent. The Archbishop made it his special charge. He -was fond of watching the rolling of armour plate, and constantly -addressed meetings of working men. “Now what are these Nihilisms, and -Socialisms, and Communisms, and Fenianisms, and Secret Societies—what -do they all mean?” he asked. “Selfishness,” he replied, and “assertion -of one class against the rest is at the bottom of them all.” There was a -law of nature, he said, by which wages went up and wages went down. “You -must accept the declivity as well as the ascent. . . . If we could only -get people to learn that, then things would go on a great deal better -and smoother.” And the working men of Sheffield responded by giving him -five hundred pieces of cutlery mounted in sterling silver. But -presumably there were a certain number of knives among the spoons and -the forks. - -Bishop Colenso, however, was far more troublesome than the working men -of Sheffield; and the Ritualists vexed him so persistently that even his -vast strength felt the strain. The questions which were referred to him -for decision were peculiarly fitted to tease and annoy even a man of his -bulk and his blandness. Shall a drunkard found dead in a ditch, or a -burglar who has fallen through a skylight, be given the benefit of the -Burial Service? he was asked. The question of lighted candles was “most -difficult”; the wearing of coloured stoles and the administration of the -mixed chalice taxed him considerably; and finally there was the Rev. -John Purchas, who, dressed in cope, alb, biretta and stole “cross-wise”, -lit candles and extinguished them “for no special reason”; filled a -vessel with black powder and rubbed it into the foreheads of his -congregation; and hung over the Holy Table “a figure, image, or stuffed -skin of a dove, in a flying attitude”. The Archbishop’s temper, usually -so positive and imperturbable, was gravely ruffled. “Will there ever -come a time when it will be thought a crime to have striven to keep the -Church of England as representing the common sense of the Nation?” he -asked. “I suppose it may, but I shall not see it. I have gone through a -good deal, but I do not repent of having done my best.” If, for a -moment, the Archbishop himself could ask such a question, we must -confess to a state of complete bewilderment. What has become of our -superlatively good man? He is harassed and cumbered; spends his time -settling questions about stuffed pigeons and coloured petticoats; writes -over eighty letters before breakfast sometimes; scarcely has time to run -over to Paris and buy his daughter a bonnet; and in the end has to ask -himself whether one of these days his conduct will not be considered a -crime. - -Was it a crime? And if so, was it his fault? Did he not start out in the -belief that Christianity had something to do with renunciation and was -not entirely a matter of common sense? If honours and obligations, pomps -and possessions, accumulated and encrusted him, how, being an -Archbishop, could he refuse to accept them? Princesses must have their -soap; palaces must have their furniture; children must have their cows. -And, pathetic though it seems, he never completely lost his interest in -science. He wore a pedometer; he was one of the first to use a camera; -he believed in the future of the typewriter; and in his last years he -tried to mend a broken clock. He was a delightful father too; he wrote -witty, terse, sensible letters; his good stories were much to the point; -and he died in harness. Certainly he was a very able man, but if we -insist upon goodness—is it easy, is it possible, for a good man to be -an Archbishop? - - - - -_The Patron and the Crocus_ - - -Young men and women beginning to write are generally given the plausible -but utterly impracticable advice to write what they have to write as -shortly as possible, as clearly as possible, and without other thought -in their minds except to say exactly what is in them. Nobody ever adds -on these occasions the one thing needful: “And be sure you choose your -patron wisely”, though that is the gist of the whole matter. For a book -is always written for somebody to read, and, since the patron is not -merely the paymaster, but also in a very subtle and insidious way the -instigator and inspirer of what is written, it is of the utmost -importance that he should be a desirable man. - -But who, then, is the desirable man—the patron who will cajole the best -out of the writer’s brain and bring to birth the most varied and -vigorous progeny of which he is capable? Different ages have answered -the question differently. The Elizabethans, to speak roughly, -chose the aristocracy to write for and the playhouse public. The -eighteenth-century patron was a combination of coffee-house wit and Grub -Street bookseller. In the nineteenth-century the great writers wrote for -the half-crown magazines and the leisured classes. And looking back and -applauding the splendid results of these different alliances, it all -seems enviably simple, and plain as a pikestaff compared with our own -predicament—for whom should we write? For the present supply of patrons -is of unexampled and bewildering variety. There is the daily Press, the -weekly Press, the monthly Press; the English public and the American -public; the best-seller public and the worst-seller public; the -high-brow public and the red-blood public; all now organised -self-conscious entities capable through their various mouthpieces of -making their needs known and their approval or displeasure felt. Thus -the writer who has been moved by the sight of the first crocus in -Kensington Gardens has, before he sets pen to paper, to choose from a -crowd of competitors the particular patron who suits him best. It is -futile to say, “Dismiss them all; think only of your crocus”, because -writing is a method of communication; and the crocus is an imperfect -crocus until it has been shared. The first man or the last may write for -himself alone, but he is an exception and an unenviable one at that, and -the gulls are welcome to his works if the gulls can read them. - -Granted, then, that every writer has some public or other at the end of -his pen, the high-minded will say that it should be a submissive public, -accepting obediently whatever he likes to give it. Plausible as the -theory sounds, great risks are attached to it. For in that case the -writer remains conscious of his public, yet is superior to it—an -uncomfortable and unfortunate combination, as the works of Samuel -Butler, George Meredith, and Henry James may be taken to prove. Each -despised the public; each desired a public; each failed to attain a -public; and each wreaked his failure upon the public by a succession, -gradually increasing in intensity, of angularities, obscurities, and -affectations which no writer whose patron was his equal and friend would -have thought it necessary to inflict. Their crocuses in consequence are -tortured plants, beautiful and bright, but with something wry-necked -about them, malformed, shrivelled on the one side, overblown on the -other. A touch of the sun would have done them a world of good. Shall we -then rush to the opposite extreme and accept (if in fancy alone) the -flattering proposals which the editors of the _Times_ and the _Daily -News_ may be supposed to make us—“Twenty pounds down for your crocus in -precisely fifteen hundred words, which shall blossom upon every -breakfast table from John o’ Groats to the Land’s End before nine -o’clock to-morrow morning with the writer’s name attached”? - -But will one crocus be enough, and must it not be a very brilliant -yellow to shine so far, to cost so much, and to have one’s name attached -to it? The Press is undoubtedly a great multiplier of crocuses. But if -we look at some of these plants, we shall find that they are only very -distantly related to the original little yellow or purple flower which -pokes up through the grass in Kensington Gardens about this time of -year. The newspaper crocus is amazing but still a very different plant. -It fills precisely the space allotted to it. It radiates a golden glow. -It is genial, affable, warm-hearted. It is beautifully finished, too, -for let nobody think that the art of “our dramatic critic” of the -_Times_ or of Mr. Lynd of the _Daily News_ is an easy one. It is no -despicable feat to start a million brains running at nine o’clock in the -morning, to give two million eyes something bright and brisk and amusing -to look at. But the night comes and these flowers fade. So little bits -of glass lose their lustre if you take them out of the sea; great prima -donnas howl like hyenas if you shut them up in telephone boxes; and the -most brilliant of articles when removed from its element is dust and -sand and the husks of straw. Journalism embalmed in a book is -unreadable. - -The patron we want, then, is one who will help us to preserve our -flowers from decay. But as his qualities change from age to age, and it -needs considerable integrity and conviction not to be dazzled by the -pretensions or bamboozled by the persuasions of the competing crowd, -this business of patron-finding is one of the tests and trials of -authorship. To know whom to write for is to know how to write. Some of -the modern patron’s qualities are, however, fairly plain. The writer -will require at this moment, it is obvious, a patron with the -book-reading habit rather than the play-going habit. Nowadays, too, he -must be instructed in the literature of other times and races. But there -are other qualities which our special weaknesses and tendencies demand -in him. There is the question of indecency, for instance, which plagues -us and puzzles us much more than it did the Elizabethans. The -twentieth-century patron must be immune from shock. He must distinguish -infallibly between the little clod of manure which sticks to the crocus -of necessity, and that which is plastered to it out of bravado. He must -be a judge, too, of those social influences which inevitably play so -large a part in modern literature, and able to say which matures and -fortifies, which inhibits and makes sterile. Further, there is emotion -for him to pronounce on, and in no department can he do more useful work -than in bracing a writer against sentimentality on the one hand and a -craven fear of expressing his feeling on the other. It is worse, he will -say, and perhaps more common, to be afraid of feeling than to feel too -much. He will add, perhaps, something about language, and point out how -many words Shakespeare used and how much grammar Shakespeare violated, -while we, though we keep our fingers so demurely to the black notes on -the piano, have not appreciably improved upon _Antony and Cleopatra_. -And if you can forget your sex altogether, he will say, so much the -better; a writer has none. But all this is by the way—elementary and -disputable. The patron’s prime quality is something different, only to -be expressed perhaps by the use of that convenient word which cloaks so -much—atmosphere. It is necessary that the patron should shed and -envelop the crocus in an atmosphere which makes it appear a plant of the -very highest importance, so that to misrepresent it is the one outrage -not to be forgiven this side of the grave. He must make us feel that a -single crocus, if it be a real crocus, is enough for him; that he does -not want to be lectured, elevated, instructed, or improved; that he is -sorry that he bullied Carlyle into vociferation, Tennyson into idyllics, -and Ruskin into insanity; that he is now ready to efface himself or -assert himself as his writers require; that he is bound to them by a -more than maternal tie; that they are twins indeed, one dying if the -other dies, one flourishing if the other flourishes; that the fate of -literature depends upon their happy alliance—all of which proves, as we -began by saying, that the choice of a patron is of the highest -importance. But how to choose rightly? How to write well? Those are the -questions. - - - - -_The Modern Essay_ - - -As Mr. Rhys truly says, it is unnecessary to go profoundly into the -history and origin of the essay—whether it derives from Socrates or -Siranney the Persian—since, like all living things, its present is more -important than its past. Moreover, the family is widely spread; and -while some of its representatives have risen in the world and wear their -coronets with the best, others pick up a precarious living in the gutter -near Fleet Street. The form, too, admits variety. The essay can be short -or long, serious or trifling, about God and Spinoza, or about turtles -and Cheapside. But as we turn over the pages of these five little -volumes,[13] containing essays written between 1870 and 1920, certain -principles appear to control the chaos, and we detect in the short -period under review something like the progress of history. - -Of all forms of literature, however, the essay is the one which least -calls for the use of long words. The principle which controls it is -simply that it should give pleasure; the desire which impels us when we -take it from the shelf is simply to receive pleasure. Everything in an -essay must be subdued to that end. It should lay us under a spell with -its first word, and we should only wake, refreshed, with its last. In -the interval we may pass through the most various experiences of -amusement, surprise, interest, indignation; we may soar to the heights -of fantasy with Lamb or plunge to the depths of wisdom with Bacon, but -we must never be roused. The essay must lap us about and draw its -curtain across the world. - -So great a feat is seldom accomplished, though the fault may well be as -much on the reader’s side as on the writer’s. Habit and lethargy have -dulled his palate. A novel has a story, a poem rhyme; but what art can -the essayist use in these short lengths of prose to sting us wide awake -and fix us in a trance which is not sleep but rather an intensification -of life—a basking, with every faculty alert, in the sun of pleasure? He -must know—that is the first essential—how to write. His learning may -be as profound as Mark Pattison’s, but in an essay it must be so fused -by the magic of writing that not a fact juts out, not a dogma tears the -surface of the texture. Macaulay in one way, Froude in another, did this -superbly over and over again. They have blown more knowledge into us in -the course of one essay than the innumerable chapters of a hundred -text-books. But when Mark Pattison has to tell us, in the space of -thirty-five little pages, about Montaigne, we feel that he had not -previously assimilated M. Grün. M. Grün was a gentleman who once wrote -a bad book. M. Grün and his book should have been embalmed for our -perpetual delight in amber. But the process is fatiguing; it requires -more time and perhaps more temper than Pattison had at his command. He -served M. Grün up raw, and he remains a crude berry among the cook -meats, upon which our teeth must grate for ever. Something of the sort -applies to Matthew Arnold and a certain translator of Spinoza. Literal -truth-telling and finding fault with a culprit for his good are out of -place in an essay, where everything should be for our good and rather -for eternity than for the March number of the _Fortnightly Review_. But -if the voice of the scold should never be heard in this narrow plot, -there is another voice which is as a plague of locusts—the voice of a -man stumbling drowsily among loose words, clutching aimlessly at vague -ideas, the voice, for example, of Mr. Hutton in the following passage: - - -Add to this that his married life was very brief, only seven years and a -half, being unexpectedly cut short, and that his passionate reverence -for his wife’s memory and genius—in his own words, “a religion”—was -one which, as he must have been perfectly sensible, he could not make to -appear otherwise than extravagant, not to say an hallucination, in the -eyes of the rest of mankind, and yet that he was possessed by an -irresistible yearning to attempt to embody it in all the tender and -enthusiastic hyperbole of which it is so pathetic to find a man who -gained his fame by his “dry-light” a master, and it is impossible not to -feel that the human incidents in Mr. Mill’s career are very sad. - - -A book could take that blow, but it sinks an essay. A biography in two -volumes is indeed the proper depositary; for there, where the licence is -so much wider, and hints and glimpses of outside things make part of the -feast (we refer to the old type of Victorian volume), these yawns and -stretches hardly matter, and have indeed some positive value of their -own. But that value, which is contributed by the reader, perhaps -illicitly, in his desire to get as much into the book from all possible -sources as he can, must be ruled out here. - -There is no room for the impurities of literature in an essay. Somehow -or other, by dint of labour or bounty of nature, or both combined, the -essay must be pure—pure like water or pure like wine, but pure from -dullness, deadness, and deposits of extraneous matter. Of all writers in -the first volume, Walter Pater best achieves this arduous task, because -before setting out to write his essay (“Notes on Leonardo da Vinci”) he -has somehow contrived to get his material fused. He is a learned man, -but it is not knowledge of Leonardo that remains with us, but a vision, -such as we get in a good novel where everything contributes to bring the -writer’s conception as a whole before us. Only here, in the essay, where -the bounds are so strict and facts have to be used in their nakedness, -the true writer like Walter Pater makes these limitations yield their -own quality. Truth will give it authority; from its narrow limits he -will get shape and intensity; and then there is no more fitting place -for some of those ornaments which the old writers loved and we, by -calling them ornaments, presumably despise. Nowadays nobody would have -the courage to embark on the once famous description of Leonardo’s lady -who has - - -learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas and -keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with -Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, -as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary . . . - - -The passage is too thumb-marked to slip naturally into the context. But -when we come unexpectedly upon “the smiling of women and the motion of -great waters”, or upon “full of the refinement of the dead, in sad, -earth-coloured raiment, set with pale stones”, we suddenly remember that -we have ears and we have eyes, and that the English language fills a -long array of stout volumes with innumerable words, many of which are of -more than one syllable. The only living Englishman who ever looks into -these volumes is, of course, a gentleman of Polish extraction. But -doubtless our abstention saves us much gush, much rhetoric, much -high-stepping and cloud-prancing, and for the sake of the prevailing -sobriety and hard-headedness we should be willing to barter the -splendour of Sir Thomas Browne and the vigour of Swift. - -Yet, if the essay admits more properly than biography or fiction of -sudden boldness and metaphor, and can be polished till every atom of its -surface shines, there are dangers in that too. We are soon in sight of -ornament. Soon the current, which is the life-blood of literature, runs -slow; and instead of sparkling and flashing or moving with a quieter -impulse which has a deeper excitement, words coagulate together in -frozen sprays which, like the grapes on a Christmas-tree, glitter for a -single night, but are dusty and garish the day after. The temptation to -decorate is great where the theme may be of the slightest. What is there -to interest another in the fact that one has enjoyed a walking tour, or -has amused oneself by rambling down Cheapside and looking at the turtles -in Mr. Sweeting’s shop window? Stevenson and Samuel Butler chose very -different methods of exciting our interest in these domestic themes. -Stevenson, of course, trimmed and polished and set out his matter in the -traditional eighteenth-century form. It is admirably done, but we cannot -help feeling anxious, as the essay proceeds, lest the material may give -out under the craftsman’s fingers. The ingot is so small, the -manipulation so incessant. And perhaps that is why the peroration— - - -To sit still and contemplate—to remember the faces of women without -desire, to be pleased by the great deeds of men without envy, to be -everything and everywhere in sympathy and yet content to remain where -and what you are— - - -has the sort of insubstantiality which suggests that by the time he got -to the end he had left himself nothing solid to work with. Butler -adopted the very opposite method. Think your own thoughts, he seems to -say, and speak them as plainly as you can. These turtles in the shop -window which appear to leak out of their shells through heads and feet -suggest a fatal faithfulness to a fixed idea. And so, striding -unconcernedly from one idea to the next, we traverse a large stretch of -ground; observe that a wound in the solicitor is a very serious thing; -that Mary Queen of Scots wears surgical boots and is subject to fits -near the Horse Shoe in Tottenham Court Road; take it for granted that no -one really cares about Æschylus; and so, with many amusing anecdotes -and some profound reflections, reach the peroration, which is that, as -he had been told not to see more in Cheapside than he could get into -twelve pages of the _Universal Review_, he had better stop. And yet -obviously Butler is at least as careful of our pleasure as Stevenson; -and to write like oneself and call it not writing is a much harder -exercise in style than to write like Addison and call it writing well. - -But, however much they differ individually, the Victorian essayists yet -had something in common. They wrote at greater length than is now usual, -and they wrote for a public which had not only time to sit down to its -magazine seriously, but a high, if peculiarly Victorian, standard of -culture by which to judge it. It was worth while to speak out upon -serious matters in an essay; and there was nothing absurd in writing as -well as one possibly could when, in a month or two, the same public -which had welcomed the essay in a magazine would carefully read it once -more in a book. But a change came from a small audience of cultivated -people to a larger audience of people who were not quite so cultivated. -The change was not altogether for the worse. In volume III. we find Mr. -Birrell and Mr. Beerbohm. It might even be said that there was a -reversion to the classic type, and that the essay by losing its size and -something of its sonority was approaching more nearly the essay of -Addison and Lamb. At any rate, there is a great gulf between Mr. Birrell -on Carlyle and the essay which one may suppose that Carlyle would have -written upon Mr. Birrell. There is little similarity between _A Cloud of -Pinafores_, by Max Beerbohm, and _A Cynic’s Apology_, by Leslie Stephen. -But the essay is alive; there is no reason to despair. As the conditions -change so the essayist, most sensitive of all plants to public opinion, -adapts himself, and if he is good makes the best of the change, and if -he is bad the worst. Mr. Birrell is certainly good; and so we find that, -though he has dropped a considerable amount of weight, his attack is -much more direct and his movement more supple. But what did Mr. Beerbohm -give to the essay and what did he take from it? That is a much more -complicated question, for here we have an essayist who has concentrated -on the work and is without doubt the prince of his profession. - -What Mr. Beerbohm gave was, of course, himself. This presence, which has -haunted the essay fitfully from the time of Montaigne, had been in exile -since the death of Charles Lamb. Matthew Arnold was never to his readers -Matt, nor Walter Pater affectionately abbreviated in a thousand homes to -Wat. They gave us much, but that they did not give. Thus, some time in -the nineties, it must have surprised readers accustomed to exhortation, -information, and denunciation to find themselves familiarly addressed by -a voice which seemed to belong to a man no larger than themselves. He -was affected by private joys and sorrows, and had no gospel to preach -and no learning to impart. He was himself, simply and directly, and -himself he has remained. Once again we have an essayist capable of using -the essayist’s most proper but most dangerous and delicate tool. He has -brought personality into literature, not unconsciously and impurely, but -so consciously and purely that we do not know whether there is any -relation between Max the essayist and Mr. Beerbohm the man. We only know -that the spirit of personality permeates every word that he writes. The -triumph is the triumph of style. For it is only by knowing how to write -that you can make use in literature of your self; that self which, while -it is essential to literature, is also its most dangerous antagonist. -Never to be yourself and yet always—that is the problem. Some of the -essayists in Mr. Rhys’ collection, to be frank, have not altogether -succeeded in solving it. We are nauseated by the sight of trivial -personalities decomposing in the eternity of print. As talk, no doubt, -it was charming, and certainly the writer is a good fellow to meet over -a bottle of beer. But literature is stern; it is no use being charming, -virtuous, or even learned and brilliant into the bargain, unless, she -seems to reiterate, you fulfil her first condition—to know how to -write. - -This art is possessed to perfection by Mr. Beerbohm. But he has not -searched the dictionary for polysyllables. He has not moulded firm -periods or seduced our ears with intricate cadences and strange -melodies. Some of his companions—Henley and Stevenson, for example—are -momentarily more impressive. But _A Cloud of Pinafores_ had in it that -indescribable inequality, stir, and final expressiveness which belong to -life and to life alone. You have not finished with it because you have -read it, any more than friendship is ended because it is time to part. -Life wells up and alters and adds. Even things in a book-case change if -they are alive; we find ourselves wanting to meet them again; we find -them altered. So we look back upon essay after essay by Mr. Beerbohm, -knowing that, come September or May, we shall sit down with them and -talk. Yet it is true that the essayist is the most sensitive of all -writers to public opinion. The drawing-room is the place where a great -deal of reading is done nowadays, and the essays of Mr. Beerbohm lie, -with an exquisite appreciation of all that the position exacts, upon the -drawing-room table. There is no gin about; no strong tobacco; no puns, -drunkenness, or insanity. Ladies and gentlemen talk together, and some -things, of course, are not said. - -But if it would be foolish to attempt to confine Mr. Beerbohm to one -room, it would be still more foolish, unhappily, to make him, the -artist, the man who gives us only his best, the representative of our -age. There are no essays by Mr. Beerbohm in the fourth or fifth volumes -of the present collection. His age seems already a little distant, and -the drawing-room table, as it recedes, begins to look rather like an -altar where, once upon a time, people deposited offerings—fruit from -their own orchards, gifts carved with their own hands. Now once more the -conditions have changed. The public needs essays as much as ever, and -perhaps even more. The demand for the light middle not exceeding fifteen -hundred words, or in special cases seventeen hundred and fifty, much -exceeds the supply. Where Lamb wrote one essay and Max perhaps writes -two, Mr. Belloc at a rough computation produces three hundred and -sixty-five. They are very short, it is true. Yet with what dexterity the -practised essayist will utilise his space—beginning as close to the top -of the sheet as possible, judging precisely how far to go, when to turn, -and how, without sacrificing a hair’s-breadth of paper, to wheel about -and alight accurately upon the last word his editor allows! As a feat of -skill it is well worth watching. But the personality upon which Mr. -Belloc, like Mr. Beerbohm, depends suffers in the process. It comes to -us not with the natural richness of the speaking voice, but strained and -thin and full of mannerisms and affectations, like the voice of a man -shouting through a megaphone to a crowd on a windy day. “Little friends, -my readers,” he says in the essay called “An Unknown Country”, and he -goes on to tell us how— - - -There was a shepherd the other day at Findon Fair who had come from the -east by Lewes with sheep, and who had in his eyes that reminiscence of -horizons which makes the eyes of shepherds and of mountaineers different -from the eyes of other men. . . . I went with him to hear what he had to -say, for shepherds talk quite differently from other men. - - -Happily this shepherd had little to say, even under the stimulus of the -inevitable mug of beer, about the Unknown Country, for the only remark -that he did make proves him either a minor poet, unfit for the care of -sheep, or Mr. Belloc himself masquerading with a fountain pen. That is -the penalty which the habitual essayist must now be prepared to face. He -must masquerade. He cannot afford the time either to be himself or to be -other people. He must skim the surface of thought and dilute the -strength of personality. He must give us a worn weekly halfpenny instead -of a solid sovereign once a year. - -But it is not Mr. Belloc only who has suffered from the prevailing -conditions. The essays which bring the collection to the year 1920 may -not be the best of their authors’ work, but, if we except writers like -Mr. Conrad and Mr. Hudson, who have strayed into essay writing -accidentally, and concentrate upon those who write essays habitually, we -shall find them a good deal affected by the change in their -circumstances. To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to -write for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired people -coming home in the evening, is a heart-breaking task for men who know -good writing from bad. They do it, but instinctively draw out of harm’s -way anything precious that might be damaged by contact with the public, -or anything sharp that might irritate its skin. And so, if one reads Mr. -Lucas, Mr. Lynd, or Mr. Squire in the bulk, one feels that a common -greyness silvers everything. They are as far removed from the -extravagant beauty of Walter Pater as they are from the intemperate -candour of Leslie Stephen. Beauty and courage are dangerous spirits to -battle in a column and a half; and thought, like a brown paper parcel in -a waistcoat pocket, has a way of spoiling the symmetry of an article. It -is a kind, tired, apathetic world for which they write, and the marvel -is that they never cease to attempt, at least, to write well. - -But there is no need to pity Mr. Clutton Brock for this change in the -essayist’s conditions. He has clearly made the best of his circumstances -and not the worst. One hesitates even to say that he has had to make any -conscious effort in the matter, so naturally has he effected the -transition from the private essayist to the public, from the -drawing-room to the Albert Hall. Paradoxically enough, the shrinkage in -size has brought about a corresponding expansion of individuality. We -have no longer the “I” of Max and of Lamb, but the “we” of public bodies -and other sublime personages. It is “we” who go to hear the _Magic -Flute_; “we” who ought to profit by it; “we”, in some mysterious way, -who, in our corporate capacity, once upon a time actually wrote it. For -music and literature and art must submit to the same generalisation or -they will not carry to the farthest recesses of the Albert Hall. That -the voice of Mr. Clutton Brock, so sincere and so disinterested, carries -such a distance and reaches so many without pandering to the weakness of -the mass or its passions must be a matter of legitimate satisfaction to -us all. But while “we” are gratified, “I”, that unruly partner in the -human fellowship, is reduced to despair. “I” must always think things -for himself, and feel things for himself. To share them in a diluted -form with the majority of well-educated and well-intentioned men and -women is for him sheer agony; and while the rest of us listen intently -and profit profoundly, “I” slips off to the woods and the fields and -rejoices in a single blade of grass or a solitary potato. - -In the fifth volume of modern essays, it seems, we have got some way -from pleasure and the art of writing. But in justice to the essayists of -1920 we must be sure that we are not praising the famous because they -have been praised already and the dead because we shall never meet them -wearing spats in Piccadilly. We must know what we mean when we say that -they can write and give us pleasure. We must compare them; we must bring -out the quality. We must point to this and say it is good because it is -exact, truthful, and imaginative: - - -Nay, retire men cannot when they would; neither will they, when it were -Reason; but are impatient of Privateness, even in age and sickness, -which require the shadow: like old Townsmen: that will still be sitting -at their street door, though thereby they offer Age to Scorn . . . - - -and to this, and say it is bad because it is loose, plausible, and -commonplace: - - -With courteous and precise cynicism on his lips, he thought of quiet -virginal chambers, of waters singing under the moon, of terraces where -taintless music sobbed into the open night, of pure maternal mistresses -with protecting arms and vigilant eyes, of fields slumbering in the -sunlight, of leagues of ocean heaving under warm tremulous heavens, of -hot ports, gorgeous and perfumed. . . . - - -It goes on, but already we are bemused with sound and neither feel nor -hear. The comparison makes us suspect that the art of writing has for -backbone some fierce attachment to an idea. It is on the back of an -idea, something believed in with conviction or seen with precision and -thus compelling words to its shape, that the diverse company which -included Lamb and Bacon, and Mr. Beerbohm and Hudson, and Vernon Lee and -Mr. Conrad, and Leslie Stephen and Butler and Walter Pater reaches the -farther shore. Very various talents have helped or hindered the passage -of the idea into words. Some scrape through painfully; others fly with -every wind favouring. But Mr. Belloc and Mr. Lucas and Mr. Lynd and Mr. -Squire are not fiercely attached to anything in itself. They share the -contemporary dilemma—that lack of an obstinate conviction which lifts -ephemeral sounds through the misty sphere of anybody’s language to the -land where there is a perpetual marriage, a perpetual union. Vague as -all definitions are, a good essay must have this permanent quality about -it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that -shuts us in, not out. - - -[Footnote 13: _Modern English Essays_, edited by Ernest Rhys, -5 vols. (Dent).] - - - - -_Joseph Conrad_[14] - - -Suddenly, without giving us time to arrange our thoughts or prepare our -phrases, our guest has left us; and his withdrawal without farewell or -ceremony is in keeping with his mysterious arrival, long years ago, to -take up his lodging in this country. For there was always an air of -mystery about him. It was partly his Polish birth, partly his memorable -appearance, partly his preference for living in the depths of the -country, out of ear-shot of gossips, beyond reach of hostesses, so that -for news of him one had to depend upon the evidence of simple visitors -with a habit of ringing door-bells who reported of their unknown host -that he had the most perfect manners, the brightest eyes, and spoke -English with a strong foreign accent. - -Still, though it is the habit of death to quicken and focus our -memories, there clings to the genius of Conrad something essentially, -and not accidentally, difficult of approach. His reputation of later -years was, with one obvious exception, undoubtedly the highest in -England; yet he was not popular. He was read with passionate delight by -some; others he left cold and lustreless. Among his readers were people -of the most opposite ages and sympathies. Schoolboys of fourteen, -driving their way through Marryat, Scott, Henty, and Dickens, swallowed -him down with the rest; while the seasoned and the fastidious, who in -process of time have eaten their way to the heart of literature and -there turn over and over a few precious crumbs, set Conrad scrupulously -upon their banqueting table. One source of difficulty and disagreement -is, of course, to be found, where men have at all times found it, in his -beauty. One opens his pages and feels as Helen must have felt when she -looked in her glass and realised that, do what she would, she could -never in any circumstances pass for a plain woman. So Conrad had been -gifted, so he had schooled himself, and such was his obligation to a -strange language wooed characteristically for its Latin qualities rather -than its Saxon that it seemed impossible for him to make an ugly or -insignificant movement of the pen. His mistress, his style, is a little -somnolent sometimes in repose. But let somebody speak to her, and then -how magnificently she bears down upon us, with what colour, triumph, and -majesty! Yet it is arguable that Conrad would have gained both in credit -and in popularity if he had written what he had to write without this -incessant care for appearances. They block and impede and distract, his -critics say, pointing to those famous passages which it is becoming the -habit to lift from their context and exhibit among other cut flowers of -English prose. He was self-conscious and stiff and ornate, they -complain, and the sound of his own voice was dearer to him than the -voice of humanity in its anguish. The criticism is familiar, and as -difficult to refute as the remarks of deaf people when _Figaro_ is -played. They see the orchestra; far off they hear a dismal scrape of -sound; their own remarks are interrupted, and, very naturally, they -conclude that the ends of life would be better served if instead of -scraping Mozart those fifty fiddlers broke stones upon the road. That -beauty teaches, that beauty is a disciplinarian, how are we to convince -them, since her teaching is inseparable from the sound of her voice and -to that they are deaf? But read Conrad, not in birthday books but in the -bulk, and he must be lost indeed to the meaning of words who does not -hear in that rather stiff and sombre music, with its reserve, its pride, -its vast and implacable integrity, how it is better to be good than bad, -how loyalty is good and honesty and courage, though ostensibly Conrad is -concerned merely to show us the beauty of a night at sea. But it is ill -work dragging such intimations from their element. Dried in our little -saucers, without the magic and mystery of language, they lose their -power to excite and goad; they lose the drastic power which is a -constant quality of Conrad’s prose. - -For it was by virtue of something drastic in him, the qualities of a -leader and captain, that Conrad kept his hold over boys and young -people. Until _Nostromo_ was written his characters, as the young were -quick to perceive, were fundamentally simple and heroic, however subtle -the mind and indirect the method of their creator. They were seafarers, -used to solitude and silence. They were in conflict with Nature, but at -peace with man. Nature was their antagonist; she it was who drew forth -honour, magnanimity, loyalty, the qualities proper to man; she who in -sheltered bays reared to womanhood beautiful girls unfathomable and -austere. Above all, it was Nature who turned out such gnarled and tested -characters as Captain Whalley and old Singleton, obscure but glorious in -their obscurity, who were to Conrad the pick of our race, the men whose -praises he was never tired of celebrating: - - -They had been strong as those are strong who know neither doubts nor -hopes. They had been impatient and enduring, turbulent and devoted, -unruly and faithful. Well-meaning people had tried to represent these -men as whining over every mouthful of their food, as going about their -work in fear of their lives. But in truth they had been men who knew -toil, privation, violence, debauchery—but knew not fear, and had no -desire of spite in their hearts. Men hard to manage, but easy to -inspire; voiceless men—but men enough to scorn in their hearts the -sentimental voices that bewailed the hardness of their fate. It was a -fate unique and their own; the capacity to bear it appeared to them the -privilege of the chosen! Their generation lived inarticulate and -indispensable, without knowing the sweetness of affections or the refuge -of a home—and died free from the dark menace of a narrow grave. They -were the everlasting children of the mysterious sea. - - -Such were the characters of the early books—_Lord Jim, Typhoon, The -Nigger of the “Narcissus”, Youth_; and these books, in spite of the -changes and fashions, are surely secure of their place among our -classics. But they reach this height by means of qualities which the -simple story of adventure, as Marryat told it, or Fenimore Cooper, has -no claim to possess. For it is clear that to admire and celebrate such -men and such deeds, romantically, wholeheartedly and with the fervour -of a lover, one must be possessed of the double vision; one must be at -once inside and out. To praise their silence one must possess a voice. -To appreciate their endurance one must be sensitive to fatigue. One must -be able to live on equal terms with the Whalleys and the Singletons and -yet hide from their suspicious eyes the very qualities which enable one -to understand them. Conrad alone was able to live that double life, for -Conrad was compound of two men; together with the sea captain dwelt that -subtle, refined, and fastidious analyst whom he called Marlow. “A most -discreet, understanding man”, he said of Marlow. - -Marlow was one of those born observers who are happiest in retirement. -Marlow liked nothing better than to sit on deck, in some obscure creek -of the Thames, smoking and recollecting; smoking and speculating; -sending after his smoke beautiful rings of words until all the summer’s -night became a little clouded with tobacco smoke. Marlow, too, had a -profound respect for the men with whom he had sailed; but he saw the -humour of them. He nosed out and described in masterly fashion those -livid creatures who prey successfully upon the clumsy veterans. He had a -flair for human deformity; his humour was sardonic. Nor did Marlow live -entirely wreathed in the smoke of his own cigars. He had a habit of -opening his eyes suddenly and looking—at a rubbish heap, at a port, at -a shop counter—and then complete in its burning ring of light that -thing is flashed bright upon the mysterious background. Introspective -and analytical, Marlow was aware of this peculiarity. He said the power -came to him suddenly. He might, for instance, overhear a French officer -murmur “Mon Dieu, how the time passes!” - - -Nothing [he comments] could have been more commonplace than this remark; -but its utterance coincided for me with a moment of vision. It’s -extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull -ears, with dormant thoughts. . . . Nevertheless, there can be but few of -us who had never known one of these rare moments of awakening, when we -see, hear, understand, ever so much—everything—in a flash, before we -fall back again into our agreeable somnolence. I raised my eyes when he -spoke, and I saw him as though I had never seen him before. - - -Picture after picture he painted thus upon that dark background; ships -first and foremost, ships at anchor, ships flying before the storm, -ships in harbour; he painted sunsets and dawns; he painted the night; he -painted the sea in every aspect; he painted the gaudy brilliancy of -Eastern ports, and men and women, their houses and their attitudes. He -was an accurate and unflinching observer, schooled to that “absolute -loyalty towards his feelings and sensations”, which, Conrad wrote, “an -author should keep hold of in his most exalted moments of creation”. And -very quietly and compassionately Marlow sometimes lets fall a few words -of epitaph which remind us, with all that beauty and brilliancy before -our eyes, of the darkness of the background. - -Thus a rough-and-ready distinction would make us say that it is Marlow -who comments, Conrad who creates. It would lead us, aware that we are on -dangerous ground, to account for that change which, Conrad tells us, -took place when he had finished the last story in the _Typhoon_ -volume—“a subtle change in the nature of the inspiration”—by some -alteration in the relationship of the two old friends. “. . . it seemed -somehow that there was nothing more in the world to write about.” It was -Conrad, let us suppose, Conrad the creator, who said that, looking back -with sorrowful satisfaction upon the stories he had told; feeling as he -well might that he could never better the storm in _The Nigger of the -“Narcissus_”, or render more faithful tribute to the qualities of -British seamen than he had done already in _Youth_ and _Lord Jim_. It -was then that Marlow, the commentator, reminded him how, in the course -of nature, one must grow old, sit smoking on deck, and give up -sea-faring. But, he reminded him, those strenuous years had deposited -their memories; and he even went so far perhaps as to hint that, though -the last word might have been said about Captain Whalley and his -relation to the universe, there remained on shore a number of men and -women whose relationships, though of a more personal kind, might be -worth looking into. If we further suppose that there was a volume of -Henry James on board and that Marlow gave his friend the book to take to -bed with him, we may seek support in the fact that it was in 1905 that -Conrad wrote a very fine essay upon that master. - -For some years, then, it was Marlow who was the dominant partner. -_Nostromo, Chance, The Arrow of Gold_ represent that stage of the -alliance which some will continue to find the richest of all. The human -heart is more intricate than the forest, they will say; it has its -storms; it has its creatures of the night; and if as novelist you wish -to test man in all his relationships, the proper antagonist is man; his -ordeal is in society, not solitude. For them there will always be a -peculiar fascination in the books where the light of those brilliant -eyes falls not only upon the waste of waters but upon the heart in its -perplexity. But it must be admitted that, if Marlow thus advised Conrad -to shift his angle of vision, the advice was bold. For the vision of a -novelist is both complex and specialised; complex, because behind his -characters and apart from them must stand something stable to which he -relates them; specialised because since he is a single person with one -sensibility the aspects of life in which he can believe with conviction -are strictly limited. So delicate a balance is easily disturbed. After -the middle period Conrad never again was able to bring his figures into -perfect relation with their background. He never believed in his later -and more highly sophisticated characters as he had believed in his early -seamen. When he had to indicate their relation to that other unseen -world of novelists, the world of values and convictions, he was far less -sure what those values were. Then, over and over again, a single phrase, -“He steered with care”, coming at the end of a storm, carried in it a -whole morality. But in this more crowded and complicated world such -terse phrases became less and less appropriate. Complex men and women of -many interests and relations would not submit to so summary a judgement; -or, if they did, much that was important in them escaped the verdict. -And yet it was very necessary to Conrad’s genius, with its luxuriant and -romantic power, to have some law by which its creations could be tried. -Essentially—such remained his creed—this world of civilised and -self-conscious people is based upon “a few very simple ideas”; but -where, in the world of thoughts and personal relations, are we to find -them? There are no masts in drawing-rooms; the typhoon does not test the -worth of politicians and business men. Seeking and not finding such -supports, the world of Conrad’s later period has about it an involuntary -obscurity, an inconclusiveness, almost a disillusionment which baffles -and fatigues. We lay hold in the dusk only of the old nobilities and -sonorities: fidelity, compassion, honour, service—beautiful always, but -now a little wearily reiterated, as if times had changed. Perhaps it was -Marlow who was at fault. His habit of mind was a trifle sedentary. He -had sat upon deck too long; splendid in soliloquy, he was less apt in -the give and take of conversation; and those “moments of vision” -flashing and fading, do not serve as well as steady lamplight to -illumine the ripple of life and its long, gradual years. Above all, -perhaps, he did not take into account how, if Conrad was to create, it -was essential first that he should believe. - -Therefore, though we shall make expeditions into the later books and -bring back wonderful trophies, large tracts of them will remain by most -of us untrodden. It is the earlier books—_Youth, Lord Jim, Typhoon, The -Nigger of the “Narcissus”_—that we shall read in their entirety. For -when the question is asked, what of Conrad will survive and where in the -ranks of novelists we are to place him, these books, with their air of -telling us something very old and perfectly true, which had lain hidden -but is now revealed, will come to mind and make such questions and -comparisons seem a little futile. Complete and still, very chaste and -very beautiful, they rise in the memory as, on these hot summer nights, -in their slow and stately way first one star comes out and then another. - - -[Footnote 14: August, 1924.] - - - - -_How It Strikes a -Contemporary_ - - -In the first place a contemporary can scarcely fail to be struck by the -fact that two critics at the same table at the same moment will -pronounce completely different opinions about the same book. Here, on -the right, it is declared a masterpiece of English prose; on the left, -simultaneously, a mere mass of waste-paper which, if the fire could -survive it, should be thrown upon the flames. Yet both critics are in -agreement about Milton and about Keats. They display an exquisite -sensibility and have undoubtedly a genuine enthusiasm. It is only when -they discuss the work of contemporary writers that they inevitably come -to blows. The book in question, which is at once a lasting contribution -to English literature and a mere farrago of pretentious mediocrity, was -published about two months ago. That is the explanation; that is why -they differ. - -The explanation is a strange one. It is equally disconcerting to the -reader who wishes to take his bearings in the chaos of contemporary -literature and to the writer who has a natural desire to know whether -his own work, produced with infinite pains and in almost utter darkness, -is likely to burn for ever among the fixed luminaries of English letters -or, on the contrary, to put out the fire. But if we identify ourselves -with the reader and explore his dilemma first, our bewilderment is -short-lived enough. The same thing has happened so often before. We have -heard the doctors disagreeing about the new and agreeing about the old -twice a year on the average, in spring and autumn, ever since Robert -Elsmere, or was it Stephen Phillips, somehow pervaded the atmosphere, -and there was the same disagreement among grown-up people about them. It -would be much more marvellous, and indeed much more upsetting, if, for a -wonder, both gentlemen agreed, pronounced Blank’s book an undoubted -masterpiece, and thus faced us with the necessity of deciding whether we -should back their judgement to the extent of ten and sixpence. Both are -critics of reputation; the opinions tumbled out so spontaneously here -will be starched and stiffened into columns of sober prose which will -uphold the dignity of letters in England and America. - -It must be some innate cynicism, then, some ungenerous distrust of -contemporary genius, which determines us automatically as the talk goes -on that, were they to agree—which they show no signs of doing—half a -guinea is altogether too large a sum to squander upon contemporary -enthusiasms, and the case will be met quite adequately by a card to the -library. Still the question remains, and let us put it boldly to the -critics themselves. Is there no guidance nowadays for a reader who -yields to none in reverence for the dead, but is tormented by the -suspicion that reverence for the dead is vitally connected with -understanding of the living? After a rapid survey both critics are -agreed that there is unfortunately no such person. For what is their own -judgement worth where new books are concerned? Certainly not ten and -sixpence. And from the stores of their experience they proceed to bring -forth terrible examples of past blunders; crimes of criticism which, if -they had been committed against the dead and not against the living, -would have lost them their jobs and imperilled their reputations. The -only advice they can offer is to respect one’s own instincts, to follow -them fearlessly and, rather than submit them to the control of any -critic or reviewer alive, to check them by reading and reading again the -masterpieces of the past. - -Thanking them humbly, we cannot help reflecting that it was not always -so. Once upon a time, we must believe, there was a rule, a discipline, -which controlled the great republic of readers in a way which is now -unknown. That is not to say that the great critic—the Dryden, the -Johnson, the Coleridge, the Arnold—was an impeccable judge of -contemporary work, whose verdicts stamped the book indelibly and saved -the reader the trouble of reckoning the value for himself. The mistakes -of these great men about their own contemporaries are too notorious to -be worth recording. But the mere fact of their existence had a -centralising influence. That alone, it is not fantastic to suppose, -would have controlled the disagreements of the dinner-table and given to -random chatter about some book just out an authority now entirely to -seek. The diverse schools would have debated as hotly as ever, but at -the back of every reader’s mind would have been the consciousness that -there was at least one man who kept the main principles of literature -closely in view; who, if you had taken to him some eccentricity of the -moment, would have brought it into touch with permanence and tethered it -by his own authority in the contrary blasts of praise and blame.[15] But -when it comes to the making of a critic, nature must be generous and -society ripe. The scattered dinner-tables of the modern world, the chase -and eddy of the various currents which compose the society of our time, -could only be dominated by a giant of fabulous dimensions. And where is -even the very tall man whom we have the right to expect? Reviewers we -have but no critic; a million competent and incorruptible policemen but -no judge. Men of taste and learning and ability are for ever lecturing -the young and celebrating the dead. But the too frequent result of their -able and industrious pens is a desiccation of the living tissues of -literature into a network of little bones. Nowhere shall we find the -downright vigour of a Dryden, or Keats with his fine and natural -bearing, his profound insight and sanity, or Flaubert and the tremendous -power of his fanaticism, or Coleridge, above all, brewing in his head -the whole of poetry and letting issue now and then one of those profound -general statements which are caught up by the mind when hot with the -friction of reading as if they were of the soul of the book itself. - -And to all this, too, the critics generously agree. A great critic, they -say, is the rarest of beings. But should one miraculously appear, how -should we maintain him, on what should we feed him? Great critics, if -they are not themselves great poets, are bred from the profusion of the -age. There is some great man to be vindicated, some school to be founded -or destroyed. But our age is meagre to the verge of destitution. There -is no name which dominates the rest. There is no master in whose -workshop the young are proud to serve apprenticeship. Mr. Hardy has long -since withdrawn from the arena, and there is something exotic about the -genius of Mr. Conrad which makes him not so much an influence as an -idol, honoured and admired, but aloof and apart. As for the rest, though -they are many and vigorous and in the full flood of creative activity, -there is none whose influence can seriously affect his contemporaries, -or penetrate beyond our day to that not very distant future which it -pleases us to call immortality. If we make a century our test, and ask -how much of the work produced in these days in England will be in -existence then, we shall have to answer not merely that we cannot agree -upon the same book, but that we are more than doubtful whether such a -book there is. It is an age of fragments. A few stanzas, a few pages, a -chapter here and there, the beginning of this novel, the end of that, -are equal to the best of any age or author. But can we go to posterity -with a sheaf of loose pages, or ask the readers of those days, with the -whole of literature before them, to sift our enormous rubbish heaps for -our tiny pearls? Such are the questions which the critics might lawfully -put to their companions at table, the novelists and poets. - -At first the weight of pessimism seems sufficient to bear down all -opposition. Yes, it is a lean age, we repeat, with much to justify its -poverty; but, frankly, if we pit one century against another the -comparison seems overwhelmingly against us. _Waverley, The Excursion, -Kubla Khan, Don Juan, Hazlitt’s Essays, Pride and Prejudice, Hyperion_, -and _Prometheus Unbound_ were all published between 1800 and 1821. Our -century has not lacked industry; but if we ask for masterpieces it -appears on the face of it that the pessimists are right. It seems as if -an age of genius must be succeeded by an age of endeavour; riot and -extravagance by cleanliness and hard work. All honour, of course, to -those who have sacrificed their immortality to set the house in order. -But if we ask for masterpieces, where are we to look? A little poetry, -we may feel sure, will survive; a few poems by Mr. Yeats, by Mr. Davies, -by Mr. De la Mare. Mr. Lawrence, of course, has moments of greatness, -but hours of something very different. Mr. Beerbohm, in his way, is -perfect, but it is not a big way. Passages in _Far Away and Long Ago_ -will undoubtedly go to posterity entire. _Ulysses_ was a memorable -catastrophe—immense in daring, terrific in disaster. And so, picking -and choosing, we select now this, now that, hold it up for display, hear -it defended or derided, and finally have to meet the objection that even -so we are only agreeing with the critics that it is an age incapable of -sustained effort, littered with fragments, and not seriously to be -compared with the age that went before. - -But it is just when opinions universally prevail and we have added lip -service to their authority that we become sometimes most keenly -conscious that we do not believe a word that we are saying. It is a -barren and exhausted age, we repeat; we must look back with envy to the -past. Meanwhile it is one of the first fine days of spring. Life is not -altogether lacking in colour. The telephone, which interrupts the most -serious conversations and cuts short the most weighty observations, has -a romance of its own. And the random talk of people who have no chance -of immortality and thus can speak their minds out has a setting, often, -of lights, streets, houses, human beings, beautiful or grotesque, which -will weave itself into the moment for ever. But this is life; the talk -is about literature. We must try to disentangle the two, and justify the -rash revolt of optimism against the superior plausibility, the finer -distinction, of pessimism. - -Our optimism, then, is largely instinctive. It springs from the fine day -and the wine and the talk; it springs from the fact that when life -throws up such treasures daily, daily suggests more than the most -voluble can express, much though we admire the dead, we prefer life as -it is. There is something about the present which we would not exchange, -though we were offered a choice of all past ages to live in. And modern -literature, with all its imperfections, has the same hold on us and the -same fascination. It is like a relation whom we snub and scarify daily, -but, after all, cannot do without. It has the same endearing quality of -being that which we are, that which we have made, that in which we live, -instead of being something, however august, alien to ourselves and -beheld from the outside. Nor has any generation more need than ours to -cherish its contemporaries. We are sharply cut off from our -predecessors. A shift in the scale—the war, the sudden slip of masses -held in position for ages—has shaken the fabric from top to bottom, -alienated us from the past and made us perhaps too vividly conscious of -the present. Every day we find ourselves doing, saying, or thinking -things that would have been impossible to our fathers. And we feel the -differences which have not been noted far more keenly than the -resemblances which have been very perfectly expressed. New books lure us -to read them partly in the hope that they will reflect this -rearrangement of our attitude—these scenes, thoughts, and apparently -fortuitous groupings of incongruous things which impinge upon us with so -keen a sense of novelty—and, as literature does, give it back into our -keeping, whole and comprehended. Here indeed there is every reason for -optimism. No age can have been more rich than ours in writers determined -to give expression to the differences which separate them from the past -and not to the resemblances which connect them with it. It would be -invidious to mention names, but the most casual reader dipping into -poetry, into fiction, into biography can hardly fail to be impressed by -the courage, the sincerity, in a word, by the widespread originality of -our time. But our exhilaration is strangely curtailed. Book after book -leaves us with the same sense of promise unachieved, of intellectual -poverty, of brilliance which has been snatched from life but not -transmuted into literature. Much of what is best in contemporary work -has the appearance of being noted under pressure, taken down in a bleak -shorthand which preserves with astonishing brilliance the movements and -expressions of the figures as they pass across the screen. But the flash -is soon over, and there remains with us a profound dissatisfaction. The -irritation is as acute as the pleasure was intense. - -After all, then, we are back at the beginning, vacillating from extreme -to extreme, at one moment enthusiastic, at the next pessimistic, unable -to come to any conclusion about our contemporaries. We have asked the -critics to help us, but they have deprecated the task. Now, then, is the -time to accept their advice and correct these extremes by consulting the -masterpieces of the past. We feel ourselves indeed driven to them, -impelled not by calm judgement but by some imperious need to anchor our -instability upon their security. But, honestly, the shock of the -comparison between past and present is at first disconcerting. -Undoubtedly there is a dullness in great books. There is an unabashed -tranquillity in page after page of Wordsworth and Scott and Miss Austen -which is sedative to the verge of somnolence. Opportunities occur and -they neglect them. Shades and subtleties accumulate and they ignore -them. They seem deliberately to refuse to gratify those senses which are -stimulated so briskly by the moderns; the senses of sight, of sound, of -touch—above all, the sense of the human being, his depth and the -variety of his perceptions, his complexity, his confusion, his self, in -short. There is little of all this in the works of Wordsworth and Scott -and Jane Austen. From what, then, arises that sense of security which -gradually, delightfully, and completely overcomes us? It is the power of -their belief—their conviction, that imposes itself upon us. In -Wordsworth, the philosophic poet, this is obvious enough. But it is -equally true of the careless Scott, who scribbled masterpieces to build -castles before breakfast, and of the modest maiden lady who wrote -furtively and quietly simply to give pleasure. In both there is the same -natural conviction that life is of a certain quality. They have their -judgement of conduct. They know the relations of human beings towards -each other and towards the universe. Neither of them probably has a word -to say about the matter outright, but everything depends on it. Only -believe, we find ourselves saying, and all the rest will come of itself. -Only believe, to take a very simple instance which the recent -publication of _The Watsons_ brings to mind, that a nice girl will -instinctively try to soothe the feelings of a boy who has been snubbed -at a dance, and then, if you believe it implicitly and unquestioningly, -you will not only make people a hundred years later feel the same thing, -but you will make them feel it as literature. For certainty of that kind -is the condition which makes it possible to write. To believe that your -impressions hold good for others is to be released from the cramp and -confinement of personality. It is to be free, as Scott was free, to -explore with a vigour which still holds us spell-bound the whole world -of adventure and romance. It is also the first step in that mysterious -process in which Jane Austen was so great an adept. The little grain of -experience once selected, believed in, and set outside herself, could be -put precisely in its place, and she was then free to make of it, by a -process which never yields its secrets to the analyst, into that -complete statement which is literature. - -So then our contemporaries afflict us because they have ceased to -believe. The most sincere of them will only tell us what it is that -happens to himself. They cannot make a world, because they are not free -of other human beings. They cannot tell stories because they do not -believe the stories are true. They cannot generalise. They depend on -their senses and emotions, whose testimony is trustworthy, rather than -on their intellects whose message is obscure. And they have perforce to -deny themselves the use of some of the most powerful and some of the -most exquisite of the weapons of their craft. With the whole wealth of -the English language at the back of them, they timidly pass about from -hand to hand and book to book only the meanest copper coins. Set down at -a fresh angle of the eternal prospect they can only whip out their -notebooks and record with agonised intensity the flying gleams, which -light on what? and the transitory splendours, which may, perhaps, -compose nothing whatever. But here the critics interpose, and with some -show of justice. - -If this description holds good, they say, and is not, as it may well be, -entirely dependent upon our position at the table and certain purely -personal relationships to mustard pots and flower vases, then the risks -of judging contemporary work are greater than ever before. There is -every excuse for them if they are wide of the mark; and no doubt it -would be better to retreat, as Matthew Arnold advised, from the burning -ground of the present to the safe tranquillity of the past. “We enter on -burning ground,” wrote Matthew Arnold, “as we approach the poetry of -times so near to us, poetry like that of Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth, -of which the estimates are so often not only personal, but personal with -passion,” and this, they remind us, was written in the year 1880. -Beware, they say, of putting under the microscope one inch of a ribbon -which runs many miles; things sort themselves out if you wait; -moderation and a study of the classics are to be recommended. Moreover, -life is short; the Byron centenary is at hand; and the burning question -of the moment is, did he, or did he not, marry his sister? To sum up, -then—if indeed any conclusion is possible when everybody is talking at -once and it is time to be going—it seems that it would be wise for the -writers of the present to renounce for themselves the hope of creating -masterpieces. Their poems, plays, biographies, novels are not books but -notebooks, and Time, like a good schoolmaster, will take them in his -hands, point to their blots and erasions, and tear them across; but he -will not throw them into the waste-paper basket. He will keep them -because other students will find them very useful. It is from notebooks -of the present that the masterpieces of the future are made. Literature, -as the critics were saying just now, has lasted long, has undergone many -changes, and it is only a short sight and a parochial mind that will -exaggerate the importance of these squalls, however they may agitate the -little boats now tossing out at sea. The storm and the drenching are on -the surface; and continuity and calm are in the depths. - -As for the critics whose task it is to pass judgement upon the books of -the moment, whose work, let us admit, is difficult, dangerous, and often -distasteful, let us ask them to be generous of encouragement, but -sparing of those wreaths and coronets which are so apt to get awry, and -fade, and make the wearers, in six months time, look a little -ridiculous. Let them take a wider, a less personal view of modern -literature, and look indeed upon the writers as if they were engaged -upon some vast building, which being built by common effort, the -separate workmen may well remain anonymous. Let them slam the door upon -the cosy company where sugar is cheap and butter plentiful, give over, -for a time at least, the discussion of that fascinating topic—whether -Byron married his sister—and, withdrawing, perhaps, a handsbreadth from -the table where we sit chattering, say something interesting about -literature. Let us buttonhole them as they leave, and recall to their -memory that gaunt aristocrat, Lady Hester Stanhope, who kept a -milk-white horse in her stable in readiness for the Messiah and was for -ever scanning the mountain tops, impatiently but with confidence, for -signs of his approach, and ask them to follow her example; scan the -horizon; see the past in relation to the future; and so prepare the way -for masterpieces to come. - - -[Footnote 15: How violent these are two quotations will show. “It [Told -by _an Idiot_] should be read as the _Tempest_ should be read, and as -_Gulliver’s Travels_ should be read, for if Miss Macaulay’s poetic gift -happens to be less sublime than those of the author of the _Tempest_, -and if her irony happens to be less tremendous than that of the author -of _Gulliver’s Travels_, her justice and wisdom are no less noble than -theirs.”—_The Daily News._ - -The next day we read: “For the rest one can only say that if Mr. Eliot -had been pleased to write in demotic English _The Waste Land_ might not -have been, as it just is to all but anthropologists, and literati, so -much waste-paper.”—_The Manchester Guardian._] - - -[Illustration] - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 64457 *** diff --git a/old/64457-h/64457-h.htm b/old/64457-h/64457-h.htm deleted file mode 100644 index 2753545..0000000 --- a/old/64457-h/64457-h.htm +++ /dev/null @@ -1,8156 +0,0 @@ -<!DOCTYPE html> -<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> - <head> - <meta charset="UTF-8"> - <title>Ashes, The Common Reader | Project Gutenberg</title> - <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> -<style> - -body { - margin-left: 10%; 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} -.ph3 { font-size: large; margin: .83em auto; } -.ph5 { font-size: medium; margin: 1.12em auto; } - - </style> - </head> -<body> -<div>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 64457 ***</div> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="500" alt=""> -</div> - - -<h1><i>THE</i><br>COMMON READER</h1> - - - -<div class='ph2'>BY</div> - -<div class='ph3'>VIRGINIA A WOOLF</div> - - - -<div class="blockquot-half"> -<p>". . . I rejoice to concur with the common -reader; for by the common sense of readers, -uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the -refinements of subtlety and the dogmatism of -learning, must be generally decided all claim to -poetical honors."</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 40%;">DR. JOHNSON, <i>Life of Gray.</i></p> -</div> - - - - -<div class='ph5'><i>New York</i></div> - -<div class='ph2'>HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY</div> - -<hr class="r5"> - - -<div class='ph5'>COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY<br> -HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.</div> - -<hr class="r5"> - -<div class='ph2'>TO</div> - - -<h2>LYTTON STRACHEY</h2> - -<hr class="r5"> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<blockquote> -<p>Some of these papers appeared originally in the <i>Times Literary -Supplement</i> and the <i>Dial</i>. I have to thank the Editors for -allowing me to reprint them here; some are based upon articles written for -various newspapers, while others appear now for the first time.</p> -</blockquote> - -<hr class="r5"> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2><i>CONTENTS</i></h2> - -<p><a href="#The_Common_Reader">The Common Reader</a><br> -<a href="#The_Pastons_and_Chaucer">The Pastons and Chaucer</a><br> -<a href="#On_Not_Knowing_Greek">On Not Knowing Greek</a><br> -<a href="#The_Elizabethan">The Elizabethan Lumber Room</a><br> -<a href="#Notes">Notes on an Elizabethan Play</a><br> -<a href="#Montaigne">Montaigne</a><br> -<a href="#The_Duchess">The Duchess of Newcastle</a><br> -<a href="#Rambling_Round_Evelyn">Rambling Round Evelyn</a><br> -<a href="#Defoe">Defoe</a><br> -<a href="#Addison">Addison</a><br> -<br> -<a href="#The_Lives_of_the_Obscure">The Lives of the Obscure</a><br> -I. <a href="#The_Taylors">The Taylors and the Edgeworths</a><br> -II. <a href="#Laetitia_Pilkington">Laetitia Pilkington</a><br> -III. <a href="#Miss_Ormerod">Miss Ormerod</a><br> -<br> -<a href="#Jane_Austen">Jane Austen</a><br> -<a href="#Modern_Fiction">Modern Fiction</a><br> -<a href="#Jane_Eyre">"Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights"</a><br> -<a href="#George_Eliot">George Eliot</a><br> -<a href="#The_Russian">The Russian Point of View</a><br> -<br> -<a href="#Outlines">Outlines—</a><br> -I. <a href="#Miss_Mitford">Miss Mitford</a><br> -II. <a href="#Dr_Bentley">Dr. Bentley</a><br> -III. <a href="#Lady_Dorothy_Nevill">Lady Dorothy Nevill</a><br> -IV. <a href="#Archbishop_Thomson">Archbishop Thomson</a><br> -<br> -<a href="#The_Patron">The Patron and the Crocus</a><br> -<a href="#The_Modern_Essay">The Modern Essay</a><br> -<a href="#Joseph_Conrad">Joseph Conrad</a><br> -<a href="#How_It">How It Strikes a Contemporary</a></p> - -<hr class="r5"> - - - -<h2>THE COMMON READER</h2> - -<p><br></p> - - -<h2><a id="The_Common_Reader"><i>The Common Reader</i></a></h2> - - -<p>There is a sentence in Dr. Johnson's Life of Gray which might well be -written up in all those rooms, too humble to be called libraries, yet -full of books, where the pursuit of reading is carried on by private -people. ". . . I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the -common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all -the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be -finally decided all claim to poetical honours." It defines their -qualities; it dignifies their aims; it bestows upon a pursuit which -devours a great deal of time, and is yet apt to leave behind it nothing -very substantial, the sanction of the great man's approval.</p> - -<p>The common reader, as Dr. Johnson implies, differs from the critic and -the scholar. He is worse educated, and nature has not gifted him so -generously. He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart -knowledge or correct the opinions of others. Above all, he is guided by -an instinct to create for himself, out of whatever odds and ends he can -come by, some kind of whole—a portrait of a man, a sketch of an age, -a theory of the art of writing. He never ceases, as he reads, to run up -some rickety and ramshackle fabric which shall give him the temporary -satisfaction of looking sufficiently like the real object to allow of -affection, laughter, and argument. Hasty, inaccurate, and superficial, -snatching now this poem, now that scrap of old furniture without caring -where he finds it or of what nature it may be so long as it serves his -purpose and rounds his structure, his deficiencies as a critic are too -obvious to be pointed out; but if he has, as Dr. Johnson maintained, -some say in the final distribution of poetical honours, then, perhaps, -it may be worth while to write down a few of the ideas and opinions -which, insignificant in themselves, yet contribute to so mighty a -result.</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2><a id="The_Pastons_and_Chaucer"><i>The Pastons and Chaucer</i></a><a id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></h2> - - -<p>The tower of Caister Castle still rises ninety feet into the air, and -the arch still stands from which Sir John Fastolf's barges sailed out to -fetch stone for the building of the great castle. But now jackdaws nest -on the tower, and of the castle, which once covered six acres of ground, -only ruined walls remain, pierced by loop-holes and surmounted by -battlements, though there are neither archers within nor cannon without. -As for the "seven religious men" and the "seven poor folk" who should, -at this very moment, be praying for the souls of Sir John and his -parents, there is no sign of them nor sound of their prayers. The place -is a ruin. Antiquaries speculate and differ.</p> - -<p>Not so very far off lie more ruins—the ruins of Bromholm Priory, -where John Paston was buried, naturally enough, since his house was only a -mile or so away, lying on low ground by the sea, twenty miles north of -Norwich. The coast is dangerous, and the land, even in our time, -inaccessible. Nevertheless the little bit of wood at Bromholm, the -fragment of the true Cross, brought pilgrims incessantly to the Priory, -and sent them away with eyes opened and limbs straightened. But some of -them with their newly-opened eyes saw a sight which shocked them—the -grave of John Paston in Bromholm Priory without a tombstone. The news -spread over the country-side. The Pastons had fallen; they that had been -so powerful could no longer afford a stone to put above John Paston's -head. Margaret, his widow, could not pay her debts; the eldest son, Sir -John, wasted his property upon women and tournaments, while the younger, -John also, though a man of greater parts, thought more of his hawks than -of his harvests.</p> - -<p>The pilgrims of course were liars, as people whose eyes have just been -opened by a piece of the true Cross have every right to be; but their -news, none the less, was welcome. The Pastons had risen in the world. -People said even that they had been bondmen not so very long ago. At any -rate, men still living could remember John's grandfather Clement tilling -his own land, a hard-working peasant; and William, Clement's son, -becoming a judge and buying land; and John, William's son, marrying well -and buying more land and quite lately inheriting the vast new castle at -Caister, and all Sir John's lands in Norfolk and Suffolk. People said -that he had forged the old knight's will. What wonder, then, that he -lacked a tombstone? But, if we consider the character of Sir John -Paston, John's eldest son, and his upbringing and his surroundings, and -the relations between himself and his father as the family letters -reveal them, we shall see how difficult it was, and how likely to be -neglected—this business of making his father's tombstone.</p> - -<p>For let us imagine, in the most desolate part of England known to us at -the present moment, a raw, new-built house, without telephone, bathroom, -or drains, arm-chairs or newspapers, and one shelf perhaps of books, -unwieldy to hold, expensive to come by. The windows look out upon a few -cultivated fields and a dozen hovels, and beyond them there is the sea -on one side, on the other a vast fen. A single road crosses the fen, but -there is a hole in it, which, one of the farm hands reports, is big -enough to swallow a carriage. And, the man adds, Tom Topcroft, the mad -bricklayer, has broken loose again and ranges the country half-naked, -threatening to kill any one who approaches him. That is what they talk -about at dinner in the desolate house, while the chimney smokes -horribly, and the draught lifts the carpets on the floor. Orders are -given to lock all gates at sunset, and, when the long dismal evening has -worn itself away, simply and solemnly, girt about with dangers as they -are, these isolated men and women fall upon their knees in prayer.</p> - -<p>In the fifteenth century, however, the wild landscape was broken -suddenly and very strangely by vast piles of brand-new masonry. There -rose out of the sand-hills and heaths of the Norfolk coast a huge bulk -of stone, like a modern hotel in a watering-place; but there was no -parade, no lodging houses, and no pier at Yarmouth then, and this -gigantic building on the outskirts of the town was built to house one -solitary old gentleman without any children—Sir John Fastolf, who had -fought at Agincourt and acquired great wealth. He had fought at -Agincourt and got but little reward. No one took his advice. Men spoke -ill of him behind his back. He was well aware of it; his temper was none -the sweeter for it. He was a hot-tempered old man, powerful, embittered -by a sense of grievance. But whether on the battlefield or at court he -thought perpetually of Caister, and how, when his duties allowed, he -would settle down on his father's land and live in a great house of his -own building.</p> - -<p>The gigantic structure of Caister Castle was in progress not so many -miles away when the little Pastons were children. John Paston, the -father, had charge of some part of the business, and the children -listened, as soon as they could listen at all, to talk of stone and -building, of barges gone to London and not yet returned, of the -twenty-six private chambers, of the hall and chapel; of foundations, -measurements, and rascally work-people. Later, in 1454, when the work -was finished and Sir John had come to spend his last years at Caister, -they may have seen for themselves the mass of treasure that was stored -there; the tables laden with gold and silver plate; the wardrobes -stuffed with gowns of velvet and satin and cloth of gold, with hoods and -tippets and beaver hats and leather jackets and velvet doublets; and how -the very pillow-cases on the beds were of green and purple silk. There -were tapestries everywhere. The beds were laid and the bedrooms hung -with tapestries representing sieges, hunting and hawking, men fishing, -archers shooting, ladies playing on their harps, dallying with ducks, or -a giant "bearing the leg of a bear in his hand". Such were the fruits of -a well-spent life. To buy land, to build great houses, to stuff these -houses full of gold and silver plate (though the privy might well be in -the bedroom), was the proper aim of mankind. Mr. and Mrs. Paston spent -the greater part of their energies in the same exhausting occupation. -For since the passion to acquire was universal, one could never rest -secure in one's possessions for long. The outlying parts of one's -property were in perpetual jeopardy. The Duke of Norfolk might covet -this manor, the Duke of Suffolk that. Some trumped-up excuse, as for -instance that the Pastons were bondmen, gave them the right to seize the -house and batter down the lodges in the owner's absence. And how could -the owner of Paston and Mauteby and Drayton and Gresham be in five or -six places at once, especially now that Caister Castle was his, and he -must be in London trying to get his rights recognised by the King? The -King was mad too, they said; did not know his own child, they said; or -the King was in flight; or there was civil war in the land. Norfolk was -always the most distressed of counties and its country gentlemen the -most quarrelsome of mankind. Indeed, had Mrs. Paston chosen, she could -have told her children how when she was a young woman a thousand men -with bows and arrows and pans of burning fire had marched upon Gresham -and broken the gates and mined the walls of the room where she sat -alone. But much worse things than that had happened to women. She -neither bewailed her lot nor thought herself a heroine. The long, long -letters which she wrote so laboriously in her clear cramped hand to her -husband, who was (as usual) away, make no mention of herself. The sheep -had wasted the hay. Heyden's and Tuddenham's men were out. A dyke had -been broken and a bullock stolen. They needed treacle badly, and really -she must have stuff for a dress.</p> - -<p>But Mrs. Paston did not talk about herself.</p> - -<p>Thus the little Pastons would see their mother writing or dictating page -after page, hour after hour, long, long letters, but to interrupt a -parent who writes so laboriously of such important matters would have -been a sin. The prattle of children, the lore of the nursery or -schoolroom, did not find its way into these elaborate communications. -For the most part her letters are the letters of an honest bailiff to -his master, explaining, asking advice, giving news, rendering accounts. -There was robbery and manslaughter; it was difficult to get in the -rents; Richard Calle had gathered but little money; and what with one -thing and another Margaret had not had time to make out, as she should -have done, the inventory of the goods which her husband desired. Well -might old Agnes, surveying her son's affairs rather grimly from a -distance, counsel him to contrive it so that "ye may have less to do in -the world; your father said. In little business lieth much rest. This -world is but a thoroughfare, and full of woe; and when we depart -therefrom, right nought bear with us but our good deeds and ill."</p> - -<p>The thought of death would thus come upon them in a clap. Old Fastolf, -cumbered with wealth and property, had his vision at the end of Hell -fire, and shrieked aloud to his executors to distribute alms, and see -that prayers were said "in perpetuum", so that his soul might escape the -agonies of purgatory. William Paston, the judge, was urgent too that the -monks of Norwich should be retained to pray for his soul "for ever". The -soul was no wisp of air, but a solid body capable of eternal suffering, -and the fire that destroyed it was as fierce as any that burnt on mortal -grates. For ever there would be monks and the town of Norwich, and for -ever the Chapel of Our Lady in the town of Norwich. There was something -matter-of-fact, positive, and enduring in their conception both of life -and of death.</p> - -<p>With the plan of existence so vigorously marked out, children of course -were well beaten, and boys and girls taught to know their places. They -must acquire land; but they must obey their parents. A mother would -clout her daughter's head three times a week and break the skin if she -did not conform to the laws of behaviour. Agnes Paston, a lady of birth -and breeding, beat her daughter Elizabeth. Margaret Paston, a -softer-hearted woman, turned her daughter out of the house for loving -the honest bailiff Richard Calle. Brothers would not suffer their -sisters to marry beneath them, and "sell candle and mustard in -Framlingham". The fathers quarrelled with the sons, and the mothers, -fonder of their boys than of their girls, yet bound by all law and -custom to obey their husbands, were torn asunder in their efforts to -keep the peace. With all her pains, Margaret failed to prevent rash acts -on the part of her eldest son John, or the bitter words with which his -father denounced him. He was a "drone among bees", the father burst out, -"which labour for gathering honey in the fields, and the drone doth -naught but taketh his part of it". He treated his parents with -insolence, and yet was fit for no charge of responsibility abroad.</p> - -<p>But the quarrel was ended, very shortly, by the death (22nd May 1466) of -John Paston, the father, in London. The body was brought down to -Bromholm to be buried. Twelve poor men trudged all the way bearing -torches beside it. Alms were distributed; masses and dirges were said. -Bells were rung. Great quantities of fowls, sheep, pigs, eggs, bread, -and cream were devoured, ale and wine drunk, and candles burnt. Two -panes were taken from the church windows to let out the reek of the -torches. Black cloth was distributed, and a light set burning on the -grave. But John Paston, the heir, delayed to make his father's -tombstone.</p> - -<p>He was a young man, something over twenty-four years of age. The -discipline and the drudgery of a country life bored him. When he ran -away from home, it was, apparently, to attempt to enter the King's -household. Whatever doubts, indeed, might be cast by their enemies on -the blood of the Pastons, Sir John was unmistakably a gentleman. He had -inherited his lands; the honey was his that the bees had gathered with -so much labour. He had the instincts of enjoyment rather than of -acquisition, and with his mother's parsimony was strangely mixed -something of his father's ambition. Yet his own indolent and luxurious -temperament took the edge from both. He was attractive to women, liked -society and tournaments, and court life and making bets, and sometimes, -even, reading books. And so life, now that John Paston was buried, -started afresh upon rather a different foundation. There could be little -outward change indeed. Margaret still ruled the house. She still ordered -the lives of the younger children as she had ordered the lives of the -elder. The boys still needed to be beaten into book-learning by their -tutors, the girls still loved the wrong men and must be married to the -right. Rents had to be collected; the interminable lawsuit for the -Fastolf property dragged on. Battles were fought; the roses of York and -Lancaster alternately faded and flourished. Norfolk was full of poor -people seeking redress for their grievances, and Margaret worked for her -son as she had worked for her husband, with this significant change -only, that now, instead of confiding in her husband, she took the advice -of her priest.</p> - -<p>But inwardly there was a change. It seems at last as if the hard outer -shell had served its purpose and something sensitive, appreciative, and -pleasure-loving had formed within. At any rate Sir John, writing to his -brother John at home, strayed sometimes from the business on hand to -crack a joke, to send a piece of gossip, or to instruct him, knowingly -and even subtly, upon the conduct of a love affair. Be "as lowly to the -mother as ye list, but to the maid not too lowly, nor that ye be too -glad to speed, nor too sorry to fail. And I shall always be your herald -both here, if she come hither, and at home, when I come home, which I -hope hastily within XI. days at the furthest." And then a hawk was to be -bought, a hat, or new silk laces sent down to John in Norfolk, -prosecuting his suit, flying his hawks, and attending with considerable -energy and not too nice a sense of honesty to the affairs of the Paston -estates.</p> - -<p>The lights had long since burnt out on John Paston's grave. But still -Sir John delayed; no tomb replaced them. He had his excuses; what with -the business of the lawsuit, and his duties at Court, and the -disturbance of the civil wars, his time was occupied and his money -spent. But perhaps something strange had happened to Sir John himself, -and not only to Sir John dallying in London, but to his sister Margery -falling in love with the bailiff, and to Walter making Latin verses at -Eton, and to John flying his hawks at Paston. Life was a little more -various in its pleasures. They were not quite so sure as the elder -generation had been of the rights of man and of the dues of God, of the -horrors of death, and of the importance of tombstones. Poor Margaret -Paston scented the change and sought uneasily, with the pen which had -marched so stiffly through so many pages, to lay bare the root of her -troubles. It was not that the lawsuit saddened her; she was ready to -defend Caister with her own hands if need be, "though I cannot well -guide nor rule soldiers", but there was something wrong with the family -since the death of her husband and master. Perhaps her son had failed in -his service to God; he had been too proud or too lavish in his -expenditure; or perhaps he had shown too little mercy to the poor. -Whatever the fault might be, she only knew that Sir John spent twice as -much money as his father for less result; that they could scarcely pay -their debts without selling land, wood, or household stuff ("It is a -death to me to think if it"); while every day people spoke ill of them -in the country because they left John Paston to lie without a tombstone. -The money that might have bought it, or more land, and more goblets and -more tapestry, was spent by Sir John on clocks and trinkets, and upon -paying a clerk to copy out Treatises upon Knighthood and other such -stuff. There they stood at Paston—eleven volumes, with the poems of -Lydgate and Chaucer among them, diffusing a strange air into the gaunt, -comfortless house, inviting men to indolence and vanity, distracting -their thoughts from business, and leading them not only to neglect their -own profit but to think lightly of the sacred dues of the dead.</p> - -<p>For sometimes, instead of riding off on his horse to inspect his crops -or bargain with his tenants, Sir John would sit, in broad daylight, -reading. There, on the hard chair in the comfortless room with the wind -lifting the carpet and the smoke stinging his eyes, he would sit reading -Chaucer, wasting his time, dreaming—or what strange intoxication was -it that he drew from books? Life was rough, cheerless, and disappointing. -A whole year of days would pass fruitlessly in dreary business, like -dashes of rain on the window pane. There was no reason in it as there -had been for his father; no imperative need to establish a family and -acquire an important position for children who were not born, or if -born, had no right to bear their father's name. But Lydgate's poems or -Chaucer's, like a mirror in which figures move brightly, silently, and -compactly, showed him the very skies, fields, and people whom he knew, -but rounded and complete. Instead of waiting listlessly for news from -London or piecing out from his mother's gossip some country tragedy of -love and jealousy, here, in a few pages, the whole story was laid before -him. And then as he rode or sat at table he would remember some -description or saying which bore upon the present moment and fixed it, -or some string of words would charm him, and putting aside the pressure -of the moment, he would hasten home to sit in his chair and learn the -end of the story.</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p>To learn the end of the story—Chaucer can still make us wish to do -that. He has pre-eminently that story-teller's gift, which is almost the -rarest gift among writers at the present day. Nothing happens to us as -it did to our ancestors; events are seldom important; if we recount -them, we do not really believe in them; we have perhaps things of -greater interest to say, and for these reasons natural story-tellers -like Mr. Garnett, whom we must distinguish from self-conscious -story-tellers like Mr. Masefield, have become rare. For the -story-teller, besides his indescribable zest for facts, must tell his -story craftily, without undue stress or excitement, or we shall swallow -it whole and jumble the parts together; he must let us stop, give us -time to think and look about us, yet always be persuading us to move on. -Chaucer was helped to this to some extent by the time of his birth; and -in addition he had another advantage over the moderns which will never -come the way of English poets again. England was an unspoilt country. -His eyes rested on a virgin land, all unbroken grass and wood except for -the small towns and an occasional castle in the building. No villa roofs -peered through Kentish tree-tops; no factory chimney smoked on the -hillside. The state of the country, considering how poets go to Nature, -how they use her for their images and their contrasts even when they do -not describe her directly, is a matter of some importance. Her -cultivation or her savagery influences the poet far more profoundly than -the prose writer. To the modern poet, with Birmingham, Manchester, and -London the size they are, the country is the sanctuary of moral -excellence in contrast with the town which is the sink of vice. It is a -retreat, the haunt of modesty and virtue, where men go to hide and -moralise. There is something morbid, as if shrinking from human contact, -in the nature worship of Wordsworth, still more in the microscopic -devotion which Tennyson lavished upon the petals of roses and the buds -of lime trees. But these were great poets. In their hands, the country -was no mere jeweller's shop, or museum of curious objects to be -described, even more curiously, in words. Poets of smaller gift, since -the view is so much spoilt, and the garden or the meadow must replace -the barren heath and the precipitous mountain-side, are now confined to -little landscapes, to birds' nests, to acorns with every wrinkle drawn -to the life. The wider landscape is lost.</p> - -<p>But to Chaucer the country was too large and too wild to be altogether -agreeable. He turned instinctively, as if he had painful experience of -their nature, from tempests and rocks to the bright May day and the -jocund landscape, from the harsh and mysterious to the gay and definite. -Without possessing a tithe of the virtuosity in word-painting which is -the modern inheritance, he could give, in a few words, or even, when we -come to look, without a single word of direct description, the sense of -the open air.</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">And se the fresshe floures how they sprynge</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>—that is enough.</p> - -<p>Nature, uncompromising, untamed, was no looking-glass for happy faces, -or confessor of unhappy souls. She was herself; sometimes, therefore, -disagreeable enough and plain, but always in Chaucer's pages with the -hardness and the freshness of an actual presence. Soon, however, we -notice something of greater importance than the gay and picturesque -appearance of the mediaeval world—the solidity which plumps it out, -the conviction which animates the characters. There is immense variety in -the <i>Canterbury Tales</i>, and yet, persisting underneath, one consistent -type. Chaucer has his world; he has his young men; he has his young -women. If one met them straying in Shakespeare's world one would know -them to be Chaucer's, not Shakespeare's. He wants to describe a girl, -and this is what she looks like:</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">Ful semely hir wimpel pinched was,</span><br> -<span class="i2">Hir nose tretys; hir eyen greye as glas;</span><br> -<span class="i2">Hir mouth ful smal, and ther-to soft and reed;</span><br> -<span class="i2">But sikerly she hadde a fair foreheed;</span><br> -<span class="i2">It was almost a spanne brood, I trowe;</span><br> -<span class="i2">For, hardily, she was nat undergrowe.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>Then he goes on to develop her; she was a girl, a virgin, cold in her -virginity:</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">I am, thou woost, yet of thy companye,</span><br> -<span class="i2">A mayde, and love hunting and venerye,</span><br> -<span class="i2">And for to walken in the wodes wilde,</span><br> -<span class="i2">And noght to been a wyf and be with childe.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>Next he bethinks him how</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">Discreet she was in answering alway;</span><br> -<span class="i2">And though she had been as wise as Pallas</span><br> -<span class="i2">No countrefeted termes hadde she</span><br> -<span class="i2">To seme wys; but after hir degree</span><br> -<span class="i2">She spak, and alle hir wordes more and lesse</span><br> -<span class="i2">Souninge in vertu and in gentillesse.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>Each of these quotations, in fact, comes from a different Tale, but they -are parts, one feels, of the same personage, whom he had in mind, -perhaps unconsciously, when he thought of a young girl, and for this -reason, as she goes in and out of the <i>Canterbury Tales</i> bearing -different names, she has a stability which is only to be found where the -poet has made up his mind about young women, of course, but also about -the world they live in, its end, its nature, and his own craft and -technique, so that his mind is free to apply its force fully to its -object. It does not occur to him that his Griselda might be improved or -altered. There is no blur about her, no hesitation; she proves nothing; -she is content to be herself. Upon her, therefore, the mind can rest -with that unconscious ease which allows it, from hints and suggestions, -to endow her with many more qualities than are actually referred to. -Such is the power of conviction, a rare gift, a gift shared in our day -by Joseph Conrad in his earlier novels, and a gift of supreme -importance, for upon it the whole weight of the building depends. Once -believe in Chaucer's young men and women and we have no need of -preaching or protest. We know what he finds good, what evil; the less -said the better. Let him get on with his story, paint knights and -squires, good women and bad, cooks, shipmen, priests, and we will supply -the landscape, give his society its belief, its standing towards life -and death, and make of the journey to Canterbury a spiritual -pilgrimage.</p> - -<p>This simple faithfulness to his own conceptions was easier then than now -in one respect at least, for Chaucer could write frankly where we must -either say nothing or say it slyly. He could sound every note in the -language instead of finding a great many of the best gone dumb from -disuse, and thus, when struck by daring fingers, giving off a loud -discordant jangle out of keeping with the rest. Much of Chaucer—a -few lines perhaps in each of the Tales—is improper and gives us as we -read it the strange sensation of being naked to the air after being muffled -in old clothing. And, as a certain kind of humour depends upon being -able to speak without self-consciousness of the parts and functions of -the body, so with the advent of decency literature lost the use of one -of its limbs. It lost its power to create the Wife of Bath, Juliet's -nurse, and their recognisable though already colourless relation, Moll -Flanders. Sterne, from fear of coarseness, is forced into indecency. He -must be witty, not humorous. He must hint instead of speaking outright. -Nor can we believe, with Mr. Joyce's <i>Ulysses</i> before us, that -laughter of the old kind will ever be heard again.</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">But, lord Christ! When that it remembreth me</span><br> -<span class="i2">Up-on my yowthe, and on my Iolitee,</span><br> -<span class="i2">It tikleth me aboute myn herte rote.</span><br> -<span class="i2">Unto this day it doth myn herte bote</span><br> -<span class="i2">That I have had my world as in my tyme.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>The sound of that old woman's voice is still.</p> - -<p>But there is another and more important reason for the surprising -brightness, the still effective merriment of the <i>Canterbury Tales</i>. -Chaucer was a poet; but he never flinched from the life that was being -lived at the moment before his eyes. A farmyard, with its straw, its -dung, its cocks and its hens is not (we have come to think) a poetic -subject; poets seem either to rule out the farmyard entirely or to -require that it shall be a farmyard in Thessaly and its pigs of -mythological origin. But Chaucer says outright:</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">Three large sowes hadde she, and namo,</span><br> -<span class="i2">Three kyn, and eek a sheep that highte Malle;</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>or again,</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">A yard she hadde, enclosed al aboute</span><br> -<span class="i2">With stikkes, and a drye ditch with-oute.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>He is unabashed and unafraid. He will always get close up to his -object—an old man's chin—</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">With thikke bristles of his berde unsofte,</span><br> -<span class="i2">Lyk to the skin of houndfish, sharp as brere;</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>or an old man's neck—</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">The slakke skin aboute his nekke shaketh</span><br> -<span class="i2">Whyl that he sang;</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>and he will tell you what his characters wore, how they looked, what -they ate and drank, as if poetry could handle the common facts of this -very moment of Tuesday, the sixteenth day of April, 1387, without -dirtying her hands. If he withdraws to the time of the Greeks or the -Romans, it is only that his story leads him there. He has no desire to -wrap himself round in antiquity, to take refuge in age, or to shirk the -associations of common grocer's English.</p> - -<p>Therefore when we say that we know the end of the journey, it is hard to -quote the particular lines from which we take our knowledge. He fixed -his eyes upon the road before him, not upon the world to come. He was -little given to abstract contemplation. He deprecated, with peculiar -archness, any competition with the scholars and divines:</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">The answere of this I lete to divynis,</span><br> -<span class="i2">But wel I woot, that in this world grey pyne is.</span><br> -<br> -<span class="i2">What is this world? What asketh men to have?</span><br> -<span class="i2">Now with his love, now in the colde grave</span><br> -<span class="i2">Allone, withouten any companye,</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>he asks, or ponders</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i7">O cruel goddes, that governe</span><br> -<span class="i2">This world with binding of your worde eterne,</span><br> -<span class="i2">And wryten in the table of athamaunt</span><br> -<span class="i2">Your parlement, and your eterne graunt,</span><br> -<span class="i2">What is mankinde more un-to yow holde</span><br> -<span class="i2">Than is the sheepe, that rouketh in the folde?</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>Questions press upon him; he asks questions, but he is too true a poet -to answer them; he leaves them unsolved, uncramped by the solution of -the moment, thus fresh for the generations that come after him. In his -life, too, it would be impossible to write him down a man of this party -or of that, a democrat or an aristocrat. He was a staunch churchman, but -he laughed at priests. He was an able public servant and a courtier, but -his views upon sexual morality were extremely lax. He sympathised with -poverty, but did nothing to improve the lot of the poor. It is safe to -say that not a single law has been framed or one stone set upon another -because of anything that Chaucer said or wrote; and yet, as we read him, -we are of course absorbing morality at every pore. For among writers -there are two kinds: there are the priests who take you by the hand and -lead you straight up to the mystery; there are the laymen who imbed -their doctrines in flesh and blood and make a complete model of the -world without excluding the bad or laying stress upon the good. -Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley are among the priests; they give us -text after text to be hung upon the wall, saying after saying to be laid -upon the heart like an amulet against disaster—</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i1">Farewell, farewell, the heart that lives alone</span><br> -<br> -<span class="i2">He prayeth best that loveth best</span><br> -<span class="i2">All things both great and small</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>—such lines of exhortation and command spring to memory instantly. -But Chaucer lets us go our ways doing the ordinary things with the ordinary -people. His morality lies in the way men and women behave to each other. -We see them eating, drinking, laughing, and making love, and come to -feel without a word being said what their standards are and so are -steeped through and through with their morality. There can be no more -forcible preaching than this where all actions and passions are -represented, and instead of being solemnly exhorted we are left to stray -and stare and make out a meaning for ourselves. It is the morality of -ordinary intercourse, the morality of the novel, which parents and -librarians rightly judge to be far more persuasive than the morality of -poetry.</p> - -<p>And so, when we shut Chaucer, we feel that without a word being said the -criticism is complete; what we are saying, thinking, reading, doing has -been commented upon. Nor are we left merely with the sense, powerful -though that is, of having been in good company and got used to the ways -of good society. For as we have jogged through the real, the unadorned -country-side, with first one good fellow cracking his joke or singing -his song and then another, we know that though this world resembles, it -is not in fact our daily world. It is the world of poetry. Everything -happens here more quickly and more intensely, and with better order than -in life or in prose; there is a formal elevated dullness which is part -of the incantation of poetry; there are lines speaking half a second in -advance what we were about to say, as if we read our thoughts before -words cumbered them; and lines which we go back to read again with that -heightened quality, that enchantment which keeps them glittering in the -mind long afterwards. And the whole is held in its place, and its -variety and divagations ordered by the power which is among the most -impressive of all—the shaping power, the architect's power. It is the -peculiarity of Chaucer, however, that though we feel at once this -quickening, this enchantment, we cannot prove it by quotation. From most -poets quotation is easy and obvious; some metaphor suddenly flowers; -some passage breaks off from the rest. But Chaucer is very equal, very -even-paced, very unmetaphorical. If we take six or seven lines in the -hope that the quality will be contained in them it has escaped.</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">My lord, ye woot that in my fadres place,</span><br> -<span class="i2">Ye dede me strepe out of my povre wede,</span><br> -<span class="i2">And richely me cladden, o your grace</span><br> -<span class="i2">To yow broghte I noght elles, out of drede,</span><br> -<span class="i2">But feyth and nakedness and maydenhede.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>In its place that seemed not only memorable and moving but fit to set -beside striking beauties. Cut out and taken separately it appears -ordinary and quiet. Chaucer, it seems, has some art by which the most -ordinary words and the simplest feelings when laid side by side make -each other shine; when separated lose their lustre. Thus the pleasure he -gives us is different from the pleasure that other poets give us, -because it is more closely connected with what we have ourselves felt or -observed. Eating, drinking and fine weather, the May, cocks and hens, -millers, old peasant women, flowers—there is a special stimulus in -seeing all these common things so arranged that they affect us as poetry -affects us, and are yet bright, sober, precise as we see them out of -doors. There is a pungency in this unfigurative language; a stately and -memorable beauty in the undraped sentences which follow each other like -women so slightly veiled that you see the lines of their bodies as they -go—</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">And she set down hir water pot anon</span><br> -<span class="i2">Biside the threshold in an oxe's stall.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>And then, as the procession takes its way, tranquilly, beautifully, out -from behind peeps the face of Chaucer, grinning, malicious, in league -with all foxes, donkeys, and hens, to mock the pomp and ceremonies of -life—witty, intellectual, French, at the same time based upon a broad -bottom of English humour.</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p>So Sir John read his Chaucer in the comfortless room with the wind -blowing and the smoke stinging, and left his father's tombstone unmade. -But no book, no tomb, had power to hold him long. He was one of those -ambiguous characters who haunt the boundary line where one age merges in -another and are not able to inhabit either. At one moment he was all for -buying books cheap; next he was off to France and told his mother, "My -mind is now not most upon books". In his own house, where his mother -Margaret was perpetually making out inventories or confiding in Gloys -the priest, he had no peace or comfort. There was always reason on her -side; she was a brave woman, for whose sake one must put up with the -priest's insolence and choke down one's rage when the grumbling broke -into open abuse, and "Thou proud priest" and "Thou proud Squire" were -bandied angrily about the room. All this, with the discomforts of life -and the weakness of his own character, drove him to loiter in pleasanter -places, to put off coming, to put off writing, to put off, year after -year, the making of his father's tombstone.</p> - -<p>Yet John Paston had now lain for twelve years under the bare ground. The -Prior of Bromholm sent word that the grave cloth was in tatters, and he -had tried to patch it himself. Worse still, for a proud woman like -Margaret Paston, the country people murmured at the Pastons' lack of -piety, and other families she heard, of no greater standing than theirs, -spent money in pious restoration in the very church where her husband -lay unremembered. At last, turning from tournaments and Chaucer and -Mistress Anne Hault, Sir John bethought him of a piece of cloth of gold -which had been used to cover his father's hearse and might now be sold -to defray the expenses of his tomb. Margaret had it in safe keeping; she -had hoarded it and cared for it, and spent twenty marks on its repair. -She grudged it; but there was no help for it. She sent it him, still -distrusting his intentions or his power to put them into effect. "If you -sell it to any other use," she wrote, "by my troth I shall never trust -you while I live."</p> - -<p>But this final act, like so many that Sir John had undertaken in the -course of his life, was left undone. A dispute with the Duke of Suffolk -in the year 1479 made it necessary for him to visit London in spite of -the epidemic of sickness that was abroad; and there, in dirty lodgings, -alone, busy to the end with quarrels, clamorous to the end for money, -Sir John died and was buried at Whitefriars in London. He left a natural -daughter; he left a considerable number of books; but his father's tomb -was still unmade.</p> - -<p>The four thick volumes of the Paston letters, however, swallow up this -frustrated man as the sea absorbs a raindrop. For, like all collections -of letters, they seem to hint that we need not care overmuch for the -fortunes of individuals. The family will go on whether Sir John lives or -dies. It is their method to heap up in mounds of insignificant and often -dismal dust the innumerable trivialities of daily life, as it grinds -itself out, year after year. And then suddenly they blaze up; the day -shines out, complete, alive, before our eyes. It is early morning and -strange men have been whispering among the women as they milk. It is -evening, and there in the churchyard Warne's wife bursts out against old -Agnes Paston: "All the devils of Hell draw her soul to Hell." Now it is -the autumn in Norfolk and Cecily Dawne comes whining to Sir John for -clothing. "Moreover, Sir, liketh it your mastership to understand that -winter and cold weather draweth nigh and I have few clothes but of your -gift." There is the ancient day, spread out before us, hour by hour.</p> - -<p>But in all this there is no writing for writing's sake; no use of the -pen to convey pleasure or amusement or any of the million shades of -endearment and intimacy which have filled so many English letters since. -Only occasionally, under stress of anger for the most part, does -Margaret Paston quicken into some shrewd saw or solemn curse. "Men cut -large thongs here out of other men's leather. . . . We beat the bushes -and other men have the birds. . . . Haste reweth . . . which is to my -heart a very spear." That is her eloquence and that her anguish. Her -sons, it is true, bend their pens more easily to their will. They jest -rather stiffly; they hint rather clumsily; they make a little scene like -a rough puppet show of the old priest's anger and give a phrase or two -directly as they were spoken in person. But when Chaucer lived he must -have heard this very language, matter of fact, unmetaphorical, far -better fitted for narrative than for analysis, capable of religious -solemnity or of broad humour, but very stiff material to put on the lips -of men and women accosting each other face to face. In short it is easy -to see, from the Paston letters, why Chaucer wrote not <i>Lear</i> or -<i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, but the <i>Canterbury Tales</i>.</p> - -<p>Sir John was buried; and John the younger brother succeeded in his turn. -The Paston letters go on; life at Paston continues much the same as -before. Over it all broods a sense of discomfort and nakedness; of -unwashed limbs thrust into splendid clothing; of tapestry blowing on the -draughty walls; of the bedroom with its privy; of winds sweeping -straight over land unmitigated by hedge or town; of Caister Castle -covering with solid stone six acres of ground, and of the plain-faced -Pastons indefatigably accumulating wealth, treading out the roads of -Norfolk, and persisting with an obstinate courage which does them -infinite credit in furnishing the bareness of England.</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a><i>The Paston Letters</i>, edited by Dr. James -Gairdner (1904), 4 vols.</p></div> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2><a id="On_Not_Knowing_Greek"><i>On Not Knowing Greek</i></a></h2> - - -<p>For it is vain and foolish to talk of Knowing Greek, since in our -ignorance we should be at the bottom of any class of schoolboys, since -we do not know how the words sounded, or where precisely we ought to -laugh, or how the actors acted, and between this foreign people and -ourselves there is not only difference of race and tongue but a -tremendous breach of tradition. All the more strange, then, is it that -we should wish to know Greek, try to know Greek, feel for ever drawn -back to Greek, and be for ever making up some notion of the meaning of -Greek, though from what incongruous odds and ends, with what slight -resemblance to the real meaning of Greek, who shall say?</p> - -<p>It is obvious in the first place that Greek literature is the impersonal -literature. Those few hundred years that separate John Paston from -Plato, Norwich from Athens, make a chasm which the vast tide of European -chatter can never succeed in crossing. When we read Chaucer, we are -floated up to him insensibly on the current of our ancestors' lives, and -later, as records increase and memories lengthen, there is scarcely a -figure which has not its nimbus of association, its life and letters, -its wife and family, its house, its character, its happy or dismal -catastrophe. But the Greeks remain in a fastness of their own. Fate has -been kind there too. She has preserved them from vulgarity, Euripides -was eaten by dogs; Æschylus killed by a stone; Sappho leapt from a -cliff. We know no more of them than that. We have their poetry, and that -is all.</p> - -<p>But that is not, and perhaps never can be, wholly true. Pick up any play -by Sophocles, read—</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Son of him who led our hosts at Troy of old, son of</span><br> -<span class="i3">Agamemnon,</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>and at once the mind begins to fashion itself surroundings. It makes -some background, even of the most provisional sort, for Sophocles; it -imagines some village, in a remote part of the country, near the sea. -Even nowadays such villages are to be found in the wilder parts of -England, and as we enter them we can scarcely help feeling that here, in -this cluster of cottages, cut off from rail or city, are all the -elements of a perfect existence. Here is the Rectory; here the Manor -house, the farm and the cottages; the church for worship, the club for -meeting, the cricket field for play. Here life is simply sorted out into -its main elements. Each man and woman has his work; each works for the -health or happiness of others. And here, in this little community, -characters become part of the common stock; the eccentricities of the -clergyman are known; the great ladies' defects of temper; the -blacksmith's feud with the milkman, and the loves and matings of the -boys and girls. Here life has cut the same grooves for centuries; -customs have arisen; legends have attached themselves to hilltops and -solitary trees, and the village has its history, its festivals, and its -rivalries.</p> - -<p>It is the climate that is impossible. If we try to think of Sophocles -here, we must annihilate the smoke and the damp and the thick wet mists. -We must sharpen the lines of the hills. We must imagine a beauty of -stone and earth rather than of woods and greenery. With warmth and -sunshine and months of brilliant, fine weather, life of course is -instantly changed; it is transacted out of doors, with the result, known -to all who visit Italy, that small incidents are debated in the street, -not in the sitting-room, and become dramatic; make people voluble; -inspire in them that sneering, laughing, nimbleness of wit and tongue -peculiar to the Southern races, which has nothing in common with the -slow reserve, the low half-tones, the brooding introspective melancholy -of people accustomed to live more than half the year indoors.</p> - -<p>That is the quality that first strikes us in Greek literature, the -lightning-quick, sneering, out-of-doors manner. It is apparent in the -most august as well as in the most trivial places. Queens and Princesses -in this very tragedy by Sophocles stand at the door bandying words like -village women, with a tendency, as one might expect, to rejoice in -language, to split phrases into slices, to be intent on verbal victory. -The humour of the people was not good natured like that of our postmen -and cabdrivers. The taunts of men lounging at the street corners had -something cruel in them as well as witty. There is a cruelty in Greek -tragedy which is quite unlike our English brutality: Is not Pentheus, -for example, that highly respectable man, made ridiculous in the -<i>Bacchæ</i> before he is destroyed? In fact, of course, these Queens and -Princesses were out of doors, with the bees buzzing past them, shadows -crossing them, and the wind taking their draperies. They were speaking -to an enormous audience rayed round them on one of those brilliant -southern days when the sun is so hot and yet the air so exciting. The -poet, therefore, had to bethink him, not of some theme which could be -read for hours by people in privacy, but of something emphatic, -familiar, brief, that would carry, instantly and directly, to an -audience of seventeen thousand people, perhaps, with ears and eyes eager -and attentive, with bodies whose muscles would grow stiff if they sat -too long without diversion. Music and dancing he would need, and -naturally would choose one of those legends, like our Tristram and -Iseult, which are known to every one in outline, so that a great fund of -emotion is ready prepared, but can be stressed in a new place by each -new poet.</p> - -<p>Sophocles would take the old story of Electra, for instance, but would -at once impose his stamp upon it. Of that, in spite of our weakness and -distortion, what remains visible to us? That his genius was of the -extreme kind in the first place; that he chose a design which, if it -failed, would show its failure in gashes and ruin, not in the gentle -blurring of some insignificant detail; which, if it succeeded, would cut -each stroke to the bone, would stamp each finger-print in marble. His -Electra stands before us like a figure so tightly bound that she can -only move an inch this way, an inch that. But each movement must tell to -the utmost, or, bound as she is, denied the relief of all hints, -repetitions, suggestions, she will be nothing but a dummy, tightly -bound. Her words in crisis are, as a matter of fact, bare; mere cries of -despair, joy, hate</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">οἲ 'γὼ τάλαιν', ὄλωλα τῇδ' ὲν ἡμέρᾀ.</span><br> -<span class="i2">παῖσον, εἰ σθένεις, διπλῆν.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>But these cries give angle and outline to the play. It is thus, with a -thousand differences of degree, that in English literature Jane Austen -shapes a novel. There comes a moment—"I will dance with you," says -Emma—which rises higher than the rest, which, though not eloquent in -itself, or violent, or made striking by beauty of language, has the -whole weight of the book behind it. In Jane Austen, too, we have the -same sense, though the ligatures are much less tight, that her figures -are bound, and restricted to a few definite movements. She, too, in her -modest, everyday prose, chose the dangerous art where one slip means -death.</p> - -<p>But it is not so easy to decide what it is that gives these cries of -Electra in her anguish their power to cut and wound and excite. It is -partly that we know her, that we have picked up from little turns and -twists of the dialogue hints of her character, of her appearance, which, -characteristically, she neglected; of something suffering in her, -outraged and stimulated to its utmost stretch of capacity, yet, as she -herself knows ("my behaviour is unseemly and becomes me ill"), blunted -and debased by the horror of her position, an unwed girl made to witness -her mother's vileness and denounce it in loud, almost vulgar, -clamour to the world at large. It is partly, too, that we know in -the same way that Clytemnestra is no unmitigated villainess. -"δεινὸν τὸ τίκτειν ἐστίν," she says—"there is a strange power in -motherhood". It is no murderess, violent and unredeemed, whom Orestes -kills within the house, and Electra bids him utterly destroy—"strike -again". No; the men and women standing out in the sunlight before the -audience on the hillside were alive enough, subtle enough, not mere -figures, or plaster casts of human beings.</p> - -<p>Yet it is not because we can analyse them into feelings that they -impress us. In six pages of Proust we can find more complicated and varied -emotions than in the whole of the <i>Electra</i>. But in the <i>Electra</i> -or in the <i>Antigone</i> we are impressed by something different, by -something perhaps more impressive—by heroism itself, by fidelity -itself. In spite of the labour and the difficulty it is this that draws -us back and back to the Greeks; the stable, the permanent, the original -human being is to be found there. Violent emotions are needed to rouse -him into action, but when thus stirred by death, by betrayal, by some -other primitive calamity, Antigone and Ajax and Electra behave in the -way in which we should behave thus struck down; the way in which -everybody has always behaved; and thus we understand them more easily -and more directly than we understand the characters in the <i>Canterbury -Tales</i>. These are the originals, Chaucer's the varieties of the human -species.</p> - -<p>It is true, of course, that these types of the original man or woman, -these heroic Kings, these faithful daughters, these tragic Queens who -stalk through the ages always planting their feet in the same places, -twitching their robes with the same gestures, from habit not from -impulse, are among the greatest bores and the most demoralising -companions in the world. The plays of Addison, Voltaire, and a host of -others are there to prove it. But encounter them in Greek. Even in -Sophocles, whose reputation for restraint and mastery has filtered down -to us from the scholars, they are decided, ruthless, direct. A fragment -of their speech broken off would, we feel, colour oceans and oceans of -the respectable drama. Here we meet them before their emotions have been -worn into uniformity. Here we listen to the nightingale whose song -echoes through English literature singing in her own Greek tongue. For -the first time Orpheus with his lute makes men and beasts follow him. -Their voices ring out clear and sharp; we see the hairy tawny bodies at -play in the sunlight among the olive trees, not posed gracefully on -granite plinths in the pale corridors of the British Museum. And then -suddenly, in the midst of all this sharpness and compression, Electra, -as if she swept her veil over her face and forbade us to think of her -any more, speaks of that very nightingale: "that bird distraught with -grief, the messenger of Zeus. Ah, queen of sorrow, Niobe, thee I deem -divine—thee; who evermore weepest in thy rocky tomb".</p> - -<p>And as she silences her own complaint, she perplexes us again with the -insoluble question of poetry and its nature, and why, as she speaks -thus, her words put on the assurance of immortality. For they are Greek; -we cannot tell how they sounded; they ignore the obvious sources of -excitement; they owe nothing of their effect to any extravagance of -expression, and certainly they throw no light upon the speaker's -character or the writer's. But they remain, something that has been -stated and must eternally endure.</p> - -<p>Yet in a play how dangerous this poetry, this lapse from the particular -to the general must of necessity be, with the actors standing there in -person, with their bodies and their faces passively waiting to be made -use of! For this reason the later plays of Shakespeare, where there is -more of poetry than of action, are better read than seen, better -understood by leaving out the actual body than by having the body, with -all its associations and movements, visible to the eye. The intolerable -restrictions of the drama could be loosened, however, if a means could -be found by which what was general and poetic, comment, not action, -could be freed without interrupting the movement of the whole. It is -this that the choruses supply; the old men or women who take no active -part in the drama, the undifferentiated voices who sing like birds in -the pauses of the wind; who can comment, or sum up, or allow the poet to -speak himself or supply, by contrast, another side to his conception. -Always in imaginative literature, where characters speak for themselves -and the author has no part, the need of that voice is making itself -felt. For though Shakespeare (unless we consider that his fools and -madmen supply the part) dispensed with the chorus, novelists are always -devising some substitute—Thackeray speaking in his own person, -Fielding coming out and addressing the world before his curtain rises. So -to grasp the meaning of the play the chorus is of the utmost importance. -One must be able to pass easily into those ecstasies, those wild and -apparently irrelevant utterances, those sometimes obvious and -commonplace statements, to decide their relevance or irrelevance, and -give them their relation to the play as a whole.</p> - -<p>We must "be able to pass easily"; but that of course is exactly what we -cannot do. For the most part the choruses, with all their obscurities, -must be spelt out and their symmetry mauled. But we can guess that -Sophocles used them not to express something outside the action of the -play, but to sing the praises of some virtue, or the beauties of some -place mentioned in it. He selects what he wishes to emphasise and sings -of white Colonus and its nightingale, or of love unconquered in fight. -Lovely, lofty, and serene his choruses grow naturally out of his -situations, and change, not the point of view, but the mood. In -Euripides, however, the situations are not contained within themselves; -they give off an atmosphere of doubt, of suggestion, of questioning; but -if we look to the choruses to make this plain we are often baffled -rather than instructed. At once in the <i>Bacchæ</i> we are in the world of -psychology and doubt; the world where the mind twists facts and changes -them and makes the familiar aspects of life appear new and questionable. -What is Bacchus, and who are the Gods, and what is man's duty to them, -and what the rights of his subtle brain? To these questions the chorus -makes no reply, or replies mockingly, or speaks darkly as if the -straitness of the dramatic form had tempted Euripides to violate it in -order to relieve his mind of its weight. Time is so short and I have so -much to say, that unless you will allow me to place together two -apparently unrelated statements and trust to you to pull them together, -you must be content with a mere skeleton of the play I might have given -you. Such is the argument. Euripides therefore suffers less than -Sophocles and less than Æschylus from being read privately in a room, -and not seen on a hillside in the sunshine. He can be acted in the mind; -he can comment upon the questions of the moment; more than the others he -will vary in popularity from age to age.</p> - -<p>If then in Sophocles the play is concentrated in the figures themselves, -and in Euripides is to be retrieved from flashes of poetry and questions -far flung and unanswered, Æschylus makes these little dramas (the -<i>Agamemnon</i> has 1663 lines; <i>Lear</i> about 2600), tremendous by -stretching every phrase to the utmost, by sending them floating forth in -metaphors, by bidding them rise up and stalk eyeless and majestic through -the scene. To understand him it is not so necessary to understand Greek as -to understand poetry. It is necessary to take that dangerous leap -through the air without the support of words which Shakespeare also asks -of us. For words, when opposed to such a blast of meaning, must give -out, must be blown astray, and only by collecting in companies convey -the meaning which each one separately is too weak to express. Connecting -them in a rapid flight of the mind we know instantly and instinctively -what they mean, but could not decant that meaning afresh into any other -words. There is an ambiguity which is the mark of the highest poetry; we -cannot know exactly what it means. Take this from the Agamemnon for -instance—</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">ὀμμάτων δ ἐν ἀχηνίαις ἔρρει πᾶσ' Ἀφροδίτα.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>The meaning is just on the far side of language. It is the meaning which -in moments of astonishing excitement and stress we perceive in our minds -without words; it is the meaning that Dostoevsky (hampered as he was by -prose and as we are by translation) leads us to by some astonishing run -up the scale of emotions and points at but cannot indicate; the meaning -that Shakespeare succeeds in snaring.</p> - -<p>Æschylus thus will not give, as Sophocles gives, the very words that -people might have spoken, only so arranged that they have in some -mysterious way a general force, a symbolic power, nor like Euripides -will he combine incongruities and thus enlarge his little space, as a -small room is enlarged by mirrors in odd corners. By the bold and running -use of metaphor he will amplify and give us, not the thing itself, but -the reverberation and reflection which, taken into his mind, the thing -has made; close enough to the original to illustrate it, remote enough -to heighten, enlarge, and make splendid.</p> - -<p>For none of these dramatists had the license which belongs to the -novelist, and, in some degree, to all writers of printed books, of -modelling their meaning with an infinity of slight touches which can -only be properly applied by reading quietly, carefully, and sometimes -two or three times over. Every sentence had to explode on striking the -ear, however slowly and beautifully the words might then descend, and -however enigmatic might their final purport be. No splendour or richness -of metaphor could have saved the <i>Agamemnon</i> if either images or -allusions of the subtlest or most decorative had got between us and the -naked cry</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">ὀτοτοτοῖ πόποι δᾶ. ὢ 'πολλον, ὢ 'πολλον.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>Dramatic they had to be at whatever cost.</p> - -<p>But winter fell on these villages, darkness and extreme cold descended -on the hillside. There must have been some place indoors where men -could retire, both in the depths of winter and in the summer heats, -where they could sit and drink, where they could lie stretched at their -ease, where they could talk. It is Plato, of course, who reveals the -life indoors, and describes how, when a party of friends met and had -eaten not at all luxuriously and drunk a little wine, some handsome boy -ventured a question, or quoted an opinion, and Socrates took it up, -fingered it, turned it round, looked at it this way and that, swiftly -stripped it of its inconsistencies and falsities and brought the whole -company by degrees to gaze with him at the truth. It is an exhausting -process; to contract painfully upon the exact meaning of words; to judge -what each admission involves; to follow intently, yet critically, the -dwindling and changing of opinion as it hardens and intensifies into -truth. Are pleasure and good the same? Can virtue be taught? Is virtue -knowledge? The tired or feeble mind may easily lapse as the remorseless -questioning proceeds; but no one, however weak, can fail, even if he -does not learn more from Plato, to love knowledge better. For as the -argument mounts from step to step, Protagoras yielding, Socrates pushing -on, what matters is not so much the end we reach as our manner of -reaching it. That all can feel—the indomitable honesty, the courage, -the love of truth which draw Socrates and us in his wake to the summit -where, if we too may stand for a moment, it is to enjoy the greatest -felicity of which we are capable.</p> - -<p>Yet such an expression seems ill fitted to describe the state of mind of -a student to whom, after painful argument, the truth has been revealed. -But truth is various; truth comes to us in different disguises; it is -not with the intellect alone that we perceive it. It is a winter's -night; the tables are spread at Agathon's house; the girl is playing the -flute; Socrates has washed himself and put on sandals; he has stopped in -the hall; he refuses to move when they send for him. Now Socrates has -done; he is bantering Alcibiades; Alcibiades takes a fillet and binds it -round "this wonderful fellow's head". He praises Socrates. "For he cares -not for mere beauty, but despises more than any one can imagine all -external possessions, whether it be beauty or wealth or glory, or any -other thing for which the multitude felicitates the possessor. He -esteems these things and us who honour them, as nothing, and lives among -men, making all the objects of their admiration the playthings of his -irony. But I know not if any one of you has ever seen the divine images -which are within, when he has been opened and is serious. I have seen -them, and they are so supremely beautiful, so golden, divine, and -wonderful, that everything which Socrates commands surely ought to be -obeyed even like the voice of a God." All this flows over the arguments -of Plato—laughter and movement; people getting up and going out; the -hour changing; tempers being lost; jokes cracked; the dawn rising. -Truth, it seems, is various; Truth is to be pursued with all our -faculties. Are we to rule out the amusements, the tendernesses, the -frivolities of friendship because we love truth? Will truth be quicker -found because we stop our ears to music and drink no wine, and sleep -instead of talking through the long winter's night? It is not to the -cloistered disciplinarian mortifying himself in solitude that we are to -turn, but to the well-sunned nature, the man who practises the art of -living to the best advantage, so that nothing is stunted but some things -are permanently more valuable than others.</p> - -<p>So in these dialogues we are made to seek truth with every part of us. -For Plato, of course, had the dramatic genius. It is by means of that, -by an art which conveys in a sentence or two the setting and the -atmosphere, and then with perfect adroitness insinuates itself into the -coils of the argument without losing its liveliness and grace, and then -contracts to bare statement, and then, mounting, expands and soars in -that higher air which is generally reached only by the more extreme -measures of poetry—it is this art which plays upon us in so many ways -at once and brings us to an exultation of mind which can only be reached -when all the powers are called upon to contribute their energy to the -whole.</p> - -<p>But we must beware. Socrates did not care for "mere beauty", by which he -meant, perhaps, beauty as ornament. A people who judged as much as the -Athenians did by ear, sitting out-of-doors at the play or listening to -argument in the market-place, were far less apt than we are to break off -sentences and appreciate them apart from the context. For them there -were no Beauties of Hardy, Beauties of Meredith, Sayings from George -Eliot. The writer had to think more of the whole and less of the detail. -Naturally, living in the open, it was not the lip or the eye that struck -them, but the carriage of the body and the proportions of its parts. -Thus when we quote and extract we do the Greeks more damage than we do -the English. There is a bareness and abruptness in their literature -which grates upon a taste accustomed to the intricacy and finish of -printed books. We have to stretch our minds to grasp a whole devoid of -the prettiness of detail or the emphasis of eloquence. Accustomed to -look directly and largely rather than minutely and aslant, it was safe -for them to step into the thick of emotions which blind and bewilder an -age like our own. In the vast catastrophe of the European war our -emotions had to be broken up for us, and put at an angle from us, before -we could allow ourselves to feel them in poetry or fiction. The only -poets who spoke to the purpose spoke in the sidelong, satiric manner of -Wilfrid Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. It was not possible for them to be -direct without being clumsy; or to speak simply of emotion without being -sentimental. But the Greeks could say, as if for the first time, "Yet -being dead they have not died". They could say, "If to die nobly is the -chief part of excellence, to us out of all men Fortune gave this lot; -for hastening to set a crown of freedom on Greece we lie possessed of -praise that grows not old". They could march straight up, with their -eyes open; and thus fearlessly approached, emotions stand still and -suffer themselves to be looked at.</p> - -<p>But again (the question comes back and back), Are we reading Greek as it -was written when we say this? When we read these few words cut on a -tombstone, a stanza in a chorus, the end or the opening of a dialogue of -Plato's, a fragment of Sappho, when we bruise our minds upon some -tremendous metaphor in the <i>Agamemnon</i> instead of stripping the branch -of its flowers instantly as we do in reading <i>Lear</i>—are we not -reading wrongly? losing our sharp sight in the haze of associations? -reading into Greek poetry not what they have but what we lack? Does not the -whole of Greece heap itself behind every line of its literature? They -admit us to a vision of the earth unravaged, the sea unpolluted, the -maturity, tried but unbroken, of mankind. Every word is reinforced by a -vigour which pours out of olive-tree and temple and the bodies of the -young. The nightingale has only to be named by Sophocles and she sings; -the grove has only to be called ἄβατον, "untrodden", and we -imagine the twisted branches and the purple violets. Back and back we -are drawn to steep ourselves in what, perhaps, is only an image of the -reality, not the reality itself, a summer's day imagined in the heart of -a northern winter. Chief among these sources of glamour and perhaps -misunderstanding is the language. We can never hope to get the whole -fling of a sentence in Greek as we do in English. We cannot hear it, now -dissonant, now harmonious, tossing sound from line to line across a -page. We cannot pick up infallibly one by one all those minute signals -by which a phrase is made to hint, to turn, to live. Nevertheless it is -the language that has us most in bondage; the desire for that which -perpetually lures us back. First there is the compactness of the -expression. Shelley takes twenty-one words in English to translate -thirteen words of Greek.</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">πᾶς γοῦν ποιητὴς γίγνεται, κἂν ἄμουσος ᾖ τὸ πρίν, οὗ ἂν Ἕρως</span><br> -<span class="i0">ἅψηται</span> -</div></div> - -<blockquote> -<p>. . . For every one, even if before he were ever so undisciplined, -becomes a poet as soon as he is touched by love.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>Every ounce of fat has been pared off, leaving the flesh firm. Then, -spare and bare as it is, no language can move more quickly, dancing, -shaking, all alive, but controlled. Then there are the words themselves -which, in so many instances, we have made expressive to us of our own -emotions, <i>thalassa, thanatos, anthos, aster</i>—to take the first -that come to hand; so clear, so hard, so intense, that to speak plainly yet -fittingly without blurring the outline or clouding the depths Greek is -the only expression. It is useless, then, to read Greek in translations. -Translators can but offer us a vague equivalent; their language is -necessarily full of echoes and associations. Professor Mackail says -"wan", and the age of Burne-Jones and Morris is at once evoked. Nor can -the subtler stress, the flight and the fall of the words, be kept even -by the most skilful of scholars—</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>. . . thee, who evermore weepest in thy rocky tomb</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>is not</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">ἅτ' ἐν τάφῳ πετραίῳ,</span><br> -<span class="i4">αἰ, δακρύεις.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>Further, in reckoning the doubts and difficulties there is this -important problem—Where are we to laugh in reading Greek? There is a -passage in the <i>Odyssey</i> where laughter begins to steal upon us, but -if Homer were looking we should probably think it better to control our -merriment. To laugh instantly it is almost necessary (though -Aristophanes may supply us with an exception) to laugh in English. -Humour, after all, is closely bound up with a sense of the body. When we -laugh at the humour of Wycherley, we are laughing with the body of that -burly rustic who was our common ancestor on the village green. The -French, the Italians, the Americans, who derive physically from so -different a stock, pause, as we pause in reading Homer, to make sure -that they are laughing in the right place, and the pause is fatal. Thus -humour is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue, and when -we turn from Greek to Elizabethan literature it seems, after a long -silence, as if our great age were ushered in by a burst of laughter.</p> - -<p>These are all difficulties, sources of misunderstanding, of distorted -and romantic, of servile and snobbish passion. Yet even for the -unlearned some certainties remain. Greek is the impersonal literature; -it is also the literature of masterpieces. There are no schools; no -forerunners; no heirs. We cannot trace a gradual process working in many -men imperfectly until it expresses itself adequately at last in one. -Again, there is always about Greek literature that air of vigour which -permeates an "age", whether it is the age of Æschylus, or Racine, or -Shakespeare. One generation at least in that fortunate time is blown on -to be writers to the extreme; to attain that unconsciousness which means -that the consciousness is stimulated to the highest extent; to surpass -the limits of small triumphs and tentative experiments. Thus we have -Sappho with her constellations of adjectives, Plato daring extravagant -flights of poetry in the midst of prose; Thucydides, constricted and -contracted; Sophocles gliding like a shoal of trout smoothly and -quietly, apparently motionless, and then with a flicker of fins off and -away; while in the <i>Odyssey</i> we have what remains the triumph of -narrative, the clearest and at the same time the most romantic story of -the fortunes of men and women.</p> - -<p>The <i>Odyssey</i> is merely a story of adventure, the instinctive -story-telling of a sea-faring race. So we may begin it, reading quickly -in the spirit of children wanting amusement to find out what happens -next. But here is nothing immature; here are full-grown people, crafty, -subtle, and passionate. Nor is the world itself a small one, since the -sea which separates island from island has to be crossed by little -hand-made boats and is measured by the flight of the sea-gulls. It is -true that the islands are not thickly populated, and the people, though -everything is made by hand, are not closely kept at work. They have had -time to develop a very dignified, a very stately society, with an -ancient tradition of manners behind it, which makes every relation at -once orderly, natural, and full of reserve. Penelope crosses the room; -Telemachus goes to bed; Nausicaa washes her linen; and their actions -seem laden with beauty because they do not know that they are beautiful, -have been born to their possessions, are no more self-conscious than -children, and yet, all those thousands of years ago, in their little -islands, know all that is to be known. With the sound of the sea in -their ears, vines, meadows, rivulets about them, they are even more -aware than we are of a ruthless fate. There is a sadness at the back of -life which they do not attempt to mitigate. Entirely aware of their own -standing in the shadow, and yet alive to every tremor and gleam of -existence, there they endure, and it is to the Greeks that we turn when -we are sick of the vagueness, of the confusion, of the Christianity and -its consolations, of our own age.</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2><a id="The_Elizabethan"><i>The Elizabethan Lumber<br> -Room</i></a></h2> - - -<p>These magnificent volumes<a id="FNanchor_2_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_1" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> are not often, perhaps, read through. Part -of their charm consists in the fact that Hakluyt is not so much a book -as a great bundle of commodities loosely tied together, an emporium, a -lumber room strewn with ancient sacks, obsolete nautical instruments, -huge bales of wool, and little bags of rubies and emeralds. One is for -ever untying this packet here, sampling that heap over there, wiping the -dust off some vast map of the world, and sitting down in semi-darkness -to snuff the strange smells of silks and leathers and ambergris, while -outside tumble the huge waves of the uncharted Elizabethan sea.</p> - -<p>For this jumble of seeds, silks, unicorns' horns, elephants' teeth, -wool, common stones, turbans, and bars of gold, these odds and ends of -priceless value and complete worthlessness, were the fruit of -innumerable voyages, traffics, and discoveries to unknown lands in the -reign of Queen Elizabeth. The expeditions were manned by "apt young men" -from the West country, and financed in part by the great Queen herself. -The ships, says Froude, were no bigger than modern yachts. There in the -river by Greenwich the fleet lay gathered, close to the Palace. "The -Privy council looked out of the windows of the court . . . the ships -thereupon discharge their ordnance . . . and the mariners they shouted -in such sort that the sky rang again with the noise thereof." Then, as -the ships swung down the tide, one sailor after another walked the -hatches, climbed the shrouds, stood upon the mainyards to wave his -friends a last farewell. Many would come back no more. For directly -England and the coast of France were beneath the horizon, the ships -sailed into the unfamiliar; the air had its voices, the sea its lions and -serpents, its evaporations of fire and tumultuous whirlpools. But God too -was very close; the clouds but sparely hid the divinity Himself; the limbs -of Satan were almost visible. Familiarly the English sailors pitted their -God against the God of the Turks, who "can speake never a word for -dulnes, much lesse can he helpe them in such an extremitie. . . . -But howsoever their God behaved himself, our God showed himself a God -indeed. . ." God was as near by sea as by land, said Sir Humphrey -Gilbert, riding through the storm. Suddenly one light disappeared; Sir -Humphrey Gilbert had gone beneath the waves; when morning came, they -sought his ship in vain. Sir Hugh Willoughby sailed to discover the -North-West Passage and made no return. The Earl of Cumberland's men, -hung up by adverse winds off the coast of Cornwall for a fortnight, -licked the muddy water off the deck in agony. And sometimes a ragged and -worn-out man came knocking at the door of an English country house and -claimed to be the boy who had left it years ago to sail the seas. "Sir -William his father, and my lady his mother knew him not to be their son, -until they found a secret mark, which was a wart upon one of his knees." -But he had with him a black stone, veined with gold, or an ivory tusk, -or a silver ingot, and urged on the village youth with talk of gold -strewn over the land as stones are strewn in the fields of England. One -expedition might fail, but what if the passage to the fabled land of -uncounted riches lay only a little further up the coast? What if the -known world was only the prelude to some more splendid panorama? When, -after the long voyage, the ships dropped anchor in the great river of -the Plate and the men went exploring through the undulating lands, -startling grazing herds of deer, seeing the limbs of savages between the -trees, they filled their pockets with pebbles that might be emeralds or -sand that might be gold; or sometimes, rounding a headland, they saw, -far off, a string of savages slowly descending to the beach bearing on -their heads and linking their shoulders together with heavy burdens for -the Spanish King.</p> - -<p>These are the fine stories used effectively all through the West country -to decoy "the apt young men" lounging by the harbour-side to leave their -nets and fish for gold. But the voyagers were sober merchants into the -bargain, citizens with the good of English trade and the welfare of -English work-people at heart. The captains are reminded how necessary it -is to find a market abroad for English wool; to discover the herb from -which blue dyes are made; above all to make inquiry as to the methods of -producing oil, since all attempts to make it from radish seed have -failed. They are reminded of the misery of the English poor, whose -crimes, brought about by poverty, make them "daily consumed by the -gallows". They are reminded how the soil of England had been enriched by -the discoveries of travellers in the past; how Dr. Linaker brought seeds -of the damask rose and tulipas, and how beasts and plants and herbs, -"without which our life were to be said barbarous", have all come to -England gradually from abroad. In search of markets and of goods, of the -immortal fame success would bring them, the apt young men set sail for -the North, and were left, a little company of isolated Englishmen -surrounded by snow and the huts of savages, to make what bargains they -could and pick up what knowledge they might before the ships returned in -the summer to fetch them home again. There they endured, an isolated -company, burning on the rim of the dark. One of them, carrying a charter -from his company in London, went inland as far as Moscow, and there saw -the Emperor "sitting in his chair of estate with his crown on his head, -and a staff of goldsmiths' work in his left hand". All the ceremony that -he saw is carefully written out, and the sight upon which the English -merchant first set eyes has the brilliancy of a Roman vase dug up and -stood for a moment in the sun, until, exposed to the air, seen by -millions of eyes, it dulls and crumbles away. There, all these -centuries, on the outskirts of the world, the glories of Moscow, the -glories of Constantinople have flowered unseen. The Englishman was -bravely dressed for the occasion, led "three fair mastiffs in coats of -red cloth", and carried a letter from Elizabeth "the paper whereof did -smell most fragrantly of camphor and ambergris, and the ink of perfect -musk". And sometimes, since trophies from the amazing new world were -eagerly awaited at home, together with unicorns' horns and lumps of -ambergris and the fine stories of the engendering of whales and -"debates" of elephants and dragons whose blood, mixed, congealed into -vermilion, a living sample would be sent, a live savage caught somewhere -off the coast of Labrador, taken to England, and shown about like a wild -beast. Next year they brought him back, and took a woman savage on board -to keep him company. When they saw each other they blushed; they blushed -profoundly, but the sailors, though they noted it, knew not why. Later -the two savages set up house together on board ship, she attending to -his wants, he nursing her in sickness. But, as the sailors noted again, -the savages lived together in perfect chastity.</p> - -<p>All this, the new words, the new ideas, the waves, the savages, the -adventures, found their way naturally into the plays which were being -acted on the banks of the Thames. There was an audience quick to seize -upon the coloured and the high-sounding; to associate those</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i4">frigates bottom'd with rich Sethin planks,</span><br> -<span class="i2">Topt with the lofty firs of Lebanon</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>with the adventures of their own sons and brothers abroad. The Verneys, -for example, had a wild boy who had gone as pirate, turned Turk, and -died out there, sending back to Claydon to be kept as relics of him some -silk, a turban, and a pilgrim's staff. A gulf lay between the spartan -domestic housecraft of the Paston women and the refined tastes of the -Elizabethan Court ladies, who, grown old, says Harrison, spent their -time reading histories, or "writing volumes of their own, or translating -of other men's into our English and Latin tongue", while the younger -ladies played the lute and the citharne and spent their leisure in the -enjoyment of music. Thus, with singing and with music, springs into -existence the characteristic Elizabethan extravagance; the dolphins and -lavoltas of Greene; the hyperbole, more surprising in a writer so terse -and muscular, of Ben Jonson. Thus we find the whole of Elizabethan -literature strewn with gold and silver; with talk of Guiana's -rarities, and references to that America—"O my America! my -new-foundland"—which was not merely a land on the map, but -symbolised the unknown territories of the soul. So, over the water, the -imagination of Montaigne brooded in fascination upon savages, cannibals, -society, and government.</p> - -<p>But the mention of Montaigne suggests that though the influence of the -sea and the voyages, of the lumber-room crammed with sea beasts and -horns and ivory and old maps and nautical instruments, helped to inspire -the greatest age of English poetry, its effects were by no means so -beneficial upon English prose. Rhyme and metre helped the poets to keep -the tumult of their perceptions in order. But the prose writer, without -these restrictions, accumulated clauses, petered out in interminable -catalogues, tripped and stumbled over the convolutions of his own rich -draperies. How little Elizabethan prose was fit for its office, how -exquisitely French prose was already adapted, can be seen by comparing -a passage from Sidney's <i>Defense of Poesie</i> with one from Montaigne's -Essays.</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which must blur the margent -with interpretations, and load the memory with doubtfulness: but he -cometh to you with words set in delightful proportion, either -accompanied with, or prepared for the well enchanting Skill of Music, -and with a tale (forsooth) he cometh unto you, with a tale which holdeth -children from play, and old men from the Chimney corner; and pretending -no more, doth intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue; -even as the child is often brought to take most wholesome things by -hiding them in such other as have a pleasant taste: which if one should -begin to tell them the nature of the <i>Aloës</i> or <i>Rhubarbarum</i> -they should receive, would sooner take their physic at their ears than at -their mouth, so is it in men (most of which are childish in the best -things, till they be cradled in their graves) glad they will be to hear -the tales of Hercules. . . .</p></blockquote> - - -<p>And so it runs on for seventy-six words more. Sidney's prose is an -uninterrupted monologue, with sudden flashes of felicity and splendid -phrases, which lends itself to lamentations and moralities, to long -accumulations and catalogues, but is never quick, never colloquial, -unable to grasp a thought closely and firmly, or to adapt itself -flexibly and exactly to the chops and changes of the mind. Compared with -this, Montaigne is master of an instrument which knows its own powers -and limitations, and is capable of insinuating itself into crannies and -crevices which poetry can never reach; of cadences different but no less -beautiful; capable of subtleties and intensities which Elizabethan prose -entirely ignores. He is considering the way in which certain of the -ancients met death:</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>. . . ils l'ont faicte couler et glisser parmy la lascheté de leurs -occupations accoustumées entre des garses et bons compaignons; nul -propos de consolation, nulle mention de testament, nulle affectation -ambitieuse de constance, nul discours de leur condition future; mais -entre les jeux, les festins, facecies, entretiens communs et populaires, -et la musique, et des vers amoureux.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>An age seems to separate Sidney from Montaigne. The English compared -with the French are as boys compared with men.</p> - -<p>But the Elizabethan prose writers, if they have the formlessness of -youth have, too, its freshness and audacity. In the same essay Sidney -shapes language, masterfully and easily, to his liking; freely and -naturally reaches his hand for a metaphor. To bring this prose to -perfection (and Dryden's prose is very near perfection) only the -discipline of the stage was necessary and the growth of -self-consciousness. It is in the plays, and especially in the comic -passages of the plays, that the finest Elizabethan prose is to be found. -The stage was the nursery where prose learnt to find its feet. For on -the stage people had to meet, to quip and crank, to suffer -interruptions, to talk of ordinary things.</p> - -<blockquote> -<p><i>Cler</i>. A box of her autumnal face, her pieced beauty! there's no -man can be admitted till she be ready now-a-days, till she has painted, and -perfumed, and washed, and scoured, but the boy here; and him she wipes -her oiled lips upon, like a sponge. I have made a song (I pray thee hear -it) on the subject. [Page sings]</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">Still to be neat, still to be drest &c.</span> -</div></div> - -<p><i>True</i>. And I am clearly on the other side: I love a good dressing -before any beauty o' the world. O, a woman is then like a delicate -garden; nor is there one kind of it; she may vary every hour; take often -counsel of her glass, and choose the best. If she have good ears, show -them; good hair, lay it out; good legs, wear short clothes; a good hand, -discover it often: practise any art to mend breath, cleanse teeth, -repair eyebrows; paint and profess it.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>So the talk runs in Ben Jonson's <i>Silent Woman</i>, knocked into shape -by interruptions, sharpened by collisions, and never allowed to settle into -stagnancy or swell into turbidity. But the publicity of the stage and -the perpetual presence of a second person were hostile to that growing -consciousness of one's self, that brooding in solitude over the -mysteries of the soul, which, as the years went by, sought expression -and found a champion in the sublime genius of Sir Thomas Browne. His -immense egotism has paved the way for all psychological novelists, -autobiographers, confession-mongers, and dealers in the curious shades -of our private life. He it was who first turned from the contacts of men -with men to their lonely life within. "The world that I regard is -myself; it is the microcosm of my own frame that I cast mine eye on; for -the other I use it but like my globe, and turn it round sometimes for my -recreation." All was mystery and darkness as the first explorer walked -the catacombs swinging his lanthorn. "I feel sometimes a hell within -myself; Lucifer keeps his court in my breast; Legion is revived in me." -In these solitudes there were no guides and no companions. "I am in the -dark to all the world, and my nearest friends behold me but in a cloud." -The strangest thoughts and imaginings have play with him as he goes -about his work, outwardly the most sober of mankind and esteemed the -greatest physician in Norwich. He has wished for death. He has doubted -all things. What if we are asleep in this world and the conceits of life -are as mere dreams? The tavern music, the Ave Mary bell, the broken pot -that the workman has dug out of the field—at the sight and sound of -them he stops dead, as if transfixed by the astonishing vista that opens -before his imagination. "We carry with us the wonders we seek without -us; there is all Africa and her prodigies in us." A halo of wonder -encircles everything that he sees; he turns his light gradually upon the -flowers and insects and grasses at his feet so as to disturb nothing in -the mysterious processes of their existence. With the same awe, mixed -with a sublime complacency, he records the discovery of his own -qualities and attainments. He was charitable and brave and averse from -nothing. He was full of feeling for others and merciless upon himself. -"For my conversation, it is like the sun's, with all men, and with a -friendly aspect to good and bad." He knows six languages, the laws, the -customs and policies of several states, the names of all the -constellations and most of the plants of his country, and yet, so -sweeping is his imagination, so large the horizon in which he sees this -little figure walking that "methinks I do not know so many as when I did -but know a hundred, and had scarcely ever simpled further than -Cheapside".</p> - -<p>He is the first of the autobiographers. Swooping and soaring at the -highest altitudes he stoops suddenly with loving particularity upon the -details of his own body. His height was moderate, he tells us, his eyes -large and luminous; his skin dark but constantly suffused with blushes. -He dressed very plainly. He seldom laughed. He collected coins, kept -maggots in boxes, dissected the lungs of frogs, braved the stench of the -spermaceti whale, tolerated Jews, had a good word for the deformity of -the toad, and combined a scientific and sceptical attitude towards most -things with an unfortunate belief in witches. In short, as we say when -we cannot help laughing at the oddities of people we admire most, he was -a character, and the first to make us feel that the most sublime -speculations of the human imagination are issued from a particular man, -whom we can love. In the midst of the solemnities of the Urn Burial we -smile when he remarks that afflictions induce callosities. The smile -broadens to laughter as we mouth out the splendid pomposities, the -astonishing conjectures of the <i>Religio Medici</i>. Whatever he writes is -stamped with his own idiosyncrasy, and we first become conscious of -impurities which hereafter stain literature with so many freakish -colours that, however hard we try, make it difficult to be certain -whether we are looking at a man or his writing. Now we are in the -presence of sublime imagination; now rambling through one of the finest -lumber rooms in the world—a chamber stuffed from floor to ceiling -with ivory, old iron, broken pots, urns, unicorns' horns, and magic glasses -full of emerald lights and blue mystery.</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_2_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_1"><span class="label">[2]</span></a><i>Hakluyf's Collection of the Early Voyages, Travels, -and Discoveries of the English Nation</i>, five volumes, 4 to, 1810.</p></div> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2><a id="Notes"><i>Notes on an Elizabethan<br> -Play</i></a></h2> - - -<p>There are, it must be admitted, some highly formidable tracts in English -literature, and chief among them that jungle, forest, and wilderness -which is the Elizabethan drama. For many reasons, not here to be -examined, Shakespeare stands out, Shakespeare who has had the light on -him from his day to ours, Shakespeare who towers highest when looked at -from the level of his own contemporaries. But the plays of the lesser -Elizabethans—Greene, Dekker, Peele, Chapman, Beaumont and -Fletcher,—to adventure into that wilderness is for the ordinary -reader an ordeal, an upsetting experience which plies him with questions, -harries him with doubts, alternately delights and vexes him with pleasures -and pains. For we are apt to forget, reading, as we tend to do, only the -masterpieces of a bygone age how great a power the body of a literature -possesses to impose itself: how it will not suffer itself to be read -passively, but takes us and reads us; flouts our preconceptions; questions -principles which we had got into the habit of taking for granted, and, in -fact, splits us into two parts as we read, making us, even as we enjoy, -yield our ground or stick to our guns.</p> - -<p>At the outset in reading an Elizabethan play we are overcome by the -extraordinary discrepancy between the Elizabethan view of reality and -our own. The reality to which we have grown accustomed, is, speaking -roughly, based upon the life and death of some knight called Smith, who -succeeded his father in the family business of pitwood importers, timber -merchants and coal exporters, was well known in political, temperance, -and church circles, did much for the poor of Liverpool, and died last -Wednesday of pneumonia while on a visit to his son at Muswell Hill. That -is the world we know. That is the reality which our poets and novelists -have to expound and illuminate. Then we open the first Elizabethan play -that comes to hand and read how</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i9">I once did see</span><br> -<span class="i2">In my young travels through Armenia</span><br> -<span class="i2">An angry unicorn in his full career</span><br> -<span class="i2">Charge with too swift a foot a jeweller</span><br> -<span class="i2">That watch'd him for the treasure of his brow</span><br> -<span class="i2">And ere he could get shelter of a tree</span><br> -<span class="i2">Nail him with his rich antlers to the earth.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>Where is Smith, we ask, where is Liverpool? And the groves of -Elizabethan drama echo "Where?" Exquisite is the delight, sublime the -relief of being set free to wander in the land of the unicorn and the -jeweller among dukes and grandees, Gonzaloes and Bellimperias, who spend -their lives in murder and intrigue, dress up as men if they are women, -as women if they are men, see ghosts, run mad, and die in the greatest -profusion on the slightest provocation, uttering as they fall -imprecations of superb vigour or elegies of the wildest despair. But -soon the low, the relentless voice, which if we wish to identify it we -must suppose typical of a reader fed on modern English literature, and -French and Russian, asks why, then, with all this to stimulate and -enchant these old plays are for long stretches of time so intolerably -dull? Is it not that literature, if it is to keep us on the alert -through five acts or thirty-two chapters must somehow be based on Smith, -have one toe touching Liverpool, take off into whatever heights it -pleases from reality? We are not so purblind as to suppose that a man -because his name is Smith and he lives at Liverpool is therefore "real". -We know indeed that this reality is a chameleon, quality, the fantastic -becoming as we grow used to it often the closest to the truth, the sober -the furthest from it, and nothing proving a writer's greatness more than -his capacity to consolidate his scene by the use of what, until he -touched them, seemed wisps of cloud and threads of gossamer. Our -contention merely is that there is a station, somewhere in mid-air, -whence Smith and Liverpool can be seen to the best advantage; that the -great artist is the man who knows where to place himself above the -shifting scenery; that while he never loses sight of Liverpool he never -sees it in the wrong perspective. The Elizabethans bore us, then, -because their Smiths are all changed to dukes, their Liverpools to -fabulous islands and palaces in Genoa. Instead of keeping a proper poise -above life they soar miles into the empyrean, where nothing is visible -for long hours at a time but clouds at their revelry, and a cloud -landscape is not ultimately satisfactory to human eyes. The Elizabethans -bore us because they suffocate our imaginations rather than set them to -work.</p> - -<p>Still, though potent enough, the boredom of an Elizabethan play is of a -different quality altogether from the boredom which a nineteenth-century -play, a Tennyson or a Henry Taylor play, inflicts. The riot of images, -the violent volubility of language, all that cloys and satiates in the -Elizabethans yet appears to be drawn up with a roar as a feeble fire is -sucked up by a newspaper. There is, even in the worst, an intermittent -bawling vigour which gives us the sense in our quiet arm-chairs of -ostlers and orange-girls catching up the lines, flinging them back, -hissing or stamping applause. But the deliberate drama of the Victorian -age is evidently written in a study. It has for audience ticking clocks -and rows of classics bound in half morocco. There is no stamping, no -applause. It does not, as, with all its faults, the Elizabethan audience -did, leaven the mass with fire. Rhetorical and bombastic, the lines are -flung and hurried into existence and reach the same impromptu -felicities, have the same lip-moulded profusion and unexpectedness, -which speech sometimes achieves, but seldom in our day the deliberate, -solitary pen. Indeed half the work of the dramatists one feels was done -in the Elizabethan age by the public.</p> - -<p>Against that, however, is to be set the fact that the influence of the -public was in many respects detestable. To its door we must lay the -greatest infliction that Elizabethan drama puts upon us—the plot; the -incessant, improbable, almost unintelligible convolutions which -presumably gratified the spirit of an excitable and unlettered public -actually in the playhouse, but only confuse and fatigue a reader with -the book before him. Undoubtedly something must happen; undoubtedly a -play where nothing happens is an impossibility. But we have a right to -demand (since the Greeks have proved that it is perfectly possible) that -what happens shall have an end in view. It shall agitate great emotions; -bring into existence memorable scenes; stir the actors to say what could -not be said without this stimulus. Nobody can fail to remember the plot -of the <i>Antigone</i>, because what happens is so closely bound up with -the emotions of the actors that we remember the people and the plot at one -and the same time. But who can tell us what happens in the <i>White -Devil</i>, or the <i>Maid's Tragedy</i>, except by remembering the story -apart from the emotions which it has aroused? As for the lesser -Elizabethans, like Greene and Kyd, the complexities of their plots are so -great, and the violence which those plots demand so terrific, that the -actors themselves are obliterated and emotions which, according to our -convention at least, deserve the most careful investigation, the most -delicate analysis, are clean sponged off the slate. And the result is -inevitable. Outside Shakespeare and perhaps Ben Jonson, there are no -characters in Elizabethan drama, only violences whom we know so little -that we can scarcely care what becomes of them. Take any hero or heroine -in those early plays—Bellimperia in the <i>Spanish Tragedy</i> will -serve as well as another—and can we honestly say that we care a jot -for the unfortunate lady who runs the whole gamut of human misery to kill -herself in the end? No more than for an animated broomstick, we must -reply, and in a work dealing with men and women the prevalence of -broomsticks is a drawback. But the Spanish Tragedy is admittedly a crude -forerunner, chiefly valuable because such primitive efforts lay bare the -formidable framework which greater dramatists could modify, but had to -use. Ford, it is claimed, is of the school of Stendhal and of Flaubert; -Ford is a psychologist. Ford is an analyst. "This man", says Mr. -Havelock Ellis, "writes of women not as a dramatist nor as a lover, but -as one who has searched intimately and felt with instinctive sympathy -the fibres of their hearts."</p> - -<p>The play—<i>'Tis pity she's a Whore</i>—upon which this -judgement is chiefly based shows us the whole nature of Annabella spun from -pole to pole in a series of tremendous vicissitudes. First, her brother -tells her that he loves her; next she confesses her love for him; next -finds herself with child by him; next forces herself to marry Soranzo; next -is discovered; next repents; finally is killed, and it is her lover and -brother who kills her. To trace the trail of feelings which such crises -and calamities might be expected to breed in a woman of ordinary -sensibility might have filled volumes. A dramatist of course has no -volumes to fill. He is forced to contract. Even so, he can illumine; he -can reveal enough for us to guess the rest. But what is it that we know -without using microscopes and splitting hairs about the character of -Annabella? Gropingly we make out that she is a spirited girl, with her -defiance of her husband when he abuses her, her snatches of Italian -song, her ready wit, her simple glad love-making. But of character as we -understand the word there is no trace. We do not know how she reaches -her conclusions, only that she has reached them. Nobody describes her. -She is always at the height of her passion, never at its approach. -Compare her with Anna Karenina. The Russian woman is flesh and blood, -nerves and temperament, has heart, brain, body and mind where the -English girl is flat and crude as a face painted on a playing card; she -is without depth, without range, without intricacy. But as we say this -we know that we have missed something. We have let the meaning of the -play slip through our hands. We have ignored the emotion which has been -accumulating because it has accumulated in places where we have not -expected to find it. We have been comparing the play with prose, and the -play, after all, is poetry.</p> - -<p>The play is poetry we say, and the novel prose. Let us attempt to -obliterate detail, and place the two before us side by side, feeling, so -far as we can, the angles and edges of each, recalling each, so far as -we are able, as a whole. Then, at once, the prime differences emerge; -the long leisurely accumulated novel; the little contracted play; the -emotion all split up, dissipated and then woven together, slowly and -gradually massed into a whole, in the novel; the emotion concentrated, -generalised, heightened in the play. What moments of intensity, what -phrases of astonishing beauty the play shot at us!</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i9">O, my lords,</span><br> -<span class="i2">I but deceived your eyes with antic gesture,</span><br> -<span class="i2">When one news straight came huddling on another</span><br> -<span class="i2">Of death! and death! and death! still I danced forward.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>or</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i4">You have oft for these two lips</span><br> -<span class="i2">Neglected cassia or the natural sweets</span><br> -<span class="i2">Of the spring-violet: they are not yet much wither'd.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>With all her reality, Anna Karenina could never say</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i7">"You have oft, for these two lips</span><br> -<span class="i4">Neglected cassia".</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>Some of the most profound of human emotions are therefore beyond her -reach. The extremes of passion are not for the novelist; the perfect -marriages of sense and sound are not for him; he must tame his swiftness -to sluggardry; keep his eyes on the ground not on the sky: suggest by -description, not reveal by illumination. Instead of singing</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">Lay a garland on my hearse</span><br> -<span class="i3">Of the dismal yew;</span><br> -<span class="i2">Maidens, willow branches bear;</span><br> -<span class="i3">Say I died true,</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>he must enumerate the chrysanthemums fading on the grave and the -undertakers' men snuffling past in their four-wheelers. How then can we -compare this lumbering and lagging art with poetry? Granted all the -little dexterities by which the novelist makes us know the individual -and recognise the real, the dramatist goes beyond the single and the -separate, shows us not Annabella in love, but love itself; not Anna -Karenina throwing herself under the train, but ruin and death and the</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i3">. . . soul, like a ship in a black storm,</span><br> -<span class="i2">. . . driven, I know not whither.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>So with pardonable impatience we might exclaim as we shut our -Elizabethan play. But what then is the exclamation with which we close -<i>War and Peace</i>? Not one of disappointment; we are not left lamenting -the superficiality, upbraiding the triviality of the novelist's art. Rather -we are made more than ever aware of the inexhaustible richness of human -sensibility. Here, in the play, we recognise the general; here, in the -novel, the particular. Here we gather all our energies into a bunch and -spring. Here we extend and expand and let come slowly in from all -quarters deliberate impressions, accumulated messages. The mind is so -saturated with sensibility, language so inadequate to its experience, -that far from ruling off one form of literature or decreeing its -inferiority to others we complain that they are still unable to keep -pace with the wealth of material, and wait impatiently the creation of -what may yet be devised to liberate us of the enormous burden of the -unexpressed.</p> - -<p>Thus, in spite of dullness, bombast, rhetoric, and confusion we still -read the lesser Elizabethans, still find ourselves adventuring in the -land of the jeweller and the unicorn. The familiar factories of -Liverpool fade into thin air and we scarcely recognise any likeness -between the knight who imported timber and died of pneumonia at Muswell -Hill and the Armenian Duke who fell like a Roman on his sword while the -owl shrieked in the ivy and the Duchess gave birth to a still-born babe -'mongst women howling. To join those territories and recognise the same -man in different disguises we have to adjust and revise. But make the -necessary alterations in perspective, draw in those filaments of -sensibility which the moderns have so marvellously developed, use -instead the ear and the eye which the moderns have so basely starved, -hear words as they are laughed and shouted, not as they are printed in -black letters on the page, see before your eyes the changing faces and -living bodies of men and women, put yourself, in short, into a -different, but not more elementary stage of your reading development and -then the true merits of Elizabethan drama will assert themselves. The -power of the whole is undeniable. Theirs, too, is the word-coining -genius, as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping. -Theirs is that broad humour based upon the nakedness of the body, which, -however arduously the public spirited may try, is impossible, since the -body is draped. Then at the back of this, imposing not unity but some -sort of stability, is what we may briefly call a sense of the presence -of the Gods. He would be a bold critic who should attempt to impose any -creed upon the swarm and variety of the Elizabethan dramatists, and yet -it implies some timidity if we take it for granted that a whole -literature with common characteristics is a mere evaporation of high -spirits, a money-making enterprise, a fluke of the mind which, owing to -favourable circumstances, came off successfully. Even in the jungle and -the wilderness the compass still points.</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i3">"Lord, Lord, that I were dead!"</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>they are for ever crying.</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">O thou soft natural death that art joint-twin</span><br> -<span class="i2">To sweetest slumber——</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>The pageant of the world is marvellous, but the pageant of the world -is vanity.</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i9">glories</span><br> -<span class="i2">Of human greatness are but pleasing dreams</span><br> -<span class="i2">And shadows soon decaying: on the stage</span><br> -<span class="i2">Of my mortality my youth hath acted</span><br> -<span class="i2">Some scenes of vanity——</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>To die and be quit of it all is their desire; the bell -that tolls throughout the drama is death and disenchantment.</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">All life is but a wandering to find home,</span><br> -<span class="i2">When we're gone, we're there.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>Ruin, weariness, death, perpetually death, stand grimly to confront the -other presence of Elizabethan drama which is life: life compact of -frigates, fir trees and ivory, of dolphins and the juice of July -flowers, of the milk of unicorns and panthers' breath, of ropes of -pearl, brains of peacocks and Cretan wine. To this, life at its most -reckless and abundant, they reply</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">Man is a tree that hath no top in cares,</span><br> -<span class="i2">No root in comforts; all his power to live</span><br> -<span class="i2">Is given to no end but t' have power to grieve.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>It is this echo flung back and back from the other side of the play -which, if it has not the name, still has the effect of the presence of -the Gods.</p> - -<p>So we ramble through the jungle, forest, and wilderness of Elizabethan -drama. So we consort with Emperors and clowns, jewellers and unicorns, -and laugh and exult and marvel at the splendour and humour and fantasy -of it all. A noble rage consumes us when the curtain falls; we are bored -too, and nauseated by the wearisome old tricks and florid bombast. A -dozen deaths of full-grown men and women move us less than the suffering -of one of Tolstoi's flies. Wandering in the maze of the impossible and -tedious story suddenly some passionate intensity seizes us; some -sublimity exalts, or some melodious snatch of song enchants. It is a -world full of tedium and delight; pleasure and curiosity, of extravagant -laughter, poetry, and splendour. But gradually it comes over us, what -then are we being denied? What is it that we are coming to want so -persistently that unless we get it instantly we must seek elsewhere? It -is solitude. There is no privacy here. Always the door opens and some -one comes in. All is shared, made visible, audible, dramatic. Meanwhile, -as if tired with company, the mind steals off to muse in solitude; to -think, not to act; to comment, not to share; to explore its own -darkness, not the bright-lit-up surfaces of others. It turns to Donne, -to Montaigne, to Sir Thomas Browne—the keepers of the keys of -solitude.</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2><a id="Montaigne"><i>Montaigne</i></a></h2> - - -<p>Once at Bar-le-Duc Montaigne saw a portrait which René, King of Sicily, -had painted of himself, and asked, "Why is it not, in like manner, -lawful for every one to draw himself with a pen, as he did with a -crayon?" Off-hand one might reply, Not only is it lawful, but nothing -could be easier. Other people may evade us, but our own features are -almost too familiar. Let us begin. And then, when we attempt the task, -the pen falls from our fingers; it is a matter of profound, mysterious, -and overwhelming difficulty.</p> - -<p>After all, in the whole of literature, how many people have succeeded in -drawing themselves with a pen? Only Montaigne and Pepys and Rousseau -perhaps. The <i>Religio Medici</i> is a coloured glass through which darkly -one sees racing stars and a strange and turbulent soul. A bright -polished mirror reflects the face of Boswell peeping between other -people's shoulders in the famous biography. But this talking of oneself, -following one's own vagaries, giving the whole map, weight, colour, and -circumference of the soul in its confusion, its variety, its -imperfection—this art belonged to one man only: to Montaigne. As the -centuries go by, there is always a crowd before that picture, gazing -into its depths, seeing their own faces reflected in it, seeing more the -longer they look, never being able to say quite what it is that they -see. New editions testify to the perennial fascination. Here is the -Navarre Society in England reprinting in five fine volumes<a id="FNanchor_3_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_1" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Cotton's -translation; while in France the firm of Louis Conard is issuing the -complete works of Montaigne with the various readings in an edition to -which Dr. Armaingaud has devoted a long lifetime of research.</p> - -<p>To tell the truth about oneself, to discover oneself near at hand, is -not easy.</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>We hear of but two or three of the ancients who have beaten this road -[said Montaigne]. No one since has followed the track; 'tis a rugged -road, more so than it seems, to follow a pace so rambling and uncertain, -as that of the soul; to penetrate the dark profundities of its intricate -internal windings; to choose and lay hold of so many little nimble -motions; 'tis a new and extraordinary undertaking, and that withdraws us -from the common and most recommended employments of the world.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>There is, in the first place, the difficulty of expression. We all -indulge in the strange, pleasant process called thinking, but when it -comes to saying, even to some one opposite, what we think, then how -little we are able to convey! The phantom is through the mind and out of -the window before we can lay salt on its tail, or slowly sinking and -returning to the profound darkness which it has lit up momentarily with -a wandering light. Face, voice, and accent eke out our words and impress -their feebleness with character in speech. But the pen is a rigid -instrument; it can say very little; it has all kinds of habits and -ceremonies of its own. It is dictatorial too: it is always making -ordinary men into prophets, and changing the natural stumbling trip of -human speech into the solemn and stately march of pens. It is for this -reason that Montaigne stands out from the legions of the dead with such -irrepressible vivacity. We can never doubt for an instant that his book -was himself. He refused to teach; he refused to preach; he kept on -saying that he was just like other people. All his effort was to write -himself down, to communicate, to tell the truth, and that is a "rugged -road, more than it seems".</p> - -<p>For beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme -difficulty of being oneself. This soul, or life within us, by no means -agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what -she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people -say. Other people, for instance, long ago made up their minds that old -invalidish gentlemen ought to stay at home and edify the rest of us by -the spectacle of their connubial fidelity. The soul of Montaigne said, -on the contrary, that it is in old age that one ought to travel, and -marriage, which, rightly, is very seldom founded on love, is apt to -become, towards the end of life, a formal tie better broken up. Again -with politics, statesmen are always praising the greatness of Empire, -and preaching the moral duty of civilising the savage. But look at the -Spanish in Mexico, cried Montaigne in a burst of rage. "So many cities -levelled with the ground, so many nations exterminated . . . and the -richest and most beautiful part of the world turned upside down for the -traffic of pearl and pepper! Mechanic victories!" And then when the -peasants came and told him that they had found a man dying of wounds and -deserted him for fear lest justice might incriminate them, Montaigne -asked:</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>What could I have said to these people? 'Tis certain that this office of -humanity would have brought them into trouble. . . . There is nothing so -much, nor so grossly, nor so ordinarily faulty as the laws.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>Here the soul, getting restive, is lashing out at the more palpable -forms of Montaigne's great bugbears, convention and ceremony. But watch -her as she broods over the fire in the inner room of that tower which, -though detached from the main building, has so wide a view over the -estate. Really she is the strangest creature in the world, far from -heroic, variable as a weathercock, "bashful, insolent; chaste, lustful; -prating, silent; laborious, delicate; ingenious, heavy; melancholic, -pleasant; lying, true; knowing, ignorant; liberal, covetous, and -prodigal"—in short, so complex, so indefinite, corresponding so -little to the version which does duty for her in public, that a man might -spend his life merely in trying to run her to earth. The pleasure of the -pursuit more than rewards one for any damage that it may inflict upon -one's worldly prospects. The man who is aware of himself is henceforward -independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he -is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness. -He alone lives, while other people, slaves of ceremony, let life slip -past them in a kind of dream. Once conform, once do what other people do -because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and -faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; -dull, callous, and indifferent.</p> - -<p>Surely then, if we ask this great master of the art of life to tell us -his secret, he will advise us to withdraw to the inner room of our tower -and there turn the pages of books, pursue fancy after fancy as they -chase each other up the chimney, and leave the government of the world to -others. Retirement and contemplation—these must be the main elements -of his prescription. But no; Montaigne is by no means explicit. It is -impossible to extract a plain answer from that subtle, half smiling, -half melancholy man, with the heavy-lidded eyes and the dreamy, -quizzical expression. The truth is that life in the country, with one's -books and vegetables and flowers, is often extremely dull. He could -never see that his own green peas were so much better than other people's. -Paris was the place he loved best in the whole world—"jusques -à ses verrues et à ses tâches". As for reading, he could seldom read -any book for more than an hour at a time, and his memory was so bad that -he forgot what was in his mind as he walked from one room to another. -Book learning is nothing to be proud of, and as for the achievements of -science, what do they amount to? He had always mixed with clever men, -and his father had a positive veneration for them, but he had observed -that, though they have their fine moments, their rhapsodies, their -visions, the cleverest tremble on the verge of folly. Observe yourself: -one moment you are exalted; the next a broken glass puts your nerves on -edge. All extremes are dangerous. It is best to keep in the middle of -the road, in the common ruts, however muddy. In writing choose the -common words; avoid rhapsody and eloquence—yet, it is true, poetry is -delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.</p> - -<p>It appears, then, that we are to aim at a democratic simplicity. We may -enjoy our room in the tower, with the painted walls and the commodious -bookcases, but down in the garden there is a man digging who buried his -father this morning, and it is he and his like who live the real life -and speak the real language. There is certainly an element of truth in -that. Things are said very finely at the lower end of the table. There -are perhaps more of the qualities that matter among the ignorant than -among the learned. But again, what a vile thing the rabble is! "the -mother of ignorance, injustice, and inconstancy. Is it reasonable that -the life of a wise man should depend upon the judgment of fools?" Their -minds are weak, soft and without power of resistance. They must be told -what it is expedient for them to know. It is not for them to face facts -as they are. The truth can only be known by the well-born soul—"l'âme -bien née". Who, then, are these well-born souls, whom we would imitate, -if only Montaigne would enlighten us more precisely?</p> - -<p>But no. "Je n'enseigne poinct; je raconte." After all, how could he -explain other people's souls when he could say nothing "entirely simply -and solidly, without confusion or mixture, in one word", about his own, -when indeed it became daily more and more in the dark to him? One -quality or principle there is perhaps—that one must not lay down -rules. The souls whom one would wish to resemble, like Étienne de La -Boétie, for example, are always the supplest. "C'est estre, mais ce n'est -pas vivre, que de se tenir attaché et obligé par nécessité à un seul -train." The laws are mere conventions, utterly unable to keep touch with -the vast variety and turmoil of human impulses; habits and customs are a -convenience devised for the support of timid natures who dare not allow -their souls free play. But we, who have a private life and hold it -infinitely the dearest of our possessions, suspect nothing so much as an -attitude. Directly we begin to protest, to attitudinise, to lay down -laws, we perish. We are living for others, not for ourselves. We must -respect those who sacrifice themselves in the public service, load them -with honours, and pity them for allowing, as they must, the inevitable -compromise; but for ourselves let us fly fame, honour, and all offices -that put us under an obligation to others. Let us simmer over our -incalculable cauldron, our enthralling confusion, our hotch-potch of -impulses, our perpetual miracle—for the soul throws up wonders every -second. Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is -death; conformity is death: let us say what comes into our heads, repeat -ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and -follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or -thinks or says. For nothing matters except life; and, of course, order.</p> - -<p>This freedom, then, which is the essence of our being, has to be -controlled. But it is difficult to see what power we are to invoke to -help us, since every restraint of private opinion or public law has been -derided, and Montaigne never ceases to pour scorn upon the misery, the -weakness, the vanity of human nature. Perhaps, then, it will be well to -turn to religion to guide us? "Perhaps" is one of his favourite -expressions; "perhaps" and "I think" and all those words which qualify -the rash assumptions of human ignorance. Such words help one to muffle -up opinions which it would be highly impolitic to speak outright. For -one does not say everything; there are some things which at present it -is advisable only to hint. One writes for a very few people, who -understand. Certainly, seek the Divine guidance by all means, but -meanwhile there is, for those who live a private life, another monitor, -an invisible censor within, "un patron au dedans", whose blame is much -more to be dreaded than any other because he knows the truth; nor is -there anything sweeter than the chime of his approval. This is the judge -to whom we must submit; this is the censor who will help us to achieve -that order which is the grace of a well-born soul. For "C'est une vie -exquise, celle qui se maintient en ordre jusques en son privé". But he -will act by his own light; by some internal balance will achieve that -precarious and everchanging poise which, while it controls, in no way -impedes the soul's freedom to explore and experiment. Without other -guide, and without precedent, undoubtedly it is far more difficult to -live well the private life than the public. It is an art which each must -learn separately, though there are, perhaps, two or three men, like -Homer, Alexander the Great, and Epaminondas among the ancients, and -Étienne de La Boétie among the moderns, whose example may help us. But -it is an art; and the very material in which it works is variable and -complex and infinitely mysterious—human nature. To human nature we -must keep close. ". . . il faut vivre entre les vivants". We must dread any -eccentricity or refinement which cuts us off from our fellow-beings. -Blessed are those who chat easily with their neighbours about their -sport or their buildings or their quarrels, and honestly enjoy the talk -of carpenters and gardeners. To communicate is our chief business; -society and friendship our chief delights; and reading, not to acquire -knowledge, not to earn a living, but to extend our intercourse beyond -our own time and province. Such wonders there are in the world; halcyons -and undiscovered lands, men with dogs' heads and eyes in their chests, -and laws and customs, it may well be, far superior to our own. Possibly -we are asleep in this world; possibly there is some other which is -apparent to beings with a sense which we now lack.</p> - -<p>Here then, in spite of all contradictions and of all qualifications, is -something definite. These essays are an attempt to communicate a soul. -On this point at least he is explicit. It is not fame that he wants; it -is not that men shall quote him in years to come; he is setting up no -statue in the market-place; he wishes only to communicate his soul. -Communication is health; communication is truth; communication is -happiness. To share is our duty; to go down boldly and bring to light -those hidden thoughts which are the most diseased; to conceal nothing; -to pretend nothing; if we are ignorant to say so; if we love our friends -to let them know it.</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>". . . car, comme je scay par une trop certaine expérience, il n'est -aucune si douce consolation en la perte de nos amis que celle que nous -aporte la science de n'avoir rien oublié à leur dire et d'avoir eu -avec eux une parfaite et entière communication."</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>There are people who, when they travel, wrap themselves up "se -défendans de la contagion d'un air incogneu" in silence and suspicion. -When they dine they must have the same food they get at home. Every -sight and custom is bad unless it resembles those of their own village. -They travel only to return. That is entirely the wrong way to set about -it. We should start without any fixed idea where we are going to spend -the night, or when we propose to come back; the journey is everything. -Most necessary of all, but rarest good fortune, we should try to find -before we start some man of our own sort who will go with us and to whom -we can say the first thing that comes into our heads. For pleasure has -no relish unless we share it. As for the risks—that we may catch cold -or get a headache—it is always worth while to risk a little illness -for the sake of pleasure. "Le plaisir est des principales espèces du -profit." Besides if we do what we like, we always do what is good for -us. Doctors and wise men may object, but let us leave doctors and wise -men to their own dismal philosophy. For ourselves, who are ordinary men -and women, let us return thanks to Nature for her bounty by using every -one of the senses she has given us; vary our state as much as possible; -turn now this side, now that, to the warmth, and relish to the full -before the sun goes down the kisses of youth and the echoes of a -beautiful voice singing Catullus. Every season is likeable, and wet days -and fine, red wine and white, company and solitude. Even sleep, that -deplorable curtailment of the joy of life, can be full of dreams; and -the most common actions—a walk, a talk, solitude in one's own -orchard—can be enhanced and lit up by the association of the mind. -Beauty is everywhere, and beauty is only two fingers' breadth from -goodness. So, in the name of health and sanity, let us not dwell on the -end of the journey. Let death come upon us planting our cabbages, or on -horseback, or let us steal away to some cottage and there let strangers -close our eyes, for a servant sobbing or the touch of a hand would break -us down. Best of all, let death find us at our usual occupations, among -girls and good fellows who make no protests, no lamentations; let him -find us "parmy les jeux, les festins, faceties, entretiens communs et -populaires, et la musique, et des vers amoureux". But enough of death; -it is life that matters.</p> - -<p>It is life that emerges more and more clearly as these essays reach not -their end, but their suspension in full career. It is life that becomes -more and more absorbing as death draws near, one's self, one's soul, -every fact of existence: that one wears silk stockings summer and -winter; puts water in one's wine; has one's hair cut after dinner; must -have glass to drink from; has never worn spectacles; has a loud voice; -carries a switch in one's hand; bites one's tongue; fidgets with one's -feet; is apt to scratch one's ears; likes meat to be high; rubs one's -teeth with a napkin (thank God, they are good!); must have curtains to -one's bed; and, what is rather curious, began by liking radishes, then -disliked them, and now likes them again. No fact is too little to let it -slip through one's fingers and besides the interest of facts themselves, -there is the strange power we have of changing facts by the force of the -imagination. Observe how the soul is always casting her own lights and -shadows; makes the substantial hollow and the frail substantial; fills -broad daylight with dreams; is as much excited by phantoms as by -reality; and in the moment of death sports with a trifle. Observe, too, -her duplicity, her complexity. She hears of a friend's loss and -sympathises, and yet has a bitter-sweet malicious pleasure in the -sorrows of others. She believes; at the same time she does not believe. -Observe her extraordinary susceptibility to impressions, especially in -youth. A rich man steals because his father kept him short of money as a -boy. This wall one builds not for oneself, but because one's father -loved building. In short the soul is all laced about with nerves and -sympathies which affect her every action, and yet, even now in 1580, no -one has any clear knowledge—such cowards we are, such lovers of the -smooth conventional ways—how she works or what she is except that of -all things she is the most mysterious, and one's self the greatest -monster and miracle in the world. ". . . plus je me hante et connois, -plus ma difformité m'estonne, moins je m'entens en moy." Observe, -observe perpetually, and, so long as ink and paper exist, "sans cesse et -sans travail" Montaigne will write.</p> - -<p>But there remains one final question which, if we could make him look up -from his enthralling occupation, we should like to put to this great -master of the art of life. In these extraordinary volumes of short and -broken, long and learned, logical and contradictory statements, we have -heard the very pulse and rhythm of the soul, beating day after day, year -after year through a veil which, as time goes on, fines itself almost to -transparency. Here is some one who succeeded in the hazardous enterprise -of living; who served his country and lived retired; was landlord, -husband, father; entertained kings, loved women, and mused for hours -alone over old books. By means of perpetual experiment and observation -of the subtlest he achieved at last a miraculous adjustment of all these -wayward parts that constitute the human soul. He laid hold of the beauty -of the world with all his fingers. He achieved happiness. If he had had -to live again, he said, he would have lived the same life over. But, as -we watch with absorbed interest the enthralling spectacle of a soul -living openly beneath our eyes, the question frames itself, Is pleasure -the end of all? Whence this overwhelming interest in the nature of the -soul? Why this overmastering desire to communicate with others? Is the -beauty of this world enough, or is there, elsewhere, some explanation of -the mystery? To this what answer can there be? There is none. There is -only one more question: "Que scais-je?"</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_3_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_1"><span class="label">[3]</span></a><i>Essays of Montaigne</i>, translated by Charles Cotton, -5 vols. The Navarre Society, £6: 6s. net</p></div> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2><a id="The_Duchess"><i>The Duchess of Newcastle</i></a><a id="FNanchor_4_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_1" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></h2> - - -<p>". . . All I desire is fame", wrote Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of -Newcastle. And while she lived her wish was granted. Garish in her -dress, eccentric in her habits, chaste in her conduct, coarse in her -speech, she succeeded during her lifetime in drawing upon herself the -ridicule of the great and the applause of the learned. But the last -echoes of that clamour have now all died away; she lives only in the few -splendid phrases that Lamb scattered upon her tomb; her poems, her plays, -her philosophies, her orations, her discourses—all those folios and -quartos in which, she protested, her real life was shrined—moulder -in the gloom of public libraries, or are decanted into tiny thimbles -which hold six drops of their profusion. Even the curious student, -inspired by the words of Lamb, quails before the mass of her mausoleum, -peers in, looks about him, and hurries out again, shutting the door.</p> - -<p>But that hasty glance has shown him the outlines of a memorable figure. -Born (it is conjectured) in 1624, Margaret was the youngest child of a -Thomas Lucas, who died when she was an infant, and her upbringing was -due to her mother, a lady of remarkable character, of majestic grandeur -and beauty "beyond the ruin of time". "She was very skilful in leases, -and setting of lands and court keeping, ordering of stewards, and the -like affairs." The wealth which thus accrued she spent, not on marriage -portions, but on generous and delightful pleasures, "out of an opinion -that if she bred us with needy necessity it might chance to create in us -sharking qualities". Her eight sons and daughters were never beaten, but -reasoned with, finely and gayly dressed, and allowed no conversation -with servants, not because they are servants but because servants "are -for the most part ill-bred as well as meanly born". The daughters were -taught the usual accomplishments "rather for formality than for -benefit", it being their mother's opinion that character, happiness, and -honesty were of greater value to a woman than fiddling and singing, or -"the prating of several languages".</p> - -<p>Already Margaret was eager to take advantage of such indulgence to -gratify certain tastes. Already she liked reading better than -needlework, dressing and "inventing fashions" better than reading, and -writing best of all. Sixteen paper books of no title, written in -straggling letters, for the impetuosity of her thought always outdid the -pace of her fingers, testify to the use she made of her mother's -liberality. The happiness of their home life had other results as well. -They were a devoted family. Long after they were married, Margaret -noted, these handsome brothers and sisters, with their well-proportioned -bodies, their clear complexions, brown hair, sound teeth, "tunable -voices", and plain way of speaking, kept themselves "in a flock -together". The presence of strangers silenced them. But when they were -alone, whether they walked in Spring Gardens or Hyde Park, or had music, -or supped in barges upon the water, their tongues were loosed and they -made "very merry amongst themselves, . . . judging, condemning, -approving, commending, as they thought good".</p> - -<p>The happy family life had its effect upon Margaret's character. As a -child, she would walk for hours alone, musing and contemplating and -reasoning with herself of "everything her senses did present". She took -no pleasure in activity of any kind. Toys did not amuse her, and she -could neither learn foreign languages nor dress as other people did. Her -great pleasure was to invent dresses for herself, which nobody else was -to copy, "for", she remarks, "I always took delight in a singularity, -even in accoutrements of habits".</p> - -<p>Such a training, at once so cloistered and so free, should have bred a -lettered old maid, glad of her seclusion, and the writer perhaps of some -volume of letters or translations from the classics, which we should -still quote as proof of the cultivation of our ancestresses. But there -was a wild streak in Margaret, a love of finery and extravagance and -fame, which was for ever upsetting the orderly arrangements of nature. -When she heard that the Queen, since the outbreak of the Civil War, had -fewer maids-of-honour than usual, she had "a great desire" to become one -of them. Her mother let her go against the judgement of the rest of the -family, who, knowing that she had never left home and had scarcely been -beyond their sight, justly thought that she might behave at Court to her -disadvantage. "Which indeed I did," Margaret confessed; "for I was so -bashful when I was out of my mother's, brothers', and sisters' sight -that . . . I durst neither look up with my eyes, nor speak, nor be any -way sociable, insomuch as I was thought a natural fool." The courtiers -laughed at her; and she retaliated in the obvious way. People were -censorious; men were jealous of brains in a woman; women suspected -intellect in their own sex; and what other lady, she might justly ask, -pondered as she walked on the nature of matter and whether snails have -teeth? But the laughter galled her, and she begged her mother to let her -come home. This being refused, wisely as the event turned out, she -stayed on for two years (1643-45), finally going with the Queen to -Paris, and there, among the exiles who came to pay their respects to the -Court, was the Marquis of Newcastle. To the general amazement, the -princely nobleman, who had led the King's forces to disaster with -indomitable courage but little skill, fell in love with the shy, silent, -strangely dressed maid-of-honour. It was not "amorous love, but honest, -honourable love", according to Margaret. She was no brilliant match; she -had gained a reputation for prudery and eccentricity. What, then, could -have made so great a nobleman fall at her feet? The onlookers were full -of derision, disparagement, and slander. "I fear", Margaret wrote to the -Marquis, "others foresee we shall be unfortunate, though we see it not -ourselves, or else there would not be such pains to untie the knot of -our affections." Again, "Saint Germains is a place of much slander, and -thinks I send too often to you". "Pray consider", she warned him, "that -I have enemies." But the match was evidently perfect. The Duke, with his -love of poetry and music and play-writing, his interest in philosophy, -his belief "that nobody knew or could know the cause of anything", his -romantic and generous temperament, was naturally drawn to a woman who -wrote poetry herself, was also a philosopher of the same way of -thinking, and lavished upon him not only the admiration of a -fellow-artist, but the gratitude of a sensitive creature who had been -shielded and succoured by his extraordinary magnanimity. "He did -approve", she wrote, "of those bashful fears which many condemned, . . . -and though I did dread marriage and shunned men's company as much as I -could, yet I . . . had not the power to refuse him." She kept him -company during the long years of exile; she entered with sympathy, if -not with understanding, into the conduct and acquirements of those -horses which he trained to such perfection that the Spaniards crossed -themselves and cried "Miraculo!" as they witnessed their corvets, -voltoes, and pirouettes; she believed that the horses even made a -"trampling action" for joy when he came into the stables; she pleaded -his cause in England during the Protectorate; and, when the Restoration -made it possible for them to return to England, they lived together in -the depths of the country in the greatest seclusion and perfect -contentment, scribbling plays, poems, philosophies, greeting each -other's works with raptures of delight, and confabulating doubtless upon -such marvels of the natural world as chance threw their way. They were -laughed at by their contemporaries; Horace Walpole sneered at them. But -there can be no doubt that they were perfectly happy.</p> - -<p>For now Margaret could apply herself uninterruptedly to her writing. She -could devise fashions for herself and her servants. She could scribble -more and more furiously with fingers that became less and less able to -form legible letters. She could even achieve the miracle of getting her -plays acted in London and her philosophies humbly perused by men of -learning. There they stand, in the British Museum, volume after volume, -swarming with a diffused, uneasy, contorted vitality. Order, continuity, -the logical development of her argument are all unknown to her. No fears -impede her. She has the irresponsibility of a child and the arrogance of -a Duchess. The wildest fancies come to her, and she canters away on -their backs. We seem to hear her, as the thoughts boil and bubble, -calling to John, who sat with a pen in his hand next door, to come -quick, "John, John, I conceive!" And down it goes—whatever it may be; -sense or nonsense; some thought on women's education—"Women live like -Bats or Owls, labour like Beasts, and die like Worms, . . . the best -bred women are those whose minds are civilest"; some speculation that had -struck her perhaps walking that afternoon alone—why "hogs have the -measles", why "dogs that rejoice swing their tails", or what the stars -are made of, or what this chrysalis is that her maid has brought her, -and she keeps warm in a corner of her room. On and on, from subject to -subject she flies, never stopping to correct, "for there is more -pleasure in making than in mending", talking aloud to herself of all those -matters that filled her brain to her perpetual diversion—of wars, -and boarding-schools, and cutting down trees, of grammar and morals, of -monsters and the British, whether opium in small quantities is good for -lunatics, why it is that musicians are mad. Looking upwards, she -speculates still more ambitiously upon the nature of the moon, and if -the stars are blazing jellies; looking downwards she wonders if the -fishes know that the sea is salt; opines that our heads are full of -fairies, "dear to God as we are"; muses whether there are not other -worlds than ours, and reflects that the next ship may bring us word of a -new one. In short, "we are in utter darkness". Meanwhile, what a rapture -is thought!</p> - -<p>As the vast books appeared from the stately retreat at Welbeck the usual -censors made the usual objections, and had to be answered, despised, or -argued with, as her mood varied, in the preface to every work. They -said, among other things, that her books were not her own, because she -used learned terms, and "wrote of many matters outside her ken". She -flew to her husband for help, and he answered, characteristically, that -the Duchess "had never conversed with any professed scholar in learning -except her brother and myself". The Duke's scholarship, moreover, was of -a peculiar nature. "I have lived in the great world a great while, and -have thought of what has been brought to me by the senses, more than was -put into me by learned discourse; for I do not love to be led by the -nose, by authority, and old authors; <i>ipse dixit</i> will not serve my -turn." And then she takes up the pen and proceeds, with the importunity -and indiscretion of a child, to assure the world that her ignorance is -of the finest quality imaginable. She has only seen Des Cartes and -Hobbes, not questioned them; she did indeed ask Mr. Hobbes to dinner, -but he could not come; she often does not listen to a word that is said -to her; she does not know any French, though she lived abroad for five -years; she has only read the old philosophers in Mr. Stanley's account -of them; of Des Cartes she has read but half of his work on Passion; and -of Hobbes only "the little book called <i>De Cive</i>", all of which is -infinitely to the credit of her native wit, so abundant that outside -succour pained it, so honest that it would not accept help from others. -It was from the plain of complete ignorance, the untilled field of her -own consciousness, that she proposed to erect a philosophic system that -was to oust all others. The results were not altogether happy. Under the -pressure of such vast structures, her natural gift, the fresh and -delicate fancy which had led her in her first volume to write charmingly -of Queen Mab and fairyland, was crushed out of existence.</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">The palace of the Queen wherein she dwells,</span><br> -<span class="i2">Its fabric's built all of hodmandod shells;</span><br> -<span class="i2">The hangings of a Rainbow made that's thin,</span><br> -<span class="i2">Shew wondrous fine, when one first enters in;</span><br> -<span class="i2">The chambers made of Amber that is clear,</span><br> -<span class="i2">Do give a fine sweet smell, if fire be near;</span><br> -<span class="i2">Her bed a cherry stone, is carved throughout,</span><br> -<span class="i2">And with a butterfly's wing hung about;</span><br> -<span class="i2">Her sheets are of the skin of Dove's eyes made</span><br> -<span class="i2">Where on a violet bud her pillow's laid.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>So she could write when she was young. But her fairies, if they survived -at all, grew up into hippopotami. Too generously her prayer was -granted:</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">Give me the free and noble style,</span><br> -<span class="i2">Which seems uncurb'd, though it be wild.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>She became capable of involutions, and contortions and conceits of which -the following is among the shortest, but not the most terrific:</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">The human head may be likened to a town:</span><br> -<span class="i2">The mouth when full, begun</span><br> -<span class="i2">Is market day, when empty, market's done;</span><br> -<span class="i2">The city conduct, where the water flows,</span><br> -<span class="i2">Is with two spouts, the nostrils and the nose.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>She similised, energetically, incongruously, eternally; the sea became a -meadow, the sailors shepherds, the mast a maypole. The fly was the bird -of summer, trees were senators, houses ships, and even the fairies, whom -she loved better than any earthly thing, except the Duke, are changed -into blunt atoms and sharp atoms, and take part in some of those -horrible manœuvres in which she delighted to marshal the universe. -Truly, "my Lady Sanspareille hath a strange spreading wit". Worse still, -without an atom of dramatic power, she turned to play-writing. It was a -simple process. The unwieldy thoughts which turned and tumbled within -her were christened Sir Golden Riches, Moll Meanbred, Sir Puppy Dogman, -and the rest, and sent revolving in tedious debate upon the parts of the -soul, or whether virtue is better than riches, round a wise and learned -lady who answered their questions and corrected their fallacies at -considerable length in tones which we seem to have heard before.</p> - -<p>Sometimes, however, the Duchess walked abroad. She would issue out in -her own proper person, dressed in a thousand gems and furbelows, to -visit the houses of the neighbouring gentry. Her pen made instant report -of these excursions. She recorded how Lady C. R. "did beat her husband -in a public assembly"; Sir F. Ο. "I am sorry to hear hath undervalued -himself so much below his birth and wealth as to marry his -kitchen-maid"; "Miss P. I. has become a sanctified soul, a spiritual -sister, she has left curling her hair, black patches are become -abominable to her, laced shoes and Galoshoes are steps to pride—she -asked me what posture I thought was the best to be used in prayer". Her -answer was probably unacceptable. "I shall not rashly go there again", -she says of one such "gossip-making". She was not, we may hazard, a -welcome guest or an altogether hospitable hostess. She had a way of -"bragging of myself" which frightened visitors so that they left, nor -was she sorry to see them go. Indeed, Welbeck was the best place for -her, and her own company the most congenial, with the amiable Duke -wandering in and out, with his plays and his speculations, always ready -to answer a question or refute a slander. Perhaps it was this solitude -that led her, chaste as she was in conduct, to use language which in -time to come much perturbed Sir Egerton Brydges. She used, he -complained, "expressions and images of extraordinary coarseness as -flowing from a female of high rank brought up in courts". He forgot that -this particular female had long ceased to frequent the Court; she -consorted chiefly with fairies; and her friends were among the dead. -Naturally, then, her language was coarse. Nevertheless, though her -philosophies are futile, and her plays intolerable, and her verses -mainly dull, the vast bulk of the Duchess is leavened by a vein of -authentic fire. One cannot help following the lure of her erratic and -lovable personality as it meanders and twinkles through page after page. -There is something noble and Quixotic and high-spirited, as well as -crack-brained and bird-witted, about her. Her simplicity is so open; her -intelligence so active; her sympathy with fairies and animals so true -and tender. She has the freakishness of an elf, the irresponsibility of -some non-human creature, its heartlessness, and its charm. And although -"they", those terrible critics who had sneered and jeered at her ever -since, as a shy girl, she had not dared look her tormentors in the face -at Court, continued to mock, few of her critics, after all, had the wit -to trouble about the nature of the universe, or cared a straw for the -sufferings of the hunted hare, or longed, as she did, to talk to some -one "of Shakespeare's fools". Now, at any rate, the laugh is not all on -their side.</p> - -<p>But laugh they did. When the rumour spread that the crazy Duchess was -coming up from Welbeck to pay her respects at Court, people crowded the -streets to look at her, and the curiosity of Mr. Pepys twice brought him -to wait in the Park to see her pass. But the pressure of the crowd about -her coach was too great. He could only catch a glimpse of her in her -silver coach with her footmen all in velvet, a velvet cap on her head, -and her hair about her ears. He could only see for a moment between the -white curtains the face of "a very comely woman", and on she drove -through the crowd of staring Cockneys, all pressing to catch a glimpse -of that romantic lady, who stands in the picture at Welbeck, with large -melancholy eyes, and something fastidious and fantastic in her bearing, -touching a table with the tips of long pointed fingers in the calm -assurance of immortal fame.</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_4_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_1"><span class="label">[4]</span></a><i>The Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, Etc.</i>, -edited by C. H. Firth; <i>Poems and Fancies</i>, by the Duchess of -Newcastle; <i>The World's Olio; Orations of divers Sorts Accommodated to -Divers Places; Female Orations; Plays; Philosophical Letters</i>, etc., -etc.</p></div> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2><a id="Rambling_Round_Evelyn"><i>Rambling Round Evelyn</i></a></h2> - - -<p>Should you wish to make sure that your birthday will be celebrated three -hundred years hence, your best course is undoubtedly to keep a diary. -Only first be certain that you have the courage to lock your genius in a -private book and the humour to gloat over a fame that will be yours only -in the grave. For the good diarist writes either for himself alone or -for a posterity so distant that it can safely hear every secret and -justly weigh every motive. For such an audience there is need neither of -affectation nor of restraint. Sincerity is what they ask, detail, -volume; skill with the pen comes in conveniently, but brilliance is not -necessary; genius is a hindrance even; and should you know your business -and do it manfully, posterity will let you off mixing with great men, -reporting famous affairs, or having lain with the first ladies in the -land.</p> - -<p>The diary, for whose sake we are remembering the three hundredth -anniversary of the birth of John Evelyn,<a id="FNanchor_5_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_1" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> is a case in point. It is -sometimes composed like a memoir, sometimes jotted down like a calendar; -but he never used its pages to reveal the secrets of his heart, and all -that he wrote might have been read aloud in the evening with a calm -conscience to his children. If we wonder, then, why we still trouble to -read what we must consider the uninspired work of a good man we have to -confess, first that diaries are always diaries, books, that is, that we -read in convalescence, on horseback, in the grip of death; second, that -this reading, about which so many fine things have been said, is for the -most part mere dreaming and idling; lying in a chair with a book; -watching the butterflies on the dahlias; a profitless occupation which -no critic has taken the trouble to investigate, and on whose behalf only -the moralist can find a good word to say. For he will allow it to be an -innocent employment; and happiness, he will add, though derived from -trivial sources, has probably done more to prevent human beings from -changing their religions and killing their kings than either philosophy -or the pulpit.</p> - -<p>It may be well, indeed, before reading much further in Evelyn's book, to -decide where it is that our modern view of happiness differs from his. -Ignorance, surely, ignorance is at the bottom of it; his ignorance, and -our comparative erudition. No one can read the story of Evelyn's foreign -travels without envying in the first place his simplicity of mind, in -the second his activity. To take a simple example of the difference -between us—that butterfly will sit motionless on the dahlia while the -gardener trundles his barrow past it, but let him flick the wings with -the shadow of a rake, and off it flies, up it goes, instantly on the -alert. So, we may reflect, a butterfly sees but does not hear; and here -no doubt we are much on a par with Evelyn. But as for going into the -house to fetch a knife and with that knife dissecting a Red Admiral's -head, as Evelyn would have done, no sane person in the twentieth century -would entertain such a project for a second. Individually we may know as -little as Evelyn, but collectively we know so much that there is little -incentive to venture on private discoveries. We seek the encyclopædia, -not the scissors; and know in two minutes not only more than was known -to Evelyn in his lifetime, but that the mass of knowledge is so vast -that it is scarcely worth while to possess a single crumb. Ignorant, yet -justly confident that with his own hands he might advance not merely his -private knowledge but the knowledge of mankind, Evelyn dabbled in all -the arts and sciences, ran about the Continent for ten years, gazed with -unflagging gusto upon hairy women and rational dogs, and drew inferences -and framed speculations which are now only to be matched by listening to -the talk of old women round the village pump. The moon, they say, is so -much larger than usual this autumn that no mushrooms will grow, and the -carpenter's wife will be brought to bed of twins. So Evelyn, Fellow of -the Royal Society, a gentleman of the highest culture and intelligence, -carefully noted all comets and portents, and thought it a sinister omen -when a whale came up the Thames. In 1658, too, a whale had been seen. -"That year died Cromwell." Nature, it seems, was determined to stimulate -the devotion of her seventeenth-century admirers by displays of violence -and eccentricity from which she now refrains. There were storms, floods, -and droughts; the Thames frozen hard; comets flaring in the sky. If a -cat so much as kittened in Evelyn's bed the kitten was inevitably gifted -with eight legs, six ears, two bodies, and two tails.</p> - -<p>But to return to happiness. It sometimes appears that if there is an -insoluble difference between our ancestors and ourselves it is that we -draw our happiness from different sources. We rate the same things at -different values. Something of this we may ascribe to their ignorance -and our knowledge. But are we to suppose that ignorance alters the -nerves and the affections? Are we to believe that it would have been an -intolerable penance for us to live familiarly with the Elizabethans? -Should we have found it necessary to leave the room because of -Shakespeare's habits, and to have refused Queen Elizabeth's invitation -to dinner? Perhaps so. For Evelyn was a sober man of unusual refinement, -and yet he pressed into a torture chamber as we crowd to see the lions -fed.</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>. . . they first bound his wrists with a strong rope or small cable, and -one end of it to an iron ring made fast to the wall about four feet from -the floor, and then his feet with another cable, fastened about five -feet farther than his utmost length to another ring on the floor of the -room. Thus suspended, and yet lying but aslant, they slid a horse of -wood under the rope which bound his feet, which so exceedingly stiffened -it, as severed the fellow's joints in miserable sort, drawing him out at -length in an extraordinary manner, he having only a pair of linen -drawers upon his naked body . . .</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>And so on. Evelyn watched this to the end, and then remarked that "the -spectacle was so uncomfortable that I was not able to stay the sight of -another", as we might say that the lions growl so loud and the sight of -raw meat is so unpleasant that we will now visit the penguins. Allowing -for his discomfort, there is enough discrepancy between his view of pain -and ours to make us wonder whether we see any fact with the same eyes, -marry any woman from the same motives, or judge any conduct by the same -standards. To sit passive when muscles tore and bones cracked, not to -flinch when the wooden horse was raised higher and the executioner -fetched a horn and poured two buckets of water down the man's throat, to -suffer this iniquity on a suspicion of robbery which the man -denied—all this seems to put Evelyn in one of those cages where we -still mentally seclude the riff-raff of Whitechapel. Only it is obvious -that we have somehow got it wrong. If we could maintain that our -susceptibility to suffering and love of justice were proof that all our -humane instincts were as highly developed as these, then we could say that -the world improves, and we with it. But let us get on with the diary.</p> - -<p>In 1652, when it seemed that things had settled down unhappily enough, -"all being entirely in the rebels' hands", Evelyn returned to England -with his wife, his Tables of Veins and Arteries, his Venetian glass and -the rest of his curiosities, to lead the life of a country gentleman of -strong Royalist sympathies at Deptford. What with going to church and -going to town, settling his accounts and planting his garden—"I -planted the orchard at Sayes Court; new moon, wind west"—his time was -spent much as ours is. But there was one difference which it is difficult -to illustrate by a single quotation, because the evidence is scattered all -about in little insignificant phrases. The general effect of them is -that he used his eyes. The visible world was always close to him. The -visible world has receded so far from us that to hear all this talk of -buildings and gardens, statues and carving, as if the look of things -assailed one out of doors as well as in, and were not confined to a few -small canvases hung upon the wall, seems strange. No doubt there are a -thousand excuses for us; but hitherto we have been finding excuses for -him. Wherever there was a picture to be seen by Julio Romano, Polydore, -Guido, Raphael, or Tintoretto, a finely-built house, a prospect, or a -garden nobly designed, Evelyn stopped his coach to look at it, and -opened his diary to record his opinion. On August 27 Evelyn, with Dr. -Wren and others, was in St. Paul's surveying "the general decay of that -ancient and venerable church"; held with Dr. Wren another judgement from -the rest; and had a mind to build it with "a noble cupola, a form of -church building not as yet known in England but of wonderful grace", in -which Dr. Wren concurred. Six days later the Fire of London altered -their plans. It was Evelyn again who, walking by himself, chanced to -look in at the window of "a poor solitary thatched house in a field in -our parish", there saw a young man carving at a crucifix, was overcome -with an enthusiasm which does him the utmost credit, and carried -Grinling Gibbons and his carving to Court.</p> - -<p>Indeed, it is all very well to be scrupulous about the sufferings of -worms and sensitive to the dues of servant girls, but how pleasant also -if, with shut eyes, one could call up street after street of beautiful -houses. A flower is red; the apples rosy-gilt in the afternoon sun; a -picture has charm, especially as it displays the character of a -grandfather and dignifies a family descended from such a scowl; but -these are scattered fragments—little relics of beauty in a world that -has grown indescribably drab. To our charge of cruelty Evelyn might well -reply by pointing to Bayswater and the purlieus of Clapham; and if he -should assert that nothing now has character or conviction, that no -farmer in England sleeps with an open coffin at his bedside to remind -him of death, we could not retort effectually offhand. True, we like the -country. Evelyn never looked at the sky.</p> - -<p>But to return. After the Restoration Evelyn emerged in full possession -of a variety of accomplishments which in our time of specialists seems -remarkable enough. He was employed on public business; he was Secretary -to the Royal Society; he wrote plays and poems; he was the first -authority upon trees and gardens in England; he submitted a design for -the rebuilding of London; he went into the question of smoke and its -abatement—the lime trees in St. James's Park being, it is said, the -result of his cogitations; he was commissioned to write a history of the -Dutch war—in short, he completely outdid the Squire of "The -Princess", whom in many respects he anticipated—</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">A lord of fat prize oxen and of sheep,</span><br> -<span class="i2">A raiser of huge melons and of pine,</span><br> -<span class="i2">A patron of some thirty charities,</span><br> -<span class="i2">A pamphleteer on guano and on grain,</span><br> -<span class="i2">A quarter sessions chairman abler none.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>All that he was, and shared with Sir Walter another characteristic which -Tennyson does not mention. He was, we cannot help suspecting, something -of a bore, a little censorious, a little patronising, a little too sure -of his own merits, and a little obtuse to those of other people. Or what -is the quality, or absence of quality, that checks our sympathies -partly, perhaps, it is due to some inconsistency which it would be harsh -to call by so strong a name as hypocrisy. Though he deplored the vices -of his age he could never keep away from the centre of them. "The -luxurious dallying and profaneness" of the Court, the sight of "Mrs. -Nelly" looking over her garden wall and holding "very familiar -discourse" with King Charles on the green walk below, caused him acute -disgust; yet he could never decide to break with the Court and retire to -"my poor but quiet villa", which was of course the apple of his eye and -one of the show-places in England. Then, though he loved his daughter -Mary, his grief at her death did not prevent him from counting the -number of empty coaches drawn by six horses apiece that attended her -funeral. His women friends combined virtue with beauty to such an extent -that we can hardly credit them with wit into the bargain. Poor Mrs. -Godolphin at least, whom he celebrated in a sincere and touching -biography, "loved to be at funerals" and chose habitually "the dryest -and leanest morsels of meat", which may be the habits of an angel but do -not present her friendship with Evelyn in an alluring light. But it is -Pepys who sums up our case against Evelyn; Pepys who said of him after -a long morning's entertainment: "In fine a most excellent person he is -and must be allowed a little for a little conceitedness; but he may well -be so, being a man so much above others". The words exactly hit the -mark, "A most excellent person he was"; but a little conceited.</p> - -<p>Pepys it is who prompts us to another reflection, inevitable, -unnecessary, perhaps unkind. Evelyn was no genius. His writing is opaque -rather than transparent; we see no depths through it, nor any very -secret movements of mind or heart. He can neither make us hate a -regicide nor love Mrs. Godolphin beyond reason. But he writes a diary; -and he writes it supremely well. Even as we drowse, somehow or other the -bygone gentleman sets up, through three centuries, a perceptible tingle -of communication, so that without laying stress on anything in -particular, stopping to dream, stopping to laugh, stopping merely to look, -we are yet taking notice all the time. His garden for example—how -delightful is his disparagement of it, and how acid his criticism of the -gardens of others! Then, we may be sure, the hens at Sayes Court laid -the very best eggs in England, and when the Tsar drove a wheelbarrow -through his hedge what a catastrophe it was, and we can guess how Mrs. -Evelyn dusted and polished, and how Evelyn himself grumbled, and how -punctilious and efficient and trustworthy he was, how prone to give -advice, how ready to read his own works aloud, and how affectionate, -withal, lamenting bitterly but not effusively, for the man with the -long-drawn sensitive face was never that, the death of the little -prodigy Richard, and recording how "after evening prayers was my child -buried near the rest of his brothers—my very dear children." He was -not an artist; no phrases linger in the mind; no paragraphs build -themselves up in memory; but as an artistic method this of going on with -the day's story circumstantially, bringing in people who will never be -mentioned again, leading up to crises which never take place, introducing -Sir Thomas Browne but never letting him speak, has its fascination. All -through his pages good men, bad men, celebrities, nonentities are coming -into the room and going out again. The greater number we scarcely -notice; the door shuts upon them and they disappear. But now and again -the sight of a vanishing coat-tail suggests more than a whole figure -sitting still in a full light. They have struck no attitude, arranged no -mantle. Little they think that for three hundred years and more they -will be looked at in the act of jumping a gate, or observing, like the -old Marquis of Argyle, that the turtle doves in the aviary are owls. Our -eyes wander from one to the other; our affections settle here or -there—on hot-tempered Captain Wray, for instance, who was choleric, -had a dog that killed a goat, was for shooting the goat's owner, was for -shooting his horse when it fell down a precipice; on Mr. Saladine; on -Mr. Saladine's beautiful daughter; on Captain Wray lingering at Geneva -to make love to Mr. Saladine's daughter; on Evelyn himself most of all, -grown old, walking in his garden at Wotton, his sorrows smoothed out, -his grandson doing him credit, the Latin quotations falling pat from his -lips, his trees flourishing, and the butterflies flying and flaunting on -his dahlias too.</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_5_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_1"><span class="label">[5]</span></a>Written in 1920.</p></div> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2><a id="Defoe"><i>Defoe</i></a><a id="FNanchor_6_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_1" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></h2> - - -<p>The fear which attacks the recorder of centenaries lest he should find -himself measuring a diminishing spectre and forced to foretell its -approaching dissolution is not only absent in the case of <i>Robinson -Crusoe</i> but the mere thought of it is ridiculous. It may be true that -<i>Robinson Crusoe</i> is two hundred years of age upon the twenty-fifth of -April 1919, but far from raising the familiar speculations as to whether -people now read it and will continue to read it, the effect of the -bi-centenary is to make us marvel that <i>Robinson Crusoe</i>, the -perennial and immortal, should have been in existence so short a time as -that. The book resembles one of the anonymous productions of the race -itself rather than the effort of a single mind; and as for celebrating its -centenary we should as soon think of celebrating the centenaries of -Stonehenge itself. Something of this we may attribute to the fact that we -have all had <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> read aloud to us as children, and were -thus much in the same state of mind towards Defoe and his story that the -Greeks were in towards Homer. It never occurred to us that there was such -a person as Defoe, and to have been told that <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> was -the work of a man with a pen in his hand would either have disturbed us -unpleasantly or meant nothing at all. The impressions of childhood are -those that last longest and cut deepest. It still seems that the name of -Daniel Defoe has no right to appear upon the title-page of <i>Robinson -Crusoe</i>, and if we celebrate the bi-centenary of the book we are making -a slightly unnecessary allusion to the fact that, like Stonehenge, it is -still in existence.</p> - -<p>The great fame of the book has done its author some injustice; for while -it has given him a kind of anonymous glory it has obscured the fact that -he was a writer of other works which, it is safe to assert, were not -read aloud to us as children. Thus when the Editor of the <i>Christian -World</i> in the year 1870 appealed to "the boys and girls of England" to -erect a monument upon the grave of Defoe, which a stroke of lightning -had mutilated, the marble was inscribed to the memory of the author -of <i>Robinson Crusoe</i>. No mention was made of <i>Moll Flanders</i>. -Considering the topics which are dealt with in that book, and in <i>Roxana, -Captain Singleton, Colonel Jack</i> and the rest, we need not be surprised, -though we may be indignant, at the omission. We may agree with Mr. Wright, -the biographer of Defoe, that these "are not works for the drawing-room -table". But unless we consent to make that useful piece of furniture the -final arbiter of taste, we must deplore the fact that their superficial -coarseness, or the universal celebrity of <i>Robinson Crusoe</i>, has led -them to be far less widely famed than they deserve. On any monument -worthy of the name of monument the names of <i>Moll Flanders</i> and -<i>Roxana</i>, at least, should be carved as deeply as the name of Defoe. -They stand among the few English novels which we can call indisputably -great. The occasion of the bi-centenary of their more famous companion -may well lead us to consider in what their greatness, which has so much -in common with his, may be found to consist.</p> - -<p>Defoe was an elderly man when he turned novelist, many years the -predecessor of Richardson and Fielding, and one of the first indeed to -shape the novel and launch it on its way. But it is unnecessary to -labour the fact of his precedence, except that he came to his -novel-writing with certain conceptions about the art which he derived -partly from being himself one of the first to practise it. The novel had -to justify its existence by telling a true story and preaching a sound -moral. "This supplying a story by invention is certainly a most -scandalous crime," he wrote. "It is a sort of lying that makes a great -hole in the heart, in which by degrees a habit of lying enters in." -Either in the preface or in the text of each of his works, therefore, he -takes pains to insist that he has not used his invention at all but has -depended upon facts, and that his purpose has been the highly moral -desire to convert the vicious or to warn the innocent. Happily these -were principles that tallied very well with his natural disposition and -endowments. Facts had been drilled into him by sixty years of varying -fortunes before he turned his experience to account in fiction. "I have -some time ago summed up the Scenes of my life in this distich," he -wrote:</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">No man has tasted differing fortunes more,</span><br> -<span class="i2">And thirteen times I have been rich and poor.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>He had spent eighteen months in Newgate and talked with thieves, -pirates, highwaymen, and coiners before he wrote the history of Moll -Flanders. But to have facts thrust upon you by dint of living and -accident is one thing; to swallow them voraciously and retain the -imprint of them indelibly, is another. It is not merely that Defoe knew -the stress of poverty and had talked with the victims of it, but that -the unsheltered life, exposed to circumstances and forced to shift for -itself, appealed to him imaginatively as the right matter for his art. -In the first pages of each of his great novels he reduces his hero or -heroine to such a state of unfriended misery that their existence must -be a continued struggle, and their survival at all the result of luck -and their own exertions. Moll Flanders was born in Newgate of a criminal -mother; Captain Singleton was stolen as a child and sold to the gipsies; -Colonel Jack, though "born a gentleman, was put 'prentice to a -pickpocket"; Roxana starts under better auspices, but, having married at -fifteen, she sees her husband go bankrupt and is left with five children -in "a condition the most deplorable that words can express".</p> - -<p>Thus each of these boys and girls has the world to begin and the battle -to fight for himself. The situation thus created was entirely to Defoe's -liking. From her very birth or with half a year's respite at most, Moll -Flanders, the most notable of them, is goaded by "that worst of devils, -poverty", forced to earn her living as soon as she can sew, driven from -place to place, making no demands upon her creator for the subtle -domestic atmosphere which he was unable to supply, but drawing upon him -for all he knew of strange people and customs. From the outset the -burden of proving her right to exist is laid upon her. She has to depend -entirely upon her own wits and judgement, and to deal with each -emergency as it arises by a rule-of-thumb morality which she has forged -in her own head. The briskness of the story is due partly to the fact -that having transgressed the accepted laws at a very early age she has -henceforth the freedom of the outcast. The one impossible event is that -she should settle down in comfort and security. But from the first the -peculiar genius of the author asserts itself, and avoids the obvious -danger of the novel of adventure. He makes us understand that Moll -Flanders was a woman on her own account and not only material for a -succession of adventures. In proof of this she begins, as Roxana also -begins, by falling passionately, if unfortunately, in love. That she -must rouse herself and marry some one else and look very closely to her -settlements and prospects is no slight upon her passion, but to be laid -to the charge of her birth; and, like all Defoe's women, she is a person -of robust understanding. Since she makes no scruple of telling lies when -they serve her purpose, there is something undeniable about her truth -when she speaks it. She has no time to waste upon the refinements of -personal affection; one tear is dropped, one moment of despair allowed, -and then "on with the story". She has a spirit that loves to breast the -storm. She delights in the exercise of her own powers. When she -discovers that the man she has married in Virginia is her own brother -she is violently disgusted; she insists upon leaving him; but as soon as -she sets foot in Bristol, "I took the diversion of going to Bath, for as -I was still far from being old so my humour, which was always gay, -continued so to an extreme". Heartless she is not, nor can any one -charge her with levity; but life delights her, and a heroine who lives -has us all in tow. Moreover, her ambition has that slight strain of -imagination in it which puts it in the category of the noble passions. -Shrewd and practical of necessity, she is yet haunted by a desire for -romance and for the quality which to her perception makes a man a -gentleman. "It was really a true gallant spirit he was of, and it was -the more grievous to me. 'Tis something of relief even to be undone by a -man of honour rather than by a scoundrel," she writes when she had -misled a highwayman as to the extent of her fortune. It is in keeping -with this temper that she should be proud of her final partner because -he refuses to work when they reach the plantations but prefers hunting, -and that she should take pleasure in buying him wigs and silver-hilted -swords "to make him appear, as he really was, a very fine gentleman". -Her very love of hot weather is in keeping, and the passion with which -she kissed the ground that her son had trod on, and her noble tolerance -of every kind of fault so long as it is not "complete baseness of -spirit, imperious, cruel, and relentless when uppermost, abject and -low-spirited when down". For the rest of the world she has nothing but -good-will.</p> - -<p>Since the list of the qualities and graces of this seasoned old sinner -is by no means exhausted we can well understand how it was that Borrow's -apple-woman on London Bridge called her "blessed Mary" and valued her -book above all the apples on her stall; and that Borrow, taking the book -deep into the booth, read till his eyes ached. But we dwell upon such -signs of character only by way of proof that the creator of Moll -Flanders was not, as he has been accused of being, a mere journalist and -literal recorder of facts with no conception of the nature of -psychology. It is true that his characters take shape and substance of -their own accord, as if in despite of the author and not altogether to -his liking. He never lingers or stresses any point of subtlety or -pathos, but presses on imperturbably as if they came there without his -knowledge. A touch of imagination, such as that when the Prince sits by -his son's cradle and Roxana observes how "he loved to look at it when it -was asleep", seems to mean much more to us than to him. After the -curiously modern dissertation upon the need of communicating matters of -importance to a second person lest, like the thief in Newgate, we should -talk of it in our sleep, he apologises for his digression. He seems to -have taken his characters so deeply into his mind that he lived them -without exactly knowing how; and, like all unconscious artists, he -leaves more gold in his work than his own generation was able to bring -to the surface.</p> - -<p>The interpretation that we put on his characters might therefore well -have puzzled him. We find for ourselves meanings which he was careful to -disguise even from himself. Thus it comes about that we admire Moll -Flanders far more than we blame her. Nor can we believe that Defoe had -made up his mind as to the precise degree of her guilt, or was unaware -that in considering the lives of the abandoned he raised many deep -questions and hinted, if he did not state, answers quite at variance -with his professions of belief. From the evidence supplied by his essay -upon the "Education of Women" we know that he had thought deeply and -much in advance of his age upon the capacities of women, which he rated -very high, and the injustice done to them, which he rated very harsh.</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in the -world, considering us as a civilised and a Christian country, that we -deny the advantages of learning to women. We reproach the sex every day -with folly and impertinence; which I am confident, had they the -advantages of education equal to us, they would be guilty of less than -ourselves.</p></blockquote> - - -<p>The advocates of women's rights would hardly care, perhaps, to claim -Moll Flanders and Roxana among their patron saints; and yet it is clear -that Defoe not only intended them to speak some very modern doctrines -upon the subject, but placed them in circumstances where their peculiar -hardships are displayed in such a way as to elicit our sympathy. -Courage, said Moll Flanders, was what women needed, and the power to -"stand their ground"; and at once gave practical demonstration of the -benefits that would result. Roxana, a lady of the same profession, -argues more subtly against the slavery of marriage. She "had started a -new thing in the world" the merchant told her; "it was a way of arguing -contrary to the general practise". But Defoe is the last writer to be -guilty of bald preaching. Roxana keeps our attention because she is -blessedly unconscious that she is in any good sense an example to her -sex and is thus at liberty to own that part of her argument is "of an -elevated strain which was really not in my thoughts at first, at all". -The knowledge of her own frailties and the honest questioning of her own -motives, which that knowledge begets, have the happy result of keeping -her fresh and human when the martyrs and pioneers of so many problem -novels have shrunken and shrivelled to the pegs and props of their -respective creeds.</p> - -<p>But the claim of Defoe upon our admiration does not rest upon the fact -that he can be shown to have anticipated some of the views of Meredith, -or to have written scenes which (the odd suggestion occurs) might have -been turned into plays by Ibsen. Whatever his ideas upon the position of -women, they are an incidental result of his chief virtue, which is that -he deals with the important and lasting side of things and not with the -passing and trivial. He is often dull. He can imitate the matter-of-fact -precision of a scientific traveller until we wonder that his pen could -trace or his brain conceive what has not even the excuse of truth to -soften its dryness. He leaves out the whole of vegetable nature, and a -large part of human nature. All this we may admit, though we have to -admit defects as grave in many writers whom we call great. But that does -not impair the peculiar merit of what remains. Having at the outset -limited his scope and confined his ambitions he achieves a truth of -insight which is far rarer and more enduring than the truth of fact -which he professed to make his aim. Moll Flanders and her friends -recommended themselves to him not because they were, as we should say, -"picturesque"; nor, as he affirmed, because they were examples of evil -living by which the public might profit. It was their natural veracity, -bred in them by a life of hardship, that excited his interest. For them -there were no excuses; no kindly shelter obscured their motives. Poverty -was their taskmaster. Defoe did not pronounce more than a judgement of -the lips upon their failings. But their courage and resource and -tenacity delighted him. He found their society full of good talk, and -pleasant stories, and faith in each other, and morality of a home-made -kind. Their fortunes had that infinite variety which he praised and -relished and beheld with wonder in his own life. These men and women, -above all, were free to talk openly of the passions and desires which -have moved men and women since the beginning of time, and thus even now -they keep their vitality undiminished. There is a dignity in everything -that is looked at openly. Even the sordid subject of money, which plays -so large a part in their histories, becomes not sordid but tragic when -it stands not for ease and consequence but for honour, honesty and life -itself. You may object that Defoe is humdrum, but never that he is -engrossed with petty things.</p> - -<p>He belongs, indeed, to the school of the great plain writers, whose work -is founded upon a knowledge of what is most persistent, though not most -seductive, in human nature. The view of London from Hungerford Bridge, -grey, serious, massive, and full of the subdued stir of traffic and -business, prosaic if it were not for the masts of the ships and the -towers and domes of the city, brings him to mind. The tattered girls -with violets in their hands at the street corners, and the old -weather-beaten women patiently displaying their matches and bootlaces -beneath the shelter of arches, seem like characters from his books. He -is of the school of Crabbe, and of Gissing, and not merely a fellow -pupil in the same stern place of learning, but its founder and master.</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_6_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_1"><span class="label">[6]</span></a>Written in 1919.</p></div> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2><a id="Addison"><i>Addison</i></a><a id="FNanchor_7_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_1" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></h2> - - -<p>In July, 1843, Lord Macaulay pronounced the opinion that Joseph Addison -had enriched our literature with compositions "that will live as long as -the English language". But when Lord Macaulay pronounced an opinion it -was not merely an opinion. Even now, at a distance of seventy-six years, -the words seem to issue from the mouth of the chosen representative of -the people. There is an authority about them, a sonority, a sense of -responsibility, which put us in mind of a Prime Minister making a -proclamation on behalf of a great empire rather than of a journalist -writing about a deceased man of letters for a magazine. The article upon -Addison is, indeed, one of the most vigorous of the famous essays. -Florid, and at the same time extremely solid, the phrases seem to build -up a monument, at once square and lavishly festooned with ornament, -which should serve Addison for shelter so long as one stone of -Westminster Abbey stands upon another. Yet, though we may have read and -admired this particular essay times out of number (as we say when we -have read anything three times over), it has never occurred to us, -strangely enough, to believe that it is true. That is apt to happen to -the admiring reader of Macaulay's essays. While delighting in their -richness, force, and variety, and finding every judgement, however -emphatic, proper in its place, it seldom occurs to us to connect these -sweeping assertions and undeniable convictions with anything so minute -as a human being. So it is with Addison. "If we wish", Macaulay writes, -"to find anything more vivid than Addison's best portraits, we must go -either to Shakespeare or to Cervantes". "We have not the least doubt -that if Addison had written a novel on an extensive plan it would have -been superior to any that we possess." His essays, again, "fully entitle -him to the rank of a great poet"; and, to complete the edifice, we have -Voltaire proclaimed "the prince of buffoons", and together with Swift -forced to stoop so low that Addison takes rank above them both as a -humorist.</p> - -<p>Examined separately, such flourishes of ornament look grotesque enough, -but in their place—such is the persuasive power of design—they -are part of the decoration; they complete the monument. Whether Addison or -another is interred within, it is a very fine tomb. But now that two -centuries have passed since the real body of Addison was laid by night -under the Abbey floor, we are, through no merit of our own, partially -qualified to test the first of the flourishes on that fictitious -tombstone to which, though it may be empty, we have done homage, in a -formal kind of way, these sixty-seven years. The compositions of Addison -will live as long as the English language. Since every moment brings -proof that our mother tongue is more lusty and lively than sorts with -complete sedateness or chastity, we need only concern ourselves with the -vitality of Addison. Neither lusty nor lively is the adjective -we should apply to the present condition of the <i>Tatler</i> and the -<i>Spectator</i>. To take a rough test, it is possible to discover how many -people in the course of a year borrow Addison's works from the public -library, and a particular instance affords us the not very encouraging -information that during nine years two people yearly take out the first -volume of the <i>Spectator</i>. The second volume is less in request than -the first. The inquiry is not a cheerful one. From certain marginal -comments and pencil marks it seems that these rare devotees seek out only -the famous passages and, as their habit is, score what we are bold enough -to consider the least admirable phrases. No; if Addison lives at all, it is -not in the public libraries. It is in libraries that are markedly -private, secluded, shaded by lilac trees and brown with folios, that he -still draws his faint, regular breath. If any man or woman is going to -solace himself with a page of Addison before the June sun is out of the -sky to-day, it is in some such pleasant retreat as this.</p> - -<p>Yet all over England at intervals, perhaps wide ones, we may be sure -that there are people engaged in reading Addison, whatever the year or -season. For Addison is very well worth reading. The temptation to read -Pope on Addison, Macaulay on Addison, Thackeray on Addison, Johnson on -Addison rather than Addison himself is to be resisted, for you will -find, if you study the <i>Tatler</i> and the <i>Spectator</i>, glance at -<i>Cato</i>, and run through the remainder of the six moderate-sized -volumes, that Addison is neither Pope's Addison nor anybody else's Addison, -but a separate, independent individual still capable of casting a clear-cut -shape of himself upon the consciousness, turbulent and distracted as it -is, of nineteen hundred and nineteen. It is true that the fate of the -lesser shades is always a little precarious. They are so easily obscured -or distorted. It seems so often scarcely worth while to go through the -cherishing and humanising process which is necessary to get into touch -with a writer of the second class who may, after all, have little to -give us. The earth is crusted over them; their features are obliterated, -and perhaps it is not a head of the best period that we rub clean in the -end, but only the chip of an old pot. The chief difficulty with the -lesser writers, however, is not only the effort. It is that our -standards have changed. The things that they like are not the things -that we like; and as the charm of their writing depends much more upon -taste than upon conviction, a change of manners is often quite enough to -put us out of touch altogether. That is one of the most troublesome -barriers between ourselves and Addison. He attached great importance to -certain qualities. He had a very precise notion of what we are used to -call "niceness" in man or woman. He was extremely fond of saying that -men ought not to be atheists, and that women ought not to wear large -petticoats. This directly inspires in us not so much a sense of distaste -as a sense of difference. Dutifully, if at all, we strain our -imaginations to conceive the kind of audience to whom these precepts were -addressed. The <i>Tatler</i> was published in 1709; the <i>Spectator</i> a -year or two later. What was the state of England at that particular -moment? Why was Addison so anxious to insist upon the necessity of a -decent and cheerful religious belief? Why did he so constantly, and in -the main kindly, lay stress upon the foibles of women and their reform? -Why was he so deeply impressed with the evils of party government? Any -historian will explain; but it is always a misfortune to have to call in -the services of any historian. A writer should give us direct certainty; -explanations are so much water poured into the wine. As it is, we can -only feel that these counsels are addressed to ladies in hoops and -gentlemen in wigs—a vanished audience which has learnt its lesson and -gone its way and the preacher with it. We can only smile and marvel and -perhaps admire the clothes.</p> - -<p>And that is not the way to read. To be thinking that dead people -deserved these censures and admired this morality, judged the eloquence, -which we find so frigid, sublime, the philosophy to us so superficial, -profound, to take a collector's joy in such signs of antiquity, is to -treat literature as if it were a broken jar of undeniable age but -doubtful beauty, to be stood in a cabinet behind glass doors. The charm -which still makes <i>Cato</i> very readable is much of this nature. When -Syphax exclaims,</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">So, where our wide Numidian wastes extend,</span><br> -<span class="i2">Sudden, th' impetuous hurricanes descend,</span><br> -<span class="i2">Wheel through the air, in circling eddies play,</span><br> -<span class="i2">Tear up the sands, and sweep whole plains away,</span><br> -<span class="i2">The helpless traveller, with wild surprise,</span><br> -<span class="i2">Sees the dry desert all around him rise,</span><br> -<span class="i2">And smother'd in the dusty whirlwind dies,</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>we cannot help imagining the thrill in the crowded theatre, the feathers -nodding emphatically on the ladies' heads, the gentlemen leaning forward -to tap their canes, and every one exclaiming to his neighbour how vastly -fine it is and crying "Bravo!" But how can we be excited? And so with -Bishop Hurd and his notes—his "finely observed", his "wonderfully -exact, both in the sentiment and expression", his serene confidence that -when "the present humour of idolising Shakespeare is over", the time will -come when <i>Cato</i> is "supremely admired by all candid and judicious -critics". This is all very amusing and productive of pleasant fancies, -both as to the faded frippery of our ancestors' minds and the bold -opulence of our own. But it is not the intercourse of equals, let alone -that other kind of intercourse, which as it makes us contemporary with -the author, persuades us that his object is our own. Occasionally in -<i>Cato</i> one may pick up a few lines that are not obsolete; but for the -most part the tragedy which Dr. Johnson thought "unquestionably the -noblest production of Addison's genius" has become collector's -literature.</p> - -<p>Perhaps most readers approach the essays also with some suspicion as to -the need of condescension in their minds. The question to be asked is -whether Addison, attached as he was to certain standards of gentility, -morality, and taste, has not become one of those people of exemplary -character and charming urbanity who must never be talked to about -anything more exciting than the weather. We have some slight suspicion that -the <i>Spectator</i> and the <i>Tatler</i> are nothing but talk, couched in -perfect English, about the number of fine days this year compared with -the number of wet the year before. The difficulty of getting on to equal -terms with him is shown by the little fable which he introduces into one -of the early numbers of the <i>Tatler</i>, of "a young gentleman, of -moderate understanding, but great vivacity, who . . . had got a little -smattering of knowledge, just enough to make an atheist or a freethinker, -but not a philosopher, or a man of sense". This young gentleman visits his -father in the country, and proceeds "to enlarge the narrowness of the -country notions; in which he succeeded so well, that he had seduced the -butler by his table-talk, and staggered his eldest sister. . . . 'Till one -day, talking of his setting dog . . . said 'he did not question but Tray -was as immortal as any one of the family'; and in the heat of the argument -told his father, that for his own part, 'he expected to die like a dog'. -Upon which, the old man, starting up in a very great passion, cried out, -'Then, sirrah, you shall live like one'; and taking his cane in his -hand, cudgelled him out of his system. This had so good an effect upon -him, that he took up from that day, fell to reading good books, and is -now a bencher in the Middle-Temple." There is a good deal of Addison in -that story: his dislike of "dark and uncomfortable prospects"; his -respect for "principles which are the support, happiness, and glory of -all public societies, as well as private persons"; his solicitude for -the butler; and his conviction that to read good books and become a -bencher in the Middle Temple is the proper end for a very vivacious -young gentleman. This Mr. Addison married a countess, "gave his little -senate laws", and, sending for young Lord Warwick, made that famous -remark about seeing how a Christian can die which has fallen upon such -evil days that our sympathies are with the foolish, and perhaps fuddled, -young peer rather than with the frigid gentleman, not too far gone for a -last spasm of self-complacency, upon the bed.</p> - -<p>Let us rub off such incrustations, so far as they are due to the -corrosion of Pope's wit or the deposit of mid-Victorian lachrymosity, -and see what, for us in our time, remains. In the first place, there -remains the not despicable virtue, after two centuries of existence, of -being readable. Addison can fairly lay claim to that; and then, slipped -in on the tide of the smooth, well-turned prose, are little eddies, -diminutive waterfalls, agreeably diversifying the polished surface. We -begin to take note of whims, fancies, peculiarities on the part of the -essayist which light up the prim, impeccable countenance of the moralist -and convince us that, however tightly he may have pursed his lips, his -eyes are very bright and not so shallow after all. He is alert to his -finger tips. Little muffs, silver garters, fringed gloves draw his -attention; he observes with a keen, quick glance, not unkindly, and full -rather of amusement than of censure. To be sure, the age was rich in -follies. Here were coffee-houses packed with politicians talking of -Kings and Emperors and letting their own small affairs go to ruin. -Crowds applauded the Italian opera every night without understanding a -word of it. Critics discoursed of the unities. Men gave a thousand -pounds for a handful of tulip roots. As for women—or "the fair sex", -as Addison liked to call them—their follies were past counting. He -did his best to count them, with a loving particularity which roused the -ill humour of Swift. But he did it very charmingly, with a natural relish -for the task, as the following passage shows:</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>I consider woman as a beautiful romantic animal, that may be adorned -with furs and feathers, pearls and diamonds, ores and silks. The lynx -shall cast its skin at her feet to make her a tippet; the peacock, -parrot, and swan, shall pay contributions to her muff; the sea shall be -searched for shells, and the rocks for gems; and every part of nature -furnish out its share towards the embellishment of a creature that is -the most consummate work of it. All this I shall indulge them in; but as -for the petticoat I have been speaking of, I neither can nor will allow -it.</p></blockquote> - - -<p>In all these matters Addison was on the side of sense and taste and -civilisation. Of that little fraternity, often so obscure and yet so -indispensable, who in every age keep themselves alive to the importance -of art and letters and music, watching, discriminating, denouncing and -delighting, Addison was one—distinguished and strangely contemporary -with ourselves. It would have been, so one imagines, a great pleasure to -take him a manuscript; a great enlightenment, as well as a great honour, -to have his opinion. In spite of Pope, one fancies that his would have -been criticism of the best order, open-minded and generous to novelty, -and yet, in the final resort, unfaltering in its standards. The boldness -which is a proof of vigour is shown by his defence of "Chevy Chase". He -had so clear a notion of what he meant by the "very spirit and soul of -fine writing" as to track it down in an old barbarous ballad or -rediscover it in "that divine work" "Paradise Lost". Moreover, far from -being a connoisseur only of the still, settled beauties of the dead, he -was aware of the present; a severe critic of its "Gothic taste", -vigilant in protecting the rights and honours of the language, and all -in favour of simplicity and quiet. Here we have the Addison of Will's -and Button's, who, sitting late into the night and drinking more than -was good for him, gradually overcame his taciturnity and began to talk. -Then he "chained the attention of every one to him". "Addison's -conversation", said Pope, "had something in it more charming than I have -found in any other man." One can well believe it, for his essays at -their best preserve the very cadence of easy yet exquisitely modulated -conversation—the smile checked before it has broadened into laughter, -the thought lightly turned from frivolity or abstraction, the ideas -springing, bright, new, various, with the utmost spontaneity. He seems -to speak what comes into his head, and is never at the trouble of -raising his voice. But he has described himself in the character of the -lute better than any one can do it for him.</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>The lute is a character directly opposite to the drum, that sounds very -finely by itself, or in a very small concert. Its notes are exquisitely -sweet, and very low, easily drowned in a multitude of instruments, and -even lost among a few, unless you give a particular attention to it. A -lute is seldom heard in a company of more than five, whereas a drum will -show itself to advantage in an assembly of 500. The lutanists, -therefore, are men of a fine genius, uncommon reflection, great -affability, and esteemed chiefly by persons of a good taste, who are the -only proper judges of so delightful and soft a melody.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>Addison was a lutanist. No praise, indeed, could be less appropriate -than Lord Macaulay's. To call Addison on the strength of his essays a -great poet, or to prophesy that if he had written a novel on an -extensive plan it would have been "superior to any that we possess", is -to confuse him with the drums and trumpets; it is not merely to -overpraise his merits, but to overlook them. Dr. Johnson superbly, and, -as his manner is, once and for all has summed up the quality of -Addison's poetic genius:</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>His poetry is first to be considered; of which it must be confessed that -it has not often those felicities of diction which give lustre to -sentiments, or that vigour of sentiment that animates diction; there is -little of ardour, vehemence, or transport; there is very rarely the -awfulness of grandeur, and not very often the splendour of elegance. He -thinks justly; but he thinks faintly.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>The Sir Roger de Coverley papers are those which have the most -resemblance, on the surface, to a novel. But their merit consists in the -fact that they do not adumbrate, or initiate, or anticipate anything; -they exist, perfect, complete, entire in themselves. To read them as if -they were a first hesitating experiment containing the seed of greatness -to come is to miss the peculiar point of them. They are studies done -from the outside by a quiet spectator. When read together they compose a -portrait of the Squire and his circle all in characteristic -positions—one with his rod, another with his hounds—but each -can be detached from the rest without damage to the design or harm to -himself. In a novel, where each chapter gains from the one before it or -adds to the one that follows it, such separations would be intolerable. The -speed, the intricacy, the design, would be mutilated. These particular -qualities are perhaps lacking, but nevertheless Addison's method has -great advantages. Each of these essays is very highly finished. The -characters are defined by a succession of extremely neat, clean strokes. -Inevitably, where the sphere is so narrow—an essay is only three or -four pages in length—there is not room for great depth or intricate -subtlety. Here, from the <i>Spectator</i>, is a good example of the witty -and decisive manner in which Addison strikes out a portrait to fill the -little frame:</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>Sombrius is one of these sons of sorrow. He thinks himself obliged in -duty to be sad and disconsolate. He looks on a sudden fit of laughter as -a breach of his baptismal vow. An innocent jest startles him like -blasphemy. Tell him of one who is advanced to a title of honour, he -lifts up his hands and eyes; describe a public ceremony, he shakes his -head; shew him a gay equipage, he blesses himself. All the little -ornaments of life are pomps and vanities. Mirth is wanton, and wit -profane. He is scandalized at youth for being lively, and at childhood -for being playful. He sits at a christening, or at a marriage-feast, as -at a funeral; sighs at the conclusion of a merry story, and grows devout -when the rest of the company grow pleasant. After all Sombrius is a -religious man, and would have behaved himself very properly, had he -lived when Christianity was under a general persecution.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>The novel is not a development from that model, for the good reason that -no development along these lines is possible. Of its kind such a -portrait is perfect; and when we find, scattered up and down the -<i>Spectator</i> and the <i>Tatler</i>, numbers of such little masterpieces -with fancies and anecdotes in the same style, some doubt as to the -narrowness of such a sphere becomes inevitable. The form of the essay -admits of its own particular perfection; and if anything is perfect the -exact dimensions of its perfection become immaterial. One can scarcely -settle whether, on the whole, one prefers a raindrop to the River Thames. -When we have said all that we can say against them—that many are -dull, others superficial, the allegories faded, the piety conventional, the -morality trite—there still remains the fact that the essays of -Addison are perfect essays. Always at the highest point of any art there -comes a moment when everything seems in a conspiracy to help the artist, -and his achievement becomes a natural felicity on his part of which he -seems, to a later age, half-unconscious. So Addison, writing day after -day, essay after essay, knew instinctively and exactly how to do it. -Whether it was a high thing, or whether it was a low thing, whether an epic -is more profound or a lyric more passionate, undoubtedly it is due to -Addison that prose is now prosaic—the medium which makes it possible -for people of ordinary intelligence to communicate their ideas to the -world. Addison is the respectable ancestor of an innumerable progeny. Pick -up the first weekly journal and the article upon the "Delights of Summer" -or the "Approach of Age" will show his influence. But it will also show, -unless the name of Mr. Max Beerbohm, our solitary essayist, is attached -to it, that we have lost the art of writing essays. What with our views -and our virtues, our passions and profundities, the shapely silver drop, -that held the sky in it and so many bright little visions of human life, -is now nothing but a hold—all knobbed with luggage packed in a hurry. -Even so, the essayist will make an effort, perhaps without knowing it, -to write like Addison.</p> - -<p>In his temperate and reasonable way Addison more than once amused -himself with speculations as to the fate of his writings. He had a just -idea of their nature and value. "I have new-pointed all the batteries of -ridicule", he wrote. Yet, because so many of his darts had been directed -against ephemeral follies, "absurd fashions, ridiculous customs, and -affected forms of speech", the time would come, in a hundred years, -perhaps, when his essays, he thought, would be "like so many pieces of -old plate, where the weight will be regarded, but the fashion lost". Two -hundred years have passed; the plate is worn smooth; the pattern almost -rubbed out; but the metal is pure silver.</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_7_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_1"><span class="label">[7]</span></a>Written in 1919.</p></div> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2><a id="The_Lives_of_the_Obscure"><i>The Lives of the Obscure</i></a></h2> - - -<p>Five shillings, perhaps, will secure a life subscription to this faded, -out-of-date, obsolete library, which with a little help from the rates, -is chiefly subsidised from the shelves of clergymen's widows, and -country gentlemen inheriting more books than their wives like to dust. -In the middle of the wide airy room, with windows that look to the sea -and let in the shouts of men crying pilchards for sale on the cobbled -street below, a row of vases stands, in which specimens of the local -flowers droop, each with its name inscribed beneath. The elderly, the -marooned, the bored, drift from newspaper to newspaper, or sit holding -their heads over back numbers of <i>The Illustrated London News</i> and the -<i>Wesleyan Chronicle</i>. No one has spoken aloud here since the room was -opened in 1854. The obscure sleep on the walls, slouching against each -other as if they were too drowsy to stand upright. Their backs are -flaking off; their titles often vanished. Why disturb their sleep? Why -re-open those peaceful graves, the librarian seems to ask, peering over -his spectacles, and resenting the duty, which indeed has become -laborious, of retrieving from among those nameless tombstones Nos. 1763, -1080, and 606.</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2>I</h2> - -<h2><a id="The_Taylors">THE TAYLORS AND THE EDGEWORTHS</a></h2> - - -<p>For one likes romantically to feel oneself a deliverer advancing -with lights across the waste of years to the rescue of some -stranded ghost—a Mrs. Pilkington, a Rev. Henry Elman, a Mrs. Ann -Gilbert—waiting, appealing, forgotten, in the growing gloom. -Possibly they hear one coming. They shuffle, they preen, they bridle. -Old secrets well up to their lips. The divine relief of communication -will soon again be theirs. The dust shifts and Mrs. Gilbert—but -the contact with life is instantly salutary. Whatever Mrs. Gilbert may -be doing, she is not thinking about us. Far from it. Colchester, about -the year 1800, was for the young Taylors, as Kensington had been for -their mother, "a very Elysium". There were the Strutts, the Hills, the -Stapletons; there was poetry, philosophy, engraving. For the young -Taylors were brought up to work hard, and if, after a long day's toil -upon their father's pictures, they slipped round to dine with the -Strutts they had a right to their pleasure. Already they had won prizes -in Darton and Harvey's pocketbook. One of the Strutts knew James -Montgomery, and there was talk, at those gay parties, with the Moorish -decorations and all the cats—for old Ben Strutt was a bit of a -character: did not communicate; would not let his daughters eat meat, so -no wonder they died of consumption—there was talk of printing a -joint volume to be called <i>The Associate Minstrels</i>, to which -James, if not Robert himself, might contribute. The Stapletons were -poetical, too. Moira and Bithia would wander over the old town wall at -Balkerne Hill reading poetry by moonlight. Perhaps there was a little -too much poetry in Colchester in 1800. Looking back in the middle of a -prosperous and vigorous life, Ann had to lament many broken careers, -much unfulfilled promise. The Stapletons died young, perverted, -miserable; Jacob, with his "dark, scorn-speaking countenance", who had -vowed that he would spend the night looking for Ann's lost bracelet in -the street, disappeared, "and I last heard of him vegetating among the -ruins of Rome—himself too much a ruin"; as for the Hills, their -fate was worst of all. To submit to public baptism was flighty, but to -marry Captain M.! Anybody could have warned pretty Fanny Hill against -Captain M. Yet off she drove with him in his fine phaeton. For years -nothing more was heard of her. Then one night, when the Taylors had -moved to Ongar and old Mr. and Mrs. Taylor were sitting over the fire, -thinking how, as it was nine o'clock, and the moon was full, they ought, -according to their promise, to look at it and think of their absent -children, there came a knock at the door. Mrs. Taylor went down to open -it. But who was this sad, shabby-looking woman outside? "Oh, don't you -remember the Strutts and the Stapletons, and how you warned me against -Captain M.?" cried Fanny Hill, for it was Fanny Hill—poor Fanny -Hill, all worn and sunk; poor Fanny Hill, that used to be so sprightly. -She was living in a lone house not far from the Taylors, forced to -drudge for her husband's mistress, for Captain M. had wasted all her -fortune, ruined all her life.</p> - -<p>Ann married Mr. G., of course—of course. The words toll -persistently through these obscure volumes. For in the vast world to -which the memoir writers admit us there is a solemn sense of something -unescapable, of a wave gathering beneath the frail flotilla and carrying -it on. One thinks of Colchester in 1800. Scribbling verses, reading -Montgomery—so they begin; the Hills, the Stapletons, the Strutts -disperse and disappear as one knew they would; but here, after long -years, is Ann still scribbling, and at last here is the poet Montgomery -himself in her very house, and she begging him to consecrate her child -to poetry by just holding him in his arms, and he refusing (for he is a -bachelor), but taking her for a walk, and they hear the thunder, and she -thinks it the artillery, and he says in a voice which she will never, -never forget: "Yes! The artillery of Heaven!" It is one of the -attractions of the unknown, their multitude, their vastness; for, -instead of keeping their identity separate, as remarkable people do, -they seem to merge into one another, their very boards and title-pages -and frontispieces dissolving, and their innumerable pages melting into -continuous years so that we can lie back and look up into the fine -mist-like substance of countless lives, and pass unhindered from century -to century, from life to life. Scenes detach themselves. We watch -groups. Here is young Mr. Elman talking to Miss Biffen at Brighton. She -has neither arms nor legs; a footman carries her in and out. She teaches -miniature painting to his sister. Then he is in the stage coach on the -road to Oxford with Newman. Newman says nothing. Elman nevertheless -reflects that he has known all the great men of his time. And so back -and so forwards, he paces eternally the fields of Sussex until, grown to -an extreme old age, there he sits in his Rectory thinking of -Newman, thinking of Miss Biffen, and making—it is his great -consolation—string bags for missionaries. And then? Go on looking. -Nothing much happens. But the dim light is exquisitely refreshing to the -eyes. Let us watch little Miss Frend trotting along the Strand with her -father. They meet a man with very bright eyes. "Mr. Blake," says Mr. -Frend. It is Mrs. Dyer who pours out tea for them in Clifford's Inn. Mr. -Charles Lamb has just left the room. Mrs. Dyer says she married George -because his washerwoman cheated him so. What do you think George paid -for his shirts, she asks? Gently, beautifully, like the clouds of a -balmy evening, obscurity once more traverses the sky, an obscurity which -is not empty but thick with the star dust of innumerable lives. And -suddenly there is a rift in it, and we see a wretched little packet-boat -pitching off the Irish coast in the middle of the nineteenth-century. -There is an unmistakable air of 1840 about the tarpaulins and the hairy -monsters in sou'westers lurching and spitting over the sloping decks, -yet treating the solitary young woman who stands in shawl and poke -bonnet gazing, gazing, not without kindness. No, no, no! She will not -leave the deck. She will stand there till it is quite dark, thank you! -"Her great love of the sea . . . drew this exemplary wife and mother -every now and then irresistibly away from home. No one but her husband -knew where she had gone, and her children learnt only later in life that -on these occasions, when suddenly she disappeared for a few days, she -was taking short sea voyages . . ." a crime which she expiated by months -of work among the Midland poor. Then the craving would come upon her, -would be confessed in private to her husband, and off she stole -again—the mother of Sir George Newnes.</p> - -<p>One would conclude that human beings were happy, endowed with such -blindness to fate, so indefatigable an interest in their own activities, -were it not for those sudden and astonishing apparitions staring in at -us, all taut and pale in their determination never to be forgotten, men -who have just missed fame, men who have passionately desired -redress—men like Haydon, and Mark Pattison, and the Rev. Blanco -White. And in the whole world there is probably but one person who looks up -for a moment and tries to interpret the menacing face, the furious -beckoning fist, before, in the multitude of human affairs, fragments of -faces, echoes of voices, flying coat-tails, and bonnet strings disappearing -down the shrubbery walks, one's attention is distracted for ever. What -is that enormous wheel, for example, careering downhill in Berkshire in -the eighteenth-century? It runs faster and faster; suddenly a youth -jumps out from within; next moment it leaps over the edge of a chalk pit -and is dashed to smithereens. This is Edgeworth's doing—Richard -Lovell Edgeworth, we mean, the portentous bore.</p> - -<p>For that is the way he has come down to us in his two volumes of -memoirs—Byron's bore, Day's friend, Maria's father, the man who -almost invented the telegraph, and did, in fact, invent machines for -cutting turnips, climbing walls, contracting on narrow bridges and lifting -their wheels over obstacles—a man meritorious, industrious, advanced, -but still, as we investigate his memoirs, mainly a bore. Nature endowed him -with irrepressible energy. The blood coursed through his veins at least -twenty times faster than the normal rate. His face was red, round, -vivacious. His brain raced. His tongue never stopped talking. He had -married four wives and had nineteen children, including the novelist -Maria. Moreover, he had known every one and done everything. His energy -burst open the most secret doors and penetrated to the most private -apartments. His wife's grandmother, for instance, disappeared -mysteriously every day. Edgeworth blundered in upon her and found her, -with her white locks flowing and her eyes streaming, in prayer before a -crucifix. She was a Roman Catholic then, but why a penitent? He found -out somehow that her husband had been killed in a duel, and she had -married the man who killed him. "The consolations of religion are fully -equal to its terrors," Dick Edgeworth reflected as he stumbled out -again. Then there was the beautiful young woman in the castle among the -forests of Dauphiny. Half paralysed, unable to speak above a whisper, -there she lay when Edgeworth broke in and found her reading. Tapestries -flapped on the castle walls; fifty thousand bats—"odious animals -whose stench is uncommonly noisome"—hung in clusters in the caves -beneath. None of the inhabitants understood a word she said. But to the -Englishman she talked for hour after hour about books and politics and -religion. He listened; no doubt he talked. He sat dumbfounded. But what -could one do for her? Alas, one must leave her lying among the tusks, -and the old men, and the cross-bows, reading, reading, reading. For -Edgeworth was employed in turning the Rhone from its course. He must get -back to his job. One reflection he would make. "I determined on steadily -persevering in the cultivation of my understanding."</p> - -<p>He was impervious to the romance of the situations in which he found -himself. Every experience served only to fortify his character. He -reflected, he observed, he improved himself daily. You can improve, Mr. -Edgeworth used to tell his children, every day of your life. "He used to -say that with this power of improving they might in time be anything, -and without it in time they would be nothing." Imperturbable, -indefatigable, daily increasing in sturdy self-assurance, he has the -gift of the egoist. He brings out, as he bustles and bangs on his way, -the diffident, shrinking figures who would otherwise be drowned in -darkness. The aged lady, whose private penance he disturbed, is only one -of a series of figures who start up on either side of his progress, -mute, astonished, showing us in a way that is even now unmistakable, -their amazement at this well-meaning man who bursts in upon them at -their studies and interrupts their prayers. We see him through their -eyes; we see him as he does not dream of being seen. What a tyrant he -was to his first wife! How intolerably she suffered! But she never -utters a word. It is Dick Edgeworth who tells her story in complete -ignorance that he is doing anything of the kind. "It was a singular -trait of character in my wife," he observes, "who had never shown any -uneasiness at my intimacy with Sir Francis Delaval, that she should take -a strong dislike to Mr. Day. A more dangerous and seductive companion -than the one, or a more moral and improving companion than the other, -could not be found in England." It was, indeed, very singular.</p> - -<p>For the first Mrs. Edgeworth was a penniless girl, the daughter of a -ruined country gentleman, who sat over his fire picking cinders from the -hearth and throwing them into the grate, while from time to time he -ejaculated "Hein! Heing!" as yet another scheme for making his fortune -came into his head. She had had no education. An itinerant -writing-master had taught her to form a few words. When Dick Edgeworth -was an undergraduate and rode over from Oxford she fell in love with him -and married him in order to escape the poverty and the mystery and the -dirt, and to have a husband and children like other women. But with what -result? Gigantic wheels ran downhill with the bricklayer's son inside -them. Sailing carriages took flight and almost wrecked four stage -coaches. Machines did cut turnips, but not very efficiently. Her little -boy was allowed to roam the country like a poor man's son, bare-legged, -untaught. And Mr. Day, coming to breakfast and staying to dinner, argued -incessantly about scientific principles and the laws of nature.</p> - -<p>But here we encounter one of the pitfalls of this nocturnal rambling -among forgotten worthies. It is so difficult to keep, as we must with -highly authenticated people, strictly to the facts. It is so difficult -to refrain from making scenes which, if the past could be recalled, -might perhaps be found lacking in accuracy. With a character like Thomas -Day, in particular, whose history surpasses the bounds of the credible, -we find ourselves oozing amazement, like a sponge which has absorbed so -much that it can retain no more but fairly drips. Certain scenes have -the fascination which belongs rather to the abundance of fiction than to -the sobriety of fact. For instance, we conjure up all the drama of poor -Mrs. Edgeworth's daily life; her bewilderment, her loneliness, her -despair, how she must have wondered whether any one really wanted -machines to climb walls, and assured the gentlemen that turnips were -better cut simply with a knife, and so blundered and floundered and been -snubbed that she dreaded the almost daily arrival of the tall young man -with his pompous, melancholy face, marked by the smallpox, his profusion -of uncombed black hair, and his finical cleanliness of hands and person. -He talked fast, fluently, incessantly, for hours at a time about -philosophy and nature, and M. Rousseau. Yet it was her house; she had to -see to his meals, and, though he ate as though he were half asleep, his -appetite was enormous. But it was no use complaining to her husband. -Edgeworth said, "She lamented about trifles." He went on to say: "The -lamenting of a female with whom we live does not render home -delightful." And then, with his obtuse open-mindedness, he asked her -what she had to complain of? Did he ever leave her alone? In the five or -six years of their married life he had slept from home not more than -five or six times. Mr. Day could corroborate that. Mr. Day corroborated -everything that Mr. Edgeworth said. He egged him on with his -experiments. He told him to leave his son without education. He did not -care a rap what the people of Henley said. In short, he was at the -bottom of all the absurdities and extravagances which made Mrs. -Edgeworth's life a burden to her.</p> - -<p>Yet let us choose another scene—one of the last that poor Mrs. -Edgeworth was to behold. She was returning from Lyons, and Mr. Day was -her escort. A more singular figure, as he stood on the deck of the -packet which took them to Dover, very tall, very upright, one finger in -the breast of his coat, letting the wind blow his hair out, dressed -absurdly, though in the height of fashion, wild, romantic, yet at the -same time authoritative and pompous, could scarcely be imagined; and -this strange creature, who loathed women, was in charge of a lady who -was about to become a mother, had adopted two orphan girls, and had set -himself to win the hand of Miss Elizabeth Sneyd by standing between -boards for six hours daily in order to learn to dance. Now and again he -pointed his toe with rigid precision; then, waking from the congenial -dream into which the dark clouds, the flying waters, and the shadow of -England upon the horizon had thrown him, he rapped out an order in the -smart, affected tones of a man of the world. The sailors stared, but -they obeyed. There was something sincere about him, something proudly -indifferent to what you thought; yes, something comforting and humane, -too, so that Mrs. Edgeworth for her part was determined never to laugh -at him again. But men were strange; life was difficult, and with a sigh -of bewilderment, perhaps of relief, poor Mrs. Edgeworth landed at Dover, -was brought to bed of a daughter, and died.</p> - -<p>Day meanwhile proceeded to Lichfield. Elizabeth Sneyd, of course, -refused him—gave a great cry, people said; exclaimed that she had -loved Day the blackguard, but hated Day the gentleman, and rushed from the -room. And then, they said, a terrible thing happened. Mr. Day, in his -rage, bethought him of the orphan, Sabrina Sydney, whom he had bred to -be his wife; visited her at Sutton Coldfield; flew into a passion at the -sight of her; fired a pistol at her skirts, poured melted sealing wax -over her arms, and boxed her ears. "No; I could never have done that," -Mr. Edgeworth used to say, when people described the scene. And whenever -to the end of his life he thought of Thomas Day he fell silent. So great, -so passionate, so inconsistent—his life had been a tragedy, and -in thinking of his friend, the best friend he had ever had, Richard -Edgeworth fell silent.</p> - -<p>It is almost the only occasion upon which silence is recorded of him. To -muse, to repent, to contemplate were foreign to his nature. His wife and -friends and children are silhouetted with extreme vividness upon a broad -disc of interminable chatter. Upon no other background could we realise -so clearly the sharp fragment of his first wife, or the shades and -depths which make up the character, at once humane and brutal, advanced -and hidebound of the inconsistent philosopher, Thomas Day. But his power -is not limited to people; landscapes, groups, societies seem, even as he -describes them, to split off from him, to be projected away, so that we -are able to run just ahead of him and anticipate his coming. They are -brought out all the more vividly by the extreme incongruity which so -often marks his comment and stamps his presence; they live with a -peculiar beauty, fantastic, solemn, mysterious, in contrast with -Edgeworth, who is none of these things. In particular, he brings before -us a garden in Cheshire, the garden of a parsonage, an ancient but -commodious parsonage.</p> - -<p>One pushed through a white gate and found oneself in a grass court, -small but well kept, with roses growing in the hedges and grapes hanging -from the walls. But what, in the name of wonder, were those objects in -the middle of the grass plot? Through the dusk of an autumn evening -there shone out an enormous white globe. Round it at various distances -were others of different sizes—the planets and their satellites, it -seemed. But who could have placed them there, and why? The house was -silent; the windows shut; nobody was stirring. Then, furtively peeping -from behind a curtain, appeared for a second the face of an elderly man, -handsome, dishevelled, distraught. It vanished.</p> - -<p>In some mysterious way, human beings inflict their own vagaries upon -nature. Moths and birds must have flitted more silently through the -little garden; over everything must have brooded the same fantastic -peace. Then, red-faced, garrulous, inquisitive, in burst Richard Lovell -Edgeworth. He looked at the globes; he satisfied himself that they were -of "accurate design and workmanlike construction". He knocked at the -door. He knocked and knocked. No one came. At length, as his impatience -was overcoming him, slowly the latch was undone, gradually the door was -opened; a clergyman, neglected, unkempt, but still a gentleman, stood -before him. Edgeworth named himself, and they retired to a parlour -littered with books and papers and valuable furniture now fallen to -decay. At last, unable to control his curiosity any longer, Edgeworth -asked what were the globes in the garden? Instantly the clergyman -displayed extreme agitation. It was his son who had made them, he -exclaimed; a boy of genius, a boy of the greatest industry, and of -virtue and acquirements far beyond his age. But he had died. His wife -had died. Edgeworth tried to turn the conversation, but in vain. The -poor man rushed on passionately, incoherently about his son, his genius, -his death. "It struck me that his grief had injured his understanding," -said Edgeworth, and he was becoming more and more uncomfortable when the -door opened and a girl of fourteen or fifteen, entering with a tea-tray -in her hand, suddenly changed the course of his host's conversation. -Indeed, she was beautiful; dressed in white; her nose a shade too -prominent, perhaps—but no, her proportions were exquisitely right. -"She is a scholar and an artist!" the clergyman exclaimed as she left the -room. But why did she leave the room? If she was his daughter why did -she not preside at the tea-table? Was she his mistress? Who was she? And -why was the house in this state of litter and decay? Why was the front -door locked? Why was the clergyman apparently a prisoner, and what was -his secret story? Questions began to crowd into Edgeworth's head as he -sat drinking his tea; but he could only shake his head and make one last -reflection, "I feared that something was not right," as he shut the -white wicket gate behind him, and left alone for ever in the untidy -house among the planets and their satellites, the mad clergyman and the -lovely girl.</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2>II</h2> - -<h2><a id="Laetitia_Pilkington">LAETITIA PILKINGTON</a></h2> - - -<p>Let us bother the librarian once again. Let us ask him to reach down, -dust, and hand over to us that little brown book over there, the Memoirs -of Mrs. Pilkington, three volumes bound in one, printed by Peter Hoey in -Dublin, MDCCLXXVI. The deepest obscurity shades her retreat; the dust -lies heavy on her tomb—one board is loose, that is to say, and nobody -has read her since early in the last century when a reader, presumably a -lady, whether disgusted by her obscenity or stricken by the hand of -death, left off in the middle and marked her place with a faded list of -goods and groceries. If ever a woman wanted a champion, it is obviously -Laetitia Pilkington. Who then was she?</p> - -<p>Can you imagine a very extraordinary cross between Moll Flanders and -Lady Ritchie, between a rolling and rollicking woman of the town and a -lady of breeding and refinement? Laetitia Pilkington (1712-1759) was -something of the sort—shady, shifty, adventurous, and yet, like -Thackeray's daughter, like Miss Mitford, like Madame de Sévigné and -Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth, so imbued with the old traditions of -her sex that she wrote, as ladies talk, to give pleasure. Throughout her -<i>Memoirs</i>, we can never forget that it is her wish to entertain, -her unhappy fate to sob. Dabbing her eyes and controlling her anguish, -she begs us to forgive an odious breach of manners which only -the suffering of a lifetime, the intolerable persecutions of -Mr. P——n, the malignant, she must say the h——h, -spite of Lady C——t can excuse. For who should know better -than the Earl of Killmallock's great-granddaughter that it is the part -of a lady to hide her sufferings? Thus Laetitia is in the great -tradition of English women of letters. It is her duty to entertain; it -is her instinct to conceal. Still, though her room near the Royal -Exchange is threadbare, and the table is spread with old play-bills -instead of a cloth, and the butter is served in a shoe, and Mr. Worsdale -has used the teapot to fetch small beer that very morning, still she -presides, still she entertains. Her language is a trifle coarse, -perhaps. But who taught her English? The great Doctor Swift.</p> - -<p>In all her wanderings, which were many and in her failings, which were -great, she looked back to those early Irish days when Swift had pinched -her into propriety of speech. He had beaten her for fumbling at a -drawer: he had daubed her cheeks with burnt cork to try her temper; he -had bade her pull off her shoes and stockings and stand against the -wainscot and let him measure her. At first she had refused; then she had -yielded. "Why," said the Dean, "I suspected you had either broken -Stockings or foul toes, and in either case should have delighted to -expose you." Three feet two inches was all she measured, he declared, -though, as Laetitia complained, the weight of Swift's hand on her head -had made her shrink to half her size. But she was foolish to complain. -Probably she owed her intimacy to that very fact—she was only three -feet two. Swift had lived, a lifetime among the giants; now there was a -charm in dwarfs. He took the little creature into his library. "'Well,' -said he, 'I have brought you here to show you all the Money I got when I -was in the Ministry, but don't steal any of it.' 'I won't, indeed. Sir,' -said I; so he opened a Cabinet, and showed me a whole parcel of empty -drawers. 'Bless me,' says he, 'the Money is flown.'" There was a charm -in her surprise; there was a charm in her humility. He could beat her -and bully her, make her shout when he was deaf, force her husband to -drink the lees of the wine, pay their cab fares, stuff guineas into a -piece of gingerbread, and relent surprisingly, as if there were -something grimly pleasing to him in the thought of so foolish a midget -setting up to have a life and a mind of her own. For with Swift she was -herself; it was the effect of his genius. She had to pull off her -stockings if he told her to. So, though his satire terrified her, and -she found it highly unpleasant to dine at the Deanery and see him -watching, in the great glass which hung before him for that purpose, the -butler stealing beer at the sideboard, she knew that it was a privilege -to walk with him in his garden; to hear him talk of Mr. Pope and quote -Hudibras; and then be hustled back in the rain to save coach hire, and -then to sit chatting in the parlour with Mrs. Brent, the housekeeper, -about the Dean's oddity and charity, and how the sixpence he saved on -the coach he gave to the lame old man who sold gingerbread at the -corner, while the Dean dashed up the front stairs and down the back so -violently that she was afraid he would fall and hurt himself.</p> - -<p>But memories of great men are no infallible specific. They fall upon the -race of life like beams from a lighthouse. They flash, they shock, they -reveal, they vanish. To remember Swift was of little avail to Laetitia -when the troubles of life came thick about her. Mr. Pilkington left her -for Widow W—rr—n. Her father—her dear father—died. -The sheriff's officers insulted her. She was deserted in an empty house -with two children to provide for. The tea chest was secured, the garden -gate locked, and the bills left unpaid. And still she was young and -attractive and gay, with an inordinate passion for scribbling verses and -an incredible hunger for reading books. It was this that was her -undoing. The book was fascinating and the hour late. The gentleman would -not lend it, but would stay till she had finished. They sat in her -bedroom. It was highly indiscreet, she owned. Suddenly twelve watchmen -broke through the kitchen window, and Mr. Pilkington appeared with a -cambric handkerchief tied about his neck. Swords were drawn and heads -broken. As for her excuse, how could one expect Mr. Pilkington and the -twelve watchmen to believe that? Only reading! Only sitting up late to -finish a new book! Mr. Pilkington and the watchmen interpreted the -situation as such men would. But lovers of learning, she is persuaded, -will understand her passion and deplore its consequences.</p> - -<p>And now what was she to do? Reading had played her false, but still she -could write. Ever since she could form her letters, indeed, she had -written, with incredible speed and considerable grace, odes, addresses, -apostrophes to Miss Hoadley, to the Recorder of Dublin, to Dr. -Delville's place in the country. "Hail, happy Delville, blissful seat!" -"Is there a man whose fixed and steady gaze——"—the verses -flowed without the slightest difficulty on the slightest occasion. Now, -therefore, crossing to England, she set up, as her advertisement had it, -to write letters upon any subject, except the law, for twelve pence -ready money, and no trust given. She lodged opposite White's Chocolate -House, and there, in the evening, as she watered her flowers on the -leads, the noble gentlemen in the window across the road drank her -health, sent her over a bottle of burgundy; and later she heard old -Colonel——crying, "Poke after me, my lord, poke after me," as -he shepherded the D—— of M—lb—gh up her dark stairs. -That lovely gentleman, who honoured his title by wearing it, kissed her, -complimented her, opened his pocketbook, and left her with a banknote -for fifty pounds upon Sir Francis Child. Such tributes stimulated her -pen to astonishing outbursts of impromptu gratitude. If, on the other -hand, a gentleman refused to buy or a lady hinted impropriety, this same -flowery pen writhed and twisted in agonies of hate and vituperation. -"Had I said that your F——r died Blaspheming the Almighty", one -of her accusations begins, but the end is unprintable. Great ladies were -accused of every depravity, and the clergy, unless their taste in poetry -was above reproach, suffered an incessant castigation. Mr. Pilkington, -she never forgot, was a clergyman.</p> - -<p>Slowly but surely the Earl of Killmallock's great-granddaughter -descended in the social scale. From St. James's Street and its noble -benefactors she migrated to Green Street to lodge with Lord Stair's -<i>valet de chambre</i> and his wife, who washed for persons of -distinction. She, who had dallied with dukes, was glad for company's sake -to take a hand at quadrille with footmen and laundresses and Grub Street -writers, who, as they drank porter, sipped green tea, and smoked tobacco, -told stories of the utmost scurrility about their masters and mistresses. -The spiciness of their conversation made amends for the vulgarity of their -manners. From them Laetitia picked up those anecdotes of the great which -sprinkled her pages with dashes and served her purpose when subscribers -failed and landladies grew insolent. Indeed, it was a hard life—to -trudge to Chelsea in the snow wearing nothing but a chintz gown and be -put off with a beggarly half-crown by Sir Hans Sloane; next to tramp to -Ormond Street and extract two guineas from the odious Dr. Meade, which, -in her glee, she tossed in the air and lost in a crack of the floor; to -be insulted by footmen; to sit down to a dish of boiling water because -her landlady must not guess that a pinch of tea was beyond her means. -Twice on moonlight nights, with the lime trees in flower, she wandered -in St. James's Park and contemplated suicide in Rosamond's Pond. Once, -musing among the tombs in Westminster Abbey, the door was locked on her, -and she had to spend the night in the pulpit wrapped in a carpet from -the Communion Table to protect herself from the assaults of rats. "I -long to listen to the young-ey'd cherubims!" she exclaimed. But a very -different fate was in store for her. In spite of Mr. Colley Cibber, and -Mr. Richardson, who supplied her first with gilt-edged notepaper and -then with baby linen, those harpies, her landladies, after drinking her -ale, devouring her lobsters, and failing often for years at a time to -comb their hair, succeeded in driving Swift's friend, and the Earl's -great-granddaughter, to be imprisoned with common debtors in the -Marshalsea.</p> - -<p>Bitterly she cursed her husband who had made her a lady of adventure -instead of what nature intended, "a harmless household dove". More and -more wildly she ransacked her brains for anecdotes, memories, scandals, -views about the bottomless nature of the sea, the inflammable character -of the earth—anything that would fill a page and earn her a guinea. -She remembered that she had eaten plovers' eggs with Swift. "Here, Hussey," -said he, "is a Plover's egg. King William used to give crowns apiece for -them. . . ." Swift never laughed, she remembered. He used to suck in his -cheeks instead of laughing. And what else could she remember? A great -many gentlemen, a great many landladies; how the window was thrown up -when her father died, and her sister came downstairs with the -sugar-basin, laughing. All had been bitterness and struggle, except that -she had loved Shakespeare, known Swift, and kept through all the shifts -and shades of an adventurous career a gay spirit, something of a lady's -breeding, and the gallantry which, at the end of her short life, led her -to crack her joke and enjoy her duck with death at her heart and duns at -her pillow.</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2>III</h2> - -<h2><a id="Miss_Ormerod">MISS ORMEROD</a><a id="FNanchor_8_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_1" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></h2> - - -<p>The trees stood massively in all their summer foliage spotted and -grouped upon a meadow which sloped gently down from the big white house. -There were unmistakable signs of the year 1835 both in the trees and in -the sky, for modern trees are not nearly so voluminous as these ones, -and the sky of those days had a kind of pale diffusion in its texture -which was different from the more concentrated tone of the skies we -know.</p> - -<p>Mr. George Ormerod stepped from the drawing-room window of Sedbury -House, Gloucestershire, wearing a tall furry hat and white trousers -strapped under his instep; he was closely, though deferentially, -followed by a lady wearing a yellow-spotted dress over a crinoline, and -behind her, singly and arm in arm, came nine children in nankeen jackets -and long white drawers. They were going to see the water let out of a -pond.</p> - -<p>The youngest child, Eleanor, a little girl with a pale face, rather -elongated features, and black hair, was left by herself in the -drawing-room, a large sallow apartment with pillars, two chandeliers, -for some reason enclosed in holland bags, and several octagonal tables -some of inlaid wood and others of greenish malachite. At one of these -little Eleanor Ormerod was seated in a high chair.</p> - -<p>"Now, Eleanor," said her mother, as the party assembled for the -expedition to the pond, "here are some pretty beetles. Don't touch the -glass. Don't get down from your chair, and when we come back little -George will tell you all about it."</p> - -<p>So saying, Mrs. Ormerod placed a tumbler of water containing about half -a dozen great water grubs in the middle of the malachite table, at a -safe distance from the child, and followed her husband down the slope of -old-fashioned turf towards a cluster of extremely old-fashioned sheep; -opening, directly she stepped on to the terrace, a tiny parasol of -bottle green silk with a bottle green fringe, though the sky was like -nothing so much as a flock bed covered with a counterpane of white -dimity.</p> - -<p>The plump pale grubs gyrated slowly round and round in the tumbler. So -simple an entertainment must surely soon have ceased to satisfy. Surely -Eleanor would shake the tumbler, upset the grubs, and scramble down from -her chair. Why, even a grown person can hardly watch those grubs -crawling down the glass wall, then floating to the surface, without a -sense of boredom not untinged with disgust. But the child sat perfectly -still. Was it her custom, then, to be entertained by the gyrations of -grubs? Her eyes were reflective, even critical. But they shone with -increasing excitement. She beat one hand upon the edge of the table. -What was the reason? One of the grubs had ceased to float: he lay at the -bottom; the rest, descending, proceeded to tear him to pieces.</p> - -<p>"And how has little Eleanor enjoyed herself?" asked Mr. Ormerod, in -rather a deep voice, stepping into the room and with a slight air of -heat and of fatigue upon his face.</p> - -<p>"Papa," said Eleanor, almost interrupting her father in her eagerness to -impart her observation, "I saw one of the grubs fall down and the rest -came and ate him!"</p> - -<p>"Nonsense, Eleanor," said Mr. Ormerod. "You are not telling the truth." -He looked severely at the tumbler in which the beetles were still -gyrating as before.</p> - -<p>"Papa, it was true!"</p> - -<p>"Eleanor, little girls are not allowed to contradict their fathers," -said Mrs. Ormerod, coming in through the window, and closing her green -parasol with a snap.</p> - -<p>"Let this be a lesson," Mr. Ormerod began, signing to the other children -to approach, when the door opened, and the servant announced,</p> - -<p>"Captain Fenton."</p> - -<p>Captain Fenton "was at times thought to be tedious in his recurrence to -the charge of the Scots Greys in which he had served at the battle of -Waterloo."</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p>But what is this crowd gathered round the door of the George Hotel in -Chepstow? A faint cheer rises from the bottom of the hill. Up comes the -mail coach, horses steaming, panels mud-splashed. "Make way! Make way!" -cries the ostler and the vehicle dashes into the courtyard, pulls up -sharp before the door. Down jumps the coachman, the horses are led off, -and a fine team of spanking greys is harnessed with incredible -speed in their stead. Upon all this—coachman, horses, coach, and -passengers—the crowd looked with gaping admiration every Wednesday -evening all through the year. But to-day, the twelfth of March, 1852, as -the coachman settled his rug, and stretched his hands for the reins, he -observed that instead of being fixed upon him, the eyes of the people of -Chepstow darted this way and that. Heads were jerked. Arms flung out. Here -a hat swooped in a semi-circle. Off drove the coach almost unnoticed. As it -turned the corner all the outside passengers craned their necks, and one -gentleman rose to his feet and shouted, "There! there! there!" before he -was bowled into eternity. It was an insect—a red-winged insect. Out -the people of Chepstow poured into the high road; down the hill they ran; -always the insect flew in front of them; at length by Chepstow Bridge a -young man, throwing his bandanna over the blade of an oar, captured it -alive and presented it to a highly respectable elderly gentleman who now -came puffing upon the scene—Samuel Budge, doctor, of Chepstow. By -Samuel Budge it was presented to Miss Ormerod; by her sent to a -professor at Oxford. And he, declaring it "a fine specimen of the rose -underwinged locust" added the gratifying information that it "was the -first of the kind to be captured so far west."</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p>And so, at the age of twenty-four Miss Eleanor Ormerod was thought the -proper person to receive the gift of a locust.</p> - -<p>When Eleanor Ormerod appeared at archery meetings and croquet -tournaments young men pulled their whiskers and young ladies looked -grave. It was so difficult to make friends with a girl who could talk of -nothing but black beetles and earwigs—"Yes, that's what she likes, -isn't it queer?—Why, the other day Ellen, Mama's maid, heard from -Jane, who's under-kitchenmaid at Sedbury House, that Eleanor tried to -boil a beetle in the kitchen saucepan and he wouldn't die, and swam -round and round, and she got into a terrible state and sent the groom -all the way to Gloucester to fetch chloroform—all for an insect, -my dear!—and she gives the cottagers shillings to collect beetles -for her—and she spends hours in her bedroom cutting them -up—and she climbs trees like a boy to find wasps' nests—oh, -you can't think what they don't say about her in the village—for -she does look so odd, dressed anyhow, with that great big nose and those -bright little eyes, so like a caterpillar herself, I always -think—but of course she's wonderfully clever and very good, too, -both of them. Georgiana has a lending library for the cottagers, and -Eleanor never misses a service—but there she is—that short -pale girl in the large bonnet. Do go and talk to her, for I'm sure I'm -too stupid, but you'd find plenty to say—" But neither Fred nor -Arthur, Henry nor William found anything to say—</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>". . . probably the lecturer would have been equally well pleased -had none of her own sex put in an appearance."</p> - -<p>This comment upon a lecture delivered in the year 1889 throws some -light, perhaps, upon archery meetings in the 'fifties.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>It being nine o'clock on a February night some time about 1862 all the -Ormerods were in the library; Mr. Ormerod making architectural designs -at a table; Mrs. Ormerod lying on a sofa making pencil drawings upon -grey paper; Eleanor making a model of a snake to serve as a paper -weight; Georgiana making a copy of the font in Tidenham Church; some of -the others examining books with beautiful illustrations; while at -intervals someone rose, unlocked the wire book case, took down a volume -for instruction or entertainment, and perused it beneath the -chandelier.</p> - -<p>Mr. Ormerod required complete silence for his studies. His word was law, -even to the dogs, who, in the absence of their master, instinctively -obeyed the eldest male person in the room. Some whispered colloquy there -might be between Mrs. Ormerod and her daughters—</p> - -<p>"The draught under the pew was really worse than ever this morning, -Mama—"</p> - -<p>"And we could only unfasten the latch in the chancel because Eleanor -happened to have her ruler with her—"</p> - -<p>"—hm—m—m. Dr. Armstrong—Hm—m—m—"</p> - -<p>"—Anyhow things aren't as bad with us as they are at Kinghampton. -They say Mrs. Briscoe's Newfoundland dog follows her right up to the -chancel rails when she takes the sacrament—"</p> - -<p>"And the turkey is still sitting on its eggs in the pulpit."</p> - -<p>—"The period of incubation for a turkey is between three and four -weeks"—said Eleanor, thoughtfully looking up from her cast of the -snake and forgetting, in the interest of her subject, to speak in a -whisper.</p> - -<p>"Am I to be allowed no peace in my own house?" Mr. Ormerod exclaimed -angrily, rapping with his ruler on the table, upon which Mrs. Ormerod -half shut one eye and squeezed a little blob of Chinese white on to her -high light, and they remained silent until the servants came in, when -everyone, with the exception of Mrs. Ormerod, fell on their knees. For -she, poor lady, suffered from a chronic complaint and left the family -party forever a year or two later, when the green sofa was moved into -the corner, and the drawings given to her nieces in memory of her. But -Mr. Ormerod went on making architectural drawings at nine p.m. every -night (save on Sundays when he read a sermon) until he too lay upon the -green sofa, which had not been used since Mrs. Ormerod lay there, but -still looked much the same. "We deeply felt the happiness of ministering -to his welfare," Miss Ormerod wrote, "for he would not hear of our -leaving him for even twenty-four hours and he objected to visits -from my brothers excepting occasionally for a short time. They, not -being used to the gentle ways necessary for an aged invalid, worried -him . . . the Thursday following, the 9th October, 1873, he -passed gently away at the mature age of eighty-seven years." Oh, -graves in country churchyards—respectable burials—mature old -gentlemen—D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S., F.S.A.—lots of letters come -after your names, but lots of women are buried with you!</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p>There remained the Hessian Fly and the Bot—mysterious insects! -Not, one would have thought, among God's most triumphant creations, -and yet—if you see them under a microscope!—the Bot, obese, -globular, obscene; the Hessian, booted, spurred, whiskered, cadaverous. -Next slip under the glass an innocent grain; behold it pock-marked and -livid; or take this strip of hide, and note those odious pullulating -lumps—well, what does the landscape look like then?</p> - -<p>The only palatable object for the eye to rest on in acres of England is -a lump of Paris Green. But English people won't use microscopes; you -can't make them use Paris Green either—or if they do, they let it -drip. Dr. Ritzema Bos is a great stand-by. For they won't take a woman's -word. And indeed, though for the sake of the Ox Warble one must stretch -a point, there are matters, questions of stock infestation, things one -has to go into—things a lady doesn't even like to see, much less -discuss, in print—"these, I say, I intend to leave entirely to the -Veterinary surgeons. My brother—oh, he's dead now—a very good -man—for whom I collected wasps' nests—lived at Brighton and -wrote about wasps—he, I say, wouldn't let me learn anatomy, never -liked me to do more than take sections of teeth."</p> - -<p>Ah, but Eleanor, the Bot and the Hessian have more power over you than -Mr. Edward Ormerod himself. Under the microscope you clearly perceive -that these insects have organs, orifices, excrement; they do, most -emphatically, copulate. Escorted on the one side by the Bos or Warble, -on the other by the Hessian Fly, Miss Ormerod advanced statelily, if -slowly, into the open. Never did her features show more sublime than -when lit up by the candour of her avowal. "This is excrement; these, -though Ritzema Bos is positive to the contrary, are the generative -organs of the male. I've proved it." Upon her head the hood of Edinburgh -most fitly descended; pioneer of purity even more than of Paris Green.</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p>"If you're sure I'm not in your way," said Miss Lipscomb unstrapping her -paint box and planting her tripod firmly in the path, "—I'll try to -get a picture of those lovely hydrangeas against the sky—What flowers -you have in Penzance!"</p> - -<p>The market gardener crossed his hands on his hoe, slowly twined a piece -of bass round his finger, looked at the sky, said something about the -sun, also about the prevalence of lady artists, and then, with a nod of -his head, observed sententiously that it was to a lady that he owed -everything he had.</p> - -<p>"Ah?" said Miss Lipscomb, flattered, but already much occupied with her -composition.</p> - -<p>"A lady with a queer-sounding name," said Mr. Pascoe, "but that's the -lady I've called my little girl after—I don't think there's such -another in Christendom."</p> - -<p>Of course it was Miss Ormerod, equally of course Miss Lipscomb was the -sister of Miss Ormerod's family doctor; and so she did no sketching that -morning, but left with a handsome bunch of grapes instead—for every -flower had drooped, ruin had stared him in the face—he had written, -not believing one bit what they told him—to the lady with the queer -name, back there came a book "In-ju-ri-ous In-sects," with the page turned -down, perhaps by her very hand, also a letter which he kept at home -under the clock, but he knew every word by heart, since it was due to -what she said there that he wasn't a ruined man—and the tears ran -down his face and Miss Lipscomb, clearing a space on the lodging-house -table, wrote the whole story to her brother.</p> - -<p>"The prejudice against Paris Green certainly seems to be dying down," -said Miss Ormerod when she read it.—"But now," she sighed rather -heavily, being no longer young and much afflicted with the gout, "now -it's the sparrows."</p> - -<p>One might have thought that <i>they</i> would have left her -alone—innocent dirt-grey birds, taking more than their share of -the breakfast crumbs, otherwise inoffensive. But once you look through a -microscope—once you see the Hessian and the Bot as they really -are—there's no peace for an elderly lady pacing her terrace on a -fine May morning. For example, why, when there are crumbs enough for -all, do only the sparrows get them? Why not swallows or martins? -Why—oh, here come the servants for prayers—</p> - -<p>"Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us. -. . . For thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory, for ever and -ever. Amen—"</p> - -<p>"The Times, ma'am—"</p> - -<p>"Thank you, Dixon. . . . The Queen's birthday! We must -drink her Majesty's health in the old white port, Dixon. Home -Rule—tut—tut—tut. All that madman Gladstone. My father -would have thought the world was coming to an end, and I'm not at all -sure that it isn't. I must talk to Dr. Lipscomb—"</p> - -<p>Yet all the time in the tail of her eye she saw myriads of sparrows, and -retiring to the study proclaimed in a pamphlet of which 36,000 copies -were gratuitously distributed that the sparrow is a pest.</p> - -<p>"When he eats an insect," she said to her sister Georgians, "which -isn't often, it's one of the few insects that one wants to keep—one of -the very few," she added with a touch of acidity natural to one whose -investigations have all tended to the discredit of the insect race.</p> - -<p>"But there'll be some very unpleasant consequences to face," she -concluded—"Very unpleasant indeed."</p> - -<p>Happily the port was now brought in, the servants assembled; and Miss -Ormerod, rising to her feet, gave the toast "Her Blessed Majesty." She -was extremely loyal, and moreover she liked nothing better than a glass -of her father's old white port. She kept his pigtail, too, in a box.</p> - -<p>Such being her disposition it went hard with her to analyse the -sparrow's crop, for the sparrow she felt, symbolises something of the -homely virtue of English domestic life, and to proclaim it stuffed with -deceit was disloyal to much that she, and her fathers before her, held -dear. Sure enough the clergy—the Rev. J. E. Walker—denounced -her for her brutality; "God Save the Sparrow!" exclaimed the Animal's -Friend; and Miss Carrington, of the Humanitarian League, replied in a -leaflet described by Miss Ormerod as "spirity, discourteous, and -inaccurate."</p> - -<p>"Well," said Miss Ormerod to her sister, "it did me no harm before to be -threatened to be shot at, also hanged in effigy, and other little -attentions."</p> - -<p>"Still it was very disagreeable, Eleanor—more disagreeable I -believe, to me than to you," said Georgiana. Soon Georgiana died. She had -however finished the beautiful series of insect diagrams at which she -worked every morning in the dining-room and they were presented to -Edinburgh University. But Eleanor was never the same woman after that.</p> - -<p>Dear forest fly—flour moths—weevils—grouse -and cheese flies—beetles—foreign correspondents—eel -worms—ladybirds—wheat midges—resignation -from the Royal Agricultural Society—gall mites—boot -beetles—Announcement of honorary degree to be -conferred—feelings of appreciation and anxiety—paper -on wasps—last annual report warnings of serious -illness—proposed pension—gradual loss of -strength—Finally Death.</p> - -<p>That is life, so they say.</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p>"It does no good to keep people waiting for an answer," sighed Miss -Ormerod, "though I don't feel as able as I did since that unlucky -accident at Waterloo. And no one realises what the strain of the work -is—often I'm the only lady in the room, and the gentlemen so learned, -though I've always found them most helpful, most generous in every way. -But I'm growing old. Miss Hartwell, that's what it is. That's what led -me to be thinking of this difficult matter of flour infestation in the -middle of the road so that I didn't see the horse until he had poked his -nose into my ear. . . . Then there's this nonsense about a pension. What -could possess Mr. Barron to think of such a thing? I should feel -inexpressibly lowered if I accepted a pension. Why, I don't altogether -like writing LL.D. after my name, though Georgie would have liked it. -All I ask is to be let go on in my own quiet way. Now where is Messrs. -Langridge's sample? We must take that first. 'Gentlemen, I have examined -your sample and find . . .'"</p> - -<p>"If any one deserves a thorough good rest it's you. Miss Ormerod," said -Dr. Lipscomb, who had grown a little white over the ears. "I should say -the farmers of England ought to set up a statue to you, bring offerings -of corn and wine—make you a kind of Goddess, eh—what was her -name?"</p> - -<p>"Not a very shapely figure for a Goddess," said Miss Ormerod with a -little laugh. "I should enjoy the wine though. You're not going to cut -me off my one glass of port surely?"</p> - -<p>"You must remember," said Dr. Lipscomb, shaking his head, "how much your -life means to others."</p> - -<p>"Well, I don't know about that," said Miss Ormerod, pondering a little. -"To be sure, I've chosen my epitaph. 'She introduced Paris Green into -England,' and there might be a word or two about the Hessian -fly—that, I do believe, was a good piece of work."</p> - -<p>"No need to think about epitaphs yet," said Dr. Lipscomb.</p> - -<p>"Our lives are in the hands of the Lord," said Miss Ormerod simply.</p> - -<p>Dr. Lipscomb bent his head and looked out of the window. Miss Ormerod -remained silent.</p> - -<p>"English entomologists care little or nothing for objects of practical -importance," she exclaimed suddenly. "Take this question of flour -infestation—I can't say how many grey hairs that hasn't grown -me."</p> - -<p>"Figuratively speaking. Miss Ormerod," said Dr. Lipscomb, for her hair -was still raven black.</p> - -<p>"Well, I do believe all good work is done in concert," Miss Ormerod -continued. "It is often a great comfort to me to think that."</p> - -<p>"It's beginning to rain," said Dr. Lipscomb. "How will your enemies like -that, Miss Ormerod?"</p> - -<p>"Hot or cold, wet or dry, insects always flourish!" cried Miss Ormerod, -energetically sitting up in bed.</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<p>"Old Miss Ormerod is dead," said Mr. Drummond, opening The Times on -Saturday, July 20th, 1901.</p> - -<p>"Old Miss Ormerod?" asked Mrs. Drummond.</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_8_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_1"><span class="label">[8]</span></a>Founded upon the Life of Eleanor Ormerod, by Robert -Wallace Murray. 1904.</p></div> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2><a id="Jane_Austen"><i>Jane Austen</i></a></h2> - - -<p>It is probable that if Miss Cassandra Austen had had her way, we should -have had nothing of Jane Austen's except her novels. To her elder sister -alone did she write freely; to her alone she confided her hopes and, if -rumour is true, the one great disappointment of her life; but when Miss -Cassandra Austen grew old, and the growth of her sister's fame made her -suspect that a time might come when strangers would pry and scholars -speculate, she burnt, at great cost to herself, every letter that could -gratify their curiosity, and spared only what she judged too trivial to -be of interest.</p> - -<p>Hence our knowledge of Jane Austen is derived from a little gossip, a -few letters, and her books. As for the gossip, gossip which has survived -its day is never despicable; with a little rearrangement it suits our -purpose admirably. For example, Jane "is not at all pretty and very -prim, unlike a girl of twelve . . . Jane is whimsical and affected," -says little Philadelphia Austen of her cousin. Then we have Mrs. -Mitford, who knew the Austens as girls and thought Jane "the prettiest, -silliest, most affected, husband-hunting butterfly she ever remembers". -Next, there is Miss Mitford's anonymous friend "who visits her now [and] -says that she has stiffened into the most perpendicular, precise, -taciturn piece of 'single blessedness' that ever existed, and that, -until <i>Pride and Prejudice</i> showed what a precious gem was hidden in -that unbending case, she was no more regarded in society than a poker or -firescreen. . . . The case is very different now," the good lady goes on; -"she is still a poker—but a poker of whom everybody is afraid. . . . -A wit, a delineator of character, who does not talk is terrific -indeed!" On the other side, of course, there are the Austens, a race -little given to panegyric of themselves, but nevertheless, they say, her -brothers "were very fond and very proud of her. They were attached to -her by her talents, her virtues, and her engaging manners, and each -loved afterwards to fancy a resemblance in some niece or daughter of his -own to the dear sister Jane, whose perfect equal they yet never expected -to see." Charming but perpendicular, loved at home but feared by -strangers, biting of tongue but tender of heart—these contrasts are -by no means incompatible, and when we turn to the novels we shall find -ourselves stumbling there too over the same complexities in the writer.</p> - -<p>To begin with, that prim little girl whom Philadelphia found so unlike a -child of twelve, whimsical and affected, was soon to be the authoress of -an astonishing and unchildish story, <i>Love and Friendship</i>,<a id="FNanchor_9_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_1" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> which, -incredible though it appears, was written at the age of fifteen. It was -written, apparently, to amuse the schoolroom; one of the stories in the -same book is dedicated with mock solemnity to her brother; another is -neatly illustrated with water-colour heads by her sister. There are -jokes which, one feels, were family property; thrusts of satire, which -went home because all little Austens made mock in common of fine ladies -who "sighed and fainted on the sofa".</p> - -<p>Brothers and sisters must have laughed when Jane read out loud her last -hit at the vices which they all abhorred. "I die a martyr to my grief -for the loss of Augustius. One fatal swoon has cost me my life. Beware -of Swoons, Dear Laura. . . . Run mad as often as you chuse, but do not -faint. . . ." And on she rushed, as fast as she could write and quicker -than she could spell, to tell the incredible adventures of Laura and -Sophia, of Philander and Gustavus, of the gentleman who drove a coach -between Edinburgh and Stirling every other day, of the theft of the -fortune that was kept in the table drawer, of the starving mothers and -the sons who acted Macbeth. Undoubtedly, the story must have roused the -schoolroom to uproarious laughter. And yet, nothing is more obvious than -that this girl of fifteen, sitting in her private corner of the common -parlour, was writing not to draw a laugh from brother and sisters, and -not for home consumption. She was writing for everybody, for nobody, for -our age, for her own; in other words, even at that early age Jane Austen -was writing. One hears it in the rhythm and shapeliness and severity of -the sentences. "She was nothing more than a mere good tempered, civil, -and obliging young woman; as such we could scarcely dislike her—she -was only an object of contempt." Such a sentence is meant to outlast the -Christmas holidays. Spirited, easy, full of fun, verging with freedom -upon sheer nonsense,—<i>Love and Friendship</i> is all that, but what -is this note which never merges in the rest, which sounds distinctly and -penetratingly all through the volume? It is the sound of laughter. The -girl of fifteen is laughing, in her corner, at the world.</p> - -<p>Girls of fifteen are always laughing. They laugh when Mr. Binney helps -himself to salt instead of sugar. They almost die of laughing when old -Mrs. Tomkins sits down upon the cat. But they are crying the moment -after. They have no fixed abode from which they see that there is -something eternally laughable in human nature, some quality in men and -women that for ever excites our satire. They do not know that Lady -Greville who snubs, and poor Maria who is snubbed, are permanent -features of every ball-room. But Jane Austen knew it from her birth -upwards. One of those fairies who perch upon cradles must have taken her -a flight through the world directly she was born. When she was laid in -the cradle again she knew not only what the world looked like, but had -already chosen her kingdom. She had agreed that if she might rule over -that territory, she would covet no other. Thus at fifteen she had few -illusions about other people and none about herself. Whatever she writes -is finished and turned and set in its relation, not to the parsonage, -but to the universe. She is impersonal; she is inscrutable. When the -writer, Jane Austen, wrote down in the most remarkable sketch in the -book a little of Lady Greville's conversation, there is no trace of -anger at the snub which the clergyman's daughter, Jane Austen, once -received. Her gaze passes straight to the mark, and we know precisely -where, upon the map of human nature, that mark is. We know because Jane -Austen kept to her compact; she never trespassed beyond her boundaries. -Never, even at the emotional age of fifteen, did she round upon herself -in shame, obliterate a sarcasm in a spasm of compassion, or blur an -outline in a mist of rhapsody. Spasms and rhapsodies, she seems to have -said, pointing with her stick, end <i>there</i>; and the boundary line is -perfectly distinct. But she does not deny that moons and mountains and -castles exist—on the other side. She has even one romance of her own. -It is for the Queen of Scots. She really admired her very much. "One of -the first characters in the world," she called her, "a bewitching -Princess whose only friend was then the Duke of Norfolk, and whose only -ones now Mr. Whitaker, Mrs. Lefroy, Mrs. Knight and myself." With these -words her passion is neatly circumscribed, and rounded with a laugh. It -is amusing to remember in what terms the young Brontës wrote, not very -much later, in their northern parsonage, about the Duke of Wellington.</p> - -<p>The prim little girl grew up. She became "the prettiest, silliest, most -affected husband-hunting butterfly" Mrs. Mitford ever remembered, and, -incidentally, the authoress of a novel called <i>Pride and Prejudice</i>, -which, written stealthily under cover of a creaking door, lay for many -years unpublished. A little later, it is thought, she began another -story, <i>The Watsons</i>, and being for some reason dissatisfied with it, -left it unfinished. Unfinished and unsuccessful, it may throw more light -upon its writer's genius than the polished masterpiece blazing in -universal fame. Her difficulties are more apparent in it, and the method -she took to overcome them less artfully concealed. To begin with, the -stiffness and the bareness of the first chapters prove that she was one -of those writers who lay their facts out rather baldly in the first -version and then go back and back and back and cover them with flesh and -atmosphere. How it would have been done we cannot say—by what -suppressions and insertions and artful devices. But the miracle would -have been accomplished; the dull history of fourteen years of family -life would have been converted into another of those exquisite and -apparently effortless introductions; and we should never have guessed -what pages of preliminary drudgery Jane Austen forced her pen to go -through. Here we perceive that she was no conjuror after all. Like other -writers, she had to create the atmosphere in which her own peculiar -genius could bear fruit. Here she fumbles; here she keeps us waiting. -Suddenly, she has done it; now things can happen as she likes things to -happen. The Edwards' are going to the ball. The Tomlinsons' carriage is -passing; she can tell us that Charles is "being provided with his gloves -and told to keep them on"; Tom Musgrove retreats to a remote corner with -a barrel of oysters and is famously snug. Her genius is freed and -active. At once our senses quicken; we are possessed with the peculiar -intensity which she alone can impart. But of what is it all composed? Of -a ball in a country town; a few couples meeting and taking hands in an -assembly room; a little eating and drinking; and for catastrophe, a boy -being snubbed by one young lady and kindly treated by another. There is -no tragedy and no heroism. Yet for some reason the little scene is -moving out of all proportion to its surface solemnity. We have been made -to see that if Emma acted so in the ball-room, how considerate, how -tender, inspired by what sincerity of feeling she would have shown -herself in those graver crises of life which, as we watch her, come -inevitably before our eyes. Jane Austen is thus a mistress of much -deeper emotion than appears upon the surface. She stimulates us to -supply what is not there. What she offers is, apparently, a trifle, yet -is composed of something that expands in the reader's mind and endows -with the most enduring form of life scenes which are outwardly trivial. -Always the stress is laid upon character. How, we are made to wonder, -will Emma behave when Lord Osborne and Tom Musgrove make their call at -five minutes before three, just as Mary is bringing in the tray and the -knife-case? It is an extremely awkward situation. The young men are -accustomed to much greater refinement. Emma may prove herself ill-bred, -vulgar, a nonentity. The turns and twists of the dialogue keep us on the -tenterhooks of suspense. Our attention is half upon the present moment, -half upon the future. And when, in the end, Emma behaves in such a way -as to vindicate our highest hopes of her, we are moved as if we had been -made witnesses of a matter of the highest importance. Here, indeed, in -this unfinished and in the main inferior story are all the elements of -Jane Austen's greatness. It has the permanent quality of literature. -Think away the surface animation, the likeness to life, and there -remains to provide a deeper pleasure, an exquisite discrimination of -human values. Dismiss this too from the mind and one can dwell with -extreme satisfaction upon the more abstract art which, in the ball-room -scene, so varies the emotions and proportions the parts that it is -possible to enjoy it, as one enjoys poetry, for itself, and not as a -link which carries the story this way and that.</p> - -<p>But the gossip says of Jane Austen that she was perpendicular, precise, -and taciturn—"a poker of whom everybody is afraid". Of this too there -are traces; she could be merciless enough; she is one of the most -consistent satirists in the whole of literature. Those first angular -chapters of <i>The Watsons</i> prove that hers was not a prolific genius; -she had not, like Emily Brontë, merely to open the door to make herself -felt. Humbly and gaily she collected the twigs and straws out of which -the nest was to be made and placed them neatly together. The twigs and -straws were a little dry and a little dusty in themselves. There was the -big house and the little house; a tea party, a dinner party, and an -occasional picnic; life was hedged in by valuable connections and -adequate incomes; by muddy roads, wet feet, and a tendency on the part -of the ladies to get tired; a little money supported it, a little -consequence, and the education commonly enjoyed by upper middle-class -families living in the country. Vice, adventure, passion were left -outside. But of all this prosiness, of all this littleness, she evades -nothing, and nothing is slurred over. Patiently and precisely she tells -us how they "made no stop anywhere till they reached Newbury, where a -comfortable meal, uniting dinner and supper, wound up the enjoyments and -fatigues of the day". Nor does she pay to conventions merely the tribute -of lip homage; she believes in them besides accepting them. When she is -describing a clergyman, like Edmund Bertram, or a sailor, in particular, -she appears debarred by the sanctity of his office from the free use of -her chief tool, the comic genius, and is apt therefore to lapse into -decorous panegyric or matter-of-fact description. But these are -exceptions; for the most part her attitude recalls the anonymous ladies' -ejaculation—"A wit, a delineator of character, who does not talk is -terrific indeed!" She wishes neither to reform nor to annihilate; she is -silent; and that is terrific indeed. One after another she creates her -fools, her prigs, her worldlings, her Mr. Collins', her Sir Walter -Elliotts, her Mrs. Bennetts. She encircles them with the lash of a -whip-like phrase which, as it runs round them, cuts out their -silhouettes for ever. But there they remain; no excuse is found for them -and no mercy shown them. Nothing remains of Julia and Maria Bertram when -she has done with them; Lady Bertram is left "sitting and calling to Pug -and trying to keep him from the flower beds" eternally. A divine justice -is meted out; Dr. Grant, who begins by liking his goose tender, ends by -bringing on "apoplexy and death, by three great institutionary dinners -in one week". Sometimes it seems as if her creatures were born merely to -give Jane Austen the supreme delight of slicing their heads off. She is -satisfied; she is content; she would not alter a hair on anybody's head, -or move one brick or one blade of grass in a world which provides her -with such exquisite delight.</p> - -<p>Nor, indeed, would we. For even if the pangs of outraged vanity, or the -heat of moral wrath, urged us to improve away a world so full of spite, -pettiness, and folly, the task is beyond our powers. People are like -that—the girl of fifteen knew it; the mature woman proves it. At this -very moment some Lady Bertram finds it almost too trying to keep Pug -from the flower beds; she sends Chapman to help Miss Fanny, a little -late. The discrimination is so perfect, the satire so just that, -consistent though it is, it almost escapes our notice. No touch of -pettiness, no hint of spite, rouses us from our contemplation. Delight -strangely mingles with our amusement. Beauty illumines these fools.</p> - -<p>That elusive quality is indeed often made up of very different parts, -which it needs a peculiar genius to bring together. The wit of Jane -Austen has for partner the perfection of her taste. Her fool is a fool, -her snob is a snob, because he departs from the model of sanity and -sense which she has in mind, and conveys to us unmistakably even while -she makes us laugh. Never did any novelist make more use of an -impeccable sense of human values. It is against the disc of an unerring -heart, an unfailing good taste, an almost stern morality, that she shows -up those deviations from kindness, truth, and sincerity which are among -the most delightful things in English literature. She depicts a Mary -Crawford in her mixture of good and bad entirely by this means. She lets -her rattle on against the clergy, or in favour of a baronetage and ten -thousand a year with all the ease and spirit possible; but now and again -she strikes one note of her own, very quietly, but in perfect tune, and -at once all Mary Crawford's chatter, though it continues to amuse, rings -flat. Hence the depth, the beauty, the complexity of her scenes. From -such contrasts there comes a beauty, a solemnity even which are not only -as remarkable as her wit, but an inseparable part of it. In <i>The -Watsons</i> she gives us a foretaste of this power; she makes us wonder why -an ordinary act of kindness, as she describes it, becomes so full of -meaning. In her masterpieces, the same gift is brought to perfection. -Here is nothing out of the way; it is midday in Northamptonshire; a dull -young man is talking to rather a weakly young woman on the stairs as -they go up to dress for dinner, with housemaids passing. But, from -triviality, from commonplace, their words become suddenly full of -meaning, and the moment for both one of the most memorable in their -lives. It fills itself; it shines; it glows; it hangs before us, deep, -trembling, serene for a second; next, the housemaid passes, and this -drop in which all the happiness of life has collected gently subsides -again to become part of the ebb and flow of ordinary existence.</p> - -<p>What more natural then, with this insight into their profundity, than -that Jane Austen should have chosen to write of the trivialities of day -to day existence, of parties, picnics, and country dances? No -"suggestions to alter her style of writing" from the Prince Regent or -Mr. Clarke could tempt her; no romance, no adventure, no politics or -intrigue could hold a candle to life on a country house staircase as she -saw it. Indeed, the Prince Regent and his librarian had run their heads -against a very formidable obstacle; they were trying to tamper with an -incorruptible conscience, to disturb an infallible discretion. The child -who formed her sentences so finely when she was fifteen never ceased to -form them, and never wrote for the Prince Regent or his Librarian, but -for the world at large. She knew exactly what her powers were, and what -material they were fitted to deal with as material should be dealt with -by a writer, whose standard of finality was high. There were impressions -that lay outside her province; emotions that by no stretch or artifice -could be properly coated and covered by her own resources. For example, -she could not make a girl talk enthusiastically of banners and chapels. -She could not throw herself wholeheartedly into a romantic moment. She -had all sorts of devices for evading scenes of passion. Nature and its -beauties she approached in a sidelong way of her own. She describes a -beautiful night without once mentioning the moon. Nevertheless, as we -read the few formal phrases about "the brilliancy of an unclouded night -and the contrast of the deep shade of the woods" the night is at once as -"solemn, and soothing, and lovely" as she tells us, quite simply, that -it was.</p> - -<p>The balance of her gifts was singularly perfect. Among her finished -novels there are no failures, and among her many chapters few that sink -markedly below the level of the others. But, after all, she died at the -age of forty-two. She died at the height of her powers. She was still -subject to those changes which often make the final period of a writer's -career the most interesting of all. Vivacious, irrepressible, gifted -with an invention of great vitality, there can be no doubt that she -would have written more, had she lived, and it is tempting to consider -whether she would not have written differently. The boundaries were -marked; moons, mountains, and castles lay on the other side. But was she -not sometimes tempted to trespass for a minute? Was she not beginning, -in her own gay and brilliant manner, to contemplate a little voyage of -discovery?</p> - -<p>Let us take <i>Persuasion</i>, the last completed novel, and look by its -light at the books she might have written had she lived. There is a -peculiar beauty and a peculiar dullness in <i>Persuasion</i>. The dullness -is that which so often marks the transition stage between two different -periods. The writer is a little bored. She has grown too familiar with -the ways of her world; she no longer notes them freshly. There is an -asperity in her comedy which suggests that she has almost ceased to be -amused by the vanities of a Sir Walter or the snobbery of a Miss -Elliott. The satire is harsh, and the comedy crude. She is no longer so -freshly aware of the amusements of daily life. Her mind is not -altogether on her object. But, while we feel that Jane Austen has done -this before, and done it better, we also feel that she is trying to do -something which she has never yet attempted. There is a new element in -<i>Persuasion</i>, the quality, perhaps, that made Dr. Whewell fire up and -insist that it was "the most beautiful of her works". She is beginning -to discover that the world is larger, more mysterious, and more romantic -than she had supposed. We feel it to be true of herself when she says of -Anne: "She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned -romance as she grew older—the natural sequel of an unnatural -beginning". She dwells frequently upon the beauty and the melancholy of -nature, upon the autumn where she had been wont to dwell upon the -spring. She talks of the "influence so sweet and so sad of autumnal -months in the country". She marks "the tawny leaves and withered -hedges". "One does not love a place the less because one has suffered in -it", she observes. But it is not only in a new sensibility to nature -that we detect the change. Her attitude to life itself is altered. She -is seeing it, for the greater part of the book, through the eyes of a -woman who, unhappy herself, has a special sympathy for the happiness and -unhappiness of others, which, until the very end, she is forced to -comment upon in silence. Therefore the observation is less of facts and -more of feelings than is usual. There is an expressed emotion in the -scene at the concert and in the famous talk about woman's constancy -which proves not merely the biographical fact that Jane Austen had -loved, but the æsthetic fact that she was no longer afraid to say so. -Experience, when it was of a serious kind, had to sink very deep, and to -be thoroughly disinfected by the passage of time, before she allowed -herself to deal with it in fiction. But now, in 1817, she was ready. -Outwardly, too, in her circumstances, a change was imminent. Her fame -had grown very slowly. "I doubt", wrote Mr. Austen Leigh, "whether it -would be possible to mention any other author of note whose personal -obscurity was so complete." Had she lived a few more years only, all -that would have been altered. She would have stayed in London, dined -out, lunched out, met famous people, made new friends, read, travelled, -and carried back to the quiet country cottage a hoard of observations to -feast upon at leisure.</p> - -<p>And what effect would all this have had upon the six novels that Jane -Austen did not write? She would not have written of crime, of passion, -or of adventure. She would not have been rushed by the importunity of -publishers or the flattery of friends into slovenliness or insincerity. -But she would have known more. Her sense of security would have been -shaken. Her comedy would have suffered. She would have trusted less -(this is already perceptible in <i>Persuasion</i>) to dialogue and more to -reflection to give us a knowledge of her characters. Those marvellous -little speeches which sum up, in a few minutes' chatter, all that we -need in order to know an Admiral Croft or a Mrs. Musgrove for ever, that -shorthand, hit-or-miss method which contains chapters of analysis and -psychology, would have become too crude to hold all that she now -perceived of the complexity of human nature. She would have devised a -method, clear and composed as ever, but deeper and more suggestive, for -conveying not only what people say, but what they leave unsaid; not only -what they are, but what life is. She would have stood farther away from -her characters, and seen them more as a group, less as individuals. Her -satire, while it played less incessantly, would have been more stringent -and severe. She would have been the forerunner of Henry James and of -Proust—but enough. Vain are these speculations: the most perfect -artist among women, the writer whose books are immortal, died "just as she -was beginning to feel confidence in her own success".</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_9_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_1"><span class="label">[9]</span></a><i>Love and Friendship</i>, Chatto and Windus.</p></div> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2><a id="Modern_Fiction"><i>Modern Fiction</i></a></h2> - - -<p>In making any survey, even the freest and loosest, of modern fiction it -is difficult not to take it for granted that the modern practice of the -art is somehow an improvement upon the old. With their simple tools and -primitive materials, it might be said, Fielding did well and Jane Austen -even better, but compare their opportunities with ours! Their -masterpieces certainly have a strange air of simplicity. And yet the -analogy between literature and the process, to choose an example, of -making motor cars scarcely holds good beyond the first glance. It is -doubtful whether in the course of the centuries, though we have learnt -much about making machines, we have learnt anything about making -literature. We do not come to write better; all that we can be said to -do is to keep moving, now a little in this direction, now in that, but -with a circular tendency should the whole course of the track be viewed -from a sufficiently lofty pinnacle. It need scarcely be said that we -make no claim to stand, even momentarily, upon that vantage ground. On -the flat, in the crowd, half blind with dust, we look back with envy to -those happier warriors, whose battle is won and whose achievements wear -so serene an air of accomplishment that we can scarcely refrain from -whispering that the fight was not so fierce for them as for us. It is -for the historian of literature to decide; for him to say if we are now -beginning or ending or standing in the middle of a great period of prose -fiction, for down in the plain little is visible. We only know that -certain gratitudes and hostilities inspire us; that certain paths seem -to lead to fertile land, others to the dust and the desert; and of this -perhaps it may be worth while to attempt some account.</p> - -<p>Our quarrel, then, is not with the classics, and if we speak of -quarrelling with Mr. Wells, Mr. Bennett, and Mr. Galsworthy it is partly -that by the mere fact of their existence in the flesh their work has a -living, breathing, every day imperfection which bids us take what -liberties with it we choose. But it is also true that, while we thank -them for a thousand gifts, we reserve our unconditional gratitude for -Mr. Hardy, for Mr. Conrad, and in a much lesser degree for the Mr. -Hudson, of <i>The Purple Land, Green Mansions</i>, and <i>Far Away and Long -Ago</i>. Mr. Wells, Mr. Bennett, and Mr. Galsworthy have excited so many -hopes and disappointed them so persistently that our gratitude largely -takes the form of thanking them for having shown us what they might have -done but have not done; what we certainly could not do, but as -certainly, perhaps, do not wish to do. No single phrase will sum up the -charge or grievance which we have to bring against a mass of work so -large in its volume and embodying so many qualities, both admirable and -the reverse. If we tried to formulate our meaning in one word we should -say that these three writers are materialists. It is because they are -concerned not with the spirit but with the body that they have -disappointed us, and left us with the feeling that the sooner English -fiction turns its back upon them, as politely as may be, and marches, if -only into the desert, the better for its soul. Naturally, no single word -reaches the centre of three separate targets. In the case of Mr. Wells -it falls notably wide of the mark. And yet even with him it indicates to -our thinking the fatal alloy in his genius, the great clod of clay that -has got itself mixed up with the purity of his inspiration. But Mr. -Bennett is perhaps the worst culprit of the three, inasmuch as he is by -far the best workman. He can make a book so well constructed and solid -in its craftsmanship that it is difficult for the most exacting of -critics to see through what chink or crevice decay can creep in. There -is not so much as a draught between the frames of the windows, or a crack -in the boards. And yet—if life should refuse to live there? That -is a risk which the creator of <i>The Old Wives' Tale</i>, George Cannon, -Edwin Clayhanger, and hosts of other figures, may well claim to have -surmounted. His characters live abundantly, even unexpectedly, but it -remains to ask how do they live, and what do they live for? More and -more they seem to us, deserting even the well-built villa in the Five -Towns, to spend their time in some softly padded first-class railway -carriage, pressing bells and buttons innumerable; and the destiny to -which they travel so luxuriously becomes more and more unquestionably an -eternity of bliss spent in the very best hotel in Brighton. It can -scarcely be said of Mr. Wells that he is a materialist in the sense that -he takes too much delight in the solidity of his fabric. His mind is too -generous in its sympathies to allow him to spend much time in making -things shipshape and substantial. He is a materialist from sheer -goodness of heart, taking upon his shoulders the work that ought to have -been discharged by Government officials, and in the plethora of his -ideas and facts scarcely having leisure to realise, or forgetting to -think important, the crudity and coarseness of his human beings. Yet -what more damaging criticism can there be both of his earth and of his -Heaven than that they are to be inhabited here and hereafter by his -Joans and his Peters? Does not the inferiority of their natures tarnish -whatever institutions and ideals may be provided for them by the -generosity of their creator? Nor, profoundly though we respect the -integrity and humanity of Mr. Galsworthy, shall we find what we seek in -his pages.</p> - -<p>If we fasten, then, one label on all these books, on which is one word -materialists, we mean by it that they write of unimportant things; that -they spend immense skill and immense industry making the trivial and the -transitory appear the true and the enduring.</p> - -<p>We have to admit that we are exacting, and, further, that we find it -difficult to justify our discontent by explaining what it is that we -exact. We frame our question differently at different times. But it -reappears most persistently as we drop the finished novel on the crest -of a sigh—Is it worth while? What is the point of it all? Can it be -that owing to one of those little deviations which the human spirit -seems to make from time to time Mr. Bennett has come down with his -magnificent apparatus for catching life just an inch or two on the wrong -side? Life escapes; and perhaps without life nothing else is worth -while. It is a confession of vagueness to have to make use of such a -figure as this, but we scarcely better the matter by speaking, as -critics are prone to do, of reality. Admitting the vagueness which -afflicts all criticism of novels, let us hazard the opinion that for us -at this moment the form of fiction most in vogue more often misses than -secures the thing we seek. Whether we call it life or spirit, truth or -reality, this, the essential thing, has moved off, or on, and refuses to -be contained any longer in such ill-fitting vestments as we provide. -Nevertheless, we go on perseveringly, conscientiously, constructing our -two and thirty chapters after a design which more and more ceases to -resemble the vision in our minds. So much of the enormous labour of -proving the solidity, the likeness to life, of the story is not merely -labour thrown away but labour misplaced to the extent of obscuring and -blotting out the light of the conception. The writer seems constrained, -not by his own free will but by some powerful and unscrupulous tyrant -who has him in thrall to provide a plot, to provide comedy, tragedy, -love, interest, and an air of probability embalming the whole so -impeccable that if all his figures were to come to life they would find -themselves dressed down to the last button of their coats in the fashion -of the hour. The tyrant is obeyed; the novel is done to a turn. But -sometimes, more and more often as time goes by, we suspect a momentary -doubt, a spasm of rebellion, as the pages fill themselves in the -customary way. Is life like this? Must novels be like this?</p> - -<p>Look within and life, it seems, is very far from being "like this". -Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind -receives a myriad impressions—trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or -engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an -incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape -themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls -differently from of old; the moment of importance came not here but -there; so that if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could -write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon -his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no -comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted -style, and perhaps not a single button sewn on as the Bond Street -tailors would have it. Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically -arranged; but a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding -us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not the task of -the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed -spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little -mixture of the alien and external as possible? We are not pleading -merely for courage and sincerity; we are suggesting that the proper -stuff of fiction is a little other than custom would have us believe -it.</p> - -<p>It is, at any rate, in some such fashion as this that we seek to -define the quality which distinguishes the work of several young -writers, among whom Mr. James Joyce is the most notable, from that of -their predecessors. They attempt to come closer to life, and to preserve -more sincerely and exactly what interests and moves them, even if to do -so they must discard most of the conventions which are commonly observed -by the novelist. Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in -the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however -disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident -scores upon the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life -exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is -commonly thought small. Any one who has read <i>The Portrait of the -Artist as a Young Man</i> or, what promises to be a far more interesting -work, <i>Ulysses</i>,<a id="FNanchor_10_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_1" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> now appearing in the -<i>Little Review</i>, will have hazarded some theory of this nature as -to Mr. Joyce's intention. On our part, with such a fragment before us, -it is hazarded rather than affirmed; but whatever the intention of the -whole there can be no question but that it is of the utmost sincerity -and that the result, difficult or unpleasant as we may judge it, is -undeniably important. In contrast with those whom we have called -materialists Mr. Joyce is spiritual; he is concerned at all costs to -reveal the flickerings of that innermost flame which flashes its -messages through the brain, and in order to preserve it he disregards -with complete courage whatever seems to him adventitious, whether it be -probability, or coherence or any other of these signposts which for -generations have served to support the imagination of a reader when -called upon to imagine what he can neither touch nor see. The scene in -the cemetery, for instance, with its brilliancy, its sordidity, its -incoherence, its sudden lightning flashes of significance, does -undoubtedly come so close to the quick of the mind that, on a first -reading at any rate, it is difficult not to acclaim a masterpiece. If we -want life itself here, surely we have it. Indeed, we find ourselves -fumbling rather awkwardly if we try to say what else we wish, and for -what reason a work of such originality yet fails to compare, -for we must take high examples, with <i>Youth</i> or <i>The Mayor of -Casterbridge</i>. It fails because of the comparative poverty of the -writer's mind, we might say simply and have done with it. But it is -possible to press a little further and wonder whether we may not refer -our sense of being in a bright yet narrow room, confined and shut in, -rather than enlarged and set free, to some limitation imposed by the -method as well as by the mind. Is it the method that inhibits the -creative power? Is it due to the method that we feel neither jovial nor -magnanimous, but centred in a self which, in spite of its tremor of -susceptibility, never embraces or creates what is outside itself and -beyond? Does the emphasis laid, perhaps didactically, upon indecency, -contribute to the effect of something angular and isolated? Or is it -merely that in any effort of such originality it is much easier, for -contemporaries especially, to feel what it lacks than to name what it -gives? In any case it is a mistake to stand outside examining "methods". -Any method is right, every method is right, that expresses what we wish -to express, if we are writers; that brings us closer to the novelist's -intention if we are readers. This method has the merit of bringing us -closer to what we were prepared to call life itself; did not the reading -of <i>Ulysses</i> suggest how much of life is excluded or ignored, and -did it not come with a shock to open <i>Tristram Shandy</i> or even -<i>Pendennis</i> and be by them convinced that there are not only other -aspects of life, but more important ones into the bargain.</p> - -<p>However this may be, the problem before the novelist at present, as we -suppose it to have been in the past, is to contrive means of being free -to set down what he chooses. He has to have the courage to say that what -interests him is no longer "this" but "that": out of "that" alone must -he construct his work. For the moderns "that", the point of interest, -lies very likely in the dark places of psychology. At once, therefore, -the accent falls a little differently; the emphasis is upon something -hitherto ignored; at once a different outline of form becomes necessary, -difficult for us to grasp, incomprehensible to our predecessors. No one -but a modern, perhaps no one but a Russian, would have felt the interest -of the situation which Tchekov has made into the short story which he -calls "Gusev". Some Russian soldiers lie ill on board a ship which is -taking them back to Russia. We are given a few scraps of their talk and -some of their thoughts; then one of them dies and is carried away; the -talk goes on among the others for a time, until Gusev himself dies, and -looking "like a carrot or a radish" is thrown overboard. The emphasis is -laid upon such unexpected places that at first it seems as if there were -no emphasis at all; and then, as the eyes accustom themselves to -twilight and discern the shapes of things in a room we see how complete -the story is, how profound, and how truly in obedience to his vision -Tchekov has chosen this, that, and the other, and placed them together -to compose something new. But it is impossible to say "this is comic", -or "that is tragic", nor are we certain, since short stories, we have -been taught, should be brief and conclusive, whether this, which is -vague and inconclusive, should be called a short story at all.</p> - -<p>The most elementary remarks upon modern English fiction can hardly avoid -some mention of the Russian influence, and if the Russians are mentioned -one runs the risk of feeling that to write of any fiction save theirs is -waste of time. If we want understanding of the soul and heart where else -shall we find it of comparable profundity? If we are sick of our own -materialism the least considerable of their novelists has by right of -birth a natural reverence for the human spirit. "Learn to make yourself -akin to people. . . . But let this sympathy be not with the mind—for -it is easy with the mind—but with the heart, with love towards them." -In every great Russian writer we seem to discern the features of a saint, -if sympathy for the sufferings of others, love towards them, endeavour -to reach some goal worthy of the most exacting demands of the spirit -constitute saintliness. It is the saint in them which confounds us with -a feeling of our own irreligious triviality, and turns so many of our -famous novels to tinsel and trickery. The conclusions of the Russian -mind, thus comprehensive and compassionate, are inevitably, perhaps, of -the utmost sadness. More accurately indeed we might speak of the -inconclusiveness of the Russian mind. It is the sense that there is no -answer, that if honestly examined life presents question after question -which must be left to sound on and on after the story is over in -hopeless interrogation that fills us with a deep, and finally it may be -with a resentful, despair. They are right perhaps; unquestionably they -see further than we do and without our gross impediments of vision. But -perhaps we see something that escapes them, or why should this voice of -protest mix itself with our gloom? The voice of protest is the voice of -another and an ancient civilisation which seems to have bred in us the -instinct to enjoy and fight rather than to suffer and understand. -English fiction from Sterne to Meredith bears witness to our natural -delight in humour and comedy, in the beauty of earth, in the activities -of the intellect, and in the splendour of the body. But any deductions -that we may draw from the comparison of two fictions so immeasurably far -apart are futile save indeed as they flood us with a view of the -infinite possibilities of the art and remind us that there is no limit -to the horizon, and that nothing—no "method", no experiment, even of -the wildest—is forbidden, but only falsity and pretence. "The proper -stuff of fiction" does not exist; everything is the proper stuff of -fiction, every feeling, every thought; every quality of brain and spirit -is drawn upon; no perception comes amiss. And if we can imagine the art -of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly -bid us break her and bully her, as well as honour and love her, for so -her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured.</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_10_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_1"><span class="label">[10]</span></a>Written April 1919.</p></div> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2><a id="Jane_Eyre"><i>Jane Eyre and<br> -Wuthering Heights</i></a><a id="FNanchor_11_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_1" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></h2> - - -<p>Of the hundred years that have passed since Charlotte Brontë was born, -she, the centre now of so much legend, devotion, and literature, lived -but thirty-nine. It is strange to reflect how different those legends -might have been had her life reached the ordinary human span. She might -have become, like some of her famous contemporaries, a figure familiarly -met with in London and elsewhere, the subject of pictures and anecdotes -innumerable, the writer of many novels, of memoirs possibly, removed -from us well within the memory of the middle-aged in all the splendour -of established fame. She might have been wealthy, she might have been -prosperous. But it is not so. When we think of her we have to imagine -some one who had no lot in our modern world; we have to cast our minds -back to the 'fifties of the last century, to a remote parsonage upon the -wild Yorkshire moors. In that parsonage, and on those moors, unhappy and -lonely, in her poverty and her exaltation, she remains for ever.</p> - -<p>These circumstances, as they affected her character, may have left their -traces on her work. A novelist, we reflect, is bound to build up his -structure with much very perishable material which begins by lending it -reality and ends by cumbering it with rubbish. As we open <i>Jane Eyre</i> -once more we cannot stifle the suspicion that we shall find her world of -imagination as antiquated, mid-Victorian, and out of date as the -parsonage on the moor, a place only to be visited by the curious, only -preserved by the pious. So we open <i>Jane Eyre</i>; and in two pages every -doubt is swept clean from our minds.</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left -were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from -the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of -my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered -a pale blank of mist and cloud; near, a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat -shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and -lamentable blast.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>There is nothing there more perishable than the moor itself, or more -subject to the sway of fashion than the "long and lamentable blast". Nor -is this exhilaration short-lived. It rushes us through the entire -volume, without giving us time to think, without letting us lift our -eyes from the page. So intense is our absorption that if some one moves -in the room the movement seems to take place not there but up in -Yorkshire. The writer has us by the hand, forces us along her road, -makes us see what she sees, never leaves us for a moment or allows us to -forget her.<a id="FNanchor_12_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_1" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> At the end we are steeped through and through with the -genius, the vehemence, the indignation of Charlotte Brontë. Remarkable -faces, figures of strong outline and gnarled feature have flashed upon -us in passing; but it is through her eyes that we have seen them. Once -she is gone, we seek for them in vain. Think of Rochester and we have to -think of Jane Eyre. Think of the moor, and again, there is Jane Eyre. -Think of the drawing-room, even, those "white carpets on which seemed -laid brilliant garlands of flowers", that "pale Parian mantelpiece" with -its Bohemia glass of "ruby red" and the "general blending of snow and -fire"—what is all that except Jane Eyre?</p> - -<p>The drawbacks of being Jane Eyre are not far to seek. Always to be a -governess and always to be in love is a serious limitation in a world -which is full, after all, of people who are neither one nor the other. -The characters of a Jane Austen or of a Tolstoi have a million facets -compared with these. They live and are complex by means of their effect -upon many different people who serve to mirror them in the round. They -move hither and thither whether their creators watch them or not, and -the world in which they live seems to us an independent world which we -can visit, now that they have created it, by ourselves. Thomas Hardy is -more akin to Charlotte Brontë in the power of his personality and the -narrowness of his vision. But the differences are vast. As we read <i>Jude -the Obscure</i> we are not rushed to a finish; we brood and ponder and -drift away from the text in plethoric trains of thought which build up -round the characters an atmosphere of question and suggestion of which -they are themselves, as often as not, unconscious. Simple peasants as -they are, we are forced to confront them with destinies and questionings -of the hugest import, so that often it seems as if the most important -characters in a Hardy novel are those which have no names. Of this -power, of this speculative curiosity, Charlotte Brontë has no trace. -She does not attempt to solve the problems of human life; she is even -unaware that such problems exist; all her force, and it is the more -tremendous for being constricted, goes into the assertion, "I love", "I -hate", "I suffer".</p> - -<p>For the self-centred and self-limited writers have a power denied the -more catholic and broad-minded. Their impressions are close packed and -strongly stamped between their narrow walls. Nothing issues from their -minds which has not been marked with their own impress. They learn -little from other writers, and what they adopt they cannot assimilate. -Both Hardy and Charlotte Brontë appear to have founded their styles -upon a stiff and decorous journalism. The staple of their prose is -awkward and unyielding. But both with labour and the most obstinate -integrity by thinking every thought until it has subdued words to -itself, have forged for themselves a prose which takes the mould of -their minds entire; which has, into the bargain, a beauty, a power, a -swiftness of its own. Charlotte Brontë, at least, owed nothing to the -reading of many books. She never learnt the smoothness of the -professional writer, or acquired his ability to stuff and sway his -language as he chooses. "I could never rest in communication with -strong, discreet, and refined minds, whether male or female," she -writes, as any leader-writer in a provincial journal might have written; -but gathering fire and speed goes on in her own authentic voice "till I -had passed the outworks of conventional reserve and crossed the -threshold of confidence, and won a place by their hearts' very -hearthstone". It is there that she takes her seat; it is the red and -fitful glow of the heart's fire which illumines her page. In other -words, we read Charlotte Brontë not for exquisite observation of -character—her characters are vigorous and elementary; not for -comedy—hers is grim and crude; not for a philosophic view of -life—hers is that of a country parson's daughter; but for her poetry. -Probably that is so with all writers who have, as she has, an overpowering -personality, who, as we should say in real life, have only to open the -door to make themselves felt. There is in them some untamed ferocity -perpetually at war with the accepted order of things which makes them -desire to create instantly rather than to observe patiently. This very -ardour, rejecting half shades and other minor impediments, wings its way -past the daily conduct of ordinary people and allies itself with their -more inarticulate passions. It makes them poets, or, if they choose to -write in prose, intolerant of its restrictions. Hence it is that both -Emily and Charlotte are always invoking the help of nature. They both -feel the need of some more powerful symbol of the vast and slumbering -passions in human nature than words or actions can convey. It is with a -description of a storm that Charlotte ends her finest novel -<i>Villette</i>. "The skies hang full and dark—a wrack sails from the -west; the clouds cast themselves into strange forms." So she calls in -nature to describe a state of mind which could not otherwise be expressed. -But neither of the sisters observed nature accurately as Dorothy Wordsworth -observed it, or painted it minutely as Tennyson painted it. They seized -those aspects of the earth which were most akin to what they themselves -felt or imputed to their characters, and so their storms, their moors, -their lovely spaces of summer weather are not ornaments applied to decorate -a dull page or display the writer's powers of observation—they carry -on the emotion and light up the meaning of the book.</p> - -<p>The meaning of a book, which lies so often apart from what happens and -what is said and consists rather in some connection which things in -themselves different have had for the writer, is necessarily hard to -grasp. Especially this is so when, like the Brontës, the writer is -poetic, and his meaning inseparable from his language, and itself rather -a mood than a particular observation. <i>Wuthering Heights</i> is a more -difficult book to understand than <i>Jane Eyre</i>, because Emily was a -greater poet than Charlotte. When Charlotte wrote she said with -eloquence and splendour and passion "I love", "I hate", "I suffer". Her -experience, though more intense, is on a level with our own. But there -is no "I" in <i>Wuthering Heights</i>. There are no governesses. There are -no employers. There is love, but it is not the love of men and women. Emily -was inspired by some more general conception. The impulse which urged -her to create was not her own suffering or her own injuries. She looked -out upon a world cleft into gigantic disorder and felt within her the -power to unite it in a book. That gigantic ambition is to be felt -throughout the novel—a struggle, half thwarted but of superb -conviction, to say something through the mouths of her characters which -is not merely "I love" or "I hate", but "we, the whole human race" and -"you, the eternal powers . . ." the sentence remains unfinished. It is -not strange that it should be so; rather it is astonishing that she can -make us feel what she had it in her to say at all. It surges up in the -half-articulate words of Catherine Earnshaw, "If all else perished and -<i>he</i> remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained -and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger; I -should not seem part of it". It breaks out again in the presence of the -dead. "I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel -an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter—the eternity -they have entered—where life is boundless in its duration, and love -in its sympathy and joy in its fulness." It is this suggestion of power -underlying the apparitions of human nature, and lifting them up into the -presence of greatness that gives the book its huge stature among other -novels. But it was not enough for Emily Brontë to write a few lyrics, -to utter a cry, to express a creed. In her poems she did this once and -for all, and her poems will perhaps outlast her novel. But she was -novelist as well as poet. She must take upon herself a more laborious -and a more ungrateful task. She must face the fact of other existences, -grapple with the mechanism of external things, build up, in recognisable -shape, farms and houses and report the speeches of men and women who -existed independently of herself. And so we reach these summits of -emotion not by rant or rhapsody but by hearing a girl sing old songs to -herself as she rocks in the branches of a tree; by watching the moor -sheep crop the turf; by listening to the soft wind breathing through the -grass. The life at the farm with all its absurdities and its -improbability is laid open to us. We are given every opportunity of -comparing <i>Wuthering Heights</i> with a real farm and Heathcliff with a -real man. How, we are allowed to ask, can there be truth or insight or -the finer shades of emotion in men and women who so little resemble what -we have seen ourselves? But even as we ask it we see in Heathcliff the -brother that a sister of genius might have seen; he is impossible we -say, but nevertheless no boy in literature has so vivid an existence as -his. So it is with the two Catherines; never could women feel as they do -or act in their manner, we say. All the same, they are the most lovable -women in English fiction. It is as if she could tear up all that we know -human beings by, and fill these unrecognisable transparences with such a -gust of life that they transcend reality. Hers, then, is the rarest of -all powers. She could free life from its dependence on facts; with a few -touches indicate the spirit of a face so that it needs no body; by -speaking of the moor make the wind blow and the thunder roar.</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_11_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_1"><span class="label">[11]</span></a>Written in 1916.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_12_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_1"><span class="label">[12]</span></a>Charlotte and Emily Brontë had much the same sense of -colour. ". . . we saw—ah! it was beautiful—a splendid place -carpeted with crimson, and crimson-covered chairs and tables, and a pure -white ceiling bordered by gold, a shower of glass drops hanging in silver -chains from the centre, and shimmering with little soft tapers" -(<i>Wuthering Heights</i>). Yet it was merely a very pretty drawing-room, -and within it a boudoir, both spread with white carpets, on which seemed -laid brilliant garlands of flowers; both ceiled with snowy mouldings of -white grapes and vine leaves, beneath which glowed in rich contrast -crimson couches and ottomans; while the ornaments on the pale Parian -mantelpiece were of sparkling Bohemia glass, ruby red; and between the -windows large mirrors repeated the general blending of snow and -fire.</p></div> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2><a id="George_Eliot"><i>George Eliot</i></a></h2> - - -<p>To read George Eliot attentively is to become aware how little one knows -about her. It is also to become aware of the credulity, not very -creditable to one's insight, with which, half consciously and partly -maliciously, one had accepted the late Victorian version of a deluded -woman who held phantom sway over subjects even more deluded than -herself. At what moment, and by what means her spell was broken it is -difficult to ascertain. Some people attribute it to the publication of -her <i>Life</i>. Perhaps George Meredith, with his phrase about the -"mercurial little showman" and the "errant woman" on the daïs, gave -point and poison to the arrows of thousands incapable of aiming them so -accurately, but delighted to let fly. She became one of the butts for -youth to laugh at, the convenient symbol of a group of serious people -who were all guilty of the same idolatry and could be dismissed with the -same scorn. Lord Acton had said that she was greater than Dante; Herbert -Spencer exempted her novels, as if they were not novels, when he banned -all fiction from the London Library. She was the pride and paragon of -her sex. Moreover, her private record was not more alluring than her -public. Asked to describe an afternoon at the Priory, the story-teller -always intimated that the memory of those serious Sunday afternoons had -come to tickle his sense of humour. He had been so much alarmed by the -grave lady in her low chair; he had been so anxious to say the -intelligent thing. Certainly, the talk had been very serious, as a note -in the fine clear hand of the great novelist bore witness. It was dated -on the Monday morning, and she accused herself of having spoken without -due forethought of Marivaux when she meant another; but no doubt, she -said, her listener had already supplied the correction. Still, the -memory of talking about Marivaux to George Eliot on a Sunday afternoon -was not a romantic memory. It had faded with the passage of the years. -It had not become picturesque.</p> - -<p>Indeed, one cannot escape the conviction that the long, heavy face with -its expression of serious and sullen and almost equine power has stamped -itself depressingly upon the minds of people who remember George Eliot, -so that it looks out upon them from her pages. Mr. Gosse has lately -described her as he saw her driving through London in a victoria—</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>a large, thick-set sybil, dreamy and immobile, whose massive features, -somewhat grim when seen in profile, were incongruously bordered by a -hat, always in the height of Paris fashion, which in those days commonly -included an immense ostrich feather.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>Lady Ritchie, with equal skill, has left a more intimate indoor -portrait:</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>She sat by the fire in a beautiful black satin gown, with a green shaded -lamp on the table beside her, where I saw German books lying and -pamphlets and ivory paper-cutters. She was very quiet and noble, with -two steady little eyes and a sweet voice. As I looked I felt her to be a -friend, not exactly a personal friend, but a good and benevolent -impulse.</p></blockquote> - - -<p>A scrap of her talk is preserved. "We ought to respect our influence," -she said. "We know by our own experience how very much others affect our -lives, and we must remember that we in turn must have the same effect -upon others." Jealously treasured, committed to memory, one can imagine -recalling the scene, repeating the words, thirty years later and -suddenly, for the first time, bursting into laughter.</p> - -<p>In all these records one feels that the recorder, even when he was in -the actual presence, kept his distance and kept his head, and never read -the novels in later years with the light of a vivid, or puzzling, or -beautiful personality dazzling in his eyes. In fiction, where so much of -personality is revealed, the absence of charm is a great lack; and her -critics, who have been, of course, mostly of the opposite sex, have -resented, half consciously perhaps, her deficiency in a quality which is -held to be supremely desirable in women. George Eliot was not charming; -she was not strongly feminine; she had none of those eccentricities and -inequalities of temper which give to so many artists the endearing -simplicity of children. One feels that to most people, as to Lady -Ritchie, she was "not exactly a personal friend, but a good and -benevolent impulse". But if we consider these portraits more closely we -shall find that they are all the portraits of an elderly celebrated -woman, dressed in black satin, driving in her victoria, a woman who has -been through her struggle and issued from it with a profound desire to -be of use to others, but with no wish for intimacy, save with the little -circle who had known her in the days of her youth. We know very little -about the days of her youth; but we do know that the culture, the -philosophy, the fame, and the influence were all built upon a very -humble foundation—she was the grand-daughter of a carpenter.</p> - -<p>The first volume of her life is a singularly depressing record. In it we -see her raising herself with groans and struggles from the intolerable -boredom of petty provincial society (her father had risen in the world -and become more middle class, but less picturesque) to be the assistant -editor of a highly intellectual London review, and the esteemed -companion of Herbert Spencer. The stages are painful as she reveals them -in the sad soliloquy in which Mr. Cross condemned her to tell the story -of her life. Marked in early youth as one "sure to get something up very -soon in the way of a clothing club", she proceeded to raise funds for -restoring a church by making a chart of ecclesiastical history; and that -was followed by a loss of faith which so disturbed her father that he -refused to live with her. Next came the struggle with the translation of -Strauss, which, dismal and "soul-stupefying" in itself, can scarcely -have been made less so by the usual feminine tasks of ordering a -household and nursing a dying father, and the distressing conviction, to -one so dependent upon affection, that by becoming a blue-stocking she -was forfeiting her brother's respect. "I used to go about like an owl," -she said, "to the great disgust of my brother." "Poor thing," wrote a -friend who saw her toiling through Strauss with a statue of the risen -Christ in front of her, "I do pity her sometimes, with her pale sickly -face and dreadful headaches, and anxiety, too, about her father." Yet, -though we cannot read the story without a strong desire that the stages -of her pilgrimage might have been made, if not more easy, at least more -beautiful, there is a dogged determination in her advance upon the -citadel of culture which raises it above our pity. Her development was -very slow and very awkward, but it had the irresistible impetus behind -it of a deep-seated and noble ambition. Every obstacle at length was -thrust from her path. She knew every one. She read everything. Her -astonishing intellectual vitality had triumphed. Youth was over, but -youth had been full of suffering. Then, at the age of thirty-five, at -the height of her powers, and in the fullness of her freedom, she made -the decision which was of such profound moment to her and still matters -even to us, and went to Weimar, alone with George Henry Lewes.</p> - -<p>The books which followed so soon after her union testify in the fullest -manner to the great liberation which had come to her with personal -happiness. In themselves they provide us with a plentiful feast. Yet at -the threshold of her literary career one may find in some of the -circumstances of her life influences that turned her mind to the past, -to the country village, to the quiet and beauty and simplicity of -childish memories and away from herself and the present. We understand -how it was that her first book was <i>Scenes of Clerical Life</i>, and not -<i>Middlemarch</i>. Her union with Lewes had surrounded her with affection, -but in view of the circumstances and of the conventions it had also -isolated her. "I wish it to be understood," she wrote in 1857, "that I -should never invite any one to come and see me who did not ask for the -invitation." She had been "cut off from what is called the world", she -said later, but she did not regret it. By becoming thus marked, first by -circumstances and later, inevitably, by her fame, she lost the power to -move on equal terms unnoted among her kind; and the loss for a novelist -was serious. Still, basking in the light and sunshine of <i>Scenes of -Clerical Life</i>, feeling the large mature mind spreading itself with a -luxurious sense of freedom in the world of her "remotest past", to speak -of loss seems inappropriate. Everything to such a mind was gain. All -experience filtered down through layer after layer of perception and -reflection, enriching and nourishing. The utmost we can say, in -qualifying her attitude towards fiction by what little we know of her -life, is that she had taken to heart certain lessons not usually learnt -early, if learnt at all, among which, perhaps, the most branded upon her -was the melancholy virtue of tolerance; her sympathies are with the -everyday lot, and play most happily in dwelling upon the homespun of -ordinary joys and sorrows. She has none of that romantic intensity which -is connected with a sense of one's own individuality, unsated and -unsubdued, cutting its shape sharply upon the background of the world. -What were the loves and sorrows of a snuffy old clergyman, dreaming over -his whisky, to the fiery egotism of Jane Eyre? The beauty of those first -books, <i>Scenes of Clerical Life</i>, <i>Adam Bede</i>, <i>The Mill on the Floss</i>, is -very great. It is impossible to estimate the merit of the Poysers, the -Dodsons, the Gilfils, the Bartons, and the rest with all their -surroundings and dependencies, because they have put on flesh and blood -and we move among them, now bored, now sympathetic, but always with that -unquestioning acceptance of all that they say and do, which we accord to -the great originals only. The flood of memory and humour which she pours -so spontaneously into one figure, one scene after another, until the -whole fabric of ancient rural England is revived, has so much in common -with a natural process that it leaves us with little consciousness that -there is anything to criticise. We accept; we feel the delicious warmth -and release of spirit which the great creative writers alone procure for -us. As one comes back to the books after years of absence they pour out, -even against our expectation, the same store of energy and heat, so that -we want more than anything to idle in the warmth as in the sun beating -down from the red orchard wall. If there is an element of unthinking -abandonment in thus submitting to the humours of Midland farmers and -their wives, that, too, is right in the circumstances. We scarcely wish -to analyse what we feel to be so large and deeply human. And when we -consider how distant in time the world of Shepperton and Hayslope is, -and how remote the minds of farmer and agricultural labourers from those -of most of George Eliot's readers, we can only attribute the ease and -pleasure with which we ramble from house to smithy, from cottage parlour -to rectory garden, to the fact that George Eliot makes us share their -lives, not in a spirit of condescension or of curiosity, but in a spirit -of sympathy. She is no satirist. The movement of her mind was too slow -and cumbersome to lend itself to comedy. But she gathers in her large -grasp a great bunch of the main elements of human nature and groups them -loosely together with a tolerant and wholesome understanding which, as -one finds upon re-reading, has not only kept her figures fresh and free, -but has given them an unexpected hold upon our laughter and tears. There -is the famous Mrs. Poyser. It would have been easy to work her -idiosyncrasies to death, and, as it is, perhaps, George Eliot gets her -laugh in the same place a little too often. But memory, after the book -is shut, brings out, as sometimes in real life, the details and -subtleties which some more salient characteristic has prevented us from -noticing at the time. We recollect that her health was not good. There -were occasions upon which she said nothing at all. She was patience -itself with a sick child. She doted upon Totty. Thus one can muse and -speculate about the greater number of George Eliot's characters and -find, even in the least important, a roominess and margin where those -qualities lurk which she has no call to bring from their obscurity.</p> - -<p>But in the midst of all this tolerance and sympathy there are, even in -the early books, moments of greater stress. Her humour has shown itself -broad enough to cover a wide range of fools and failures, mothers and -children, dogs and flourishing midland fields, farmers, sagacious or -fuddled over their ale, horse-dealers, inn-keepers, curates, and -carpenters. Over them all broods a certain romance, the only romance -that George Eliot allowed herself—the romance of the past. The books -are astonishingly readable and have no trace of pomposity or pretence. -But to the reader who holds a large stretch of her early work in view it -will become obvious that the mist of recollection gradually withdraws. -It is not that her power diminishes, for, to our thinking, it is at its -highest in the mature <i>Middlemarch</i>, the magnificent book which with -all its imperfections is one of the few English novels written for grown-up -people. But the world of fields and farms no longer contents her. In -real life she had sought her fortunes elsewhere; and though to look back -into the past was calming and consoling, there are, even in the early -works, traces of that troubled spirit, that exacting and questioning and -baffled presence who was George Eliot herself. In <i>Adam Bede</i> there is -a hint of her in Dinah. She shows herself far more openly and completely -in Maggie in <i>The Mill on the Floss</i>. She is Janet in <i>Janet's -Repentance</i>, and Romola, and Dorothea seeking wisdom and finding one -scarcely knows what in marriage with Ladislaw. Those who fall foul of -George Eliot do so, we incline to think, on account of her heroines; and -with good reason; for there is no doubt that they bring out the worst of -her, lead her into difficult places, make her self-conscious, didactic, -and occasionally vulgar. Yet if you could delete the whole sisterhood -you would leave a much smaller and a much inferior world, albeit a world -of greater artistic perfection and far superior jollity and comfort. In -accounting for her failure, in so far as it was a failure, one -recollects that she never wrote a story until she was thirty-seven, and -that by the time she was thirty-seven she had come to think of herself -with a mixture of pain and something like resentment. For long she -preferred not to think of herself at all. Then, when the first flush of -creative energy was exhausted and self-confidence had come to her, she -wrote more and more from the personal standpoint, but she did so without -the unhesitating abandonment of the young. Her self-consciousness is -always marked when her heroines say what she herself would have said. -She disguised them in every possible way. She granted them beauty and -wealth into the bargain; she invented, more improbably, a taste for -brandy. But the disconcerting and stimulating fact remained that she was -compelled by the very power of her genius to step forth in person upon -the quiet bucolic scene.</p> - -<p>The noble and beautiful girl who insisted upon being born into the Mill -on the Floss is the most obvious example of the ruin which a heroine can -strew about her. Humour controls her and keeps her lovable so long as -she is small and can be satisfied by eloping with the gipsies or -hammering nails into her doll; but she develops; and before George Eliot -knows what has happened she has a full-grown woman on her hands -demanding what neither gipsies nor dolls, nor St. Ogg's itself is -capable of giving her. First Philip Wakem is produced, and later Stephen -Guest. The weakness of the one and the coarseness of the other have -often been pointed out; but both, in their weakness and coarseness, -illustrate not so much George Eliot's inability to draw the portrait of -a man, as the uncertainty, the infirmity, and the fumbling which shook -her hand when she had to conceive a fit mate for a heroine. She is in -the first place driven beyond the home world she knew and loved, and -forced to set foot in middle-class drawing-rooms where young men sing -all the summer morning and young women sit embroidering smoking-caps for -bazaars. She feels herself out of her element, as her clumsy satire of -what she calls "good society" proves.</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>Good society has its claret and its velvet carpets, its dinner -engagements six weeks deep, its opera, and its faery ball rooms . . . -gets its science done by Faraday and its religion by the superior clergy -who are to be met in the best houses; how should it have need of belief -and emphasis?</p></blockquote> - - -<p>There is no trace of humour or insight there, but only the -vindictiveness of a grudge which we feel to be personal in its origin. -But terrible as the complexity of our social system is in its demands -upon the sympathy and discernment of a novelist straying across the -boundaries, Maggie Tulliver did worse than drag George Eliot from her -natural surroundings. She insisted upon the introduction of the great -emotional scene. She must love; she must despair; she must be drowned -clasping her brother in her arms. The more one examines the great -emotional scenes the more nervously one anticipates the brewing and -gathering and thickening of the cloud which will burst upon our heads at -the moment of crisis in a shower of disillusionment and verbosity. It is -partly that her hold upon dialogue, when it is not dialect, is slack; -and partly that she seems to shrink with an elderly dread of fatigue -from the effort of emotional concentration. She allows her heroines to -talk too much. She has little verbal felicity. She lacks the unerring -taste which chooses one sentence and compresses the heart of the scene -within that. "Whom are you going to dance with?" asked Mr. Knightley, at -the Westons' ball. "With you, if you will ask me," said Emma; and she -has said enough. Mrs. Casaubon would have talked for an hour and we -should have looked out of the window.</p> - -<p>Yet, dismiss the heroines without sympathy, confine George Eliot to -the agricultural world of her "remotest past", and you not only diminish -her greatness but lose her true flavour. That greatness is here we can -have no doubt. The width of the prospect, the large strong outlines of -the principal features, the ruddy light of the early books, the -searching power and reflective richness of the later tempt us to linger -and expatiate beyond our limits. But it is upon the heroines that we -would cast a final glance. "I have always been finding out my religion -since I was a little girl," says Dorothea Casaubon. "I used to pray so -much—now I hardly ever pray. I try not to have desires merely for -myself. . . ." She is speaking for them all. That is their problem. They -cannot live without religion, and they start out on the search for one -when they are little girls. Each has the deep feminine passion for -goodness, which makes the place where she stands in aspiration and agony -the heart of the book—still and cloistered like a place of -worship, but that she no longer knows to whom to pray. In learning they -seek their goal; in the ordinary tasks of womanhood; in the wider -service of their kind. They do not find what they seek, and we cannot -wonder. The ancient consciousness of woman, charged with suffering and -sensibility, and for so many ages dumb, seems in them to have brimmed -and overflowed and uttered a demand for something—they scarcely -know what—for something that is perhaps incompatible with the -facts of human existence. George Eliot had far too strong an -intelligence to tamper with those facts, and too broad a humour to -mitigate the truth because it was a stern one. Save for the supreme -courage of their endeavour, the struggle ends, for her heroines, in -tragedy, or in a compromise that is even more melancholy. But their -story is the incomplete version of the story of George Eliot herself. -For her, too, the burden and the complexity of womanhood were not -enough; she must reach beyond the sanctuary and pluck for herself -the strange bright fruits of art and knowledge. Clasping them -as few women have ever clasped them, she would not renounce her -own inheritance—the difference of view, the difference of -standard—nor accept an inappropriate reward. Thus we behold her, a -memorable figure, inordinately praised and shrinking from her fame, -despondent, reserved, shuddering back into the arms of love as if there -alone were satisfaction and, it might be, justification, at the same -time reaching out with "a fastidious yet hungry ambition" for all that -life could offer the free and inquiring mind and confronting her -feminine aspirations with the real world of men. Triumphant was the -issue for her, whatever it may have been for her creations, and as we -recollect all that she dared and achieved, how with every obstacle -against her—sex and health and convention—she sought more -knowledge and more freedom till the body, weighted with its double -burden, sank worn out, we must lay upon her grave whatever we have it in -our power to bestow of laurel and rose.</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2><a id="The_Russian"><i>The Russian Point of View</i></a></h2> - - -<p>Doubtful as we frequently are whether either the French or the -Americans, who have so much in common with us, can yet understand -English literature, we must admit graver doubts whether, for all their -enthusiasm, the English can understand Russian literature. Debate might -protract itself indefinitely as to what we mean by "understand". -Instances will occur to everybody of American writers in particular who -have written with the highest discrimination of our literature and of -ourselves; who have lived a lifetime among us, and finally have taken -legal steps to become subjects of King George. For all that, have they -understood us, have they not remained to the end of their days -foreigners? Could any one believe that the novels of Henry James were -written by a man who had grown-up in the society which he describes, or -that his criticism of English writers was written by a man who had read -Shakespeare without any sense of the Atlantic Ocean and two or three -hundred years on the far side of it separating his civilisation -from ours? A special acuteness and detachment, a sharp angle of -vision the foreigner will often achieve; but not that absence of -self-consciousness, that ease and fellowship and sense of common values -which make for intimacy, and sanity, and the quick give and take of -familiar intercourse.</p> - -<p>Not only have we all this to separate us from Russian literature, but a -much more serious barrier—the difference of language. Of all those -who feasted upon Tolstoi, Dostoevsky, and Tchekov during the past twenty -years, not more than one or two perhaps have been able to read them in -Russian. Our estimate of their qualities has been formed by critics who -have never read a word of Russian, or seen Russia, or even heard the -language spoken by natives; who have had to depend, blindly and -implicitly, upon the work of translators.</p> - -<p>What we are saying amounts to this, then, that we have judged a whole -literature stripped of its style. When you have changed every word in a -sentence from Russian to English, have thereby altered the sense a -little, the sound, weight, and accent of the words in relation to each -other completely, nothing remains except a crude and coarsened version -of the sense. Thus treated, the great Russian writers are like men -deprived by an earthquake or a railway accident not only of all their -clothes, but also of something subtler and more important—their -manners, the idiosyncrasies of their characters. What remains is, as the -English have proved by the fanaticism of their admiration, something -very powerful and very impressive, but it is difficult to feel sure, in -view of these mutilations, how far we can trust ourselves not to impute, -to distort, to read into them an emphasis which is false.</p> - -<p>They have lost their clothes, we say, in some terrible catastrophe, for -some such figure as that describes the simplicity, the humanity, -startled out of all effort to hide and disguise its instincts, which -Russian literature, whether it is due to translation, or to some more -profound cause, makes upon us. We find these qualities steeping it -through, as obvious in the lesser writers as in the greater. "Learn to -make yourselves akin to people. I would even like to add: make yourself -indispensable to them. But let this sympathy be not with the mind—for -it is easy with the mind—but with the heart, with love towards them." -"From the Russian," one would say instantly, wherever one chanced on -that quotation. The simplicity, the absence of effort, the assumption -that in a world bursting with misery the chief call upon us is to -understand our fellow-sufferers, "and not with the mind—for it is -easy with the mind—but with the heart"—this is the cloud which -broods above the whole of Russian literature, which lures us from our own -parched brilliancy and scorched thoroughfares to expand in its -shade—and of course with disastrous results. We become awkward and -self-conscious; denying our own qualities, we write with an affectation of -goodness and simplicity which is nauseating in the extreme. We cannot say -"Brother" with simple conviction. There is a story by Mr. Galsworthy in -which one of the characters so addresses another (they are both in the -depths of misfortune). Immediately everything becomes strained and -affected. The English equivalent for "Brother" is "Mate"—a very -different word, with something sardonic in it, an indefinable suggestion of -humour. Met though they are in the depths of misfortune the two Englishmen -who thus accost each other will, we are sure, find a job, make their -fortunes, spend the last years of their lives in luxury, and leave a sum of -money to prevent poor devils from calling each other "Brother" on the -Embankment. But it is common suffering, rather than common happiness, -effort, or desire that produces the sense of brotherhood. It is the -"deep sadness" which Dr. Hagberg Wright finds typical of the Russian -people that creates their literature.</p> - -<p>A generalisation of this kind will, of course, even if it has some -degree of truth when applied to the body of literature, be changed -profoundly when a writer of genius sets to work on it. At once other -questions arise. It is seen that an "attitude" is not simple; it is -highly complex. Men reft of their coats and their manners, stunned by a -railway accident, say hard things, harsh things, unpleasant things, -difficult things, even if they say them with the abandonment and -simplicity which catastrophe has bred in them. Our first impressions of -Tchekov are not of simplicity but of bewilderment. What is the point of -it, and why does he make a story out of this? we ask as we read story -after story. A man falls in love with a married woman, and they part and -meet, and in the end are left talking about their position and by what -means they can be free from "this intolerable bondage".</p> - -<p>"'How? How?' he asked, clutching his head. . . . And it seemed as though -in a little while the solution would be found and then a new and -splendid life would begin." That is the end. A postman drives a student -to the station and all the way the student tries to make the postman -talk, but he remains silent. Suddenly the postman says unexpectedly, -"It's against the regulations to take any one with the post." And he -walks up and down the platform with a look of anger on his face. "With -whom was he angry? Was it with people, with poverty, with the autumn -nights?" Again, that story ends.</p> - -<p>But is it the end, we ask? We have rather the feeling that we have -overrun our signals; or it is as if a tune had stopped short without the -expected chords to close it. These stories are inconclusive, we say, and -proceed to frame a criticism based upon the assumption that stories -ought to conclude in a way that we recognise. In so doing we raise the -question of our own fitness as readers. Where the tune is familiar and -the end emphatic—lovers united, villains discomfited, intrigues -exposed—as it is in most Victorian fiction, we can scarcely go wrong, -but where the tune is unfamiliar and the end a note of interrogation or -merely the information that they went on talking, as it is in Tchekov, -we need a very daring and alert sense of literature to make us hear the -tune, and in particular those last notes which complete the harmony. -Probably we have to read a great many stories before we feel, and the -feeling is essential to our satisfaction, that we hold the parts -together, and that Tchekov was not merely rambling disconnectedly, but -struck now this note, now that with intention, in order to complete his -meaning.</p> - -<p>We have to cast about in order to discover where the emphasis in these -strange stories rightly comes. Tchekov's own words give us a lead in the -right direction. ". . . such a conversation as this between us", he -says, "would have been unthinkable for our parents. At night they did -not talk, but slept sound; we, our generation, sleep badly, are -restless, but talk a great deal, and are always trying to settle whether -we are right or not." Our literature of social satire and psychological -finesse both sprang from that restless sleep, that incessant talking; -but after all, there is an enormous difference between Tchekov and Henry -James, between Tchekov and Bernard Shaw. Obviously—but where does it -arise? Tchekov, too, is aware of the evils and injustices of the social -state; the condition of the peasants appals him, but the reformer's zeal -is not his—that is not the signal for us to stop. The mind interests -him enormously; he is a most subtle and delicate analyst of human -relations. But again, no; the end is not there. Is it that he is -primarily interested not in the soul's relation with other souls, but -with the soul's relation to health—with the soul's relation to -goodness? These stories are always showing us some affectation, pose, -insincerity. Some woman has got into a false relation; some man has been -perverted by the inhumanity of his circumstances. The soul is ill; the -soul is cured; the soul is not cured. Those are the emphatic points in -his stories.</p> - -<p>Once the eye is used to these shades, half the "conclusions" of fiction -fade into thin air; they show like transparences with a light behind -them—gaudy, glaring, superficial. The general tidying up of the last -chapter, the marriage, the death, the statement of values so sonorously -trumpeted forth, so heavily underlined, become of the most rudimentary -kind. Nothing is solved, we feel; nothing is rightly held together. On -the other hand, the method which at first seemed so casual, -inconclusive, and occupied with trifles, now appears the result of an -exquisitely original and fastidious taste, choosing boldly, arranging -infallibly, and controlled by an honesty for which we can find no match -save among the Russians themselves. There may be no answer to these -questions, but at the same time let us never manipulate the evidence so -as to produce something fitting, decorous, agreeable to our vanity. This -may not be the way to catch the ear of the public; after all, they are -used to louder music, fiercer measures; but as the tune sounded, so he -has written it. In consequence, as we read these little stories about -nothing at all, the horizon widens; the soul gains an astonishing sense -of freedom.</p> - -<p>In reading Tchekov we find ourselves repeating the word "soul" again and -again. It sprinkles his pages. Old drunkards use it freely; ". . . you -are high up in the service, beyond all reach, but haven't real soul, my -dear boy . . . there's no strength in it." Indeed, it is the soul that -is the chief character in Russian fiction. Delicate and subtle in -Tchekov, subject to an infinite number of humours and distempers, it is -of greater depth and volume in Dostoevsky, liable to violent diseases -and raging fevers, but still the predominant concern. Perhaps that is -why it needs so great an effort on the part of an English reader to read -<i>The Brothers Karamazov</i> or <i>The Possessed</i> a second time. The -"soul" is alien to him. It is even antipathetic. It has little sense of -humour and no sense of comedy. It is formless. It has slight connection -with the intellect. It is confused, diffuse, tumultuous, incapable, it -seems, of submitting to the control of logic or the discipline of poetry. -The novels of Dostoevsky are seething whirlpools, gyrating sandstorms, -waterspouts which hiss and boil and suck us in. They are composed purely -and wholly of the stuff of the soul. Against our wills we are drawn in, -whirled round, blinded, suffocated, and at the same time filled with a -giddy rapture. Out of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading. We -open the door and find ourselves in a room full of Russian generals, the -tutors of Russian generals, their step-daughters and cousins and crowds -of miscellaneous people who are all talking at the tops of their voices -about their most private affairs. But where are we? Surely it is the -part of a novelist to inform us whether we are in an hotel, a flat, or -hired lodging. Nobody thinks of explaining. We are souls, tortured, -unhappy souls, whose only business it is to talk, to reveal, to confess, -to draw up at whatever rending of flesh and nerve those crabbed sins -which crawl on the sand at the bottom of us. But, as we listen, our -confusion slowly settles. A rope is flung to us; we catch hold of a -soliloquy; holding on by the skin of our teeth, we are rushed through -the water; feverishly, wildly, we rush on and on, now submerged, now in -a moment of vision understanding more than we have ever understood -before, and receiving such revelations as we are wont to get only from the -press of life at its fullest. As we fly we pick it all up—the names -of the people, their relationships, that they are staying in an hotel at -Roulettenburg, that Polina is involved in an intrigue with the Marquis -de Grieux—but what unimportant matters these are compared with the -soul! It is the soul that matters, its passion, its tumult, its -astonishing medley of beauty and vileness. And if our voices suddenly -rise into shrieks of laughter, or if we are shaken by the most violent -sobbing, what more natural?—it hardly calls for remark. The pace at -which we are living is so tremendous that sparks must rush off our -wheels as we fly. Moreover, when the speed is thus increased and the -elements of the soul are seen, not separately in scenes of humour or -scenes of passion as our slower English minds conceive them, but -streaked, involved, inextricably confused, a new panorama of the human -mind is revealed. The old divisions melt into each other. Men are at the -same time villains and saints; their acts are at once beautiful and -despicable. We love and we hate at the same time. There is none: of that -precise division between good and bad to which we are used. Often those -for whom we feel most affection are the greatest criminals, and the most -abject sinners move us to the strongest admiration as well as love.</p> - -<p>Dashed to the crest of the waves, bumped and battered on the stones at -the bottom, it is difficult for an English reader to feel at ease. The -process to which he is accustomed in his own literature is reversed. If -we wished to tell the story of a General's love affair (and we should -find it very difficult in the first place not to laugh at a General), we -should begin with his house; we should solidify his surroundings. Only -when all was ready should we attempt to deal with the General himself. -Moreover, it is not the samovar but the teapot that rules in England; -time is limited; space crowded; the influence of other points of view, -of other books, even of other ages, makes itself felt. Society is sorted -out into lower, middle, and upper classes, each with its own traditions, -its own manners, and, to some extent, its own language. Whether he -wishes it or not, there is a constant pressure upon an English novelist -to recognise these barriers, and, in consequence, order is imposed on -him and some kind of form; he is inclined to satire rather than to -compassion, to scrutiny of society rather than understanding of -individuals themselves.</p> - -<p>No such restraints were laid on Dostoevsky. It is all the same to him -whether you are noble or simple, a tramp or a great lady. Whoever you -are, you are the vessel of this perplexed liquid, this cloudy, yeasty, -precious stuff, the soul. The soul is not restrained by barriers. It -overflows, it floods, it mingles with the souls of others. The simple -story of a bank clerk who could not pay for a bottle of wine spreads, -before we know what is happening, into the lives of his father-in-law -and the five mistresses whom his father-in-law treated abominably, and -the postman's life, and the charwoman's, and the Princesses' who lodged -in the same block of flats; for nothing is outside Dostoevsky's -province; and when he is tired, he does not stop, he goes on. He cannot -restrain himself. Out it tumbles upon us, hot, scalding, mixed, -marvellous, terrible, oppressive—the human soul.</p> - -<p>There remains the greatest of all novelists—for what else can we -call the author of <i>War and Peace</i>? Shall we find Tolstoi, too, alien, -difficult, a foreigner? Is there some oddity in his angle of vision -which, at any rate until we have become disciples and so lost our -bearings, keeps us at arm's length in suspicion and bewilderment? From -his first words we can be sure of one thing at any rate—here is a man -who sees what we see, who proceeds, too, as we are accustomed to -proceed, not from the inside outwards, but from the outside inwards. -Here is a world in which the postman's knock is heard at eight o'clock, -and people go to bed between ten and eleven. Here is a man, too, who is -no savage, no child of nature; he is educated; he has had every sort of -experience. He is one of those born aristocrats who have used their -privileges to the full. He is metropolitan, not suburban. His senses, -his intellect, are acute, powerful, and well nourished. There is -something proud and superb in the attack of such a mind and such a body -upon life. Nothing seems to escape him. Nothing glances off him -unrecorded. Nobody, therefore, can so convey the excitement of sport, -the beauty of horses, and all the fierce desirability of the world to -the senses of a strong young man. Every twig, every feather sticks to -his magnet. He notices the blue or red of a child's frock; the way a -horse shifts its tail; the sound of a cough; the action of a man trying -to put his hands into pockets that have been sewn up. And what his -infallible eye reports of a cough or a trick of the hands his infallible -brain refers to something hidden in the character so that we know his -people, not only by the way they love and their views on politics and -the immortality of the soul, but also by the way they sneeze and choke. -Even in a translation we feel that we have been set on a mountain-top -and had a telescope put into our hands. Everything is astonishingly -clear and absolutely sharp. Then, suddenly, just as we are exulting, -breathing deep, feeling at once braced and purified, some -detail—perhaps the head of a man—comes at us out of the picture -in an alarming way, as if extruded by the very intensity of its life. -"Suddenly a strange thing happened to me: first I ceased to see what was -around me; then his face seemed to vanish till only the eyes were left, -shining over against mine; next the eyes seemed to be in my own head, -and then all became confused—I could see nothing and was forced to -shut my eyes, in order to break loose from the feeling of pleasure and fear -which his gaze was producing in me. . . ." Again and again we share -Masha's feelings in <i>Family Happiness</i>. One shuts one's eyes to escape -the feeling of pleasure and fear. Often it is pleasure that is -uppermost. In this very story there are two descriptions, one of a girl -walking in a garden at night with her lover, one of a newly married -couple prancing down their drawing-room, which so convey the feeling of -intense happiness that we shut the book to feel it better. But always -there is an element of fear which makes us, like Masha, wish to escape -from the gaze which Tolstoi fixes on us. Does it arise from the sense, -which in real life might harass us, that such happiness as he describes -is too intense to last, that we are on the edge of disaster? Or is it -not that the very intensity of our pleasure is somehow questionable and -forces us to ask, with Pozdnyshev in the Kreutzer Sonata, "But why -live?" Life dominates Tolstoi as the soul dominates Dostoevsky. There is -always at the centre of all the brilliant and flashing petals of the -flower this scorpion, "Why live?" There is always at the centre of the -book some Olenin, or Pierre, or Levin who gathers into himself all -experience, turns the world round between his fingers, and never ceases -to ask even as he enjoys it, what is the meaning of it, and what should -be our aims. It is not the priest who shatters our desires most -effectively; it is the man who has known them, and loved them himself. -When he derides them, the world indeed turns to dust and ashes beneath -our feet. Thus fear mingles with our pleasure, and of the three great -Russian writers, it is Tolstoi who most enthralls us and most repels.</p> - -<p>But the mind takes its bias from the place of its birth, and no doubt, -when it strikes upon a literature so alien as the Russian, flies off at -a tangent far from the truth.</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2><a id="Outlines"><i>Outlines</i></a></h2> - - -<h2>I</h2> - -<h2><a id="Miss_Mitford">MISS MITFORD</a></h2> - - -<p>Speaking truthfully, <i>Mary Russell Mitford and Her Surroundings</i> is -not a good book. It neither enlarges the mind nor purifies the heart. There -is nothing in it about Prime Ministers and not very much about Miss -Mitford. Yet, as one is setting out to speak the truth, one must own -that there are certain books which can be read without the mind and -without the heart, but still with considerable enjoyment. To come to the -point, the great merit of these scrapbooks, for they can scarcely be -called biographies, is that they license mendacity. One cannot believe -what Miss Hill says about Miss Mitford, and thus one is free to invent -Miss Mitford for oneself. Not for a second do we accuse Miss Hill of -telling lies. That infirmity is entirely ours. For example: "Alresford -was the birthplace of one who loved nature as few have loved her, and -whose writings 'breathe the air of the hayfields and the scent of the -hawthorn boughs', and seem to waft to us 'the sweet breezes that blow -over ripened cornfields and daisied meadows'." It is perfectly true that -Miss Mitford was born at Alresford, and yet, when it is put like that, -we doubt whether she was ever born at all. Indeed she was, says Miss -Hill; she was born "on the 16th December, 1787. 'A pleasant house in -truth it was,' Miss Mitford writes. 'The breakfast-room . . . was a -lofty and spacious apartment.'" So Miss Mitford was born in the -breakfast-room about eight-thirty on a snowy morning between the -Doctor's second and third cups of tea. "Pardon me," said Mrs. Mitford, -turning a little pale, but not omitting to add the right quantity of -cream to her husband's tea, "I feel . . ." That is the way in which -Mendacity begins. There is something plausible and even ingenious in her -approaches. The touch about the cream, for instance, might be called -historical, for it is well known that when Mary won £20,000 in the -Irish lottery, the Doctor spent it all upon Wedgwood china, the winning -number being stamped upon the soup plates in the middle of an Irish -harp, the whole being surmounted by the Mitford arms, and encircled by -the motto of Sir John Bertram, one of William the Conqueror's knights, -from whom the Mitfords claimed descent. "Observe," says Mendacity, "with -what an air the Doctor drinks his tea, and how she, poor lady, contrives -to curtsey as she leaves the room." Tea? I inquire, for the Doctor, -though a fine figure of a man, is already purple and profuse, and foams -like a crimson cock over the frill of his fine laced shirt. "Since the -ladies have left the room," Mendacity begins, and goes on to make up a -pack of lies with the sole object of proving that Dr. Mitford kept a -mistress in the purlieus of Reading and paid her money on the pretence -that he was investing it in a new method of lighting and heating houses -invented by the Marquis de Chavannes. It came to the same thing in the -end—to the King's Bench Prison, that is to say; but instead of -allowing us to recall the literary and historical associations of the -place, Mendacity wanders off to the window and distracts us again by the -platitudinous remark that it is still snowing. There is something very -charming in an ancient snowstorm. The weather has varied almost as much -in the course of generations as mankind. The snow of those days was more -formally shaped and a good deal softer than the snow of ours, just as an -eighteenth-century cow was no more like our cows than she was like the -florid and fiery cows of Elizabethan pastures. Sufficient attention has -scarcely been paid to this aspect of literature, which, it cannot be -denied, has its importance.</p> - -<p>Our brilliant young men might do worse, when in search of a subject, -than devote a year or two to cows in literature, snow in literature, the -daisy in Chaucer and in Coventry Patmore. At any rate, the snow falls -heavily. The Portsmouth mail-coach has already lost its way; several -ships have foundered, and Margate pier has been totally destroyed. At -Hatfield Peveral twenty sheep have been buried, and though one supports -itself by gnawing wurzels which it has found near it, there is grave -reason to fear that the French king's coach has been blocked on the road -to Colchester. It is now the 16th of February, 1808.</p> - -<p>Poor Mrs. Mitford! Twenty-one years ago she left the breakfast-room, and -no news has yet been received of her child. Even Mendacity is a little -ashamed of itself, and, picking up <i>Mary Russell Mitford and Her -Surroundings</i>, assures us that everything will come right if we possess -ourselves in patience. The French king's coach was on its way to -Bocking; at Bocking lived Lord and Lady Charles Murray-Aynsley; and Lord -Charles was shy. Lord Charles had always been shy. Once when Mary -Mitford was five years old—sixteen years, that is, before the sheep -were lost and the French king went to Bocking—Mary "threw him into an -agony of blushing by running up to his chair in mistake for that of my -papa". He had indeed to leave the room. Miss Hill, who, somewhat -strangely, finds the society of Lord and Lady Charles pleasant, does not -wish to quit it without "introducing an incident in connection with them -which took place in the month of February, 1808". But is Miss Mitford -concerned in it? we ask, for there must be an end of trifling. To some -extent, that is to say, Lady Charles was a cousin of the Mitfords, and -Lord Charles was shy. Mendacity is quite ready to deal with "the -incident" even on these terms; but, we repeat, we have had enough of -trifling. Miss Mitford may not be a great woman; for all we know she was -not even a good one; but we have certain responsibilities as a reviewer -which we are not going to evade.</p> - -<p>There is, to begin with, English literature. A sense of the beauty of -nature has never been altogether absent, however much the cow may change -from age to age, from English poetry. Nevertheless, the difference -between Pope and Wordsworth in this respect is very considerable. -<i>Lyrical Ballads</i> was published in 1798; <i>Our Village</i> in 1824. -One being in verse and the other in prose, it is not necessary to labour a -comparison which contains, however, not only the elements of justice, -but the seeds of many volumes. Like her great predecessor, Miss Mitford -much preferred the country to the town; and thus, perhaps, it may not be -inopportune to dwell for a moment upon the King of Saxony, Mary Anning, -and the ichthyosaurus. Let alone the fact that Mary Anning and Mary -Mitford had a Christian name in common, they are further connected by -what can scarcely be called a fact, but may, without hazard, be called a -probability. Miss Mitford was looking for fossils at Lyme Regis only -fifteen years before Mary Anning found one. The King of Saxony visited -Lyme in 1844, and seeing the head of an ichthyosaurus in Mary Anning's -window, asked her to drive to Pinny and explore the rocks. While they -were looking for fossils, an old woman seated herself in the King's -coach—was she Mary Mitford? Truth compels us to say that she was not; -but there is no doubt, and we are not trifling when we say it, that Mary -Mitford often expressed a wish that she had known Mary Anning, and it is -singularly unfortunate to have to state that she never did. For we have -reached the year 1844; Mary Mitford is fifty-seven years of age, and so -far, thanks to Mendacity and its trifling ways, all we know of her is -that she did not know Mary Anning, had not found an ichthyosaurus, had -not been out in a snowstorm, and had not seen the King of France.</p> - -<p>It is time to wring the creature's neck, and begin again at the very -beginning.</p> - -<p>What considerations, then, had weight with Miss Hill when she decided to -write <i>Mary Russell Mitford and Her Surroundings</i>? Three emerge from -the rest, and may be held of paramount importance. In the first place. Miss -Mitford was a lady; in the second, she was born in the year 1787; and in -the third, the stock of female characters who lend themselves to -biographic treatment by their own sex is, for one reason or another, -running short. For instance, little is known of Sappho, and that little -is not wholly to her credit. Lady Jane Grey has merit, but is undeniably -obscure. Of George Sand, the more we know the less we approve. George -Eliot was led into evil ways which not all her philosophy can excuse. -The Brontës, however highly we rate their genius, lacked that -indefinable something which marks the lady; Harriet Martineau was an -atheist; Mrs. Browning was a married woman; Jane Austen, Fanny Burney, -and Maria Edgeworth have been done already; so that, what with one thing -and another, Mary Russell Mitford is the only woman left.</p> - -<p>There is no need to labour the extreme importance of the date when we -see the word "surroundings" on the back, of a book. Surroundings, as -they are called, are invariably eighteenth-century surroundings. When we -come, as of course we do, to that phrase which relates how "as we looked -upon the steps leading down from the upper room, we fancied we saw the -tiny figure jumping from step to step", it would be the grossest outrage -upon our sensibilities to be told that those steps were Athenian, -Elizabethan, or Parisian. They were, of course, eighteenth-century -steps, leading down from the old panelled room into the shady garden, -where, tradition has it, William Pitt played marbles, or, if we like to -be bold, where on still summer days we can almost fancy that we hear the -drums of Bonaparte on the coast of France. Bonaparte is the limit of the -imagination on one side, as Monmouth is on the other; it would be fatal -if the imagination took to toying with Prince Albert or sporting with -King John. But fancy knows her place, and there is no need to labour the -point that her place is the eighteenth-century. The other point is more -obscure. One must be a lady. Yet what that means, and whether we like -what it means, may both be doubtful. If we say that Jane Austen was a -lady and that Charlotte Brontë was not one, we do as much as need be -done in the way of definition, and commit ourselves to neither side.</p> - -<p>It is undoubtedly because of their reticence that Miss Hill is on the -side of the ladies. They sigh things off and they smile things off, but -they never seize the silver table by the legs or dash the teacups on the -floor. It is in many ways a great convenience to have a subject who can -be trusted to live a long life without once raising her voice. Sixteen -years is a considerable stretch of time, but of a lady it is enough to -say, "Here Mary Mitford passed sixteen years of her life and here she -got to know and love not only their own beautiful grounds but also every -turn of the surrounding shady lanes." Her loves were vegetable, and her -lanes were shady. Then, of course, she was educated at the school where -Jane Austen and Mrs. Sherwood had been educated. She visited Lyme Regis, -and there is mention of the Cobb. She saw London from the top of St. -Paul's, and London was much smaller then than it is now. She changed -from one charming house to another, and several distinguished literary -gentlemen paid her compliments and came to tea. When the dining-room -ceiling fell down it did not fall on her head, and when she took a -ticket in a lottery she did win the prize. If in the foregoing sentences -there are any words of more than two syllables, it is our fault and not -Miss Hill's; and to do that writer justice, there are not many whole -sentences in the book which are neither quoted from Miss Mitford nor -supported by the authority of Mr. Crissy.</p> - -<p>But how dangerous a thing is life! Can one be sure that anything not -wholly made of mahogany will to the very end stand empty in the sun? -Even cupboards have their secret springs, and when, inadvertently we are -sure, Miss Hill touches this one, out, terrible to relate, topples a -stout old gentleman. In plain English, Miss Mitford had a father. There -is nothing actually improper in that. Many women have had fathers. But -Miss Mitford's father was kept in a cupboard; that is to say, he was not -a nice father. Miss Hill even goes so far as to conjecture that when "an -imposing procession of neighbours and friends" followed him to the -grave, "we cannot help thinking that this was more to show sympathy and -respect for Miss Mitford than from special respect for him". Severe as -the judgement is, the gluttonous, bibulous, amorous old man did -something to deserve it. The less said about him the better. Only, if -from your earliest childhood your father has gambled and speculated, -first with your mother's fortune, then with your own, spent your -earnings, driven you to earn more, and spent that too; if in old age he -has lain upon a sofa and insisted that fresh air is bad for daughters, -if, dying at length, he has left debts that can only be paid by selling -everything you have or sponging upon the charity of friends—then even -a lady sometimes raises her voice. Miss Mitford herself spoke out once. -"It was grief to go; there I had toiled and striven and tasted as deeply -of bitter anxiety, of fear, and of hope as often falls to the lot of -woman." What language for a lady to use! for a lady, too, who owns a -teapot. There is a drawing of the teapot at the bottom of the page. But -it is now of no avail; Miss Mitford has smashed it to smithereens. That -is the worst of writing about ladies; they have fathers as well as -teapots. On the other hand, some pieces of Dr. Mitford's Wedgwood dinner -service are still in existence, and a copy of Adam's Geography, which -Mary won as a prize at school, is "in our temporary possession". If -there is nothing improper in the suggestion, might not the next book be -devoted entirely to them?</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2>II</h2> - -<h2><a id="Dr_Bentley">DR. BENTLEY</a></h2> - - -<p>As we saunter through those famous courts where Dr. Bentley once reigned -supreme we sometimes catch sight of a figure hurrying on its way to -Chapel or Hall which, as it disappears, draws our thoughts -enthusiastically after it. For that man, we are told, has the whole of -Sophocles at his finger-ends; knows Homer by heart; reads Pindar as we -read the <i>Times</i>; and spends his life, save for these short excursions -to eat and pray, wholly in the company of the Greeks. It is true that -the infirmities of our education prevent us from appreciating his -emendations as they deserve; his life's work is a sealed book to us; -none the less, we treasure up the last flicker of his black gown, and -feel as if a bird of Paradise had flashed by us, so bright is his -spirit's raiment, and in the murk of a November evening we had been -privileged to see it winging its way to roost in fields of amaranth and -beds of moly. Of all men, great scholars are the most mysterious, the -most august. Since it is unlikely that we shall ever be admitted to -their intimacy, or see much more of them than a black gown crossing a -court at dusk, the best we can do is to read their lives—for example, -the <i>Life of Dr. Bentley</i> by Bishop Monk.</p> - -<p>There we shall find much that is odd and little that is reassuring. The -greatest of our scholars, the man who read Greek as the most expert of -us read English not merely with an accurate sense of meaning and grammar -but with a sensibility so subtle and widespread that he perceived -relations and suggestions of language which enabled him to fetch up from -oblivion lost lines and inspire new life into the little fragments that -remained, the man who should have been steeped in beauty (if what they -say of the Classics is true) as a honey-pot is ingrained with sweetness -was, on the contrary, the most quarrelsome of mankind.</p> - -<p>"I presume that there are not many examples of an individual who has -been a party in six distinct suits before the Court of King's Bench -within the space of three years", his biographer remarks; and adds that -Bentley won them all. It is difficult to deny his conclusion that though -Dr. Bentley might have been a first-rate lawyer or a great soldier "such -a display suited any character rather than that of a learned and -dignified clergyman". Not all these disputes, however, sprung from his -love of literature. The charges against which he had to defend himself -were directed against him as Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He -was habitually absent from chapel; his expenditure upon building and -upon his household was excessive; he used the college seal at meetings -which did not consist of the statutable number of sixteen, and so on. In -short, the career of the Master of Trinity was one continuous series of -acts of aggression and defiance, in which Dr. Bentley treated the -Society of Trinity College as a grown man might treat an importunate -rabble of street boys. Did they dare to hint that the staircase at the -Lodge which admitted four persons abreast was quite wide enough?—did -they refuse to sanction his expenditure upon a new one? Meeting them in -the Great Court one evening after chapel he proceeded urbanely to -question them. They refused to budge. Whereupon, with a sudden -alteration of colour and voice, Bentley demanded whether "they had -forgotten his rusty sword?" Mr. Michael Hutchinson and some others, upon -whose backs the weight of that weapon would have first descended, -brought pressure upon their seniors. The bill for £350 was paid and -their preferment secured. But Bentley did not wait for this act of -submission to finish his staircase.</p> - -<p>So it went on, year after year. Nor was the arrogance of his behaviour -always justified by the splendour or utility of the objects he had in -view—the creation of the Backs, the erection of an observatory, the -foundation of a laboratory. More trivial desires were gratified with the -same tyranny. Sometimes he wanted coal; sometimes bread and ale; and -then Madame Bentley, sending her servant with a snuff-box in token of -authority, got from the butteries at the expense of the college a great -deal more of these commodities than the college thought that Dr. Bentley -ought to require. Again, when he had four pupils to lodge with him who -paid him handsomely for their board, it was drawn from the College, at -the command of the snuff-box, for nothing. The principles of "delicacy -and good feeling" which the Master might have been expected to observe -(great scholar as he was, steeped in the wine of the classics) went for -nothing. His argument that the "few College loaves" upon which the four -young patricians were nourished were amply repaid by the three sash -windows which he had put into their rooms at his own expense failed to -convince the Fellows. And when, on Trinity Sunday 1719, the Fellows -found the famous College ale not to their liking, they were scarcely -satisfied when the butler told them that it had been brewed by the -Master's orders, from the Master's malt, which was stored in the -Master's granary, and though damaged by "an insect called the weevil" -had been paid for at the very high rates which the Master demanded.</p> - -<p>Still these battles over bread and beer are trifles and domestic trifles -at that. His conduct in his profession will throw more light upon our -inquiry. For, released from brick and building, bread and beer, -patricians and their windows, it may be found that he expanded in the -atmosphere of Homer, Horace, and Manilius, and proved in his study the -benign nature of those influences which have been wafted down to us -through the ages. But there the evidence is even less to the credit of -the dead languages. He acquitted himself magnificently, all agree, in -the great controversy about the letters of Phalaris. His temper was -excellent and his learning prodigious. But that triumph was succeeded by -a series of disputes which force upon us the extraordinary spectacle of -men of learning and genius, of authority and divinity, brawling about -Greek and Latin texts, and calling each other names for all the world -like bookies on a racecourse or washerwomen in a back street. For this -vehemence of temper and virulence of language were not confined to -Bentley alone; they appear unhappily characteristic of the profession as -a whole. Early in life, in the year 1691, a quarrel was fastened upon -him by his brother chaplain Hody for writing Malelas, not as Hody -preferred, Malela. A controversy in which Bentley displayed learning and -wit, and Hody accumulated endless pages of bitter argument against the -letter <i>s</i> ensued. Hody was worsted, and "there is too much reason to -believe, that the offence given by this trivial cause was never -afterwards healed". Indeed, to mend a line was to break a friendship. -James Gronovius of Leyden—"homunculus eruditione mediocri, ingenio -nullo", as Bentley called him—attacked Bentley for ten years because -Bentley had succeeded in correcting a fragment of Callimachus where he -had failed.</p> - -<p>But Gronovius was by no means the only scholar who resented the success -of a rival with a rancour that grey hairs and forty years spent in -editing the classics failed to subdue. In all the chief towns of Europe -lived men like the notorious de Pauw of Utrecht, "a person who has -justly been considered the pest and disgrace of letters", who, when a -new theory or new edition appeared, banded themselves together to deride -and humiliate the scholar. . . all his writings. Bishop Monk remarks of -de Pauw, "prove him to be devoid of candour, good faith, good manners, -and every gentlemanly feeling: and while he unites all the defects and -bad qualities that were ever found in a critic or commentator, he adds -one peculiar to himself, an incessant propensity to indecent allusions." -With such tempers and such habits it is not strange that the scholars of -those days sometimes ended lives made intolerable by bitterness, -poverty, and neglect by their own hands, like Johnson, who after a -lifetime spent in the detection of minute errors of construction, went -mad and drowned himself in the meadows near Nottingham. On May 20, 1712, -Trinity College was shocked to find that the professor of Hebrew, Dr. -Sike, had hanged himself "some time this evening, before candlelight, in -his sash". When Kuster died, it was reported that he, too, had killed -himself. And so, in a sense, he had. For when his body was opened "there -was found a cake of sand along the lower region of his belly. This, I -take it, was occasioned by his sitting nearly double, and writing on a -very low table, surrounded with three or four circles of books placed on -the ground, which was the situation we usually found him in." The minds -of poor schoolmasters, like John Ker of the dissenting Academy, who had -had the high gratification of dining with Dr. Bentley at the Lodge, when -the talk fell upon the use of the word <i>equidem</i>, were so distorted by -a lifetime of neglect and study that they went home, collected all uses of -the word <i>equidem</i> which contradicted the Doctor's opinion, returned -to the Lodge, anticipating in their simplicity a warm welcome, met the -Doctor issuing to dine with the Archbishop of Canterbury, followed him -down the street in spite of his indifference and annoyance, and, being -refused even a word of farewell, went home to brood over their injuries -and wait the day of revenge.</p> - -<p>But the bickerings and animosities of the smaller fry were magnified, -not obliterated, by the Doctor himself in the conduct of his own -affairs. The courtesy and good temper which he had shown in his early -controversies had worn away. ". . . a course of violent animosities and -the indulgence of unrestrained indignation for many years had impaired -both his taste and judgement in controversy", and he condescended, -though the subject in dispute was the Greek Testament, to call his -antagonist "maggot", "vermin", "gnawing rat", and "cabbage head", to -refer to the darkness of his complexion, and to insinuate that his wits -were crazed, which charge he supported by dwelling on the fact that his -brother, a clergyman, wore a beard to his girdle.</p> - -<p>Violent, pugnacious, and unscrupulous. Dr. Bentley survived these storms -and agitations, and remained, though suspended from his degrees and -deprived of his mastership, seated at the Lodge imperturbably. Wearing a -broad-brimmed hat indoors to protect his eyes, smoking his pipe, -enjoying his port, and expounding to his friends his doctrine of the -digamma, Bentley lived those eighty years which, he said, were long -enough "to read everything which was worth reading", "Et tunc", he -added, in his peculiar manner.</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">Et tunc magna mei sub terris ibit imago.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>A small square stone marked his grave in Trinity College, but the -Fellows refused to record upon it the fact that he had been their -Master.</p> - -<p>But the strangest sentence in this strange story has yet to be written, -and Bishop Monk writes it as if it were a commonplace requiring no -comment. "For a person who was neither a poet, nor possessed of poetical -taste to venture upon such a task was no common presumption." The task -was to detect every slip of language in <i>Paradise Lost</i>, and all -instances of bad taste and incorrect imagery. The result was notoriously -lamentable. Yet in what, we may ask, did it differ from those in which -Bentley was held to have acquitted himself magnificently? And if Bentley -was incapable of appreciating the poetry of Milton, how can we accept -his verdict upon Horace and Homer? And if we cannot trust implicitly to -scholars, and if the study of Greek is supposed to refine the manners -and purify the soul—but enough. Our scholar has returned from Hall; -his lamp is lit; his studies are resumed; and it is time that our profane -speculations should have an end. Besides, all this happened many, many -years ago.</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2>III</h2> - -<h2><a id="Lady_Dorothy_Nevill">LADY DOROTHY NEVILL</a></h2> - - -<p>She had stayed, in a humble capacity, for a week in the ducal household. -She had seen the troops of highly decorated human beings descending in -couples to eat, and ascending in couples to bed. She had, -surreptitiously, from a gallery, observed the Duke himself dusting the -miniatures in the glass cases, while the Duchess let her crochet fall -from her hands as if in utter disbelief that the world had need of -crochet. From an upper window she had seen, as far as eye could reach, -gravel paths swerving round isles of greenery and losing themselves in -little woods designed to shed the shade without the severity of forests; -she had watched the ducal carriage bowling in and out of the prospect, -and returning a different way from the way it went. And what was her -verdict? "A lunatic asylum."</p> - -<p>It is true that she was a lady's-maid, and that Lady Dorothy Nevill, had -she encountered her on the stairs, would have made an opportunity to -point out that that is a very different thing from being a lady.</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>My mother never failed to point out the folly of work-women, shop-girls, -and the like calling each other "Ladies". All this sort of thing seemed -to her to be mere vulgar humbug, and she did not fail to say so.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>What can we point out to Lady Dorothy Nevill? that with all her -advantages she had never learned to spell? that she could not write a -grammatical sentence? that she lived for eighty-seven years and did -nothing but put food into her mouth and slip gold through her fingers? -But delightful though it is to indulge in righteous indignation, it is -misplaced if we agree with the lady's-maid that high birth is a form of -congenital insanity, that the sufferer merely inherits the diseases of -his ancestors, and endures them, for the most part very stoically, in -one of those comfortably padded lunatic asylums which are known, -euphemistically, as the stately homes of England.</p> - -<p>Moreover, the Walpoles are not ducal. Horace Walpole's mother was a Miss -Shorter; there is no mention of Lady Dorothy's mother in the present -volume, but her great-grandmother was Mrs. Oldfield the actress, and, to -her credit, Lady Dorothy was "exceedingly proud" of the fact. Thus she -was not an extreme case of aristocracy; she was confined rather to a -bird-cage than to an asylum; through the bars she saw people walking at -large, and once or twice she made a surprising little flight into the -open air. A gayer, brighter, more vivacious specimen of the caged tribe -can seldom have existed; so that one is forced at times to ask whether -what we call living in a cage is not the fate that wise people, -condemned to a single sojourn upon earth, would choose. To be at large -is, after all, to be shut out; to waste most of life in accumulating the -money to buy and the time to enjoy what the Lady Dorothys find -clustering and glowing about their cradles when their eyes first -open—as hers opened in the year 1826 at number eleven Berkeley -Square. Horace Walpole had lived there. Her father, Lord Orford, gambled it -away in one night's play the year after she was born. But Wolterton Hall, -in Norfolk, was full of carving and mantelpieces, and there were rare trees -in the garden, and a large and famous lawn. No novelist could wish a -more charming and even romantic environment in which to set the story of -two little girls, growing up, wild yet secluded, reading Bossuet with -their governess, and riding out on their ponies at the head of the -tenantry on polling day. Nor can one deny that to have had the author of -the following letter among one's ancestors would have been a source of -inordinate pride. It is addressed to the Norwich Bible Society, which -had invited Lord Orford to become its president:</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>I have long been addicted to the Gaming Table. I have lately taken to -the Turf. I fear I frequently blaspheme. But I have never distributed -religious tracts. All this was known to you and your Society. -Notwithstanding which you think me a fit person to be your president. -God forgive your hypocrisy.</p></blockquote> - - -<p>It was not Lord Orford who was in the cage on that occasion. But, alas! -Lord Orford owned another country house, Ilsington Hall, in Dorsetshire, -and there Lady Dorothy came in contact first with the mulberry tree, and -later with Mr. Thomas Hardy; and we get our first glimpse of the bars. -We do not pretend to the ghost of an enthusiasm for Sailors' Homes in -general; no doubt mulberry trees are much nicer to look at; but when it -comes to calling people "vandals" who cut them down to build houses, and -to having footstools made from the wood, and to carving upon those -footstools inscriptions which testify that "often and often has King -George III. taken his tea" under this very footstool, then we want to -protest—"Surely you must mean Shakespeare?" But as her subsequent -remarks upon Mr. Hardy tend to prove, Lady Dorothy does not mean -Shakespeare. She "warmly appreciated" the works of Mr. Hardy, and used -to complain "that the county families were too stupid to appreciate his -genius at its proper worth". George the Third drinking his tea; the -county families failing to appreciate Mr. Hardy: Lady Dorothy is -undoubtedly behind the bars.</p> - -<p>Yet no story more aptly illustrates the barrier which we perceive -hereafter between Lady Dorothy and the outer world than the story of -Charles Darwin and the blankets. Among her recreations Lady Dorothy made -a hobby of growing orchids, and thus got into touch with "the great -naturalist". Mrs. Darwin, inviting her to stay with them, remarked with -apparent simplicity that she had heard that people who moved much in -London society were fond of being tossed in blankets. "I am afraid," her -letter ended, "we should hardly be able to offer you anything of that -sort." Whether in fact the necessity of tossing Lady Dorothy in a -blanket had been seriously debated at Down, or whether Mrs. Darwin -obscurely hinted her sense of some incongruity between her husband and -the lady of the orchids, we do not know. But we have a sense of two -worlds in collision; and it is not the Darwin world that emerges in -fragments. More and more do we see Lady Dorothy hopping from perch to -perch, picking at groundsel here, and at hempseed there, indulging in -exquisite trills and roulades, and sharpening her beak against a lump of -sugar in a large, airy, magnificently equipped bird-cage. The cage was -full of charming diversions. Now she illuminated leaves which had been -macerated to skeletons; now she interested herself in improving the -breed of donkeys; next she took up the cause of silkworms, almost -threatened Australia with a plague of them, and "actually succeeded in -obtaining enough silk to make a dress"; again she was the first to -discover that wood, gone green with decay, can be made, at some expense, -into little boxes; she went into the question of funguses and -established the virtues of the neglected English truffle; she imported -rare fish; spent a great deal of energy in vainly trying to induce -storks and Cornish choughs to breed in Sussex; painted on china; -emblazoned heraldic arms, and, attaching whistles to the tails of -pigeons, produced wonderful effects "as of an aerial orchestra" when -they flew through the air. To the Duchess of Somerset belongs the credit -of investigating the proper way of cooking guinea-pigs; but Lady Dorothy -was one of the first to serve up a dish of these little creatures at -luncheon in Charles Street.</p> - -<p>But all the time the door of the cage was ajar. Raids were made into -what Mr. Nevill calls "Upper Bohemia"; from which Lady Dorothy returned -with "authors, journalists, actors, actresses, or other agreeable and -amusing people". Lady Dorothy's judgement is proved by the fact that -they seldom misbehaved, and some indeed became quite domesticated, and -wrote her "very gracefully turned letters". But once or twice she made a -flight beyond the cage herself. "These horrors", she said, alluding to -the middle class, "are so clever and we are so stupid; but then look how -well they are educated, while our children learn nothing but how to -spend their parents' money!" She brooded over the fact. Something was -going wrong. She was too shrewd and too honest not to lay the blame -partly at least upon her own class. "I suppose she can just about read?" -she said of one lady calling herself cultured; and of another, "She is -indeed curious and well adapted to open bazaars." But to our thinking -her most remarkable flight took place a year or two before her death, in -the Victoria and Albert Museum:</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>I do so agree with you, she wrote—though I ought not -to say so—that the upper class are very—I don't know what to -say—but they seem to take no interest in anything—but -golfing, etc. One day I was at the Victoria and Albert Museum, just a -few sprinkles of legs, for I am sure they looked too frivolous to have -bodies and souls attached to them—but what softened the sight to -my eyes were 2 little Japs poring over each article with a handbook . . -. our bodies, of course, giggling and looking at nothing. Still worse, -not one soul of the higher class visible: in fact I never heard of any -one of them knowing of the place, and for this we are spending -millions—it is all too painful.</p> - -</blockquote> - - -<p>It was all too painful, and the guillotine, she felt, loomed ahead. That -catastrophe she was spared, for who could wish to cut off the head of a -pigeon with a whistle attached to its tail? But if the whole bird-cage -had been overturned and the aerial orchestra sent screaming and -fluttering through the air, we can be sure, as Mr. Joseph Chamberlain -told her, that her conduct would have been "a credit to the British -aristocracy".</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2>IV</h2> - -<h2><a id="Archbishop_Thomson">ARCHBISHOP THOMSON</a></h2> - - -<p>The origin of Archbishop Thomson was obscure. His great-uncle "may -reasonably be supposed" to have been "an ornament to the middle -classes". His aunt married a gentleman who was present at the murder of -Gustavus III. of Sweden; and his father met his death at the age of -eighty-seven by treading on a cat in the early hours of the morning. The -physical vigour which this anecdote implies was combined in the -Archbishop with powers of intellect which promised success in whatever -profession he adopted. At Oxford it seemed likely that he would devote -himself to philosophy or science. While reading for his degree he found -time to write the <i>Outlines of the Laws of Thought</i>, which -"immediately became a recognised text-book for Oxford classes". But -though poetry, philosophy, medicine, and the law held out their -temptations he put such thoughts aside, or never entertained them, -having made up his mind from the first to dedicate himself to Divine -service. The measure of his success in the more exalted sphere is -attested by the following facts: Ordained deacon in 1842 at the age of -twenty-three, he became Dean and Bursar of Queen's College, Oxford, in -1845; Provost in 1855, Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol in 1861, and -Archbishop of York in 1862. Thus at the early age of forty-three he -stood next in rank to the Archbishop of Canterbury himself; and it was -commonly though erroneously expected that he would in the end attain to -that dignity also.</p> - -<p>It is a matter of temperament and belief whether you read this list with -respect or with boredom; whether you look upon an archbishop's hat as a -crown or as an extinguisher. If, like the present reviewer, you are -ready to hold the simple faith that the outer order corresponds to the -inner—that a vicar is a good man, a canon a better man, and an -archbishop the best man of all—you will find the study of the -Archbishop's life one of extreme fascination. He has turned aside from -poetry and philosophy and law, and specialised in virtue. He has -dedicated himself to the service of the Divine. His spiritual -proficiency has been such that he has developed from deacon to dean, -from dean to bishop, and from bishop to archbishop in the short space of -twenty years. As there are only two archbishops in the whole of England -the inference seems to be that he is the second best man in England; his -hat is the proof of it. Even in a material sense his hat was one of the -largest; it was larger than Mr. Gladstone's; larger than Thackeray's; -larger than Dickens'; it was in fact, so his hatter told him and we are -inclined to agree, an "eight full". Yet he began much as other men -begin. He struck an undergraduate in a fit of temper and was rusticated; -he wrote a text-book of logic and rowed a very good oar. But after he -was ordained his diary shows that the specialising process had begun. He -thought a great deal about the state of his soul; about "the monstrous -tumour of Simony"; about Church reform; and about the meaning of -Christianity. "Self-renunciation," he came to the conclusion, "is the -foundation of Christian Religion and Christian Morals. . . . The highest -wisdom is that which can enforce and cultivate this self-renunciation. -Hence (against Cousin) I hold that religion is higher far than -philosophy." There is one mention of chemists and capillarity, but -science and philosophy were, even at this early stage, in danger of -being crowded out. Soon the diary takes a different tone. "He seems," -says his biographer, "to have had no time for committing his thoughts to -paper"; he records his engagements only, and he dines out almost every -night. Sir Henry Taylor, whom he met at one of these parties, described -him as "simple, solid, good, capable, and pleasing". Perhaps it was his -solidity combined with his "eminently scientific" turn of mind, his -blandness as well as his bulk, that impressed some of these great people -with the confidence that in him the Church had found a very necessary -champion. His "brawny logic" and massive frame seemed to fit him to grapple -with a task that taxed the strongest—how, that is, to reconcile -the scientific discoveries of the age with religion, and even prove them -"some of its strongest witnesses for the truth". If any one could do -this Thomson could; his practical ability, unhampered by any mystical or -dreaming tendency, had already proved itself in the conduct of the -business affairs of his College. From Bishop he became almost instantly -Archbishop; and in becoming Archbishop he became Primate of England, -Governor of the Charterhouse and King's College, London, patron of one -hundred and twenty livings, with the Archdeaconries of York, Cleveland, -and the East Riding in his gift, and the Canonries and Prebends in York -Minster. Bishopthorpe itself was an enormous palace; he was -immediately faced by the "knotty question" of whether to buy all the -furniture—"much of it only poor stuff"—or to furnish the house -anew, which would cost a fortune. Moreover there were seven cows in the -park; but these, perhaps, were counterbalanced by nine children in the -nursery. Then the Prince and Princess of Wales came to stay, and the -Archbishop took upon himself the task of furnishing the Princess's -apartments. He went up to London and bought eight Moderator lamps, two -Spanish figures holding candles, and reminded himself of the necessity -of buying "soap for Princess". But meanwhile far more serious matters -claimed every ounce of his strength. Already he had been exhorted to -"wield the sure lance of your brawny logic against the sophistries" of the -authors of <i>Essays and Reviews</i>, and had responded in a work called -<i>Aids to Faith</i>. Near at hand the town of Sheffield, with its large -population of imperfectly educated working men, was a breeding ground of -scepticism and discontent. The Archbishop made it his special charge. He -was fond of watching the rolling of armour plate, and constantly -addressed meetings of working men. "Now what are these Nihilisms, and -Socialisms, and Communisms, and Fenianisms, and Secret Societies—what -do they all mean?" he asked. "Selfishness," he replied, and "assertion -of one class against the rest is at the bottom of them all." There was a -law of nature, he said, by which wages went up and wages went down. "You -must accept the declivity as well as the ascent. . . . If we could only -get people to learn that, then things would go on a great deal better -and smoother." And the working men of Sheffield responded by giving him -five hundred pieces of cutlery mounted in sterling silver. But -presumably there were a certain number of knives among the spoons and -the forks.</p> - -<p>Bishop Colenso, however, was far more troublesome than the working men -of Sheffield; and the Ritualists vexed him so persistently that even his -vast strength felt the strain. The questions which were referred to him -for decision were peculiarly fitted to tease and annoy even a man of his -bulk and his blandness. Shall a drunkard found dead in a ditch, or a -burglar who has fallen through a skylight, be given the benefit of the -Burial Service? he was asked. The question of lighted candles was "most -difficult"; the wearing of coloured stoles and the administration of the -mixed chalice taxed him considerably; and finally there was the Rev. -John Purchas, who, dressed in cope, alb, biretta and stole "cross-wise", -lit candles and extinguished them "for no special reason"; filled a -vessel with black powder and rubbed it into the foreheads of his -congregation; and hung over the Holy Table "a figure, image, or stuffed -skin of a dove, in a flying attitude". The Archbishop's temper, usually -so positive and imperturbable, was gravely ruffled. "Will there ever -come a time when it will be thought a crime to have striven to keep the -Church of England as representing the common sense of the Nation?" he -asked. "I suppose it may, but I shall not see it. I have gone through a -good deal, but I do not repent of having done my best." If, for a -moment, the Archbishop himself could ask such a question, we must -confess to a state of complete bewilderment. What has become of our -superlatively good man? He is harassed and cumbered; spends his time -settling questions about stuffed pigeons and coloured petticoats; writes -over eighty letters before breakfast sometimes; scarcely has time to run -over to Paris and buy his daughter a bonnet; and in the end has to ask -himself whether one of these days his conduct will not be considered a -crime.</p> - -<p>Was it a crime? And if so, was it his fault? Did he not start out in the -belief that Christianity had something to do with renunciation and was -not entirely a matter of common sense? If honours and obligations, pomps -and possessions, accumulated and encrusted him, how, being an -Archbishop, could he refuse to accept them? Princesses must have their -soap; palaces must have their furniture; children must have their cows. -And, pathetic though it seems, he never completely lost his interest in -science. He wore a pedometer; he was one of the first to use a camera; -he believed in the future of the typewriter; and in his last years he -tried to mend a broken clock. He was a delightful father too; he wrote -witty, terse, sensible letters; his good stories were much to the point; -and he died in harness. Certainly he was a very able man, but if we -insist upon goodness—is it easy, is it possible, for a good man to be -an Archbishop?</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2><a id="The_Patron"><i>The Patron and the Crocus</i></a></h2> - - -<p>Young men and women beginning to write are generally given the plausible -but utterly impracticable advice to write what they have to write as -shortly as possible, as clearly as possible, and without other thought -in their minds except to say exactly what is in them. Nobody ever adds -on these occasions the one thing needful: "And be sure you choose your -patron wisely", though that is the gist of the whole matter. For a book -is always written for somebody to read, and, since the patron is not -merely the paymaster, but also in a very subtle and insidious way the -instigator and inspirer of what is written, it is of the utmost -importance that he should be a desirable man.</p> - -<p>But who, then, is the desirable man—the patron who will cajole the -best out of the writer's brain and bring to birth the most varied and -vigorous progeny of which he is capable? Different ages have answered -the question differently. The Elizabethans, to speak roughly, -chose the aristocracy to write for and the playhouse public. The -eighteenth-century patron was a combination of coffee-house wit and Grub -Street bookseller. In the nineteenth-century the great writers wrote for -the half-crown magazines and the leisured classes. And looking back and -applauding the splendid results of these different alliances, it all -seems enviably simple, and plain as a pikestaff compared with our own -predicament—for whom should we write? For the present supply of -patrons is of unexampled and bewildering variety. There is the daily Press, -the weekly Press, the monthly Press; the English public and the American -public; the best-seller public and the worst-seller public; the -high-brow public and the red-blood public; all now organised -self-conscious entities capable through their various mouthpieces of -making their needs known and their approval or displeasure felt. Thus -the writer who has been moved by the sight of the first crocus in -Kensington Gardens has, before he sets pen to paper, to choose from a -crowd of competitors the particular patron who suits him best. It is -futile to say, "Dismiss them all; think only of your crocus", because -writing is a method of communication; and the crocus is an imperfect -crocus until it has been shared. The first man or the last may write for -himself alone, but he is an exception and an unenviable one at that, and -the gulls are welcome to his works if the gulls can read them.</p> - -<p>Granted, then, that every writer has some public or other at the end of -his pen, the high-minded will say that it should be a submissive public, -accepting obediently whatever he likes to give it. Plausible as the -theory sounds, great risks are attached to it. For in that case the -writer remains conscious of his public, yet is superior to it—an -uncomfortable and unfortunate combination, as the works of Samuel -Butler, George Meredith, and Henry James may be taken to prove. Each -despised the public; each desired a public; each failed to attain a -public; and each wreaked his failure upon the public by a succession, -gradually increasing in intensity, of angularities, obscurities, and -affectations which no writer whose patron was his equal and friend would -have thought it necessary to inflict. Their crocuses in consequence are -tortured plants, beautiful and bright, but with something wry-necked -about them, malformed, shrivelled on the one side, overblown on the -other. A touch of the sun would have done them a world of good. Shall we -then rush to the opposite extreme and accept (if in fancy alone) the -flattering proposals which the editors of the <i>Times</i> and the <i>Daily -News</i> may be supposed to make us—"Twenty pounds down for your -crocus in precisely fifteen hundred words, which shall blossom upon every -breakfast table from John o' Groats to the Land's End before nine -o'clock to-morrow morning with the writer's name attached"?</p> - -<p>But will one crocus be enough, and must it not be a very brilliant -yellow to shine so far, to cost so much, and to have one's name attached -to it? The Press is undoubtedly a great multiplier of crocuses. But if -we look at some of these plants, we shall find that they are only very -distantly related to the original little yellow or purple flower which -pokes up through the grass in Kensington Gardens about this time of -year. The newspaper crocus is amazing but still a very different plant. -It fills precisely the space allotted to it. It radiates a golden glow. -It is genial, affable, warm-hearted. It is beautifully finished, too, -for let nobody think that the art of "our dramatic critic" of the -<i>Times</i> or of Mr. Lynd of the <i>Daily News</i> is an easy one. It is -no despicable feat to start a million brains running at nine o'clock in the -morning, to give two million eyes something bright and brisk and amusing -to look at. But the night comes and these flowers fade. So little bits -of glass lose their lustre if you take them out of the sea; great prima -donnas howl like hyenas if you shut them up in telephone boxes; and the -most brilliant of articles when removed from its element is dust and -sand and the husks of straw. Journalism embalmed in a book is -unreadable.</p> - -<p>The patron we want, then, is one who will help us to preserve our -flowers from decay. But as his qualities change from age to age, and it -needs considerable integrity and conviction not to be dazzled by the -pretensions or bamboozled by the persuasions of the competing crowd, -this business of patron-finding is one of the tests and trials of -authorship. To know whom to write for is to know how to write. Some of -the modern patron's qualities are, however, fairly plain. The writer -will require at this moment, it is obvious, a patron with the -book-reading habit rather than the play-going habit. Nowadays, too, he -must be instructed in the literature of other times and races. But there -are other qualities which our special weaknesses and tendencies demand -in him. There is the question of indecency, for instance, which plagues -us and puzzles us much more than it did the Elizabethans. The -twentieth-century patron must be immune from shock. He must distinguish -infallibly between the little clod of manure which sticks to the crocus -of necessity, and that which is plastered to it out of bravado. He must -be a judge, too, of those social influences which inevitably play so -large a part in modern literature, and able to say which matures and -fortifies, which inhibits and makes sterile. Further, there is emotion -for him to pronounce on, and in no department can he do more useful work -than in bracing a writer against sentimentality on the one hand and a -craven fear of expressing his feeling on the other. It is worse, he will -say, and perhaps more common, to be afraid of feeling than to feel too -much. He will add, perhaps, something about language, and point out how -many words Shakespeare used and how much grammar Shakespeare violated, -while we, though we keep our fingers so demurely to the black notes on -the piano, have not appreciably improved upon <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>. -And if you can forget your sex altogether, he will say, so much the -better; a writer has none. But all this is by the way—elementary and -disputable. The patron's prime quality is something different, only to -be expressed perhaps by the use of that convenient word which cloaks so -much—atmosphere. It is necessary that the patron should shed and -envelop the crocus in an atmosphere which makes it appear a plant of the -very highest importance, so that to misrepresent it is the one outrage -not to be forgiven this side of the grave. He must make us feel that a -single crocus, if it be a real crocus, is enough for him; that he does -not want to be lectured, elevated, instructed, or improved; that he is -sorry that he bullied Carlyle into vociferation, Tennyson into idyllics, -and Ruskin into insanity; that he is now ready to efface himself or -assert himself as his writers require; that he is bound to them by a -more than maternal tie; that they are twins indeed, one dying if the -other dies, one flourishing if the other flourishes; that the fate of -literature depends upon their happy alliance—all of which proves, as -we began by saying, that the choice of a patron is of the highest -importance. But how to choose rightly? How to write well? Those are the -questions.</p> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2><a id="The_Modern_Essay"><i>The Modern Essay</i></a></h2> - - -<p>As Mr. Rhys truly says, it is unnecessary to go profoundly into the -history and origin of the essay—whether it derives from Socrates or -Siranney the Persian—since, like all living things, its present is -more important than its past. Moreover, the family is widely spread; and -while some of its representatives have risen in the world and wear their -coronets with the best, others pick up a precarious living in the gutter -near Fleet Street. The form, too, admits variety. The essay can be short -or long, serious or trifling, about God and Spinoza, or about turtles -and Cheapside. But as we turn over the pages of these five little -volumes,<a id="FNanchor_13_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_1" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> containing essays written between 1870 and 1920, certain -principles appear to control the chaos, and we detect in the short -period under review something like the progress of history.</p> - -<p>Of all forms of literature, however, the essay is the one which least -calls for the use of long words. The principle which controls it is -simply that it should give pleasure; the desire which impels us when we -take it from the shelf is simply to receive pleasure. Everything in an -essay must be subdued to that end. It should lay us under a spell with -its first word, and we should only wake, refreshed, with its last. In -the interval we may pass through the most various experiences of -amusement, surprise, interest, indignation; we may soar to the heights -of fantasy with Lamb or plunge to the depths of wisdom with Bacon, but -we must never be roused. The essay must lap us about and draw its -curtain across the world.</p> - -<p>So great a feat is seldom accomplished, though the fault may well be as -much on the reader's side as on the writer's. Habit and lethargy have -dulled his palate. A novel has a story, a poem rhyme; but what art can -the essayist use in these short lengths of prose to sting us wide awake -and fix us in a trance which is not sleep but rather an intensification of -life—a basking, with every faculty alert, in the sun of pleasure? -He must know—that is the first essential—how to write. His -learning may be as profound as Mark Pattison's, but in an essay it must be -so fused by the magic of writing that not a fact juts out, not a dogma -tears the surface of the texture. Macaulay in one way, Froude in another, -did this superbly over and over again. They have blown more knowledge into -us in the course of one essay than the innumerable chapters of a hundred -text-books. But when Mark Pattison has to tell us, in the space of -thirty-five little pages, about Montaigne, we feel that he had not -previously assimilated M. Grün. M. Grün was a gentleman who once wrote -a bad book. M. Grün and his book should have been embalmed for our -perpetual delight in amber. But the process is fatiguing; it requires -more time and perhaps more temper than Pattison had at his command. He -served M. Grün up raw, and he remains a crude berry among the cook -meats, upon which our teeth must grate for ever. Something of the sort -applies to Matthew Arnold and a certain translator of Spinoza. Literal -truth-telling and finding fault with a culprit for his good are out of -place in an essay, where everything should be for our good and rather for -eternity than for the March number of the <i>Fortnightly Review</i>. But -if the voice of the scold should never be heard in this narrow plot, -there is another voice which is as a plague of locusts—the voice of a -man stumbling drowsily among loose words, clutching aimlessly at vague -ideas, the voice, for example, of Mr. Hutton in the following passage:</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>Add to this that his married life was very brief, only seven years and a -half, being unexpectedly cut short, and that his passionate reverence for -his wife's memory and genius—in his own words, "a religion"—was -one which, as he must have been perfectly sensible, he could not make to -appear otherwise than extravagant, not to say an hallucination, in the -eyes of the rest of mankind, and yet that he was possessed by an -irresistible yearning to attempt to embody it in all the tender and -enthusiastic hyperbole of which it is so pathetic to find a man who -gained his fame by his "dry-light" a master, and it is impossible not to -feel that the human incidents in Mr. Mill's career are very sad.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>A book could take that blow, but it sinks an essay. A biography in two -volumes is indeed the proper depositary; for there, where the licence is -so much wider, and hints and glimpses of outside things make part of the -feast (we refer to the old type of Victorian volume), these yawns and -stretches hardly matter, and have indeed some positive value of their -own. But that value, which is contributed by the reader, perhaps -illicitly, in his desire to get as much into the book from all possible -sources as he can, must be ruled out here.</p> - -<p>There is no room for the impurities of literature in an essay. Somehow -or other, by dint of labour or bounty of nature, or both combined, the -essay must be pure—pure like water or pure like wine, but pure from -dullness, deadness, and deposits of extraneous matter. Of all writers in -the first volume, Walter Pater best achieves this arduous task, because -before setting out to write his essay ("Notes on Leonardo da Vinci") he -has somehow contrived to get his material fused. He is a learned man, -but it is not knowledge of Leonardo that remains with us, but a vision, -such as we get in a good novel where everything contributes to bring the -writer's conception as a whole before us. Only here, in the essay, where -the bounds are so strict and facts have to be used in their nakedness, -the true writer like Walter Pater makes these limitations yield their -own quality. Truth will give it authority; from its narrow limits he -will get shape and intensity; and then there is no more fitting place -for some of those ornaments which the old writers loved and we, by -calling them ornaments, presumably despise. Nowadays nobody would have -the courage to embark on the once famous description of Leonardo's lady -who has</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas and -keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with -Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, -as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary . . .</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>The passage is too thumb-marked to slip naturally into the context. But -when we come unexpectedly upon "the smiling of women and the motion of -great waters", or upon "full of the refinement of the dead, in sad, -earth-coloured raiment, set with pale stones", we suddenly remember that -we have ears and we have eyes, and that the English language fills a -long array of stout volumes with innumerable words, many of which are of -more than one syllable. The only living Englishman who ever looks into -these volumes is, of course, a gentleman of Polish extraction. But -doubtless our abstention saves us much gush, much rhetoric, much -high-stepping and cloud-prancing, and for the sake of the prevailing -sobriety and hard-headedness we should be willing to barter the -splendour of Sir Thomas Browne and the vigour of Swift.</p> - -<p>Yet, if the essay admits more properly than biography or fiction of -sudden boldness and metaphor, and can be polished till every atom of its -surface shines, there are dangers in that too. We are soon in sight of -ornament. Soon the current, which is the life-blood of literature, runs -slow; and instead of sparkling and flashing or moving with a quieter -impulse which has a deeper excitement, words coagulate together in -frozen sprays which, like the grapes on a Christmas-tree, glitter for a -single night, but are dusty and garish the day after. The temptation to -decorate is great where the theme may be of the slightest. What is there -to interest another in the fact that one has enjoyed a walking tour, or -has amused oneself by rambling down Cheapside and looking at the turtles -in Mr. Sweeting's shop window? Stevenson and Samuel Butler chose very -different methods of exciting our interest in these domestic themes. -Stevenson, of course, trimmed and polished and set out his matter in the -traditional eighteenth-century form. It is admirably done, but we cannot -help feeling anxious, as the essay proceeds, lest the material may give -out under the craftsman's fingers. The ingot is so small, the -manipulation so incessant. And perhaps that is why the peroration—</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>To sit still and contemplate—to remember the faces of women -without desire, to be pleased by the great deeds of men without envy, to be -everything and everywhere in sympathy and yet content to remain where -and what you are—</p></blockquote> - - -<p>has the sort of insubstantiality which suggests that by the time he got -to the end he had left himself nothing solid to work with. Butler -adopted the very opposite method. Think your own thoughts, he seems to -say, and speak them as plainly as you can. These turtles in the shop -window which appear to leak out of their shells through heads and feet -suggest a fatal faithfulness to a fixed idea. And so, striding -unconcernedly from one idea to the next, we traverse a large stretch of -ground; observe that a wound in the solicitor is a very serious thing; -that Mary Queen of Scots wears surgical boots and is subject to fits -near the Horse Shoe in Tottenham Court Road; take it for granted that no -one really cares about Æschylus; and so, with many amusing anecdotes -and some profound reflections, reach the peroration, which is that, as -he had been told not to see more in Cheapside than he could get into -twelve pages of the <i>Universal Review</i>, he had better stop. And yet -obviously Butler is at least as careful of our pleasure as Stevenson; -and to write like oneself and call it not writing is a much harder -exercise in style than to write like Addison and call it writing well.</p> - -<p>But, however much they differ individually, the Victorian essayists yet -had something in common. They wrote at greater length than is now usual, -and they wrote for a public which had not only time to sit down to its -magazine seriously, but a high, if peculiarly Victorian, standard of -culture by which to judge it. It was worth while to speak out upon -serious matters in an essay; and there was nothing absurd in writing as -well as one possibly could when, in a month or two, the same public -which had welcomed the essay in a magazine would carefully read it once -more in a book. But a change came from a small audience of cultivated -people to a larger audience of people who were not quite so cultivated. -The change was not altogether for the worse. In volume III. we find Mr. -Birrell and Mr. Beerbohm. It might even be said that there was a -reversion to the classic type, and that the essay by losing its size and -something of its sonority was approaching more nearly the essay of -Addison and Lamb. At any rate, there is a great gulf between Mr. Birrell -on Carlyle and the essay which one may suppose that Carlyle would have -written upon Mr. Birrell. There is little similarity between <i>A Cloud of -Pinafores</i>, by Max Beerbohm, and <i>A Cynic's Apology</i>, by Leslie -Stephen. But the essay is alive; there is no reason to despair. As the -conditions change so the essayist, most sensitive of all plants to public -opinion, adapts himself, and if he is good makes the best of the change, -and if he is bad the worst. Mr. Birrell is certainly good; and so we find -that, though he has dropped a considerable amount of weight, his attack is -much more direct and his movement more supple. But what did Mr. Beerbohm -give to the essay and what did he take from it? That is a much more -complicated question, for here we have an essayist who has concentrated -on the work and is without doubt the prince of his profession.</p> - -<p>What Mr. Beerbohm gave was, of course, himself. This presence, which has -haunted the essay fitfully from the time of Montaigne, had been in exile -since the death of Charles Lamb. Matthew Arnold was never to his readers -Matt, nor Walter Pater affectionately abbreviated in a thousand homes to -Wat. They gave us much, but that they did not give. Thus, some time in -the nineties, it must have surprised readers accustomed to exhortation, -information, and denunciation to find themselves familiarly addressed by -a voice which seemed to belong to a man no larger than themselves. He -was affected by private joys and sorrows, and had no gospel to preach -and no learning to impart. He was himself, simply and directly, and -himself he has remained. Once again we have an essayist capable of using -the essayist's most proper but most dangerous and delicate tool. He has -brought personality into literature, not unconsciously and impurely, but -so consciously and purely that we do not know whether there is any -relation between Max the essayist and Mr. Beerbohm the man. We only know -that the spirit of personality permeates every word that he writes. The -triumph is the triumph of style. For it is only by knowing how to write -that you can make use in literature of your self; that self which, while -it is essential to literature, is also its most dangerous antagonist. -Never to be yourself and yet always—that is the problem. Some of the -essayists in Mr. Rhys' collection, to be frank, have not altogether -succeeded in solving it. We are nauseated by the sight of trivial -personalities decomposing in the eternity of print. As talk, no doubt, -it was charming, and certainly the writer is a good fellow to meet over -a bottle of beer. But literature is stern; it is no use being charming, -virtuous, or even learned and brilliant into the bargain, unless, she -seems to reiterate, you fulfil her first condition—to know how to -write.</p> - -<p>This art is possessed to perfection by Mr. Beerbohm. But he has not -searched the dictionary for polysyllables. He has not moulded firm -periods or seduced our ears with intricate cadences and strange melodies. -Some of his companions—Henley and Stevenson, for example—are -momentarily more impressive. But <i>A Cloud of Pinafores</i> had in it that -indescribable inequality, stir, and final expressiveness which belong to -life and to life alone. You have not finished with it because you have -read it, any more than friendship is ended because it is time to part. -Life wells up and alters and adds. Even things in a book-case change if -they are alive; we find ourselves wanting to meet them again; we find -them altered. So we look back upon essay after essay by Mr. Beerbohm, -knowing that, come September or May, we shall sit down with them and -talk. Yet it is true that the essayist is the most sensitive of all -writers to public opinion. The drawing-room is the place where a great -deal of reading is done nowadays, and the essays of Mr. Beerbohm lie, -with an exquisite appreciation of all that the position exacts, upon the -drawing-room table. There is no gin about; no strong tobacco; no puns, -drunkenness, or insanity. Ladies and gentlemen talk together, and some -things, of course, are not said.</p> - -<p>But if it would be foolish to attempt to confine Mr. Beerbohm to one -room, it would be still more foolish, unhappily, to make him, the -artist, the man who gives us only his best, the representative of our -age. There are no essays by Mr. Beerbohm in the fourth or fifth volumes -of the present collection. His age seems already a little distant, and -the drawing-room table, as it recedes, begins to look rather like an -altar where, once upon a time, people deposited offerings—fruit from -their own orchards, gifts carved with their own hands. Now once more the -conditions have changed. The public needs essays as much as ever, and -perhaps even more. The demand for the light middle not exceeding fifteen -hundred words, or in special cases seventeen hundred and fifty, much -exceeds the supply. Where Lamb wrote one essay and Max perhaps writes -two, Mr. Belloc at a rough computation produces three hundred and -sixty-five. They are very short, it is true. Yet with what dexterity the -practised essayist will utilise his space—beginning as close to the -top of the sheet as possible, judging precisely how far to go, when to -turn, and how, without sacrificing a hair's-breadth of paper, to wheel -about and alight accurately upon the last word his editor allows! As a feat -of skill it is well worth watching. But the personality upon which Mr. -Belloc, like Mr. Beerbohm, depends suffers in the process. It comes to -us not with the natural richness of the speaking voice, but strained and -thin and full of mannerisms and affectations, like the voice of a man -shouting through a megaphone to a crowd on a windy day. "Little friends, -my readers," he says in the essay called "An Unknown Country", and he -goes on to tell us how—</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>There was a shepherd the other day at Findon Fair who had come from the -east by Lewes with sheep, and who had in his eyes that reminiscence of -horizons which makes the eyes of shepherds and of mountaineers different -from the eyes of other men. . . . I went with him to hear what he had to -say, for shepherds talk quite differently from other men.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>Happily this shepherd had little to say, even under the stimulus of the -inevitable mug of beer, about the Unknown Country, for the only remark -that he did make proves him either a minor poet, unfit for the care of -sheep, or Mr. Belloc himself masquerading with a fountain pen. That is -the penalty which the habitual essayist must now be prepared to face. He -must masquerade. He cannot afford the time either to be himself or to be -other people. He must skim the surface of thought and dilute the -strength of personality. He must give us a worn weekly halfpenny instead -of a solid sovereign once a year.</p> - -<p>But it is not Mr. Belloc only who has suffered from the prevailing -conditions. The essays which bring the collection to the year 1920 may -not be the best of their authors' work, but, if we except writers like -Mr. Conrad and Mr. Hudson, who have strayed into essay writing -accidentally, and concentrate upon those who write essays habitually, we -shall find them a good deal affected by the change in their -circumstances. To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to -write for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired people -coming home in the evening, is a heart-breaking task for men who know -good writing from bad. They do it, but instinctively draw out of harm's -way anything precious that might be damaged by contact with the public, -or anything sharp that might irritate its skin. And so, if one reads Mr. -Lucas, Mr. Lynd, or Mr. Squire in the bulk, one feels that a common -greyness silvers everything. They are as far removed from the -extravagant beauty of Walter Pater as they are from the intemperate -candour of Leslie Stephen. Beauty and courage are dangerous spirits to -battle in a column and a half; and thought, like a brown paper parcel in -a waistcoat pocket, has a way of spoiling the symmetry of an article. It -is a kind, tired, apathetic world for which they write, and the marvel -is that they never cease to attempt, at least, to write well.</p> - -<p>But there is no need to pity Mr. Clutton Brock for this change in the -essayist's conditions. He has clearly made the best of his circumstances -and not the worst. One hesitates even to say that he has had to make any -conscious effort in the matter, so naturally has he effected the -transition from the private essayist to the public, from the -drawing-room to the Albert Hall. Paradoxically enough, the shrinkage in -size has brought about a corresponding expansion of individuality. We -have no longer the "I" of Max and of Lamb, but the "we" of public bodies -and other sublime personages. It is "we" who go to hear the <i>Magic -Flute</i>; "we" who ought to profit by it; "we", in some mysterious way, -who, in our corporate capacity, once upon a time actually wrote it. For -music and literature and art must submit to the same generalisation or -they will not carry to the farthest recesses of the Albert Hall. That -the voice of Mr. Clutton Brock, so sincere and so disinterested, carries -such a distance and reaches so many without pandering to the weakness of -the mass or its passions must be a matter of legitimate satisfaction to -us all. But while "we" are gratified, "I", that unruly partner in the -human fellowship, is reduced to despair. "I" must always think things -for himself, and feel things for himself. To share them in a diluted -form with the majority of well-educated and well-intentioned men and -women is for him sheer agony; and while the rest of us listen intently -and profit profoundly, "I" slips off to the woods and the fields and -rejoices in a single blade of grass or a solitary potato.</p> - -<p>In the fifth volume of modern essays, it seems, we have got some way -from pleasure and the art of writing. But in justice to the essayists of -1920 we must be sure that we are not praising the famous because they -have been praised already and the dead because we shall never meet them -wearing spats in Piccadilly. We must know what we mean when we say that -they can write and give us pleasure. We must compare them; we must bring -out the quality. We must point to this and say it is good because it is -exact, truthful, and imaginative:</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>Nay, retire men cannot when they would; neither will they, when it were -Reason; but are impatient of Privateness, even in age and sickness, -which require the shadow: like old Townsmen: that will still be sitting -at their street door, though thereby they offer Age to Scorn . . .</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>and to this, and say it is bad because it is loose, plausible, and -commonplace:</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>With courteous and precise cynicism on his lips, he thought of quiet -virginal chambers, of waters singing under the moon, of terraces where -taintless music sobbed into the open night, of pure maternal mistresses -with protecting arms and vigilant eyes, of fields slumbering in the -sunlight, of leagues of ocean heaving under warm tremulous heavens, of -hot ports, gorgeous and perfumed. . . .</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>It goes on, but already we are bemused with sound and neither feel nor -hear. The comparison makes us suspect that the art of writing has for -backbone some fierce attachment to an idea. It is on the back of an -idea, something believed in with conviction or seen with precision and -thus compelling words to its shape, that the diverse company which -included Lamb and Bacon, and Mr. Beerbohm and Hudson, and Vernon Lee and -Mr. Conrad, and Leslie Stephen and Butler and Walter Pater reaches the -farther shore. Very various talents have helped or hindered the passage -of the idea into words. Some scrape through painfully; others fly with -every wind favouring. But Mr. Belloc and Mr. Lucas and Mr. Lynd and Mr. -Squire are not fiercely attached to anything in itself. They share the -contemporary dilemma—that lack of an obstinate conviction which lifts -ephemeral sounds through the misty sphere of anybody's language to the -land where there is a perpetual marriage, a perpetual union. Vague as -all definitions are, a good essay must have this permanent quality about -it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that -shuts us in, not out.</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_13_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_1"><span class="label">[13]</span></a><i>Modern English Essays</i>, edited by Ernest Rhys, -5 vols. (Dent).</p></div> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2><a id="Joseph_Conrad"><i>Joseph Conrad</i></a><a id="FNanchor_14_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_1" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></h2> - - -<p>Suddenly, without giving us time to arrange our thoughts or prepare our -phrases, our guest has left us; and his withdrawal without farewell or -ceremony is in keeping with his mysterious arrival, long years ago, to -take up his lodging in this country. For there was always an air of -mystery about him. It was partly his Polish birth, partly his memorable -appearance, partly his preference for living in the depths of the -country, out of ear-shot of gossips, beyond reach of hostesses, so that -for news of him one had to depend upon the evidence of simple visitors -with a habit of ringing door-bells who reported of their unknown host -that he had the most perfect manners, the brightest eyes, and spoke -English with a strong foreign accent.</p> - -<p>Still, though it is the habit of death to quicken and focus our -memories, there clings to the genius of Conrad something essentially, -and not accidentally, difficult of approach. His reputation of later -years was, with one obvious exception, undoubtedly the highest in -England; yet he was not popular. He was read with passionate delight by -some; others he left cold and lustreless. Among his readers were people -of the most opposite ages and sympathies. Schoolboys of fourteen, -driving their way through Marryat, Scott, Henty, and Dickens, swallowed -him down with the rest; while the seasoned and the fastidious, who in -process of time have eaten their way to the heart of literature and -there turn over and over a few precious crumbs, set Conrad scrupulously -upon their banqueting table. One source of difficulty and disagreement -is, of course, to be found, where men have at all times found it, in his -beauty. One opens his pages and feels as Helen must have felt when she -looked in her glass and realised that, do what she would, she could -never in any circumstances pass for a plain woman. So Conrad had been -gifted, so he had schooled himself, and such was his obligation to a -strange language wooed characteristically for its Latin qualities rather -than its Saxon that it seemed impossible for him to make an ugly or -insignificant movement of the pen. His mistress, his style, is a little -somnolent sometimes in repose. But let somebody speak to her, and then -how magnificently she bears down upon us, with what colour, triumph, and -majesty! Yet it is arguable that Conrad would have gained both in credit -and in popularity if he had written what he had to write without this -incessant care for appearances. They block and impede and distract, his -critics say, pointing to those famous passages which it is becoming the -habit to lift from their context and exhibit among other cut flowers of -English prose. He was self-conscious and stiff and ornate, they -complain, and the sound of his own voice was dearer to him than the -voice of humanity in its anguish. The criticism is familiar, and as -difficult to refute as the remarks of deaf people when <i>Figaro</i> is -played. They see the orchestra; far off they hear a dismal scrape of -sound; their own remarks are interrupted, and, very naturally, they -conclude that the ends of life would be better served if instead of -scraping Mozart those fifty fiddlers broke stones upon the road. That -beauty teaches, that beauty is a disciplinarian, how are we to convince -them, since her teaching is inseparable from the sound of her voice and -to that they are deaf? But read Conrad, not in birthday books but in the -bulk, and he must be lost indeed to the meaning of words who does not -hear in that rather stiff and sombre music, with its reserve, its pride, -its vast and implacable integrity, how it is better to be good than bad, -how loyalty is good and honesty and courage, though ostensibly Conrad is -concerned merely to show us the beauty of a night at sea. But it is ill -work dragging such intimations from their element. Dried in our little -saucers, without the magic and mystery of language, they lose their -power to excite and goad; they lose the drastic power which is a -constant quality of Conrad's prose.</p> - -<p>For it was by virtue of something drastic in him, the qualities of a -leader and captain, that Conrad kept his hold over boys and young -people. Until <i>Nostromo</i> was written his characters, as the young were -quick to perceive, were fundamentally simple and heroic, however subtle -the mind and indirect the method of their creator. They were seafarers, -used to solitude and silence. They were in conflict with Nature, but at -peace with man. Nature was their antagonist; she it was who drew forth -honour, magnanimity, loyalty, the qualities proper to man; she who in -sheltered bays reared to womanhood beautiful girls unfathomable and -austere. Above all, it was Nature who turned out such gnarled and tested -characters as Captain Whalley and old Singleton, obscure but glorious in -their obscurity, who were to Conrad the pick of our race, the men whose -praises he was never tired of celebrating:</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>They had been strong as those are strong who know neither doubts nor -hopes. They had been impatient and enduring, turbulent and devoted, -unruly and faithful. Well-meaning people had tried to represent these -men as whining over every mouthful of their food, as going about their -work in fear of their lives. But in truth they had been men who knew -toil, privation, violence, debauchery—but knew not fear, and had no -desire of spite in their hearts. Men hard to manage, but easy to -inspire; voiceless men—but men enough to scorn in their hearts the -sentimental voices that bewailed the hardness of their fate. It was a -fate unique and their own; the capacity to bear it appeared to them the -privilege of the chosen! Their generation lived inarticulate and -indispensable, without knowing the sweetness of affections or the refuge -of a home—and died free from the dark menace of a narrow grave. They -were the everlasting children of the mysterious sea.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>Such were the characters of the early books—<i>Lord Jim, Typhoon, -The Nigger of the "Narcissus", Youth</i>; and these books, in spite of the -changes and fashions, are surely secure of their place among our -classics. But they reach this height by means of qualities which the -simple story of adventure, as Marryat told it, or Fenimore Cooper, has -no claim to possess. For it is clear that to admire and celebrate such -men and such deeds, romantically, wholeheartedly and with the fervour -of a lover, one must be possessed of the double vision; one must be at -once inside and out. To praise their silence one must possess a voice. -To appreciate their endurance one must be sensitive to fatigue. One must -be able to live on equal terms with the Whalleys and the Singletons and -yet hide from their suspicious eyes the very qualities which enable one -to understand them. Conrad alone was able to live that double life, for -Conrad was compound of two men; together with the sea captain dwelt that -subtle, refined, and fastidious analyst whom he called Marlow. "A most -discreet, understanding man", he said of Marlow.</p> - -<p>Marlow was one of those born observers who are happiest in retirement. -Marlow liked nothing better than to sit on deck, in some obscure creek -of the Thames, smoking and recollecting; smoking and speculating; -sending after his smoke beautiful rings of words until all the summer's -night became a little clouded with tobacco smoke. Marlow, too, had a -profound respect for the men with whom he had sailed; but he saw the -humour of them. He nosed out and described in masterly fashion those -livid creatures who prey successfully upon the clumsy veterans. He had a -flair for human deformity; his humour was sardonic. Nor did Marlow live -entirely wreathed in the smoke of his own cigars. He had a habit of -opening his eyes suddenly and looking—at a rubbish heap, at a port, -at a shop counter—and then complete in its burning ring of light that -thing is flashed bright upon the mysterious background. Introspective -and analytical, Marlow was aware of this peculiarity. He said the power -came to him suddenly. He might, for instance, overhear a French officer -murmur "Mon Dieu, how the time passes!"</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>Nothing [he comments] could have been more commonplace than this remark; -but its utterance coincided for me with a moment of vision. It's -extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull -ears, with dormant thoughts. . . . Nevertheless, there can be but few of -us who had never known one of these rare moments of awakening, when we -see, hear, understand, ever so much—everything—in a flash, -before we fall back again into our agreeable somnolence. I raised my eyes -when he spoke, and I saw him as though I had never seen him before.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>Picture after picture he painted thus upon that dark background; ships -first and foremost, ships at anchor, ships flying before the storm, -ships in harbour; he painted sunsets and dawns; he painted the night; he -painted the sea in every aspect; he painted the gaudy brilliancy of -Eastern ports, and men and women, their houses and their attitudes. He -was an accurate and unflinching observer, schooled to that "absolute -loyalty towards his feelings and sensations", which, Conrad wrote, "an -author should keep hold of in his most exalted moments of creation". And -very quietly and compassionately Marlow sometimes lets fall a few words -of epitaph which remind us, with all that beauty and brilliancy before -our eyes, of the darkness of the background.</p> - -<p>Thus a rough-and-ready distinction would make us say that it is Marlow -who comments, Conrad who creates. It would lead us, aware that we are on -dangerous ground, to account for that change which, Conrad tells us, -took place when he had finished the last story in the <i>Typhoon</i> -volume—"a subtle change in the nature of the inspiration"—by -some alteration in the relationship of the two old friends. ". . . it -seemed somehow that there was nothing more in the world to write about." It -was Conrad, let us suppose, Conrad the creator, who said that, looking back -with sorrowful satisfaction upon the stories he had told; feeling as he -well might that he could never better the storm in <i>The Nigger of the -"Narcissus</i>", or render more faithful tribute to the qualities of -British seamen than he had done already in <i>Youth</i> and <i>Lord -Jim</i>. It was then that Marlow, the commentator, reminded him how, in the -course of nature, one must grow old, sit smoking on deck, and give up -sea-faring. But, he reminded him, those strenuous years had deposited -their memories; and he even went so far perhaps as to hint that, though -the last word might have been said about Captain Whalley and his -relation to the universe, there remained on shore a number of men and -women whose relationships, though of a more personal kind, might be -worth looking into. If we further suppose that there was a volume of -Henry James on board and that Marlow gave his friend the book to take to -bed with him, we may seek support in the fact that it was in 1905 that -Conrad wrote a very fine essay upon that master.</p> - -<p>For some years, then, it was Marlow who was the dominant partner. -<i>Nostromo, Chance, The Arrow of Gold</i> represent that stage of the -alliance which some will continue to find the richest of all. The human -heart is more intricate than the forest, they will say; it has its -storms; it has its creatures of the night; and if as novelist you wish -to test man in all his relationships, the proper antagonist is man; his -ordeal is in society, not solitude. For them there will always be a -peculiar fascination in the books where the light of those brilliant -eyes falls not only upon the waste of waters but upon the heart in its -perplexity. But it must be admitted that, if Marlow thus advised Conrad -to shift his angle of vision, the advice was bold. For the vision of a -novelist is both complex and specialised; complex, because behind his -characters and apart from them must stand something stable to which he -relates them; specialised because since he is a single person with one -sensibility the aspects of life in which he can believe with conviction -are strictly limited. So delicate a balance is easily disturbed. After -the middle period Conrad never again was able to bring his figures into -perfect relation with their background. He never believed in his later -and more highly sophisticated characters as he had believed in his early -seamen. When he had to indicate their relation to that other unseen -world of novelists, the world of values and convictions, he was far less -sure what those values were. Then, over and over again, a single phrase, -"He steered with care", coming at the end of a storm, carried in it a -whole morality. But in this more crowded and complicated world such -terse phrases became less and less appropriate. Complex men and women of -many interests and relations would not submit to so summary a judgement; -or, if they did, much that was important in them escaped the verdict. -And yet it was very necessary to Conrad's genius, with its luxuriant and -romantic power, to have some law by which its creations could be tried. -Essentially—such remained his creed—this world of civilised and -self-conscious people is based upon "a few very simple ideas"; but -where, in the world of thoughts and personal relations, are we to find -them? There are no masts in drawing-rooms; the typhoon does not test the -worth of politicians and business men. Seeking and not finding such -supports, the world of Conrad's later period has about it an involuntary -obscurity, an inconclusiveness, almost a disillusionment which baffles -and fatigues. We lay hold in the dusk only of the old nobilities and -sonorities: fidelity, compassion, honour, service—beautiful always, -but now a little wearily reiterated, as if times had changed. Perhaps it -was Marlow who was at fault. His habit of mind was a trifle sedentary. He -had sat upon deck too long; splendid in soliloquy, he was less apt in -the give and take of conversation; and those "moments of vision" -flashing and fading, do not serve as well as steady lamplight to -illumine the ripple of life and its long, gradual years. Above all, -perhaps, he did not take into account how, if Conrad was to create, it -was essential first that he should believe.</p> - -<p>Therefore, though we shall make expeditions into the later books and -bring back wonderful trophies, large tracts of them will remain by most -of us untrodden. It is the earlier books—<i>Youth, Lord Jim, Typhoon, -The Nigger of the "Narcissus"</i>—that we shall read in their -entirety. For when the question is asked, what of Conrad will survive and -where in the ranks of novelists we are to place him, these books, with -their air of telling us something very old and perfectly true, which had -lain hidden but is now revealed, will come to mind and make such questions -and comparisons seem a little futile. Complete and still, very chaste and -very beautiful, they rise in the memory as, on these hot summer nights, -in their slow and stately way first one star comes out and then another.</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_14_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_1"><span class="label">[14]</span></a>August, 1924.</p></div> - -<p><br><br><br></p> - -<h2><a id="How_It"><i>How It Strikes a<br> -Contemporary</i></a></h2> - - -<p>In the first place a contemporary can scarcely fail to be struck by the -fact that two critics at the same table at the same moment will -pronounce completely different opinions about the same book. Here, on -the right, it is declared a masterpiece of English prose; on the left, -simultaneously, a mere mass of waste-paper which, if the fire could -survive it, should be thrown upon the flames. Yet both critics are in -agreement about Milton and about Keats. They display an exquisite -sensibility and have undoubtedly a genuine enthusiasm. It is only when -they discuss the work of contemporary writers that they inevitably come -to blows. The book in question, which is at once a lasting contribution -to English literature and a mere farrago of pretentious mediocrity, was -published about two months ago. That is the explanation; that is why -they differ.</p> - -<p>The explanation is a strange one. It is equally disconcerting to the -reader who wishes to take his bearings in the chaos of contemporary -literature and to the writer who has a natural desire to know whether -his own work, produced with infinite pains and in almost utter darkness, -is likely to burn for ever among the fixed luminaries of English letters -or, on the contrary, to put out the fire. But if we identify ourselves -with the reader and explore his dilemma first, our bewilderment is -short-lived enough. The same thing has happened so often before. We have -heard the doctors disagreeing about the new and agreeing about the old -twice a year on the average, in spring and autumn, ever since Robert -Elsmere, or was it Stephen Phillips, somehow pervaded the atmosphere, -and there was the same disagreement among grown-up people about them. It -would be much more marvellous, and indeed much more upsetting, if, for a -wonder, both gentlemen agreed, pronounced Blank's book an undoubted -masterpiece, and thus faced us with the necessity of deciding whether we -should back their judgement to the extent of ten and sixpence. Both are -critics of reputation; the opinions tumbled out so spontaneously here -will be starched and stiffened into columns of sober prose which will -uphold the dignity of letters in England and America.</p> - -<p>It must be some innate cynicism, then, some ungenerous distrust of -contemporary genius, which determines us automatically as the talk goes on -that, were they to agree—which they show no signs of doing—half -a guinea is altogether too large a sum to squander upon contemporary -enthusiasms, and the case will be met quite adequately by a card to the -library. Still the question remains, and let us put it boldly to the -critics themselves. Is there no guidance nowadays for a reader who -yields to none in reverence for the dead, but is tormented by the -suspicion that reverence for the dead is vitally connected with -understanding of the living? After a rapid survey both critics are -agreed that there is unfortunately no such person. For what is their own -judgement worth where new books are concerned? Certainly not ten and -sixpence. And from the stores of their experience they proceed to bring -forth terrible examples of past blunders; crimes of criticism which, if -they had been committed against the dead and not against the living, -would have lost them their jobs and imperilled their reputations. The -only advice they can offer is to respect one's own instincts, to follow -them fearlessly and, rather than submit them to the control of any -critic or reviewer alive, to check them by reading and reading again the -masterpieces of the past.</p> - -<p>Thanking them humbly, we cannot help reflecting that it was not always -so. Once upon a time, we must believe, there was a rule, a discipline, -which controlled the great republic of readers in a way which is now -unknown. That is not to say that the great critic—the Dryden, the -Johnson, the Coleridge, the Arnold—was an impeccable judge of -contemporary work, whose verdicts stamped the book indelibly and saved -the reader the trouble of reckoning the value for himself. The mistakes -of these great men about their own contemporaries are too notorious to -be worth recording. But the mere fact of their existence had a -centralising influence. That alone, it is not fantastic to suppose, -would have controlled the disagreements of the dinner-table and given to -random chatter about some book just out an authority now entirely to -seek. The diverse schools would have debated as hotly as ever, but at -the back of every reader's mind would have been the consciousness that -there was at least one man who kept the main principles of literature -closely in view; who, if you had taken to him some eccentricity of the -moment, would have brought it into touch with permanence and tethered it -by his own authority in the contrary blasts of praise and blame.<a id="FNanchor_15_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_1" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> But -when it comes to the making of a critic, nature must be generous and -society ripe. The scattered dinner-tables of the modern world, the chase -and eddy of the various currents which compose the society of our time, -could only be dominated by a giant of fabulous dimensions. And where is -even the very tall man whom we have the right to expect? Reviewers we -have but no critic; a million competent and incorruptible policemen but -no judge. Men of taste and learning and ability are for ever lecturing -the young and celebrating the dead. But the too frequent result of their -able and industrious pens is a desiccation of the living tissues of -literature into a network of little bones. Nowhere shall we find the -downright vigour of a Dryden, or Keats with his fine and natural -bearing, his profound insight and sanity, or Flaubert and the tremendous -power of his fanaticism, or Coleridge, above all, brewing in his head -the whole of poetry and letting issue now and then one of those profound -general statements which are caught up by the mind when hot with the -friction of reading as if they were of the soul of the book itself.</p> - -<p>And to all this, too, the critics generously agree. A great critic, they -say, is the rarest of beings. But should one miraculously appear, how -should we maintain him, on what should we feed him? Great critics, if -they are not themselves great poets, are bred from the profusion of the -age. There is some great man to be vindicated, some school to be founded -or destroyed. But our age is meagre to the verge of destitution. There -is no name which dominates the rest. There is no master in whose -workshop the young are proud to serve apprenticeship. Mr. Hardy has long -since withdrawn from the arena, and there is something exotic about the -genius of Mr. Conrad which makes him not so much an influence as an -idol, honoured and admired, but aloof and apart. As for the rest, though -they are many and vigorous and in the full flood of creative activity, -there is none whose influence can seriously affect his contemporaries, -or penetrate beyond our day to that not very distant future which it -pleases us to call immortality. If we make a century our test, and ask -how much of the work produced in these days in England will be in -existence then, we shall have to answer not merely that we cannot agree -upon the same book, but that we are more than doubtful whether such a -book there is. It is an age of fragments. A few stanzas, a few pages, a -chapter here and there, the beginning of this novel, the end of that, -are equal to the best of any age or author. But can we go to posterity -with a sheaf of loose pages, or ask the readers of those days, with the -whole of literature before them, to sift our enormous rubbish heaps for -our tiny pearls? Such are the questions which the critics might lawfully -put to their companions at table, the novelists and poets.</p> - -<p>At first the weight of pessimism seems sufficient to bear down all -opposition. Yes, it is a lean age, we repeat, with much to justify its -poverty; but, frankly, if we pit one century against another the -comparison seems overwhelmingly against us. <i>Waverley, The Excursion, -Kubla Khan, Don Juan, Hazlitt's Essays, Pride and Prejudice, Hyperion</i>, -and <i>Prometheus Unbound</i> were all published between 1800 and 1821. Our -century has not lacked industry; but if we ask for masterpieces it -appears on the face of it that the pessimists are right. It seems as if -an age of genius must be succeeded by an age of endeavour; riot and -extravagance by cleanliness and hard work. All honour, of course, to -those who have sacrificed their immortality to set the house in order. -But if we ask for masterpieces, where are we to look? A little poetry, -we may feel sure, will survive; a few poems by Mr. Yeats, by Mr. Davies, -by Mr. De la Mare. Mr. Lawrence, of course, has moments of greatness, -but hours of something very different. Mr. Beerbohm, in his way, is -perfect, but it is not a big way. Passages in <i>Far Away and Long Ago</i> -will undoubtedly go to posterity entire. <i>Ulysses</i> was a memorable -catastrophe—immense in daring, terrific in disaster. And so, picking -and choosing, we select now this, now that, hold it up for display, hear -it defended or derided, and finally have to meet the objection that even -so we are only agreeing with the critics that it is an age incapable of -sustained effort, littered with fragments, and not seriously to be -compared with the age that went before.</p> - -<p>But it is just when opinions universally prevail and we have added lip -service to their authority that we become sometimes most keenly -conscious that we do not believe a word that we are saying. It is a -barren and exhausted age, we repeat; we must look back with envy to the -past. Meanwhile it is one of the first fine days of spring. Life is not -altogether lacking in colour. The telephone, which interrupts the most -serious conversations and cuts short the most weighty observations, has -a romance of its own. And the random talk of people who have no chance -of immortality and thus can speak their minds out has a setting, often, -of lights, streets, houses, human beings, beautiful or grotesque, which -will weave itself into the moment for ever. But this is life; the talk -is about literature. We must try to disentangle the two, and justify the -rash revolt of optimism against the superior plausibility, the finer -distinction, of pessimism.</p> - -<p>Our optimism, then, is largely instinctive. It springs from the fine day -and the wine and the talk; it springs from the fact that when life -throws up such treasures daily, daily suggests more than the most -voluble can express, much though we admire the dead, we prefer life as -it is. There is something about the present which we would not exchange, -though we were offered a choice of all past ages to live in. And modern -literature, with all its imperfections, has the same hold on us and the -same fascination. It is like a relation whom we snub and scarify daily, -but, after all, cannot do without. It has the same endearing quality of -being that which we are, that which we have made, that in which we live, -instead of being something, however august, alien to ourselves and -beheld from the outside. Nor has any generation more need than ours to -cherish its contemporaries. We are sharply cut off from our -predecessors. A shift in the scale—the war, the sudden slip of masses -held in position for ages—has shaken the fabric from top to bottom, -alienated us from the past and made us perhaps too vividly conscious of -the present. Every day we find ourselves doing, saying, or thinking -things that would have been impossible to our fathers. And we feel the -differences which have not been noted far more keenly than the -resemblances which have been very perfectly expressed. New books lure us -to read them partly in the hope that they will reflect this -rearrangement of our attitude—these scenes, thoughts, and apparently -fortuitous groupings of incongruous things which impinge upon us with so -keen a sense of novelty—and, as literature does, give it back into -our keeping, whole and comprehended. Here indeed there is every reason for -optimism. No age can have been more rich than ours in writers determined -to give expression to the differences which separate them from the past -and not to the resemblances which connect them with it. It would be -invidious to mention names, but the most casual reader dipping into -poetry, into fiction, into biography can hardly fail to be impressed by -the courage, the sincerity, in a word, by the widespread originality of -our time. But our exhilaration is strangely curtailed. Book after book -leaves us with the same sense of promise unachieved, of intellectual -poverty, of brilliance which has been snatched from life but not -transmuted into literature. Much of what is best in contemporary work -has the appearance of being noted under pressure, taken down in a bleak -shorthand which preserves with astonishing brilliance the movements and -expressions of the figures as they pass across the screen. But the flash -is soon over, and there remains with us a profound dissatisfaction. The -irritation is as acute as the pleasure was intense.</p> - -<p>After all, then, we are back at the beginning, vacillating from extreme -to extreme, at one moment enthusiastic, at the next pessimistic, unable -to come to any conclusion about our contemporaries. We have asked the -critics to help us, but they have deprecated the task. Now, then, is the -time to accept their advice and correct these extremes by consulting the -masterpieces of the past. We feel ourselves indeed driven to them, -impelled not by calm judgement but by some imperious need to anchor our -instability upon their security. But, honestly, the shock of the -comparison between past and present is at first disconcerting. -Undoubtedly there is a dullness in great books. There is an unabashed -tranquillity in page after page of Wordsworth and Scott and Miss Austen -which is sedative to the verge of somnolence. Opportunities occur and -they neglect them. Shades and subtleties accumulate and they ignore -them. They seem deliberately to refuse to gratify those senses which are -stimulated so briskly by the moderns; the senses of sight, of sound, of -touch—above all, the sense of the human being, his depth and the -variety of his perceptions, his complexity, his confusion, his self, in -short. There is little of all this in the works of Wordsworth and Scott -and Jane Austen. From what, then, arises that sense of security which -gradually, delightfully, and completely overcomes us? It is the power of -their belief—their conviction, that imposes itself upon us. In -Wordsworth, the philosophic poet, this is obvious enough. But it is -equally true of the careless Scott, who scribbled masterpieces to build -castles before breakfast, and of the modest maiden lady who wrote -furtively and quietly simply to give pleasure. In both there is the same -natural conviction that life is of a certain quality. They have their -judgement of conduct. They know the relations of human beings towards -each other and towards the universe. Neither of them probably has a word -to say about the matter outright, but everything depends on it. Only -believe, we find ourselves saying, and all the rest will come of itself. -Only believe, to take a very simple instance which the recent -publication of <i>The Watsons</i> brings to mind, that a nice girl will -instinctively try to soothe the feelings of a boy who has been snubbed -at a dance, and then, if you believe it implicitly and unquestioningly, -you will not only make people a hundred years later feel the same thing, -but you will make them feel it as literature. For certainty of that kind -is the condition which makes it possible to write. To believe that your -impressions hold good for others is to be released from the cramp and -confinement of personality. It is to be free, as Scott was free, to -explore with a vigour which still holds us spell-bound the whole world -of adventure and romance. It is also the first step in that mysterious -process in which Jane Austen was so great an adept. The little grain of -experience once selected, believed in, and set outside herself, could be -put precisely in its place, and she was then free to make of it, by a -process which never yields its secrets to the analyst, into that -complete statement which is literature.</p> - -<p>So then our contemporaries afflict us because they have ceased to -believe. The most sincere of them will only tell us what it is that -happens to himself. They cannot make a world, because they are not free -of other human beings. They cannot tell stories because they do not -believe the stories are true. They cannot generalise. They depend on -their senses and emotions, whose testimony is trustworthy, rather than -on their intellects whose message is obscure. And they have perforce to -deny themselves the use of some of the most powerful and some of the -most exquisite of the weapons of their craft. With the whole wealth of -the English language at the back of them, they timidly pass about from -hand to hand and book to book only the meanest copper coins. Set down at -a fresh angle of the eternal prospect they can only whip out their -notebooks and record with agonised intensity the flying gleams, which -light on what? and the transitory splendours, which may, perhaps, -compose nothing whatever. But here the critics interpose, and with some -show of justice.</p> - -<p>If this description holds good, they say, and is not, as it may well be, -entirely dependent upon our position at the table and certain purely -personal relationships to mustard pots and flower vases, then the risks -of judging contemporary work are greater than ever before. There is -every excuse for them if they are wide of the mark; and no doubt it -would be better to retreat, as Matthew Arnold advised, from the burning -ground of the present to the safe tranquillity of the past. "We enter on -burning ground," wrote Matthew Arnold, "as we approach the poetry of -times so near to us, poetry like that of Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth, -of which the estimates are so often not only personal, but personal with -passion," and this, they remind us, was written in the year 1880. -Beware, they say, of putting under the microscope one inch of a ribbon -which runs many miles; things sort themselves out if you wait; -moderation and a study of the classics are to be recommended. Moreover, -life is short; the Byron centenary is at hand; and the burning question -of the moment is, did he, or did he not, marry his sister? To sum up, -then—if indeed any conclusion is possible when everybody is talking -at once and it is time to be going—it seems that it would be wise for -the writers of the present to renounce for themselves the hope of creating -masterpieces. Their poems, plays, biographies, novels are not books but -notebooks, and Time, like a good schoolmaster, will take them in his -hands, point to their blots and erasions, and tear them across; but he -will not throw them into the waste-paper basket. He will keep them -because other students will find them very useful. It is from notebooks -of the present that the masterpieces of the future are made. Literature, -as the critics were saying just now, has lasted long, has undergone many -changes, and it is only a short sight and a parochial mind that will -exaggerate the importance of these squalls, however they may agitate the -little boats now tossing out at sea. The storm and the drenching are on -the surface; and continuity and calm are in the depths.</p> - -<p>As for the critics whose task it is to pass judgement upon the books of -the moment, whose work, let us admit, is difficult, dangerous, and often -distasteful, let us ask them to be generous of encouragement, but -sparing of those wreaths and coronets which are so apt to get awry, and -fade, and make the wearers, in six months time, look a little -ridiculous. Let them take a wider, a less personal view of modern -literature, and look indeed upon the writers as if they were engaged -upon some vast building, which being built by common effort, the -separate workmen may well remain anonymous. Let them slam the door upon -the cosy company where sugar is cheap and butter plentiful, give over, -for a time at least, the discussion of that fascinating topic—whether -Byron married his sister—and, withdrawing, perhaps, a handsbreadth -from the table where we sit chattering, say something interesting about -literature. Let us buttonhole them as they leave, and recall to their -memory that gaunt aristocrat, Lady Hester Stanhope, who kept a -milk-white horse in her stable in readiness for the Messiah and was for -ever scanning the mountain tops, impatiently but with confidence, for -signs of his approach, and ask them to follow her example; scan the -horizon; see the past in relation to the future; and so prepare the way -for masterpieces to come.</p> - -<p><br></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a id="Footnote_15_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_1"><span class="label">[15]</span></a>How violent these are two quotations will show. "It [Told -by <i>an Idiot</i>] should be read as the <i>Tempest</i> should be read, -and as <i>Gulliver's Travels</i> should be read, for if Miss Macaulay's -poetic gift happens to be less sublime than those of the author of the -<i>Tempest</i>, and if her irony happens to be less tremendous than that of -the author of <i>Gulliver's Travels</i>, her justice and wisdom are no less -noble than theirs."—<i>The Daily News.</i></p> - -<p>The next day we read: "For the rest one can only say that if Mr. Eliot -had been pleased to write in demotic English <i>The Waste Land</i> might -not have been, as it just is to all but anthropologists, and literati, so -much waste-paper."—<i>The Manchester Guardian.</i></p></div> - -<p><br></p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 150px;"> -<img src="images/figure.jpg" width="150" alt=""> -</div> -<div>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 64457 ***</div> -</body> -</html> - diff --git a/old/64457-h/images/common_cover.jpg b/old/64457-h/images/common_cover.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 3cc3696..0000000 --- a/old/64457-h/images/common_cover.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/64457-h/images/cover.jpg b/old/64457-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 3cc3696..0000000 --- a/old/64457-h/images/cover.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/64457-h/images/figure.jpg b/old/64457-h/images/figure.jpg Binary files differdeleted file mode 100644 index 936efc2..0000000 --- a/old/64457-h/images/figure.jpg +++ /dev/null diff --git a/old/old/64457-0.txt b/old/old/64457-0.txt deleted file mode 100644 index 5f5a8af..0000000 --- a/old/old/64457-0.txt +++ /dev/null @@ -1,8138 +0,0 @@ -The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Common Reader, by Virginia Woolf - -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: The Common Reader - -Author: Virginia Woolf - -Release Date: February 04, 2021 [eBook #64457] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -Produced by: Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Images generously - made available by Hathi Trust Digital Library.) - -*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMMON READER *** -_THE_ - -COMMON READER - - - -BY - -VIRGINIA A WOOLF - - - - -". . . I rejoice to concur with the common -reader; for by the common sense of readers, -uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the -refinements of subtlety and the dogmatism of -learning, must be generally decided all claim to -poetical honors." - -DR. JOHNSON, _Life of Gray._ - - - - -_New York_ - -HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY - - - - -COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY -HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. - - -TO - -LYTTON STRACHEY - - - - -Some of these papers appeared originally in the _Times Literary -Supplement_ and the _Dial_. I have to thank the Editors for allowing me -to reprint them here; some are based upon articles written for various -newspapers, while others appear now for the first time. - - - - -_CONTENTS_ - -The Common Reader -The Pastons and Chaucer -On Not Knowing Greek -The Elizabethan Lumber Room -Notes on an Elizabethan Play -Montaigne -The Duchess of Newcastle -Rambling Round Evelyn -Defoe -Addison - -The Lives of the Obscure -I. The Taylors and the Edgeworths -II. Laetitia Pilkington -III. Miss Ormerod - -Jane Austen -Modern Fiction -"Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights" -George Eliot -The Russian Point of View - -Outlines-- -I. Miss Mitford -II. Dr. Bentley -III. Lady Dorothy Nevill -IV. Archbishop Thomson - -The Patron and the Crocus -The Modern Essay -Joseph Conrad -How It Strikes a Contemporary - - - - -THE COMMON READER - - - - -_The Common Reader_ - - -There is a sentence in Dr. Johnson's Life of Gray which might well be -written up in all those rooms, too humble to be called libraries, yet -full of books, where the pursuit of reading is carried on by private -people. ". . . I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the -common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all -the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be -finally decided all claim to poetical honours." It defines their -qualities; it dignifies their aims; it bestows upon a pursuit which -devours a great deal of time, and is yet apt to leave behind it nothing -very substantial, the sanction of the great man's approval. - -The common reader, as Dr. Johnson implies, differs from the critic and -the scholar. He is worse educated, and nature has not gifted him so -generously. He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart -knowledge or correct the opinions of others. Above all, he is guided by -an instinct to create for himself, out of whatever odds and ends he can -come by, some kind of whole--a portrait of a man, a sketch of an age, a -theory of the art of writing. He never ceases, as he reads, to run up -some rickety and ramshackle fabric which shall give him the temporary -satisfaction of looking sufficiently like the real object to allow of -affection, laughter, and argument. Hasty, inaccurate, and superficial, -snatching now this poem, now that scrap of old furniture without caring -where he finds it or of what nature it may be so long as it serves his -purpose and rounds his structure, his deficiencies as a critic are too -obvious to be pointed out; but if he has, as Dr. Johnson maintained, -some say in the final distribution of poetical honours, then, perhaps, -it may be worth while to write down a few of the ideas and opinions -which, insignificant in themselves, yet contribute to so mighty a -result. - - - - -_The Pastons and Chaucer_[1] - - -The tower of Caister Castle still rises ninety feet into the air, and -the arch still stands from which Sir John Fastolf's barges sailed out to -fetch stone for the building of the great castle. But now jackdaws nest -on the tower, and of the castle, which once covered six acres of ground, -only ruined walls remain, pierced by loop-holes and surmounted by -battlements, though there are neither archers within nor cannon without. -As for the "seven religious men" and the "seven poor folk" who should, -at this very moment, be praying for the souls of Sir John and his -parents, there is no sign of them nor sound of their prayers. The place -is a ruin. Antiquaries speculate and differ. - -Not so very far off lie more ruins--the ruins of Bromholm Priory, where -John Paston was buried, naturally enough, since his house was only a -mile or so away, lying on low ground by the sea, twenty miles north of -Norwich. The coast is dangerous, and the land, even in our time, -inaccessible. Nevertheless the little bit of wood at Bromholm, the -fragment of the true Cross, brought pilgrims incessantly to the Priory, -and sent them away with eyes opened and limbs straightened. But some of -them with their newly-opened eyes saw a sight which shocked them--the -grave of John Paston in Bromholm Priory without a tombstone. The news -spread over the country-side. The Pastons had fallen; they that had been -so powerful could no longer afford a stone to put above John Paston's -head. Margaret, his widow, could not pay her debts; the eldest son, Sir -John, wasted his property upon women and tournaments, while the younger, -John also, though a man of greater parts, thought more of his hawks than -of his harvests. - -The pilgrims of course were liars, as people whose eyes have just been -opened by a piece of the true Cross have every right to be; but their -news, none the less, was welcome. The Pastons had risen in the world. -People said even that they had been bondmen not so very long ago. At any -rate, men still living could remember John's grandfather Clement tilling -his own land, a hard-working peasant; and William, Clement's son, -becoming a judge and buying land; and John, William's son, marrying well -and buying more land and quite lately inheriting the vast new castle at -Caister, and all Sir John's lands in Norfolk and Suffolk. People said -that he had forged the old knight's will. What wonder, then, that he -lacked a tombstone? But, if we consider the character of Sir John -Paston, John's eldest son, and his upbringing and his surroundings, and -the relations between himself and his father as the family letters -reveal them, we shall see how difficult it was, and how likely to be -neglected--this business of making his father's tombstone. - -For let us imagine, in the most desolate part of England known to us at -the present moment, a raw, new-built house, without telephone, bathroom, -or drains, arm-chairs or newspapers, and one shelf perhaps of books, -unwieldy to hold, expensive to come by. The windows look out upon a few -cultivated fields and a dozen hovels, and beyond them there is the sea -on one side, on the other a vast fen. A single road crosses the fen, but -there is a hole in it, which, one of the farm hands reports, is big -enough to swallow a carriage. And, the man adds, Tom Topcroft, the mad -bricklayer, has broken loose again and ranges the country half-naked, -threatening to kill any one who approaches him. That is what they talk -about at dinner in the desolate house, while the chimney smokes -horribly, and the draught lifts the carpets on the floor. Orders are -given to lock all gates at sunset, and, when the long dismal evening has -worn itself away, simply and solemnly, girt about with dangers as they -are, these isolated men and women fall upon their knees in prayer. - -In the fifteenth century, however, the wild landscape was broken -suddenly and very strangely by vast piles of brand-new masonry. There -rose out of the sand-hills and heaths of the Norfolk coast a huge bulk -of stone, like a modern hotel in a watering-place; but there was no -parade, no lodging houses, and no pier at Yarmouth then, and this -gigantic building on the outskirts of the town was built to house one -solitary old gentleman without any children--Sir John Fastolf, who had -fought at Agincourt and acquired great wealth. He had fought at -Agincourt and got but little reward. No one took his advice. Men spoke -ill of him behind his back. He was well aware of it; his temper was none -the sweeter for it. He was a hot-tempered old man, powerful, embittered -by a sense of grievance. But whether on the battlefield or at court he -thought perpetually of Caister, and how, when his duties allowed, he -would settle down on his father's land and live in a great house of his -own building. - -The gigantic structure of Caister Castle was in progress not so many -miles away when the little Pastons were children. John Paston, the -father, had charge of some part of the business, and the children -listened, as soon as they could listen at all, to talk of stone and -building, of barges gone to London and not yet returned, of the -twenty-six private chambers, of the hall and chapel; of foundations, -measurements, and rascally work-people. Later, in 1454, when the work -was finished and Sir John had come to spend his last years at Caister, -they may have seen for themselves the mass of treasure that was stored -there; the tables laden with gold and silver plate; the wardrobes -stuffed with gowns of velvet and satin and cloth of gold, with hoods and -tippets and beaver hats and leather jackets and velvet doublets; and how -the very pillow-cases on the beds were of green and purple silk. There -were tapestries everywhere. The beds were laid and the bedrooms hung -with tapestries representing sieges, hunting and hawking, men fishing, -archers shooting, ladies playing on their harps, dallying with ducks, or -a giant "bearing the leg of a bear in his hand". Such were the fruits of -a well-spent life. To buy land, to build great houses, to stuff these -houses full of gold and silver plate (though the privy might well be in -the bedroom), was the proper aim of mankind. Mr. and Mrs. Paston spent -the greater part of their energies in the same exhausting occupation. -For since the passion to acquire was universal, one could never rest -secure in one's possessions for long. The outlying parts of one's -property were in perpetual jeopardy. The Duke of Norfolk might covet -this manor, the Duke of Suffolk that. Some trumped-up excuse, as for -instance that the Pastons were bondmen, gave them the right to seize the -house and batter down the lodges in the owner's absence. And how could -the owner of Paston and Mauteby and Drayton and Gresham be in five or -six places at once, especially now that Caister Castle was his, and he -must be in London trying to get his rights recognised by the King? The -King was mad too, they said; did not know his own child, they said; or -the King was in flight; or there was civil war in the land. Norfolk was -always the most distressed of counties and its country gentlemen the -most quarrelsome of mankind. Indeed, had Mrs. Paston chosen, she could -have told her children how when she was a young woman a thousand men -with bows and arrows and pans of burning fire had marched upon Gresham -and broken the gates and mined the walls of the room where she sat -alone. But much worse things than that had happened to women. She -neither bewailed her lot nor thought herself a heroine. The long, long -letters which she wrote so laboriously in her clear cramped hand to her -husband, who was (as usual) away, make no mention of herself. The sheep -had wasted the hay. Heyden's and Tuddenham's men were out. A dyke had -been broken and a bullock stolen. They needed treacle badly, and really -she must have stuff for a dress. - -But Mrs. Paston did not talk about herself. - -Thus the little Pastons would see their mother writing or dictating page -after page, hour after hour, long, long letters, but to interrupt a -parent who writes so laboriously of such important matters would have -been a sin. The prattle of children, the lore of the nursery or -schoolroom, did not find its way into these elaborate communications. -For the most part her letters are the letters of an honest bailiff to -his master, explaining, asking advice, giving news, rendering accounts. -There was robbery and manslaughter; it was difficult to get in the -rents; Richard Calle had gathered but little money; and what with one -thing and another Margaret had not had time to make out, as she should -have done, the inventory of the goods which her husband desired. Well -might old Agnes, surveying her son's affairs rather grimly from a -distance, counsel him to contrive it so that "ye may have less to do in -the world; your father said. In little business lieth much rest. This -world is but a thoroughfare, and full of woe; and when we depart -therefrom, right nought bear with us but our good deeds and ill." - -The thought of death would thus come upon them in a clap. Old Fastolf, -cumbered with wealth and property, had his vision at the end of Hell -fire, and shrieked aloud to his executors to distribute alms, and see -that prayers were said "in perpetuum", so that his soul might escape the -agonies of purgatory. William Paston, the judge, was urgent too that the -monks of Norwich should be retained to pray for his soul "for ever". The -soul was no wisp of air, but a solid body capable of eternal suffering, -and the fire that destroyed it was as fierce as any that burnt on mortal -grates. For ever there would be monks and the town of Norwich, and for -ever the Chapel of Our Lady in the town of Norwich. There was something -matter-of-fact, positive, and enduring in their conception both of life -and of death. - -With the plan of existence so vigorously marked out, children of course -were well beaten, and boys and girls taught to know their places. They -must acquire land; but they must obey their parents. A mother would -clout her daughter's head three times a week and break the skin if she -did not conform to the laws of behaviour. Agnes Paston, a lady of birth -and breeding, beat her daughter Elizabeth. Margaret Paston, a -softer-hearted woman, turned her daughter out of the house for loving -the honest bailiff Richard Calle. Brothers would not suffer their -sisters to marry beneath them, and "sell candle and mustard in -Framlingham". The fathers quarrelled with the sons, and the mothers, -fonder of their boys than of their girls, yet bound by all law and -custom to obey their husbands, were torn asunder in their efforts to -keep the peace. With all her pains, Margaret failed to prevent rash acts -on the part of her eldest son John, or the bitter words with which his -father denounced him. He was a "drone among bees", the father burst out, -"which labour for gathering honey in the fields, and the drone doth -naught but taketh his part of it". He treated his parents with -insolence, and yet was fit for no charge of responsibility abroad. - -But the quarrel was ended, very shortly, by the death (22nd May 1466) of -John Paston, the father, in London. The body was brought down to -Bromholm to be buried. Twelve poor men trudged all the way bearing -torches beside it. Alms were distributed; masses and dirges were said. -Bells were rung. Great quantities of fowls, sheep, pigs, eggs, bread, -and cream were devoured, ale and wine drunk, and candles burnt. Two -panes were taken from the church windows to let out the reek of the -torches. Black cloth was distributed, and a light set burning on the -grave. But John Paston, the heir, delayed to make his father's -tombstone. - -He was a young man, something over twenty-four years of age. The -discipline and the drudgery of a country life bored him. When he ran -away from home, it was, apparently, to attempt to enter the King's -household. Whatever doubts, indeed, might be cast by their enemies on -the blood of the Pastons, Sir John was unmistakably a gentleman. He had -inherited his lands; the honey was his that the bees had gathered with -so much labour. He had the instincts of enjoyment rather than of -acquisition, and with his mother's parsimony was strangely mixed -something of his father's ambition. Yet his own indolent and luxurious -temperament took the edge from both. He was attractive to women, liked -society and tournaments, and court life and making bets, and sometimes, -even, reading books. And so life, now that John Paston was buried, -started afresh upon rather a different foundation. There could be little -outward change indeed. Margaret still ruled the house. She still ordered -the lives of the younger children as she had ordered the lives of the -elder. The boys still needed to be beaten into book-learning by their -tutors, the girls still loved the wrong men and must be married to the -right. Rents had to be collected; the interminable lawsuit for the -Fastolf property dragged on. Battles were fought; the roses of York and -Lancaster alternately faded and flourished. Norfolk was full of poor -people seeking redress for their grievances, and Margaret worked for her -son as she had worked for her husband, with this significant change -only, that now, instead of confiding in her husband, she took the advice -of her priest. - -But inwardly there was a change. It seems at last as if the hard outer -shell had served its purpose and something sensitive, appreciative, and -pleasure-loving had formed within. At any rate Sir John, writing to his -brother John at home, strayed sometimes from the business on hand to -crack a joke, to send a piece of gossip, or to instruct him, knowingly -and even subtly, upon the conduct of a love affair. Be "as lowly to the -mother as ye list, but to the maid not too lowly, nor that ye be too -glad to speed, nor too sorry to fail. And I shall always be your herald -both here, if she come hither, and at home, when I come home, which I -hope hastily within XI. days at the furthest." And then a hawk was to be -bought, a hat, or new silk laces sent down to John in Norfolk, -prosecuting his suit flying his hawks, and attending with considerable -energy and not too nice a sense of honesty to the affairs of the Paston -estates. - -The lights had long since burnt out on John Paston's grave. But still -Sir John delayed; no tomb replaced them. He had his excuses; what with -the business of the lawsuit, and his duties at Court, and the -disturbance of the civil wars, his time was occupied and his money -spent. But perhaps something strange had happened to Sir John himself, -and not only to Sir John dallying in London, but to his sister Margery -falling in love with the bailiff, and to Walter making Latin verses at -Eton, and to John flying his hawks at Paston. Life was a little more -various in its pleasures. They were not quite so sure as the elder -generation had been of the rights of man and of the dues of God, of the -horrors of death, and of the importance of tombstones. Poor Margaret -Paston scented the change and sought uneasily, with the pen which had -marched so stiffly through so many pages, to lay bare the root of her -troubles. It was not that the lawsuit saddened her; she was ready to -defend Caister with her own hands if need be, "though I cannot well -guide nor rule soldiers", but there was something wrong with the family -since the death of her husband and master. Perhaps her son had failed in -his service to God; he had been too proud or too lavish in his -expenditure; or perhaps he had shown too little mercy to the poor. -Whatever the fault might be, she only knew that Sir John spent twice as -much money as his father for less result; that they could scarcely pay -their debts without selling land, wood, or household stuff ("It is a -death to me to think if it"); while every day people spoke ill of them -in the country because they left John Paston to lie without a tombstone. -The money that might have bought it, or more land, and more goblets and -more tapestry, was spent by Sir John on clocks and trinkets, and upon -paying a clerk to copy out Treatises upon Knighthood and other such -stuff. There they stood at Paston--eleven volumes, with the poems of -Lydgate and Chaucer among them, diffusing a strange air into the gaunt, -comfortless house, inviting men to indolence and vanity, distracting -their thoughts from business, and leading them not only to neglect their -own profit but to think lightly of the sacred dues of the dead. - -For sometimes, instead of riding off on his horse to inspect his crops -or bargain with his tenants, Sir John would sit, in broad daylight, -reading. There, on the hard chair in the comfortless room with the wind -lifting the carpet and the smoke stinging his eyes, he would sit reading -Chaucer, wasting his time, dreaming--or what strange intoxication was it -that he drew from books? Life was rough, cheerless, and disappointing. -A whole year of days would pass fruitlessly in dreary business, like -dashes of rain on the window pane. There was no reason in it as there -had been for his father; no imperative need to establish a family and -acquire an important position for children who were not born, or if -born, had no right to bear their father's name. But Lydgate's poems or -Chaucer's, like a mirror in which figures move brightly, silently, and -compactly, showed him the very skies, fields, and people whom he knew, -but rounded and complete. Instead of waiting listlessly for news from -London or piecing out from his mother's gossip some country tragedy of -love and jealousy, here, in a few pages, the whole story was laid before -him. And then as he rode or sat at table he would remember some -description or saying which bore upon the present moment and fixed it, -or some string of words would charm him, and putting aside the pressure -of the moment, he would hasten home to sit in his chair and learn the -end of the story. - - -To learn the end of the story--Chaucer can still make us wish to do -that. He has pre-eminently that story-teller's gift, which is almost the -rarest gift among writers at the present day. Nothing happens to us as -it did to our ancestors; events are seldom important; if we recount -them, we do not really believe in them; we have perhaps things of -greater interest to say, and for these reasons natural story-tellers -like Mr. Garnett, whom we must distinguish from self-conscious -story-tellers like Mr. Masefield, have become rare. For the -story-teller, besides his indescribable zest for facts, must tell his -story craftily, without undue stress or excitement, or we shall swallow -it whole and jumble the parts together; he must let us stop, give us -time to think and look about us, yet always be persuading us to move on. -Chaucer was helped to this to some extent by the time of his birth; and -in addition he had another advantage over the moderns which will never -come the way of English poets again. England was an unspoilt country. -His eyes rested on a virgin land, all unbroken grass and wood except for -the small towns and an occasional castle in the building. No villa roofs -peered through Kentish tree-tops; no factory chimney smoked on the -hillside. The state of the country, considering how poets go to Nature, -how they use her for their images and their contrasts even when they do -not describe her directly, is a matter of some importance. Her -cultivation or her savagery influences the poet far more profoundly than -the prose writer. To the modern poet, with Birmingham, Manchester, and -London the size they are, the country is the sanctuary of moral -excellence in contrast with the town which is the sink of vice. It is a -retreat, the haunt of modesty and virtue, where men go to hide and -moralise. There is something morbid, as if shrinking from human contact, -in the nature worship of Wordsworth, still more in the microscopic -devotion which Tennyson lavished upon the petals of roses and the buds -of lime trees. But these were great poets. In their hands, the country -was no mere jeweller's shop, or museum of curious objects to be -described, even more curiously, in words. Poets of smaller gift, since -the view is so much spoilt, and the garden or the meadow must replace -the barren heath and the precipitous mountain-side, are now confined to -little landscapes, to birds' nests, to acorns with every wrinkle drawn -to the life. The wider landscape is lost. - -But to Chaucer the country was too large and too wild to be altogether -agreeable. He turned instinctively, as if he had painful experience of -their nature, from tempests and rocks to the bright May day and the -jocund landscape, from the harsh and mysterious to the gay and definite. -Without possessing a tithe of the virtuosity in word-painting which is -the modern inheritance, he could give, in a few words, or even, when we -come to look, without a single word of direct description, the sense of -the open air. - - -And se the fresshe floures how they sprynge - - ---that is enough. - -Nature, uncompromising, untamed, was no looking-glass for happy faces, -or confessor of unhappy souls. She was herself; sometimes, therefore, -disagreeable enough and plain, but always in Chaucer's pages with the -hardness and the freshness of an actual presence. Soon, however, we -notice something of greater importance than the gay and picturesque -appearance of the mediaeval world--the solidity which plumps it out, the -conviction which animates the characters. There is immense variety in -the _Canterbury Tales_, and yet, persisting underneath, one consistent -type. Chaucer has his world; he has his young men; he has his young -women. If one met them straying in Shakespeare's world one would know -them to be Chaucer's, not Shakespeare's. He wants to describe a girl, -and this is what she looks like: - - -Ful semely hir wimpel pinched was, -Hir nose tretys; hir eyen greye as glas; -Hir mouth ful smal, and ther-to soft and reed; -But sikerly she hadde a fair foreheed; -It was almost a spanne brood, I trowe; -For, hardily, she was nat undergrowe. - - -Then he goes on to develop her; she was a girl, a virgin, cold in her -virginity: - - -I am, thou woost, yet of thy companye, -A mayde, and love hunting and venerye, -And for to walken in the wodes wilde, -And noght to been a wyf and be with childe. - - -Next he bethinks him how - - -Discreet she was in answering alway; -And though she had been as wise as Pallas -No countrefeted termes hadde she -To seme wys; but after hir degree -She spak, and alle hir wordes more and lesse -Souninge in vertu and in gentillesse. - - -Each of these quotations, in fact, comes from a different Tale, but they -are parts, one feels, of the same personage, whom he had in mind, -perhaps unconsciously, when he thought of a young girl, and for this -reason, as she goes in and out of the _Canterbury Tales_ bearing -different names, she has a stability which is only to be found where the -poet has made up his mind about young women, of course, but also about -the world they live in, its end, its nature, and his own craft and -technique, so that his mind is free to apply its force fully to its -object. It does not occur to him that his Griselda might be improved or -altered. There is no blur about her, no hesitation; she proves nothing; -she is content to be herself. Upon her, therefore, the mind can rest -with that unconscious ease which allows it, from hints and suggestions, -to endow her with many more qualities than are actually referred to. -Such is the power of conviction, a rare gift, a gift shared in our day -by Joseph Conrad in his earlier novels, and a gift of supreme -importance, for upon it the whole weight of the building depends. Once -believe in Chaucer's young men and women and we have no need of -preaching or protest. We know what he finds good, what evil; the less -said the better. Let him get on with his story, paint knights and -squires, good women and bad, cooks, shipmen, priests, and we will supply -the landscape, give his society its belief, its standing towards life -and death, and make of the journey to Canterbury a spiritual pilgrimage. - -This simple faithfulness to his own conceptions was easier then than now -in one respect at least, for Chaucer could write frankly where we must -either say nothing or say it slyly. He could sound every note in the -language instead of finding a great many of the best gone dumb from -disuse, and thus, when struck by daring fingers, giving off a loud -discordant jangle out of keeping with the rest. Much of Chaucer--a few -lines perhaps in each of the Tales--is improper and gives us as we read -it the strange sensation of being naked to the air after being muffled -in old clothing. And, as a certain kind of humour depends upon being -able to speak without self-consciousness of the parts and functions of -the body, so with the advent of decency literature lost the use of one -of its limbs. It lost its power to create the Wife of Bath, Juliet's -nurse, and their recognisable though already colourless relation, Moll -Flanders. Sterne, from fear of coarseness, is forced into indecency. He -must be witty, not humorous. He must hint instead of speaking outright. -Nor can we believe, with Mr. Joyce's _Ulysses_ before us, that laughter -of the old kind will ever be heard again. - - -But, lord Christ! When that it remembreth me -Up-on my yowthe, and on my Iolitee, -It tikleth me aboute myn herte rote. -Unto this day it doth myn herte bote -That I have had my world as in my tyme. - - -The sound of that old woman's voice is still. - -But there is another and more important reason for the surprising -brightness, the still effective merriment of the _Canterbury Tales_. -Chaucer was a poet; but he never flinched from the life that was being -lived at the moment before his eyes. A farmyard, with its straw, its -dung, its cocks and its hens is not (we have come to think) a poetic -subject; poets seem either to rule out the farmyard entirely or to -require that it shall be a farmyard in Thessaly and its pigs of -mythological origin. But Chaucer says outright: - - -Three large sowes hadde she, and namo, -Three kyn, and eek a sheep that highte Malle; - - -or again, - - -A yard she hadde, enclosed al aboute -With stikkes, and a drye ditch with-oute. - - -He is unabashed and unafraid. He will always get close up to his -object--an old man's chin-- - - -With thikke bristles of his berde unsofte, -Lyk to the skin of houndfish, sharp as brere; - - -or an old man's neck-- - - -The slakke skin aboute his nekke shaketh -Whyl that he sang; - - -and he will tell you what his characters wore, how they looked, what -they ate and drank, as if poetry could handle the common facts of this -very moment of Tuesday, the sixteenth day of April, 1387, without -dirtying her hands. If he withdraws to the time of the Greeks or the -Romans, it is only that his story leads him there. He has no desire to -wrap himself round in antiquity, to take refuge in age, or to shirk the -associations of common grocer's English. - -Therefore when we say that we know the end of the journey, it is hard to -quote the particular lines from which we take our knowledge. He fixed -his eyes upon the road before him, not upon the world to come. He was -little given to abstract contemplation. He deprecated, with peculiar -archness, any competition with the scholars and divines: - - -The answere of this I lete to divynis, -But wel I woot, that in this world grey pyne is. - -What is this world? What asketh men to have? -Now with his love, now in the colde grave -Allone, withouten any companye, - - -he asks, or ponders - - -O cruel goddes, that governe -This world with binding of your worde eterne, -And wryten in the table of athamaunt -Your parlement, and your eterne graunt, -What is mankinde more un-to yow holde -Than is the sheepe, that rouketh in the folde? - - -Questions press upon him; he asks questions, but he is too true a poet -to answer them; he leaves them unsolved, uncramped by the solution of -the moment, thus fresh for the generations that come after him. In his -life, too, it would be impossible to write him down a man of this party -or of that, a democrat or an aristocrat. He was a staunch churchman, but -he laughed at priests. He was an able public servant and a courtier, but -his views upon sexual morality were extremely lax. He sympathised with -poverty, but did nothing to improve the lot of the poor. It is safe to -say that not a single law has been framed or one stone set upon another -because of anything that Chaucer said or wrote; and yet, as we read him, -we are of course absorbing morality at every pore. For among writers -there are two kinds: there are the priests who take you by the hand and -lead you straight up to the mystery; there are the laymen who imbed -their doctrines in flesh and blood and make a complete model of the -world without excluding the bad or laying stress upon the good. -Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley are among the priests; they give us -text after text to be hung upon the wall, saying after saying to be laid -upon the heart like an amulet against disaster-- - - -Farewell, farewell, the heart that lives alone - -He prayeth best that loveth best -All things both great and small - - ---such lines of exhortation and command spring to memory instantly. But -Chaucer lets us go our ways doing the ordinary things with the ordinary -people. His morality lies in the way men and women behave to each other. -We see them eating, drinking, laughing, and making love, and come to -feel without a word being said what their standards are and so are -steeped through and through with their morality. There can be no more -forcible preaching than this where all actions and passions are -represented, and instead of being solemnly exhorted we are left to stray -and stare and make out a meaning for ourselves. It is the morality of -ordinary intercourse, the morality of the novel, which parents and -librarians rightly judge to be far more persuasive than the morality of -poetry. - -And so, when we shut Chaucer, we feel that without a word being said the -criticism is complete; what we are saying, thinking, reading, doing has -been commented upon. Nor are we left merely with the sense, powerful -though that is, of having been in good company and got used to the ways -of good society. For as we have jogged through the real, the unadorned -country-side, with first one good fellow cracking his joke or singing -his song and then another, we know that though this world resembles, it -is not in fact our daily world. It is the world of poetry. Everything -happens here more quickly and more intensely, and with better order than -in life or in prose; there is a formal elevated dullness which is part -of the incantation of poetry; there are lines speaking half a second in -advance what we were about to say, as if we read our thoughts before -words cumbered them; and lines which we go back to read again with that -heightened quality, that enchantment which keeps them glittering in the -mind long afterwards. And the whole is held in its place, and its -variety and divagations ordered by the power which is among the most -impressive of all--the shaping power, the architect's power. It is the -peculiarity of Chaucer, however, that though we feel at once this -quickening, this enchantment, we cannot prove it by quotation. From most -poets quotation is easy and obvious; some metaphor suddenly flowers; -some passage breaks off from the rest. But Chaucer is very equal, very -even-paced, very unmetaphorical. If we take six or seven lines in the -hope that the quality will be contained in them it has escaped. - - -My lord, ye woot that in my fadres place, -Ye dede me strepe out of my povre wede, -And richely me cladden, o your grace -To yow broghte I noght elles, out of drede, -But feyth and nakedness and maydenhede. - - -In its place that seemed not only memorable and moving but fit to set -beside striking beauties. Cut out and taken separately it appears -ordinary and quiet. Chaucer, it seems, has some art by which the most -ordinary words and the simplest feelings when laid side by side make -each other shine; when separated lose their lustre. Thus the pleasure he -gives us is different from the pleasure that other poets give us, -because it is more closely connected with what we have ourselves felt or -observed. Eating, drinking and fine weather, the May, cocks and hens, -millers, old peasant women, flowers--there is a special stimulus in -seeing all these common things so arranged that they affect us as poetry -affects us, and are yet bright, sober, precise as we see them out of -doors. There is a pungency in this unfigurative language; a stately and -memorable beauty in the undraped sentences which follow each other like -women so slightly veiled that you see the lines of their bodies as they -go-- - - -And she set down hir water pot anon -Biside the threshold in an oxe's stall. - - -And then, as the procession takes its way, tranquilly, beautifully, out -from behind peeps the face of Chaucer, grinning, malicious, in league -with all foxes, donkeys, and hens, to mock the pomp and ceremonies of -life--witty, intellectual, French, at the same time based upon a broad -bottom of English humour. - - -So Sir John read his Chaucer in the comfortless room with the wind -blowing and the smoke stinging, and left his father's tombstone unmade. -But no book, no tomb, had power to hold him long. He was one of those -ambiguous characters who haunt the boundary line where one age merges in -another and are not able to inhabit either. At one moment he was all for -buying books cheap; next he was off to France and told his mother, "My -mind is now not most upon books". In his own house, where his mother -Margaret was perpetually making out inventories or confiding in Gloys -the priest, he had no peace or comfort. There was always reason on her -side; she was a brave woman, for whose sake one must put up with the -priest's insolence and choke down one's rage when the grumbling broke -into open abuse, and "Thou proud priest" and "Thou proud Squire" were -bandied angrily about the room. All this, with the discomforts of life -and the weakness of his own character, drove him to loiter in pleasanter -places, to put off coming, to put off writing, to put off, year after -year, the making of his father's tombstone. - -Yet John Paston had now lain for twelve years under the bare ground. The -Prior of Bromholm sent word that the grave cloth was in tatters, and he -had tried to patch it himself. Worse still, for a proud woman like -Margaret Paston, the country people murmured at the Pastons' lack of -piety, and other families she heard, of no greater standing than theirs, -spent money in pious restoration in the very church where her husband -lay unremembered. At last, turning from tournaments and Chaucer and -Mistress Anne Hault, Sir John bethought him of a piece of cloth of gold -which had been used to cover his father's hearse and might now be sold -to defray the expenses of his tomb. Margaret had it in safe keeping; she -had hoarded it and cared for it, and spent twenty marks on its repair. -She grudged it; but there was no help for it. She sent it him, still -distrusting his intentions or his power to put them into effect. "If you -sell it to any other use," she wrote, "by my troth I shall never trust -you while I live." - -But this final act, like so many that Sir John had undertaken in the -course of his life, was left undone. A dispute with the Duke of Suffolk -in the year 1479 made it necessary for him to visit London in spite of -the epidemic of sickness that was abroad; and there, in dirty lodgings, -alone, busy to the end with quarrels, clamorous to the end for money. -Sir John died and was buried at Whitefriars in London. He left a natural -daughter; he left a considerable number of books; but his father's tomb -was still unmade. - -The four thick volumes of the Paston letters, however, swallow up this -frustrated man as the sea absorbs a raindrop. For, like all collections -of letters, they seem to hint that we need not care overmuch for the -fortunes of individuals. The family will go on whether Sir John lives or -dies. It is their method to heap up in mounds of insignificant and often -dismal dust the innumerable trivialities of daily life, as it grinds -itself out, year after year. And then suddenly they blaze up; the day -shines out, complete, alive, before our eyes. It is early morning and -strange men have been whispering among the women as they milk. It is -evening, and there in the churchyard Warne's wife bursts out against old -Agnes Paston: "All the devils of Hell draw her soul to Hell." Now it is -the autumn in Norfolk and Cecily Dawne comes whining to Sir John for -clothing. "Moreover, Sir, liketh it your mastership to understand that -winter and cold weather draweth nigh and I have few clothes but of your -gift." There is the ancient day, spread out before us, hour by hour. - -But in all this there is no writing for writing's sake; no use of the -pen to convey pleasure or amusement or any of the million shades of -endearment and intimacy which have filled so many English letters since. -Only occasionally, under stress of anger for the most part, does -Margaret Paston quicken into some shrewd saw or solemn curse. "Men cut -large thongs here out of other men's leather. . . . We beat the bushes -and other men have the birds. . . . Haste reweth . . . which is to my -heart a very spear." That is her eloquence and that her anguish. Her -sons, it is true, bend their pens more easily to their will. They jest -rather stiffly; they hint rather clumsily; they make a little scene like -a rough puppet show of the old priest's anger and give a phrase or two -directly as they were spoken in person. But when Chaucer lived he must -have heard this very language, matter of fact, unmetaphorical, far -better fitted for narrative than for analysis, capable of religious -solemnity or of broad humour, but very stiff material to put on the lips -of men and women accosting each other face to face. In short it is easy -to see, from the Paston letters, why Chaucer wrote not _Lear_ or _Romeo -and Juliet_, but the _Canterbury Tales_. - -Sir John was buried; and John the younger brother succeeded in his turn. -The Paston letters go on; life at Paston continues much the same as -before. Over it all broods a sense of discomfort and nakedness; of -unwashed limbs thrust into splendid clothing; of tapestry blowing on the -draughty walls; of the bedroom with its privy; of winds sweeping -straight over land unmitigated by hedge or town; of Caister Castle -covering with solid stone six acres of ground, and of the plain-faced -Pastons indefatigably accumulating wealth, treading out the roads of -Norfolk, and persisting with an obstinate courage which does them -infinite credit in furnishing the bareness of England. - - -[Footnote 1: _The Paston Letters_, edited by Dr. James -Gairdner (1904), 4 vols.] - - - - -_On Not Knowing Greek_ - - -For it is vain and foolish to talk of Knowing Greek, since in our -ignorance we should be at the bottom of any class of schoolboys, since -we do not know how the words sounded, or where precisely we ought to -laugh, or how the actors acted, and between this foreign people and -ourselves there is not only difference of race and tongue but a -tremendous breach of tradition. All the more strange, then, is it that -we should wish to know Greek, try to know Greek, feel for ever drawn -back to Greek, and be for ever making up some notion of the meaning of -Greek, though from what incongruous odds and ends, with what slight -resemblance to the real meaning of Greek, who shall say? - -It is obvious in the first place that Greek literature is the impersonal -literature. Those few hundred years that separate John Paston from -Plato, Norwich from Athens, make a chasm which the vast tide of European -chatter can never succeed in crossing. When we read Chaucer, we are -floated up to him insensibly on the current of our ancestors' lives, and -later, as records increase and memories lengthen, there is scarcely a -figure which has not its nimbus of association, its life and letters, -its wife and family, its house, its character, its happy or dismal -catastrophe. But the Greeks remain in a fastness of their own. Fate has -been kind there too. She has preserved them from vulgarity, Euripides -was eaten by dogs; Æschylus killed by a stone; Sappho leapt from a -cliff. We know no more of them than that. We have their poetry, and that -is all. - -But that is not, and perhaps never can be, wholly true. Pick up any play -by Sophocles, read-- - - -Son of him who led our hosts at Troy of old, son of -Agamemnon, - - -and at once the mind begins to fashion itself surroundings. It makes -some background, even of the most provisional sort, for Sophocles; it -imagines some village, in a remote part of the country, near the sea. -Even nowadays such villages are to be found in the wilder parts of -England, and as we enter them we can scarcely help feeling that here, in -this cluster of cottages, cut off from rail or city, are all the -elements of a perfect existence. Here is the Rectory; here the Manor -house, the farm and the cottages; the church for worship, the club for -meeting, the cricket field for play. Here life is simply sorted out into -its main elements. Each man and woman has his work; each works for the -health or happiness of others. And here, in this little community, -characters become part of the common stock; the eccentricities of the -clergyman are known; the great ladies' defects of temper; the -blacksmith's feud with the milkman, and the loves and matings of the -boys and girls. Here life has cut the same grooves for centuries; -customs have arisen; legends have attached themselves to hilltops and -solitary trees, and the village has its history, its festivals, and its -rivalries. - -It is the climate that is impossible. If we try to think of Sophocles -here, we must annihilate the smoke and the damp and the thick wet mists. -We must sharpen the lines of the hills. We must imagine a beauty of -stone and earth rather than of woods and greenery. With warmth and -sunshine and months of brilliant, fine weather, life of course is -instantly changed; it is transacted out of doors, with the result, known -to all who visit Italy, that small incidents are debated in the street, -not in the sitting-room, and become dramatic; make people voluble; -inspire in them that sneering, laughing, nimbleness of wit and tongue -peculiar to the Southern races, which has nothing in common with the -slow reserve, the low half-tones, the brooding introspective melancholy -of people accustomed to live more than half the year indoors. - -That is the quality that first strikes us in Greek literature, the -lightning-quick, sneering, out-of-doors manner. It is apparent in the -most august as well as in the most trivial places. Queens and Princesses -in this very tragedy by Sophocles stand at the door bandying words like -village women, with a tendency, as one might expect, to rejoice in -language, to split phrases into slices, to be intent on verbal victory. -The humour of the people was not good natured like that of our postmen -and cabdrivers. The taunts of men lounging at the street corners had -something cruel in them as well as witty. There is a cruelty in Greek -tragedy which is quite unlike our English brutality: Is not Pentheus, -for example, that highly respectable man, made ridiculous in the -_Bacchæ_ before he is destroyed? In fact, of course, these Queens and -Princesses were out of doors, with the bees buzzing past them, shadows -crossing them, and the wind taking their draperies. They were speaking -to an enormous audience rayed round them on one of those brilliant -southern days when the sun is so hot and yet the air so exciting. The -poet, therefore, had to bethink him, not of some theme which could be -read for hours by people in privacy, but of something emphatic, -familiar, brief, that would carry, instantly and directly, to an -audience of seventeen thousand people, perhaps, with ears and eyes eager -and attentive, with bodies whose muscles would grow stiff if they sat -too long without diversion. Music and dancing he would need, and -naturally would choose one of those legends, like our Tristram and -Iseult, which are known to every one in outline, so that a great fund of -emotion is ready prepared, but can be stressed in a new place by each -new poet. - -Sophocles would take the old story of Electra, for instance, but would -at once impose his stamp upon it. Of that, in spite of our weakness and -distortion, what remains visible to us? That his genius was of the -extreme kind in the first place; that he chose a design which, if it -failed, would show its failure in gashes and ruin, not in the gentle -blurring of some insignificant detail; which, if it succeeded, would cut -each stroke to the bone, would stamp each finger-print in marble. His -Electra stands before us like a figure so tightly bound that she can -only move an inch this way, an inch that. But each movement must tell to -the utmost, or, bound as she is, denied the relief of all hints, -repetitions, suggestions, she will be nothing but a dummy, tightly -bound. Her words in crisis are, as a matter of fact, bare; mere cries of -despair, joy, hate - - -οἲ 'γὼ τάλαιν', ὄλωλα τῇδ' ὲν ἡμέρᾀ. -παῖσον, εἰ σθένεις, διπλῆν. - - -But these cries give angle and outline to the play. It is thus, with a -thousand differences of degree, that in English literature Jane Austen -shapes a novel. There comes a moment--"I will dance with you," says -Emma--which rises higher than the rest, which, though not eloquent in -itself, or violent, or made striking by beauty of language, has the -whole weight of the book behind it. In Jane Austen, too, we have the -same sense, though the ligatures are much less tight, that her figures -are bound, and restricted to a few definite movements. She, too, in her -modest, everyday prose, chose the dangerous art where one slip means -death. - -But it is not so easy to decide what it is that gives these cries of -Electra in her anguish their power to cut and wound and excite. It is -partly that we know her, that we have picked up from little turns and -twists of the dialogue hints of her character, of her appearance, which, -characteristically, she neglected; of something suffering in her, -outraged and stimulated to its utmost stretch of capacity, yet, as she -herself knows ("my behaviour is unseemly and becomes me ill"), blunted -and debased by the horror of her position, an unwed girl made to witness -her mother's vileness and denounce it in loud, almost vulgar, -clamour to the world at large. It is partly, too, that we know in -the same way that Clytemnestra is no unmitigated villainess. -"δεινὸν τὸ τίκτειν ἐστίν," she says--"there is a strange power in -motherhood". It is no murderess, violent and unredeemed, whom Orestes -kills within the house, and Electra bids him utterly destroy--"strike -again". No; the men and women standing out in the sunlight before the -audience on the hillside were alive enough, subtle enough, not mere -figures, or plaster casts of human beings. - -Yet it is not because we can analyse them into feelings that they -impress us. In six pages of Proust we can find more complicated and -varied emotions than in the whole of the _Electra_. But in the _Electra_ -or in the _Antigone_ we are impressed by something different, by -something perhaps more impressive--by heroism itself, by fidelity -itself. In spite of the labour and the difficulty it is this that draws -us back and back to the Greeks; the stable, the permanent, the original -human being is to be found there. Violent emotions are needed to rouse -him into action, but when thus stirred by death, by betrayal, by some -other primitive calamity, Antigone and Ajax and Electra behave in the -way in which we should behave thus struck down; the way in which -everybody has always behaved; and thus we understand them more easily -and more directly than we understand the characters in the _Canterbury -Tales_. These are the originals, Chaucer's the varieties of the human -species. - -It is true, of course, that these types of the original man or woman, -these heroic Kings, these faithful daughters, these tragic Queens who -stalk through the ages always planting their feet in the same places, -twitching their robes with the same gestures, from habit not from -impulse, are among the greatest bores and the most demoralising -companions in the world. The plays of Addison, Voltaire, and a host of -others are there to prove it. But encounter them in Greek. Even in -Sophocles, whose reputation for restraint and mastery has filtered down -to us from the scholars, they are decided, ruthless, direct. A fragment -of their speech broken off would, we feel, colour oceans and oceans of -the respectable drama. Here we meet them before their emotions have been -worn into uniformity. Here we listen to the nightingale whose song -echoes through English literature singing in her own Greek tongue. For -the first time Orpheus with his lute makes men and beasts follow him. -Their voices ring out clear and sharp; we see the hairy tawny bodies at -play in the sunlight among the olive trees, not posed gracefully on -granite plinths in the pale corridors of the British Museum. And then -suddenly, in the midst of all this sharpness and compression, Electra, -as if she swept her veil over her face and forbade us to think of her -any more, speaks of that very nightingale: "that bird distraught with -grief, the messenger of Zeus. Ah, queen of sorrow, Niobe, thee I deem -divine--thee; who evermore weepest in thy rocky tomb". - -And as she silences her own complaint, she perplexes us again with the -insoluble question of poetry and its nature, and why, as she speaks -thus, her words put on the assurance of immortality. For they are Greek; -we cannot tell how they sounded; they ignore the obvious sources of -excitement; they owe nothing of their effect to any extravagance of -expression, and certainly they throw no light upon the speaker's -character or the writer's. But they remain, something that has been -stated and must eternally endure. - -Yet in a play how dangerous this poetry, this lapse from the particular -to the general must of necessity be, with the actors standing there in -person, with their bodies and their faces passively waiting to be made -use of! For this reason the later plays of Shakespeare, where there is -more of poetry than of action, are better read than seen, better -understood by leaving out the actual body than by having the body, with -all its associations and movements, visible to the eye. The intolerable -restrictions of the drama could be loosened, however, if a means could -be found by which what was general and poetic, comment, not action, -could be freed without interrupting the movement of the whole. It is -this that the choruses supply; the old men or women who take no active -part in the drama, the undifferentiated voices who sing like birds in -the pauses of the wind; who can comment, or sum up, or allow the poet to -speak himself or supply, by contrast, another side to his conception. -Always in imaginative literature, where characters speak for themselves -and the author has no part, the need of that voice is making itself -felt. For though Shakespeare (unless we consider that his fools and -madmen supply the part) dispensed with the chorus, novelists are always -devising some substitute--Thackeray speaking in his own person, Fielding -coming out and addressing the world before his curtain rises. So to -grasp the meaning of the play the chorus is of the utmost importance. -One must be able to pass easily into those ecstasies, those wild and -apparently irrelevant utterances, those sometimes obvious and -commonplace statements, to decide their relevance or irrelevance, and -give them their relation to the play as a whole. - -We must "be able to pass easily"; but that of course is exactly what we -cannot do. For the most part the choruses, with all their obscurities, -must be spelt out and their symmetry mauled. But we can guess that -Sophocles used them not to express something outside the action of the -play, but to sing the praises of some virtue, or the beauties of some -place mentioned in it. He selects what he wishes to emphasise and sings -of white Colonus and its nightingale, or of love unconquered in fight. -Lovely, lofty, and serene his choruses grow naturally out of his -situations, and change, not the point of view, but the mood. In -Euripides, however, the situations are not contained within themselves; -they give off an atmosphere of doubt, of suggestion, of questioning; but -if we look to the choruses to make this plain we are often baffled -rather than instructed. At once in the _Bacchæ_ we are in the world of -psychology and doubt; the world where the mind twists facts and changes -them and makes the familiar aspects of life appear new and questionable. -What is Bacchus, and who are the Gods, and what is man's duty to them, -and what the rights of his subtle brain? To these questions the chorus -makes no reply, or replies mockingly, or speaks darkly as if the -straitness of the dramatic form had tempted Euripides to violate it in -order to relieve his mind of its weight. Time is so short and I have so -much to say, that unless you will allow me to place together two -apparently unrelated statements and trust to you to pull them together, -you must be content with a mere skeleton of the play I might have given -you. Such is the argument. Euripides therefore suffers less than -Sophocles and less than Æschylus from being read privately in a room, -and not seen on a hillside in the sunshine. He can be acted in the mind; -he can comment upon the questions of the moment; more than the others he -will vary in popularity from age to age. - -If then in Sophocles the play is concentrated in the figures themselves, -and in Euripides is to be retrieved from flashes of poetry and questions -far flung and unanswered, Æschylus makes these little dramas (the -_Agamemnon_ has 1663 lines; _Lear_ about 2600), tremendous by stretching -every phrase to the utmost, by sending them floating forth in metaphors, -by bidding them rise up and stalk eyeless and majestic through the -scene. To understand him it is not so necessary to understand Greek as -to understand poetry. It is necessary to take that dangerous leap -through the air without the support of words which Shakespeare also asks -of us. For words, when opposed to such a blast of meaning, must give -out, must be blown astray, and only by collecting in companies convey -the meaning which each one separately is too weak to express. Connecting -them in a rapid flight of the mind we know instantly and instinctively -what they mean, but could not decant that meaning afresh into any other -words. There is an ambiguity which is the mark of the highest poetry; we -cannot know exactly what it means. Take this from the Agamemnon for -instance-- - - -ὀμμάτων δ ἐν ἀχηνίαις ἔρρει πᾶσ' Ἀφροδίτα. - - -The meaning is just on the far side of language. It is the meaning which -in moments of astonishing excitement and stress we perceive in our minds -without words; it is the meaning that Dostoevsky (hampered as he was by -prose and as we are by translation) leads us to by some astonishing run -up the scale of emotions and points at but cannot indicate; the meaning -that Shakespeare succeeds in snaring. - -Æschylus thus will not give, as Sophocles gives, the very words that -people might have spoken, only so arranged that they have in some -mysterious way a general force, a symbolic power, nor like Euripides -will he combine incongruities and thus enlarge his little space, as a -small room is enlarged by mirrors in odd corners. By the bold and running -use of metaphor he will amplify and give us, not the thing itself, but -the reverberation and reflection which, taken into his mind, the thing -has made; close enough to the original to illustrate it, remote enough -to heighten, enlarge, and make splendid. - -For none of these dramatists had the license which belongs to the -novelist, and, in some degree, to all writers of printed books, of -modelling their meaning with an infinity of slight touches which can -only be properly applied by reading quietly, carefully, and sometimes -two or three times over. Every sentence had to explode on striking the -ear, however slowly and beautifully the words might then descend, and -however enigmatic might their final purport be. No splendour or richness -of metaphor could have saved the _Agamemnon_ if either images or -allusions of the subtlest or most decorative had got between us and the -naked cry - - -ὀτοτοτοῖ πόποι δᾶ. ὢ 'πολλον, ὢ 'πολλον. - - -Dramatic they had to be at whatever cost. - -But winter fell on these villages, darkness and extreme cold descended -on the hillside. There must have been some place indoors where men -could retire, both in the depths of winter and in the summer heats, -where they could sit and drink, where they could lie stretched at their -ease, where they could talk. It is Plato, of course, who reveals the -life indoors, and describes how, when a party of friends met and had -eaten not at all luxuriously and drunk a little wine, some handsome boy -ventured a question, or quoted an opinion, and Socrates took it up, -fingered it, turned it round, looked at it this way and that, swiftly -stripped it of its inconsistencies and falsities and brought the whole -company by degrees to gaze with him at the truth. It is an exhausting -process; to contract painfully upon the exact meaning of words; to judge -what each admission involves; to follow intently, yet critically, the -dwindling and changing of opinion as it hardens and intensifies into -truth. Are pleasure and good the same? Can virtue be taught? Is virtue -knowledge? The tired or feeble mind may easily lapse as the remorseless -questioning proceeds; but no one, however weak, can fail, even if he -does not learn more from Plato, to love knowledge better. For as the -argument mounts from step to step, Protagoras yielding, Socrates pushing -on, what matters is not so much the end we reach as our manner of -reaching it. That all can feel--the indomitable honesty, the courage, -the love of truth which draw Socrates and us in his wake to the summit -where, if we too may stand for a moment, it is to enjoy the greatest -felicity of which we are capable. - -Yet such an expression seems ill fitted to describe the state of mind of -a student to whom, after painful argument, the truth has been revealed. -But truth is various; truth comes to us in different disguises; it is -not with the intellect alone that we perceive it. It is a winter's -night; the tables are spread at Agathon's house; the girl is playing the -flute; Socrates has washed himself and put on sandals; he has stopped in -the hall; he refuses to move when they send for him. Now Socrates has -done; he is bantering Alcibiades; Alcibiades takes a fillet and binds it -round "this wonderful fellow's head". He praises Socrates. "For he cares -not for mere beauty, but despises more than any one can imagine all -external possessions, whether it be beauty or wealth or glory, or any -other thing for which the multitude felicitates the possessor. He -esteems these things and us who honour them, as nothing, and lives among -men, making all the objects of their admiration the playthings of his -irony. But I know not if any one of you has ever seen the divine images -which are within, when he has been opened and is serious. I have seen -them, and they are so supremely beautiful, so golden, divine, and -wonderful, that everything which Socrates commands surely ought to be -obeyed even like the voice of a God." All this flows over the arguments -of Plato--laughter and movement; people getting up and going out; the -hour changing; tempers being lost; jokes cracked; the dawn rising. -Truth, it seems, is various; Truth is to be pursued with all our -faculties. Are we to rule out the amusements, the tendernesses, the -frivolities of friendship because we love truth? Will truth be quicker -found because we stop our ears to music and drink no wine, and sleep -instead of talking through the long winter's night? It is not to the -cloistered disciplinarian mortifying himself in solitude that we are to -turn, but to the well-sunned nature, the man who practises the art of -living to the best advantage, so that nothing is stunted but some things -are permanently more valuable than others. - -So in these dialogues we are made to seek truth with every part of us. -For Plato, of course, had the dramatic genius. It is by means of that, -by an art which conveys in a sentence or two the setting and the -atmosphere, and then with perfect adroitness insinuates itself into the -coils of the argument without losing its liveliness and grace, and then -contracts to bare statement, and then, mounting, expands and soars in -that higher air which is generally reached only by the more extreme -measures of poetry--it is this art which plays upon us in so many ways -at once and brings us to an exultation of mind which can only be reached -when all the powers are called upon to contribute their energy to the -whole. - -But we must beware. Socrates did not care for "mere beauty", by which he -meant, perhaps, beauty as ornament. A people who judged as much as the -Athenians did by ear, sitting out-of-doors at the play or listening to -argument in the market-place, were far less apt than we are to break off -sentences and appreciate them apart from the context. For them there -were no Beauties of Hardy, Beauties of Meredith, Sayings from George -Eliot. The writer had to think more of the whole and less of the detail. -Naturally, living in the open, it was not the lip or the eye that struck -them, but the carriage of the body and the proportions of its parts. -Thus when we quote and extract we do the Greeks more damage than we do -the English. There is a bareness and abruptness in their literature -which grates upon a taste accustomed to the intricacy and finish of -printed books. We have to stretch our minds to grasp a whole devoid of -the prettiness of detail or the emphasis of eloquence. Accustomed to -look directly and largely rather than minutely and aslant, it was safe -for them to step into the thick of emotions which blind and bewilder an -age like our own. In the vast catastrophe of the European war our -emotions had to be broken up for us, and put at an angle from us, before -we could allow ourselves to feel them in poetry or fiction. The only -poets who spoke to the purpose spoke in the sidelong, satiric manner of -Wilfrid Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. It was not possible for them to be -direct without being clumsy; or to speak simply of emotion without being -sentimental. But the Greeks could say, as if for the first time, "Yet -being dead they have not died". They could say, "If to die nobly is the -chief part of excellence, to us out of all men Fortune gave this lot; -for hastening to set a crown of freedom on Greece we lie possessed of -praise that grows not old". They could march straight up, with their -eyes open; and thus fearlessly approached, emotions stand still and -suffer themselves to be looked at. - -But again (the question comes back and back), Are we reading Greek as it -was written when we say this? When we read these few words cut on a -tombstone, a stanza in a chorus, the end or the opening of a dialogue of -Plato's, a fragment of Sappho, when we bruise our minds upon some -tremendous metaphor in the _Agamemnon_ instead of stripping the branch -of its flowers instantly as we do in reading _Lear_--are we not reading -wrongly? losing our sharp sight in the haze of associations? reading -into Greek poetry not what they have but what we lack? Does not the -whole of Greece heap itself behind every line of its literature? They -admit us to a vision of the earth unravaged, the sea unpolluted, the -maturity, tried but unbroken, of mankind. Every word is reinforced by a -vigour which pours out of olive-tree and temple and the bodies of the -young. The nightingale has only to be named by Sophocles and she sings; -the grove has only to be called ἄβατον, "untrodden", and we -imagine the twisted branches and the purple violets. Back and back we -are drawn to steep ourselves in what, perhaps, is only an image of the -reality, not the reality itself, a summer's day imagined in the heart of -a northern winter. Chief among these sources of glamour and perhaps -misunderstanding is the language. We can never hope to get the whole -fling of a sentence in Greek as we do in English. We cannot hear it, now -dissonant, now harmonious, tossing sound from line to line across a -page. We cannot pick up infallibly one by one all those minute signals -by which a phrase is made to hint, to turn, to live. Nevertheless it is -the language that has us most in bondage; the desire for that which -perpetually lures us back. First there is the compactness of the -expression. Shelley takes twenty-one words in English to translate -thirteen words of Greek. - -πᾶς γοῦν ποιητὴς γίγνεται, κἂν ἄμουσος ᾖ τὸ πρίν, οὗ ἂν Ἕρως -ἅψηται - -. . . For every one, even if before he were ever so undisciplined, -becomes a poet as soon as he is touched by love. - - -Every ounce of fat has been pared off, leaving the flesh firm. Then, -spare and bare as it is, no language can move more quickly, dancing, -shaking, all alive, but controlled. Then there are the words themselves -which, in so many instances, we have made expressive to us of our own -emotions, _thalassa, thanatos, anthos, aster_--to take the first that -come to hand; so clear, so hard, so intense, that to speak plainly yet -fittingly without blurring the outline or clouding the depths Greek is -the only expression. It is useless, then, to read Greek in translations. -Translators can but offer us a vague equivalent; their language is -necessarily full of echoes and associations. Professor Mackail says -"wan", and the age of Burne-Jones and Morris is at once evoked. Nor can -the subtler stress, the flight and the fall of the words, be kept even -by the most skilful of scholars-- - - -. . . thee, who evermore weepest in thy rocky tomb - - -is not - - -ἅτ' ἐν τάφῳ πετραίῳ, -αἰ, δακρύεις. - - -Further, in reckoning the doubts and difficulties there is this -important problem--Where are we to laugh in reading Greek? There is a -passage in the _Odyssey_ where laughter begins to steal upon us, but if -Homer were looking we should probably think it better to control our -merriment. To laugh instantly it is almost necessary (though -Aristophanes may supply us with an exception) to laugh in English. -Humour, after all, is closely bound up with a sense of the body. When we -laugh at the humour of Wycherley, we are laughing with the body of that -burly rustic who was our common ancestor on the village green. The -French, the Italians, the Americans, who derive physically from so -different a stock, pause, as we pause in reading Homer, to make sure -that they are laughing in the right place, and the pause is fatal. Thus -humour is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue, and when -we turn from Greek to Elizabethan literature it seems, after a long -silence, as if our great age were ushered in by a burst of laughter. - -These are all difficulties, sources of misunderstanding, of distorted -and romantic, of servile and snobbish passion. Yet even for the -unlearned some certainties remain. Greek is the impersonal literature; -it is also the literature of masterpieces. There are no schools; no -forerunners; no heirs. We cannot trace a gradual process working in many -men imperfectly until it expresses itself adequately at last in one. -Again, there is always about Greek literature that air of vigour which -permeates an "age", whether it is the age of Æschylus, or Racine, or -Shakespeare. One generation at least in that fortunate time is blown on -to be writers to the extreme; to attain that unconsciousness which means -that the consciousness is stimulated to the highest extent; to surpass -the limits of small triumphs and tentative experiments. Thus we have -Sappho with her constellations of adjectives, Plato daring extravagant -flights of poetry in the midst of prose; Thucydides, constricted and -contracted; Sophocles gliding like a shoal of trout smoothly and -quietly, apparently motionless, and then with a flicker of fins off and -away; while in the _Odyssey_ we have what remains the triumph of -narrative, the clearest and at the same time the most romantic story of -the fortunes of men and women. - -The _Odyssey_ is merely a story of adventure, the instinctive -story-telling of a sea-faring race. So we may begin it, reading quickly -in the spirit of children wanting amusement to find out what happens -next. But here is nothing immature; here are full-grown people, crafty, -subtle, and passionate. Nor is the world itself a small one, since the -sea which separates island from island has to be crossed by little -hand-made boats and is measured by the flight of the sea-gulls. It is -true that the islands are not thickly populated, and the people, though -everything is made by hand, are not closely kept at work. They have had -time to develop a very dignified, a very stately society, with an -ancient tradition of manners behind it, which makes every relation at -once orderly, natural, and full of reserve. Penelope crosses the room; -Telemachus goes to bed; Nausicaa washes her linen; and their actions -seem laden with beauty because they do not know that they are beautiful, -have been born to their possessions, are no more self-conscious than -children, and yet, all those thousands of years ago, in their little -islands, know all that is to be known. With the sound of the sea in -their ears, vines, meadows, rivulets about them, they are even more -aware than we are of a ruthless fate. There is a sadness at the back of -life which they do not attempt to mitigate. Entirely aware of their own -standing in the shadow, and yet alive to every tremor and gleam of -existence, there they endure, and it is to the Greeks that we turn when -we are sick of the vagueness, of the confusion, of the Christianity and -its consolations, of our own age. - - - - -_The Elizabethan Lumber -Room_ - - -These magnificent volumes[2] are not often, perhaps, read through. Part -of their charm consists in the fact that Hakluyt is not so much a book -as a great bundle of commodities loosely tied together, an emporium, a -lumber room strewn with ancient sacks, obsolete nautical instruments, -huge bales of wool, and little bags of rubies and emeralds. One is for -ever untying this packet here, sampling that heap over there, wiping the -dust off some vast map of the world, and sitting down in semi-darkness -to snuff the strange smells of silks and leathers and ambergris, while -outside tumble the huge waves of the uncharted Elizabethan sea. - -For this jumble of seeds, silks, unicorns' horns, elephants' teeth, -wool, common stones, turbans, and bars of gold, these odds and ends of -priceless value and complete worthlessness, were the fruit of -innumerable voyages, traffics, and discoveries to unknown lands in the -reign of Queen Elizabeth. The expeditions were manned by "apt young men" -from the West country, and financed in part by the great Queen herself. -The ships, says Froude, were no bigger than modern yachts. There in the -river by Greenwich the fleet lay gathered, close to the Palace. "The -Privy council looked out of the windows of the court . . . the ships -thereupon discharge their ordnance . . . and the mariners they shouted -in such sort that the sky rang again with the noise thereof." Then, as -the ships swung down the tide, one sailor after another walked the -hatches, climbed the shrouds, stood upon the mainyards to wave his -friends a last farewell. Many would come back no more. For directly -England and the coast of France were beneath the horizon, the ships -sailed into the unfamiliar; the air had its voices, the sea its lions and -serpents, its evaporations of fire and tumultuous whirlpools. But God too -was very close; the clouds but sparely hid the divinity Himself; the limbs -of Satan were almost visible. Familiarly the English sailors pitted their -God against the God of the Turks, who "can speake never a word for -dulnes, much lesse can he helpe them in such an extremitie. . . . -But howsoever their God behaved himself, our God showed himself a God -indeed. . ." God was as near by sea as by land, said Sir Humphrey -Gilbert, riding through the storm. Suddenly one light disappeared; Sir -Humphrey Gilbert had gone beneath the waves; when morning came, they -sought his ship in vain. Sir Hugh Willoughby sailed to discover the -North-West Passage and made no return. The Earl of Cumberland's men, -hung up by adverse winds off the coast of Cornwall for a fortnight, -licked the muddy water off the deck in agony. And sometimes a ragged and -worn-out man came knocking at the door of an English country house and -claimed to be the boy who had left it years ago to sail the seas. "Sir -William his father, and my lady his mother knew him not to be their son, -until they found a secret mark, which was a wart upon one of his knees." -But he had with him a black stone, veined with gold, or an ivory tusk, -or a silver ingot, and urged on the village youth with talk of gold -strewn over the land as stones are strewn in the fields of England. One -expedition might fail, but what if the passage to the fabled land of -uncounted riches lay only a little further up the coast? What if the -known world was only the prelude to some more splendid panorama? When, -after the long voyage, the ships dropped anchor in the great river of -the Plate and the men went exploring through the undulating lands, -startling grazing herds of deer, seeing the limbs of savages between the -trees, they filled their pockets with pebbles that might be emeralds or -sand that might be gold; or sometimes, rounding a headland, they saw, -far off, a string of savages slowly descending to the beach bearing on -their heads and linking their shoulders together with heavy burdens for -the Spanish King. - -These are the fine stories used effectively all through the West country -to decoy "the apt young men" lounging by the harbour-side to leave their -nets and fish for gold. But the voyagers were sober merchants into the -bargain, citizens with the good of English trade and the welfare of -English work-people at heart. The captains are reminded how necessary it -is to find a market abroad for English wool; to discover the herb from -which blue dyes are made; above all to make inquiry as to the methods of -producing oil, since all attempts to make it from radish seed have -failed. They are reminded of the misery of the English poor, whose -crimes, brought about by poverty, make them "daily consumed by the -gallows". They are reminded how the soil of England had been enriched by -the discoveries of travellers in the past; how Dr. Linaker brought seeds -of the damask rose and tulipas, and how beasts and plants and herbs, -"without which our life were to be said barbarous", have all come to -England gradually from abroad. In search of markets and of goods, of the -immortal fame success would bring them, the apt young men set sail for -the North, and were left, a little company of isolated Englishmen -surrounded by snow and the huts of savages, to make what bargains they -could and pick up what knowledge they might before the ships returned in -the summer to fetch them home again. There they endured, an isolated -company, burning on the rim of the dark. One of them, carrying a charter -from his company in London, went inland as far as Moscow, and there saw -the Emperor "sitting in his chair of estate with his crown on his head, -and a staff of goldsmiths' work in his left hand". All the ceremony that -he saw is carefully written out, and the sight upon which the English -merchant first set eyes has the brilliancy of a Roman vase dug up and -stood for a moment in the sun, until, exposed to the air, seen by -millions of eyes, it dulls and crumbles away. There, all these -centuries, on the outskirts of the world, the glories of Moscow, the -glories of Constantinople have flowered unseen. The Englishman was -bravely dressed for the occasion, led "three fair mastiffs in coats of -red cloth", and carried a letter from Elizabeth "the paper whereof did -smell most fragrantly of camphor and ambergris, and the ink of perfect -musk". And sometimes, since trophies from the amazing new world were -eagerly awaited at home, together with unicorns' horns and lumps of -ambergris and the fine stories of the engendering of whales and -"debates" of elephants and dragons whose blood, mixed, congealed into -vermilion, a living sample would be sent, a live savage caught somewhere -off the coast of Labrador, taken to England, and shown about like a wild -beast. Next year they brought him back, and took a woman savage on board -to keep him company. When they saw each other they blushed; they blushed -profoundly, but the sailors, though they noted it, knew not why. Later -the two savages set up house together on board ship, she attending to -his wants, he nursing her in sickness. But, as the sailors noted again, -the savages lived together in perfect chastity. - -All this, the new words, the new ideas, the waves, the savages, the -adventures, found their way naturally into the plays which were being -acted on the banks of the Thames. There was an audience quick to seize -upon the coloured and the high-sounding; to associate those - - -frigates bottom'd with rich Sethin planks, -Topt with the lofty firs of Lebanon - - -with the adventures of their own sons and brothers abroad. The Verneys, -for example, had a wild boy who had gone as pirate, turned Turk, and -died out there, sending back to Claydon to be kept as relics of him some -silk, a turban, and a pilgrim's staff. A gulf lay between the spartan -domestic housecraft of the Paston women and the refined tastes of the -Elizabethan Court ladies, who, grown old, says Harrison, spent their -time reading histories, or "writing volumes of their own, or translating -of other men's into our English and Latin tongue", while the younger -ladies played the lute and the citharne and spent their leisure in the -enjoyment of music. Thus, with singing and with music, springs into -existence the characteristic Elizabethan extravagance; the dolphins and -lavoltas of Greene; the hyperbole, more surprising in a writer so terse -and muscular, of Ben Jonson. Thus we find the whole of Elizabethan -literature strewn with gold and silver; with talk of Guiana's rarities, -and references to that America--"O my America! my new-foundland"--which -was not merely a land on the map, but symbolised the unknown territories -of the soul. So, over the water, the imagination of Montaigne brooded in -fascination upon savages, cannibals, society, and government. - -But the mention of Montaigne suggests that though the influence of the -sea and the voyages, of the lumber-room crammed with sea beasts and -horns and ivory and old maps and nautical instruments, helped to inspire -the greatest age of English poetry, its effects were by no means so -beneficial upon English prose. Rhyme and metre helped the poets to keep -the tumult of their perceptions in order. But the prose writer, without -these restrictions, accumulated clauses, petered out in interminable -catalogues, tripped and stumbled over the convolutions of his own rich -draperies. How little Elizabethan prose was fit for its office, how -exquisitely French prose was already adapted, can be seen by comparing -a passage from Sidney's _Defense of Poesie_ with one from Montaigne's -Essays. - - -He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which must blur the margent -with interpretations, and load the memory with doubtfulness: but he -cometh to you with words set in delightful proportion, either -accompanied with, or prepared for the well enchanting Skill of Music, -and with a tale (forsooth) he cometh unto you, with a tale which holdeth -children from play, and old men from the Chimney corner; and pretending -no more, doth intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue; -even as the child is often brought to take most wholesome things by -hiding them in such other as have a pleasant taste: which if one should -begin to tell them the nature of the _Aloës_ or _Rhubarbarum_ they -should receive, would sooner take their physic at their ears than at -their mouth, so is it in men (most of which are childish in the best -things, till they be cradled in their graves) glad they will be to hear -the tales of Hercules. . . . - - -And so it runs on for seventy-six words more. Sidney's prose is an -uninterrupted monologue, with sudden flashes of felicity and splendid -phrases, which lends itself to lamentations and moralities, to long -accumulations and catalogues, but is never quick, never colloquial, -unable to grasp a thought closely and firmly, or to adapt itself -flexibly and exactly to the chops and changes of the mind. Compared with -this, Montaigne is master of an instrument which knows its own powers -and limitations, and is capable of insinuating itself into crannies and -crevices which poetry can never reach; of cadences different but no less -beautiful; capable of subtleties and intensities which Elizabethan prose -entirely ignores. He is considering the way in which certain of the -ancients met death: - - -. . . ils l'ont faicte couler et glisser parmy la lascheté de leurs -occupations accoustumées entre des garses et bons compaignons; nul -propos de consolation, nulle mention de testament, nulle affectation -ambitieuse de constance, nul discours de leur condition future; mais -entre les jeux, les festins, facecies, entretiens communs et populaires, -et la musique, et des vers amoureux. - - -An age seems to separate Sidney from Montaigne. The English compared -with the French are as boys compared with men. - -But the Elizabethan prose writers, if they have the formlessness of -youth have, too, its freshness and audacity. In the same essay Sidney -shapes language, masterfully and easily, to his liking; freely and -naturally reaches his hand for a metaphor. To bring this prose to -perfection (and Dryden's prose is very near perfection) only the -discipline of the stage was necessary and the growth of -self-consciousness. It is in the plays, and especially in the comic -passages of the plays, that the finest Elizabethan prose is to be found. -The stage was the nursery where prose learnt to find its feet. For on -the stage people had to meet, to quip and crank, to suffer -interruptions, to talk of ordinary things. - - -_Cler_. A box of her autumnal face, her pieced beauty! there's no man -can be admitted till she be ready now-a-days, till she has painted, and -perfumed, and washed, and scoured, but the boy here; and him she wipes -her oiled lips upon, like a sponge. I have made a song (I pray thee hear -it) on the subject. [Page sings] - - -Still to be neat, still to be drest &c. - -_True_. And I am clearly on the other side: I love a good dressing -before any beauty o' the world. O, a woman is then like a delicate -garden; nor is there one kind of it; she may vary every hour; take often -counsel of her glass, and choose the best. If she have good ears, show -them; good hair, lay it out; good legs, wear short clothes; a good hand, -discover it often: practise any art to mend breath, cleanse teeth, -repair eyebrows; paint and profess it. - - -So the talk runs in Ben Jonson's _Silent Woman_, knocked into shape by -interruptions, sharpened by collisions, and never allowed to settle into -stagnancy or swell into turbidity. But the publicity of the stage and -the perpetual presence of a second person were hostile to that growing -consciousness of one's self, that brooding in solitude over the -mysteries of the soul, which, as the years went by, sought expression -and found a champion in the sublime genius of Sir Thomas Browne. His -immense egotism has paved the way for all psychological novelists, -autobiographers, confession-mongers, and dealers in the curious shades -of our private life. He it was who first turned from the contacts of men -with men to their lonely life within. "The world that I regard is -myself; it is the microcosm of my own frame that I cast mine eye on; for -the other I use it but like my globe, and turn it round sometimes for my -recreation." All was mystery and darkness as the first explorer walked -the catacombs swinging his lanthorn. "I feel sometimes a hell within -myself; Lucifer keeps his court in my breast; Legion is revived in me." -In these solitudes there were no guides and no companions. "I am in the -dark to all the world, and my nearest friends behold me but in a cloud." -The strangest thoughts and imaginings have play with him as he goes -about his work, outwardly the most sober of mankind and esteemed the -greatest physician in Norwich. He has wished for death. He has doubted -all things. What if we are asleep in this world and the conceits of life -are as mere dreams? The tavern music, the Ave Mary bell, the broken pot -that the workman has dug out of the field--at the sight and sound of -them he stops dead, as if transfixed by the astonishing vista that opens -before his imagination. "We carry with us the wonders we seek without -us; there is all Africa and her prodigies in us." A halo of wonder -encircles everything that he sees; he turns his light gradually upon the -flowers and insects and grasses at his feet so as to disturb nothing in -the mysterious processes of their existence. With the same awe, mixed -with a sublime complacency, he records the discovery of his own -qualities and attainments. He was charitable and brave and averse from -nothing. He was full of feeling for others and merciless upon himself. -"For my conversation, it is like the sun's, with all men, and with a -friendly aspect to good and bad." He knows six languages, the laws, the -customs and policies of several states, the names of all the -constellations and most of the plants of his country, and yet, so -sweeping is his imagination, so large the horizon in which he sees this -little figure walking that "methinks I do not know so many as when I did -but know a hundred, and had scarcely ever simpled further than -Cheapside". - -He is the first of the autobiographers. Swooping and soaring at the -highest altitudes he stoops suddenly with loving particularity upon the -details of his own body. His height was moderate, he tells us, his eyes -large and luminous; his skin dark but constantly suffused with blushes. -He dressed very plainly. He seldom laughed. He collected coins, kept -maggots in boxes, dissected the lungs of frogs, braved the stench of the -spermaceti whale, tolerated Jews, had a good word for the deformity of -the toad, and combined a scientific and sceptical attitude towards most -things with an unfortunate belief in witches. In short, as we say when -we cannot help laughing at the oddities of people we admire most, he was -a character, and the first to make us feel that the most sublime -speculations of the human imagination are issued from a particular man, -whom we can love. In the midst of the solemnities of the Urn Burial we -smile when he remarks that afflictions induce callosities. The smile -broadens to laughter as we mouth out the splendid pomposities, the -astonishing conjectures of the _Religio Medici_. Whatever he writes is -stamped with his own idiosyncrasy, and we first become conscious of -impurities which hereafter stain literature with so many freakish -colours that, however hard we try, make it difficult to be certain -whether we are looking at a man or his writing. Now we are in the -presence of sublime imagination; now rambling through one of the finest -lumber rooms in the world--a chamber stuffed from floor to ceiling with -ivory, old iron, broken pots, urns, unicorns' horns, and magic glasses -full of emerald lights and blue mystery. - - -[Footnote 2: _Hakluyf's Collection of the Early Voyages, Travels, -and Discoveries of the English Nation_, five volumes, 4 to, 1810.] - - - - -_Notes on an Elizabethan -Play_ - - -There are, it must be admitted, some highly formidable tracts in English -literature, and chief among them that jungle, forest, and wilderness -which is the Elizabethan drama. For many reasons, not here to be -examined, Shakespeare stands out, Shakespeare who has had the light on -him from his day to ours, Shakespeare who towers highest when looked at -from the level of his own contemporaries. But the plays of the lesser -Elizabethans--Greene, Dekker, Peele, Chapman, Beaumont and Fletcher,--to -adventure into that wilderness is for the ordinary reader an ordeal, an -upsetting experience which plies him with questions, harries him with -doubts, alternately delights and vexes him with pleasures and pains. For -we are apt to forget, reading, as we tend to do, only the masterpieces -of a bygone age how great a power the body of a literature possesses to -impose itself: how it will not suffer itself to be read passively, but -takes us and reads us; flouts our preconceptions; questions principles -which we had got into the habit of taking for granted, and, in fact, -splits us into two parts as we read, making us, even as we enjoy, yield -our ground or stick to our guns. - -At the outset in reading an Elizabethan play we are overcome by the -extraordinary discrepancy between the Elizabethan view of reality and -our own. The reality to which we have grown accustomed, is, speaking -roughly, based upon the life and death of some knight called Smith, who -succeeded his father in the family business of pitwood importers, timber -merchants and coal exporters, was well known in political, temperance, -and church circles, did much for the poor of Liverpool, and died last -Wednesday of pneumonia while on a visit to his son at Muswell Hill. That -is the world we know. That is the reality which our poets and novelists -have to expound and illuminate. Then we open the first Elizabethan play -that comes to hand and read how - - -I once did see -In my young travels through Armenia -An angry unicorn in his full career -Charge with too swift a foot a jeweller -That watch'd him for the treasure of his brow -And ere he could get shelter of a tree -Nail him with his rich antlers to the earth. - - -Where is Smith, we ask, where is Liverpool? And the groves of -Elizabethan drama echo "Where?" Exquisite is the delight, sublime the -relief of being set free to wander in the land of the unicorn and the -jeweller among dukes and grandees, Gonzaloes and Bellimperias, who spend -their lives in murder and intrigue, dress up as men if they are women, -as women if they are men, see ghosts, run mad, and die in the greatest -profusion on the slightest provocation, uttering as they fall -imprecations of superb vigour or elegies of the wildest despair. But -soon the low, the relentless voice, which if we wish to identify it we -must suppose typical of a reader fed on modern English literature, and -French and Russian, asks why, then, with all this to stimulate and -enchant these old plays are for long stretches of time so intolerably -dull? Is it not that literature, if it is to keep us on the alert -through five acts or thirty-two chapters must somehow be based on Smith, -have one toe touching Liverpool, take off into whatever heights it -pleases from reality? We are not so purblind as to suppose that a man -because his name is Smith and he lives at Liverpool is therefore "real". -We know indeed that this reality is a chameleon, quality, the fantastic -becoming as we grow used to it often the closest to the truth, the sober -the furthest from it, and nothing proving a writer's greatness more than -his capacity to consolidate his scene by the use of what, until he -touched them, seemed wisps of cloud and threads of gossamer. Our -contention merely is that there is a station, somewhere in mid-air, -whence Smith and Liverpool can be seen to the best advantage; that the -great artist is the man who knows where to place himself above the -shifting scenery; that while he never loses sight of Liverpool he never -sees it in the wrong perspective. The Elizabethans bore us, then, -because their Smiths are all changed to dukes, their Liverpools to -fabulous islands and palaces in Genoa. Instead of keeping a proper poise -above life they soar miles into the empyrean, where nothing is visible -for long hours at a time but clouds at their revelry, and a cloud -landscape is not ultimately satisfactory to human eyes. The Elizabethans -bore us because they suffocate our imaginations rather than set them to -work. - -Still, though potent enough, the boredom of an Elizabethan play is of a -different quality altogether from the boredom which a nineteenth-century -play, a Tennyson or a Henry Taylor play, inflicts. The riot of images, -the violent volubility of language, all that cloys and satiates in the -Elizabethans yet appears to be drawn up with a roar as a feeble fire is -sucked up by a newspaper. There is, even in the worst, an intermittent -bawling vigour which gives us the sense in our quiet arm-chairs of -ostlers and orange-girls catching up the lines, flinging them back, -hissing or stamping applause. But the deliberate drama of the Victorian -age is evidently written in a study. It has for audience ticking clocks -and rows of classics bound in half morocco. There is no stamping, no -applause. It does not, as, with all its faults, the Elizabethan audience -did, leaven the mass with fire. Rhetorical and bombastic, the lines are -flung and hurried into existence and reach the same impromptu -felicities, have the same lip-moulded profusion and unexpectedness, -which speech sometimes achieves, but seldom in our day the deliberate, -solitary pen. Indeed half the work of the dramatists one feels was done -in the Elizabethan age by the public. - -Against that, however, is to be set the fact that the influence of the -public was in many respects detestable. To its door we must lay the -greatest infliction that Elizabethan drama puts upon us--the plot; the -incessant, improbable, almost unintelligible convolutions which -presumably gratified the spirit of an excitable and unlettered public -actually in the playhouse, but only confuse and fatigue a reader with -the book before him. Undoubtedly something must happen; undoubtedly a -play where nothing happens is an impossibility. But we have a right to -demand (since the Greeks have proved that it is perfectly possible) that -what happens shall have an end in view. It shall agitate great emotions; -bring into existence memorable scenes; stir the actors to say what could -not be said without this stimulus. Nobody can fail to remember the plot -of the _Antigone_, because what happens is so closely bound up with the -emotions of the actors that we remember the people and the plot at one -and the same time. But who can tell us what happens in the _White -Devil_, or the _Maid's Tragedy_, except by remembering the story apart -from the emotions which it has aroused? As for the lesser Elizabethans, -like Greene and Kyd, the complexities of their plots are so great, and -the violence which those plots demand so terrific, that the actors -themselves are obliterated and emotions which, according to our -convention at least, deserve the most careful investigation, the most -delicate analysis, are clean sponged off the slate. And the result is -inevitable. Outside Shakespeare and perhaps Ben Jonson, there are no -characters in Elizabethan drama, only violences whom we know so little -that we can scarcely care what becomes of them. Take any hero or heroine -in those early plays--Bellimperia in the _Spanish Tragedy_ will serve as -well as another--and can we honestly say that we care a jot for the -unfortunate lady who runs the whole gamut of human misery to kill -herself in the end? No more than for an animated broomstick, we must -reply, and in a work dealing with men and women the prevalence of -broomsticks is a drawback. But the Spanish Tragedy is admittedly a crude -forerunner, chiefly valuable because such primitive efforts lay bare the -formidable framework which greater dramatists could modify, but had to -use. Ford, it is claimed, is of the school of Stendhal and of Flaubert; -Ford is a psychologist. Ford is an analyst. "This man", says Mr. -Havelock Ellis, "writes of women not as a dramatist nor as a lover, but -as one who has searched intimately and felt with instinctive sympathy -the fibres of their hearts." - -The play--_'Tis pity she's a Whore_--upon which this judgement is -chiefly based shows us the whole nature of Annabella spun from pole to -pole in a series of tremendous vicissitudes. First, her brother tells -her that he loves her; next she confesses her love for him; next finds -herself with child by him; next forces herself to marry Soranzo; next is -discovered; next repents; finally is killed, and it is her lover and -brother who kills her. To trace the trail of feelings which such crises -and calamities might be expected to breed in a woman of ordinary -sensibility might have filled volumes. A dramatist of course has no -volumes to fill. He is forced to contract. Even so, he can illumine; he -can reveal enough for us to guess the rest. But what is it that we know -without using microscopes and splitting hairs about the character of -Annabella? Gropingly we make out that she is a spirited girl, with her -defiance of her husband when he abuses her, her snatches of Italian -song, her ready wit, her simple glad love-making. But of character as we -understand the word there is no trace. We do not know how she reaches -her conclusions, only that she has reached them. Nobody describes her. -She is always at the height of her passion, never at its approach. -Compare her with Anna Karenina. The Russian woman is flesh and blood, -nerves and temperament, has heart, brain, body and mind where the -English girl is flat and crude as a face painted on a playing card; she -is without depth, without range, without intricacy. But as we say this -we know that we have missed something. We have let the meaning of the -play slip through our hands. We have ignored the emotion which has been -accumulating because it has accumulated in places where we have not -expected to find it. We have been comparing the play with prose, and the -play, after all, is poetry. - -The play is poetry we say, and the novel prose. Let us attempt to -obliterate detail, and place the two before us side by side, feeling, so -far as we can, the angles and edges of each, recalling each, so far as -we are able, as a whole. Then, at once, the prime differences emerge; -the long leisurely accumulated novel; the little contracted play; the -emotion all split up, dissipated and then woven together, slowly and -gradually massed into a whole, in the novel; the emotion concentrated, -generalised, heightened in the play. What moments of intensity, what -phrases of astonishing beauty the play shot at us! - - -O, my lords, -I but deceived your eyes with antic gesture, -When one news straight came huddling on another -Of death! and death! and death! still I danced forward. - - -or - - -You have oft for these two lips -Neglected cassia or the natural sweets -Of the spring-violet: they are not yet much wither'd. - - -With all her reality, Anna Karenina could never say - - -"You have oft, for these two lips -Neglected cassia". - - -Some of the most profound of human emotions are therefore beyond her -reach. The extremes of passion are not for the novelist; the perfect -marriages of sense and sound are not for him; he must tame his swiftness -to sluggardry; keep his eyes on the ground not on the sky: suggest by -description, not reveal by illumination. Instead of singing - - -Lay a garland on my hearse -Of the dismal yew; -Maidens, willow branches bear; -Say I died true, - - -he must enumerate the chrysanthemums fading on the grave and the -undertakers' men snuffling past in their four-wheelers. How then can we -compare this lumbering and lagging art with poetry? Granted all the -little dexterities by which the novelist makes us know the individual -and recognise the real, the dramatist goes beyond the single and the -separate, shows us not Annabella in love, but love itself; not Anna -Karenina throwing herself under the train, but ruin and death and the - - -. . . soul, like a ship in a black storm, -. . . driven, I know not whither. - - -So with pardonable impatience we might exclaim as we shut our -Elizabethan play. But what then is the exclamation with which we close -_War and Peace_? Not one of disappointment; we are not left lamenting the -superficiality, upbraiding the triviality of the novelist's art. Rather -we are made more than ever aware of the inexhaustible richness of human -sensibility. Here, in the play, we recognise the general; here, in the -novel, the particular. Here we gather all our energies into a bunch and -spring. Here we extend and expand and let come slowly in from all -quarters deliberate impressions, accumulated messages. The mind is so -saturated with sensibility, language so inadequate to its experience, -that far from ruling off one form of literature or decreeing its -inferiority to others we complain that they are still unable to keep -pace with the wealth of material, and wait impatiently the creation of -what may yet be devised to liberate us of the enormous burden of the -unexpressed. - -Thus, in spite of dullness, bombast, rhetoric, and confusion we still -read the lesser Elizabethans, still find ourselves adventuring in the -land of the jeweller and the unicorn. The familiar factories of -Liverpool fade into thin air and we scarcely recognise any likeness -between the knight who imported timber and died of pneumonia at Muswell -Hill and the Armenian Duke who fell like a Roman on his sword while the -owl shrieked in the ivy and the Duchess gave birth to a still-born babe -'mongst women howling. To join those territories and recognise the same -man in different disguises we have to adjust and revise. But make the -necessary alterations in perspective, draw in those filaments of -sensibility which the moderns have so marvellously developed, use -instead the ear and the eye which the moderns have so basely starved, -hear words as they are laughed and shouted, not as they are printed in -black letters on the page, see before your eyes the changing faces and -living bodies of men and women, put yourself, in short, into a -different, but not more elementary stage of your reading development and -then the true merits of Elizabethan drama will assert themselves. The -power of the whole is undeniable. Theirs, too, is the word-coining -genius, as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping. -Theirs is that broad humour based upon the nakedness of the body, which, -however arduously the public spirited may try, is impossible, since the -body is draped. Then at the back of this, imposing not unity but some -sort of stability, is what we may briefly call a sense of the presence -of the Gods. He would be a bold critic who should attempt to impose any -creed upon the swarm and variety of the Elizabethan dramatists, and yet -it implies some timidity if we take it for granted that a whole -literature with common characteristics is a mere evaporation of high -spirits, a money-making enterprise, a fluke of the mind which, owing to -favourable circumstances, came off successfully. Even in the jungle and -the wilderness the compass still points. - - -"Lord, Lord, that I were dead!" - - -they are for ever crying. - - -O thou soft natural death that art joint-twin -To sweetest slumber---- - - -The pageant of the world is marvellous, but the pageant of the world -is vanity. - - -glories -Of human greatness are but pleasing dreams -And shadows soon decaying: on the stage -Of my mortality my youth hath acted -Some scenes of vanity---- - - -To die and be quit of it all is their desire; the bell -that tolls throughout the drama is death and disenchantment. - - -All life is but a wandering to find home, -When we're gone, we're there. - - -Ruin, weariness, death, perpetually death, stand grimly to confront the -other presence of Elizabethan drama which is life: life compact of -frigates, fir trees and ivory, of dolphins and the juice of July -flowers, of the milk of unicorns and panthers' breath, of ropes of -pearl, brains of peacocks and Cretan wine. To this, life at its most -reckless and abundant, they reply - - -Man is a tree that hath no top in cares, -No root in comforts; all his power to live -Is given to no end but t' have power to grieve. - - -It is this echo flung back and back from the other side of the play -which, if it has not the name, still has the effect of the presence of -the Gods. - -So we ramble through the jungle, forest, and wilderness of Elizabethan -drama. So we consort with Emperors and clowns, jewellers and unicorns, -and laugh and exult and marvel at the splendour and humour and fantasy -of it all. A noble rage consumes us when the curtain falls; we are bored -too, and nauseated by the wearisome old tricks and florid bombast. A -dozen deaths of full-grown men and women move us less than the suffering -of one of Tolstoi's flies. Wandering in the maze of the impossible and -tedious story suddenly some passionate intensity seizes us; some -sublimity exalts, or some melodious snatch of song enchants. It is a -world full of tedium and delight; pleasure and curiosity, of extravagant -laughter, poetry, and splendour. But gradually it comes over us, what -then are we being denied? What is it that we are coming to want so -persistently that unless we get it instantly we must seek elsewhere? It -is solitude. There is no privacy here. Always the door opens and some -one comes in. All is shared, made visible, audible, dramatic. Meanwhile, -as if tired with company, the mind steals off to muse in solitude; to -think, not to act; to comment, not to share; to explore its own -darkness, not the bright-lit-up surfaces of others. It turns to Donne, -to Montaigne, to Sir Thomas Browne--the keepers of the keys of solitude. - - - - -_Montaigne_ - - -Once at Bar-le-Duc Montaigne saw a portrait which René, King of Sicily, -had painted of himself, and asked, "Why is it not, in like manner, -lawful for every one to draw himself with a pen, as he did with a -crayon?" Off-hand one might reply, Not only is it lawful, but nothing -could be easier. Other people may evade us, but our own features are -almost too familiar. Let us begin. And then, when we attempt the task, -the pen falls from our fingers; it is a matter of profound, mysterious, -and overwhelming difficulty. - -After all, in the whole of literature, how many people have succeeded in -drawing themselves with a pen? Only Montaigne and Pepys and Rousseau -perhaps. The _Religio Medici_ is a coloured glass through which darkly -one sees racing stars and a strange and turbulent soul. A bright -polished mirror reflects the face of Boswell peeping between other -people's shoulders in the famous biography. But this talking of oneself, -following one's own vagaries, giving the whole map, weight, colour, and -circumference of the soul in its confusion, its variety, its -imperfection--this art belonged to one man only: to Montaigne. As the -centuries go by, there is always a crowd before that picture, gazing -into its depths, seeing their own faces reflected in it, seeing more the -longer they look, never being able to say quite what it is that they -see. New editions testify to the perennial fascination. Here is the -Navarre Society in England reprinting in five fine volumes[3] Cotton's -translation; while in France the firm of Louis Conard is issuing the -complete works of Montaigne with the various readings in an edition to -which Dr. Armaingaud has devoted a long lifetime of research. - -To tell the truth about oneself, to discover oneself near at hand, is -not easy. - - -We hear of but two or three of the ancients who have beaten this road -[said Montaigne]. No one since has followed the track; 'tis a rugged -road, more so than it seems, to follow a pace so rambling and uncertain, -as that of the soul; to penetrate the dark profundities of its intricate -internal windings; to choose and lay hold of so many little nimble -motions; 'tis a new and extraordinary undertaking, and that withdraws us -from the common and most recommended employments of the world. - - -There is, in the first place, the difficulty of expression. We all -indulge in the strange, pleasant process called thinking, but when it -comes to saying, even to some one opposite, what we think, then how -little we are able to convey! The phantom is through the mind and out of -the window before we can lay salt on its tail, or slowly sinking and -returning to the profound darkness which it has lit up momentarily with -a wandering light. Face, voice, and accent eke out our words and impress -their feebleness with character in speech. But the pen is a rigid -instrument; it can say very little; it has all kinds of habits and -ceremonies of its own. It is dictatorial too: it is always making -ordinary men into prophets, and changing the natural stumbling trip of -human speech into the solemn and stately march of pens. It is for this -reason that Montaigne stands out from the legions of the dead with such -irrepressible vivacity. We can never doubt for an instant that his book -was himself. He refused to teach; he refused to preach; he kept on -saying that he was just like other people. All his effort was to write -himself down, to communicate, to tell the truth, and that is a "rugged -road, more than it seems". - -For beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme -difficulty of being oneself. This soul, or life within us, by no means -agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what -she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people -say. Other people, for instance, long ago made up their minds that old -invalidish gentlemen ought to stay at home and edify the rest of us by -the spectacle of their connubial fidelity. The soul of Montaigne said, -on the contrary, that it is in old age that one ought to travel, and -marriage, which, rightly, is very seldom founded on love, is apt to -become, towards the end of life, a formal tie better broken up. Again -with politics, statesmen are always praising the greatness of Empire, -and preaching the moral duty of civilising the savage. But look at the -Spanish in Mexico, cried Montaigne in a burst of rage. "So many cities -levelled with the ground, so many nations exterminated . . . and the -richest and most beautiful part of the world turned upside down for the -traffic of pearl and pepper! Mechanic victories!" And then when the -peasants came and told him that they had found a man dying of wounds and -deserted him for fear lest justice might incriminate them, Montaigne -asked: - - -What could I have said to these people? 'Tis certain that this office of -humanity would have brought them into trouble. . . . There is nothing so -much, nor so grossly, nor so ordinarily faulty as the laws. - - -Here the soul, getting restive, is lashing out at the more palpable -forms of Montaigne's great bugbears, convention and ceremony. But watch -her as she broods over the fire in the inner room of that tower which, -though detached from the main building, has so wide a view over the -estate. Really she is the strangest creature in the world, far from -heroic, variable as a weathercock, "bashful, insolent; chaste, lustful; -prating, silent; laborious, delicate; ingenious, heavy; melancholic, -pleasant; lying, true; knowing, ignorant; liberal, covetous, and -prodigal"--in short, so complex, so indefinite, corresponding so little -to the version which does duty for her in public, that a man might spend -his life merely in trying to run her to earth. The pleasure of the -pursuit more than rewards one for any damage that it may inflict upon -one's worldly prospects. The man who is aware of himself is henceforward -independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he -is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness. -He alone lives, while other people, slaves of ceremony, let life slip -past them in a kind of dream. Once conform, once do what other people do -because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and -faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; -dull, callous, and indifferent. - -Surely then, if we ask this great master of the art of life to tell us -his secret, he will advise us to withdraw to the inner room of our tower -and there turn the pages of books, pursue fancy after fancy as they -chase each other up the chimney, and leave the government of the world -to others. Retirement and contemplation--these must be the main elements -of his prescription. But no; Montaigne is by no means explicit. It is -impossible to extract a plain answer from that subtle, half smiling, -half melancholy man, with the heavy-lidded eyes and the dreamy, -quizzical expression. The truth is that life in the country, with one's -books and vegetables and flowers, is often extremely dull. He could -never see that his own green peas were so much better than other -people's. Paris was the place he loved best in the whole world--"jusques -à ses verrues et à ses tâches". As for reading, he could seldom read -any book for more than an hour at a time, and his memory was so bad that -he forgot what was in his mind as he walked from one room to another. -Book learning is nothing to be proud of, and as for the achievements of -science, what do they amount to? He had always mixed with clever men, -and his father had a positive veneration for them, but he had observed -that, though they have their fine moments, their rhapsodies, their -visions, the cleverest tremble on the verge of folly. Observe yourself: -one moment you are exalted; the next a broken glass puts your nerves on -edge. All extremes are dangerous. It is best to keep in the middle of -the road, in the common ruts, however muddy. In writing choose the -common words; avoid rhapsody and eloquence--yet, it is true, poetry is -delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry. - -It appears, then, that we are to aim at a democratic simplicity. We may -enjoy our room in the tower, with the painted walls and the commodious -bookcases, but down in the garden there is a man digging who buried his -father this morning, and it is he and his like who live the real life -and speak the real language. There is certainly an element of truth in -that. Things are said very finely at the lower end of the table. There -are perhaps more of the qualities that matter among the ignorant than -among the learned. But again, what a vile thing the rabble is! "the -mother of ignorance, injustice, and inconstancy. Is it reasonable that -the life of a wise man should depend upon the judgment of fools?" Their -minds are weak, soft and without power of resistance. They must be told -what it is expedient for them to know. It is not for them to face facts -as they are. The truth can only be known by the well-born soul--"l'âme -bien née". Who, then, are these well-born souls, whom we would imitate, -if only Montaigne would enlighten us more precisely? - -But no. "Je n'enseigne poinct; je raconte." After all, how could he -explain other people's souls when he could say nothing "entirely simply -and solidly, without confusion or mixture, in one word", about his own, -when indeed it became daily more and more in the dark to him? One -quality or principle there is perhaps--that one must not lay down rules. -The souls whom one would wish to resemble, like Étienne de La Boétie, -for example, are always the supplest. "C'est estre, mais ce n'est pas -vivre, que de se tenir attaché et obligé par nécessité à un seul -train." The laws are mere conventions, utterly unable to keep touch with -the vast variety and turmoil of human impulses; habits and customs are a -convenience devised for the support of timid natures who dare not allow -their souls free play. But we, who have a private life and hold it -infinitely the dearest of our possessions, suspect nothing so much as an -attitude. Directly we begin to protest, to attitudinise, to lay down -laws, we perish. We are living for others, not for ourselves. We must -respect those who sacrifice themselves in the public service, load them -with honours, and pity them for allowing, as they must, the inevitable -compromise; but for ourselves let us fly fame, honour, and all offices -that put us under an obligation to others. Let us simmer over our -incalculable cauldron, our enthralling confusion, our hotch-potch of -impulses, our perpetual miracle--for the soul throws up wonders every -second. Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is -death; conformity is death: let us say what comes into our heads, repeat -ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and -follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or -thinks or says. For nothing matters except life; and, of course, order. - -This freedom, then, which is the essence of our being, has to be -controlled. But it is difficult to see what power we are to invoke to -help us, since every restraint of private opinion or public law has been -derided, and Montaigne never ceases to pour scorn upon the misery, the -weakness, the vanity of human nature. Perhaps, then, it will be well to -turn to religion to guide us? "Perhaps" is one of his favourite -expressions; "perhaps" and "I think" and all those words which qualify -the rash assumptions of human ignorance. Such words help one to muffle -up opinions which it would be highly impolitic to speak outright. For -one does not say everything; there are some things which at present it -is advisable only to hint. One writes for a very few people, who -understand. Certainly, seek the Divine guidance by all means, but -meanwhile there is, for those who live a private life, another monitor, -an invisible censor within, "un patron au dedans", whose blame is much -more to be dreaded than any other because he knows the truth; nor is -there anything sweeter than the chime of his approval. This is the judge -to whom we must submit; this is the censor who will help us to achieve -that order which is the grace of a well-born soul. For "C'est une vie -exquise, celle qui se maintient en ordre jusques en son privé". But he -will act by his own light; by some internal balance will achieve that -precarious and everchanging poise which, while it controls, in no way -impedes the soul's freedom to explore and experiment. Without other -guide, and without precedent, undoubtedly it is far more difficult to -live well the private life than the public. It is an art which each must -learn separately, though there are, perhaps, two or three men, like -Homer, Alexander the Great, and Epaminondas among the ancients, and -Étienne de La Boétie among the moderns, whose example may help us. But -it is an art; and the very material in which it works is variable and -complex and infinitely mysterious--human nature. To human nature we must -keep close. ". . . il faut vivre entre les vivants". We must dread any -eccentricity or refinement which cuts us off from our fellow-beings. -Blessed are those who chat easily with their neighbours about their -sport or their buildings or their quarrels, and honestly enjoy the talk -of carpenters and gardeners. To communicate is our chief business; -society and friendship our chief delights; and reading, not to acquire -knowledge, not to earn a living, but to extend our intercourse beyond -our own time and province. Such wonders there are in the world; halcyons -and undiscovered lands, men with dogs' heads and eyes in their chests, -and laws and customs, it may well be, far superior to our own. Possibly -we are asleep in this world; possibly there is some other which is -apparent to beings with a sense which we now lack. - -Here then, in spite of all contradictions and of all qualifications, is -something definite. These essays are an attempt to communicate a soul. -On this point at least he is explicit. It is not fame that he wants; it -is not that men shall quote him in years to come; he is setting up no -statue in the market-place; he wishes only to communicate his soul. -Communication is health; communication is truth; communication is -happiness. To share is our duty; to go down boldly and bring to light -those hidden thoughts which are the most diseased; to conceal nothing; -to pretend nothing; if we are ignorant to say so; if we love our friends -to let them know it. - - -". . . car, comme je scay par une trop certaine expérience, il n'est -aucune si douce consolation en la perte de nos amis que celle que nous -aporte la science de n'avoir rien oublié à leur dire et d'avoir eu -avec eux une parfaite et entière communication." - - -There are people who, when they travel, wrap themselves up "se -défendans de la contagion d'un air incogneu" in silence and suspicion. -When they dine they must have the same food they get at home. Every -sight and custom is bad unless it resembles those of their own village. -They travel only to return. That is entirely the wrong way to set about -it. We should start without any fixed idea where we are going to spend -the night, or when we propose to come back; the journey is everything. -Most necessary of all, but rarest good fortune, we should try to find -before we start some man of our own sort who will go with us and to whom -we can say the first thing that comes into our heads. For pleasure has -no relish unless we share it. As for the risks--that we may catch cold -or get a headache--it is always worth while to risk a little illness for -the sake of pleasure. "Le plaisir est des principales espèces du -profit." Besides if we do what we like, we always do what is good for -us. Doctors and wise men may object, but let us leave doctors and wise -men to their own dismal philosophy. For ourselves, who are ordinary men -and women, let us return thanks to Nature for her bounty by using every -one of the senses she has given us; vary our state as much as possible; -turn now this side, now that, to the warmth, and relish to the full -before the sun goes down the kisses of youth and the echoes of a -beautiful voice singing Catullus. Every season is likeable, and wet days -and fine, red wine and white, company and solitude. Even sleep, that -deplorable curtailment of the joy of life, can be full of dreams; and -the most common actions--a walk, a talk, solitude in one's own -orchard--can be enhanced and lit up by the association of the mind. -Beauty is everywhere, and beauty is only two fingers' breadth from -goodness. So, in the name of health and sanity, let us not dwell on the -end of the journey. Let death come upon us planting our cabbages, or on -horseback, or let us steal away to some cottage and there let strangers -close our eyes, for a servant sobbing or the touch of a hand would break -us down. Best of all, let death find us at our usual occupations, among -girls and good fellows who make no protests, no lamentations; let him -find us "parmy les jeux, les festins, faceties, entretiens communs et -populaires, et la musique, et des vers amoureux". But enough of death; -it is life that matters. - -It is life that emerges more and more clearly as these essays reach not -their end, but their suspension in full career. It is life that becomes -more and more absorbing as death draws near, one's self, one's soul, -every fact of existence: that one wears silk stockings summer and -winter; puts water in one's wine; has one's hair cut after dinner; must -have glass to drink from; has never worn spectacles; has a loud voice; -carries a switch in one's hand; bites one's tongue; fidgets with one's -feet; is apt to scratch one's ears; likes meat to be high; rubs one's -teeth with a napkin (thank God, they are good!); must have curtains to -one's bed; and, what is rather curious, began by liking radishes, then -disliked them, and now likes them again. No fact is too little to let it -slip through one's fingers and besides the interest of facts themselves, -there is the strange power we have of changing facts by the force of the -imagination. Observe how the soul is always casting her own lights and -shadows; makes the substantial hollow and the frail substantial; fills -broad daylight with dreams; is as much excited by phantoms as by -reality; and in the moment of death sports with a trifle. Observe, too, -her duplicity, her complexity. She hears of a friend's loss and -sympathises, and yet has a bitter-sweet malicious pleasure in the -sorrows of others. She believes; at the same time she does not believe. -Observe her extraordinary susceptibility to impressions, especially in -youth. A rich man steals because his father kept him short of money as a -boy. This wall one builds not for oneself, but because one's father -loved building. In short the soul is all laced about with nerves and -sympathies which affect her every action, and yet, even now in 1580, no -one has any clear knowledge--such cowards we are, such lovers of the -smooth conventional ways--how she works or what she is except that of -all things she is the most mysterious, and one's self the greatest -monster and miracle in the world. ". . . plus je me hante et connois, -plus ma difformité m'estonne, moins je m'entens en moy." Observe, -observe perpetually, and, so long as ink and paper exist, "sans cesse et -sans travail" Montaigne will write. - -But there remains one final question which, if we could make him look up -from his enthralling occupation, we should like to put to this great -master of the art of life. In these extraordinary volumes of short and -broken, long and learned, logical and contradictory statements, we have -heard the very pulse and rhythm of the soul, beating day after day, year -after year through a veil which, as time goes on, fines itself almost to -transparency. Here is some one who succeeded in the hazardous enterprise -of living; who served his country and lived retired; was landlord, -husband, father; entertained kings, loved women, and mused for hours -alone over old books. By means of perpetual experiment and observation -of the subtlest he achieved at last a miraculous adjustment of all these -wayward parts that constitute the human soul. He laid hold of the beauty -of the world with all his fingers. He achieved happiness. If he had had -to live again, he said, he would have lived the same life over. But, as -we watch with absorbed interest the enthralling spectacle of a soul -living openly beneath our eyes, the question frames itself, Is pleasure -the end of all? Whence this overwhelming interest in the nature of the -soul? Why this overmastering desire to communicate with others? Is the -beauty of this world enough, or is there, elsewhere, some explanation of -the mystery? To this what answer can there be? There is none. There is -only one more question: "Que scais-je?" - - -[Footnote 3: _Essays of Montaigne_, translated by Charles Cotton, -5 vols. The Navarre Society, £6: 6s. net] - - - - -_The Duchess of Newcastle_[4] - - -". . . All I desire is fame", wrote Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of -Newcastle. And while she lived her wish was granted. Garish in her -dress, eccentric in her habits, chaste in her conduct, coarse in her -speech, she succeeded during her lifetime in drawing upon herself the -ridicule of the great and the applause of the learned. But the last -echoes of that clamour have now all died away; she lives only in the few -splendid phrases that Lamb scattered upon her tomb; her poems, her -plays, her philosophies, her orations, her discourses--all those folios -and quartos in which, she protested, her real life was shrined--moulder -in the gloom of public libraries, or are decanted into tiny thimbles -which hold six drops of their profusion. Even the curious student, -inspired by the words of Lamb, quails before the mass of her mausoleum, -peers in, looks about him, and hurries out again, shutting the door. - -But that hasty glance has shown him the outlines of a memorable figure. -Born (it is conjectured) in 1624, Margaret was the youngest child of a -Thomas Lucas, who died when she was an infant, and her upbringing was -due to her mother, a lady of remarkable character, of majestic grandeur -and beauty "beyond the ruin of time". "She was very skilful in leases, -and setting of lands and court keeping, ordering of stewards, and the -like affairs." The wealth which thus accrued she spent, not on marriage -portions, but on generous and delightful pleasures, "out of an opinion -that if she bred us with needy necessity it might chance to create in us -sharking qualities". Her eight sons and daughters were never beaten, but -reasoned with, finely and gayly dressed, and allowed no conversation -with servants, not because they are servants but because servants "are -for the most part ill-bred as well as meanly born". The daughters were -taught the usual accomplishments "rather for formality than for -benefit", it being their mother's opinion that character, happiness, and -honesty were of greater value to a woman than fiddling and singing, or -"the prating of several languages". - -Already Margaret was eager to take advantage of such indulgence to -gratify certain tastes. Already she liked reading better than -needlework, dressing and "inventing fashions" better than reading, and -writing best of all. Sixteen paper books of no title, written in -straggling letters, for the impetuosity of her thought always outdid the -pace of her fingers, testify to the use she made of her mother's -liberality. The happiness of their home life had other results as well. -They were a devoted family. Long after they were married, Margaret -noted, these handsome brothers and sisters, with their well-proportioned -bodies, their clear complexions, brown hair, sound teeth, "tunable -voices", and plain way of speaking, kept themselves "in a flock -together". The presence of strangers silenced them. But when they were -alone, whether they walked in Spring Gardens or Hyde Park, or had music, -or supped in barges upon the water, their tongues were loosed and they -made "very merry amongst themselves, . . . judging, condemning, -approving, commending, as they thought good". - -The happy family life had its effect upon Margaret's character. As a -child, she would walk for hours alone, musing and contemplating and -reasoning with herself of "everything her senses did present". She took -no pleasure in activity of any kind. Toys did not amuse her, and she -could neither learn foreign languages nor dress as other people did. Her -great pleasure was to invent dresses for herself, which nobody else was -to copy, "for", she remarks, "I always took delight in a singularity, -even in accoutrements of habits". - -Such a training, at once so cloistered and so free, should have bred a -lettered old maid, glad of her seclusion, and the writer perhaps of some -volume of letters or translations from the classics, which we should -still quote as proof of the cultivation of our ancestresses. But there -was a wild streak in Margaret, a love of finery and extravagance and -fame, which was for ever upsetting the orderly arrangements of nature. -When she heard that the Queen, since the outbreak of the Civil War, had -fewer maids-of-honour than usual, she had "a great desire" to become one -of them. Her mother let her go against the judgement of the rest of the -family, who, knowing that she had never left home and had scarcely been -beyond their sight, justly thought that she might behave at Court to her -disadvantage. "Which indeed I did," Margaret confessed; "for I was so -bashful when I was out of my mother's, brothers', and sisters' sight -that . . . I durst neither look up with my eyes, nor speak, nor be any -way sociable, insomuch as I was thought a natural fool." The courtiers -laughed at her; and she retaliated in the obvious way. People were -censorious; men were jealous of brains in a woman; women suspected -intellect in their own sex; and what other lady, she might justly ask, -pondered as she walked on the nature of matter and whether snails have -teeth? But the laughter galled her, and she begged her mother to let her -come home. This being refused, wisely as the event turned out, she -stayed on for two years (1643-45), finally going with the Queen to -Paris, and there, among the exiles who came to pay their respects to the -Court, was the Marquis of Newcastle. To the general amazement, the -princely nobleman, who had led the King's forces to disaster with -indomitable courage but little skill, fell in love with the shy, silent, -strangely dressed maid-of-honour. It was not "amorous love, but honest, -honourable love", according to Margaret. She was no brilliant match; she -had gained a reputation for prudery and eccentricity. What, then, could -have made so great a nobleman fall at her feet? The onlookers were full -of derision, disparagement, and slander. "I fear", Margaret wrote to the -Marquis, "others foresee we shall be unfortunate, though we see it not -ourselves, or else there would not be such pains to untie the knot of -our affections." Again, "Saint Germains is a place of much slander, and -thinks I send too often to you". "Pray consider", she warned him, "that -I have enemies." But the match was evidently perfect. The Duke, with his -love of poetry and music and play-writing, his interest in philosophy, -his belief "that nobody knew or could know the cause of anything", his -romantic and generous temperament, was naturally drawn to a woman who -wrote poetry herself, was also a philosopher of the same way of -thinking, and lavished upon him not only the admiration of a -fellow-artist, but the gratitude of a sensitive creature who had been -shielded and succoured by his extraordinary magnanimity. "He did -approve", she wrote, "of those bashful fears which many condemned, . . . -and though I did dread marriage and shunned men's company as much as I -could, yet I . . . had not the power to refuse him." She kept him -company during the long years of exile; she entered with sympathy, if -not with understanding, into the conduct and acquirements of those -horses which he trained to such perfection that the Spaniards crossed -themselves and cried "Miraculo!" as they witnessed their corvets, -voltoes, and pirouettes; she believed that the horses even made a -"trampling action" for joy when he came into the stables; she pleaded -his cause in England during the Protectorate; and, when the Restoration -made it possible for them to return to England, they lived together in -the depths of the country in the greatest seclusion and perfect -contentment, scribbling plays, poems, philosophies, greeting each -other's works with raptures of delight, and confabulating doubtless upon -such marvels of the natural world as chance threw their way. They were -laughed at by their contemporaries; Horace Walpole sneered at them. But -there can be no doubt that they were perfectly happy. - -For now Margaret could apply herself uninterruptedly to her writing. She -could devise fashions for herself and her servants. She could scribble -more and more furiously with fingers that became less and less able to -form legible letters. She could even achieve the miracle of getting her -plays acted in London and her philosophies humbly perused by men of -learning. There they stand, in the British Museum, volume after volume, -swarming with a diffused, uneasy, contorted vitality. Order, continuity, -the logical development of her argument are all unknown to her. No fears -impede her. She has the irresponsibility of a child and the arrogance of -a Duchess. The wildest fancies come to her, and she canters away on -their backs. We seem to hear her, as the thoughts boil and bubble, -calling to John, who sat with a pen in his hand next door, to come -quick, "John, John, I conceive!" And down it goes--whatever it may be; -sense or nonsense; some thought on women's education--"Women live like -Bats or Owls, labour like Beasts, and die like Worms, . . . the best -bred women are those whose minds are civilest"; some speculation that -had struck her perhaps walking that afternoon alone--why "hogs have the -measles", why "dogs that rejoice swing their tails", or what the stars -are made of, or what this chrysalis is that her maid has brought her, -and she keeps warm in a corner of her room. On and on, from subject to -subject she flies, never stopping to correct, "for there is more -pleasure in making than in mending", talking aloud to herself of all -those matters that filled her brain to her perpetual diversion--of wars, -and boarding-schools, and cutting down trees, of grammar and morals, of -monsters and the British, whether opium in small quantities is good for -lunatics, why it is that musicians are mad. Looking upwards, she -speculates still more ambitiously upon the nature of the moon, and if -the stars are blazing jellies; looking downwards she wonders if the -fishes know that the sea is salt; opines that our heads are full of -fairies, "dear to God as we are"; muses whether there are not other -worlds than ours, and reflects that the next ship may bring us word of a -new one. In short, "we are in utter darkness". Meanwhile, what a rapture -is thought! - -As the vast books appeared from the stately retreat at Welbeck the usual -censors made the usual objections, and had to be answered, despised, or -argued with, as her mood varied, in the preface to every work. They -said, among other things, that her books were not her own, because she -used learned terms, and "wrote of many matters outside her ken". She -flew to her husband for help, and he answered, characteristically, that -the Duchess "had never conversed with any professed scholar in learning -except her brother and myself". The Duke's scholarship, moreover, was of -a peculiar nature. "I have lived in the great world a great while, and -have thought of what has been brought to me by the senses, more than was -put into me by learned discourse; for I do not love to be led by the -nose, by authority, and old authors; _ipse dixit_ will not serve my -turn." And then she takes up the pen and proceeds, with the importunity -and indiscretion of a child, to assure the world that her ignorance is -of the finest quality imaginable. She has only seen Des Cartes and -Hobbes, not questioned them; she did indeed ask Mr. Hobbes to dinner, -but he could not come; she often does not listen to a word that is said -to her; she does not know any French, though she lived abroad for five -years; she has only read the old philosophers in Mr. Stanley's account -of them; of Des Cartes she has read but half of his work on Passion; and -of Hobbes only "the little book called _De Cive_", all of which is -infinitely to the credit of her native wit, so abundant that outside -succour pained it, so honest that it would not accept help from others. -It was from the plain of complete ignorance, the untilled field of her -own consciousness, that she proposed to erect a philosophic system that -was to oust all others. The results were not altogether happy. Under the -pressure of such vast structures, her natural gift, the fresh and -delicate fancy which had led her in her first volume to write charmingly -of Queen Mab and fairyland, was crushed out of existence. - - -The palace of the Queen wherein she dwells, -Its fabric's built all of hodmandod shells; -The hangings of a Rainbow made that's thin, -Shew wondrous fine, when one first enters in; -The chambers made of Amber that is clear, -Do give a fine sweet smell, if fire be near; -Her bed a cherry stone, is carved throughout, -And with a butterfly's wing hung about; -Her sheets are of the skin of Dove's eyes made -Where on a violet bud her pillow's laid. - - -So she could write when she was young. But her fairies, if they survived -at all, grew up into hippopotami. Too generously her prayer was granted: - - -Give me the free and noble style, -Which seems uncurb'd, though it be wild. - - -She became capable of involutions, and contortions and conceits of which -the following is among the shortest, but not the most terrific: - - -The human head may be likened to a town: -The mouth when full, begun -Is market day, when empty, market's done; -The city conduct, where the water flows, -Is with two spouts, the nostrils and the nose. - - -She similised, energetically, incongruously, eternally; the sea became a -meadow, the sailors shepherds, the mast a maypole. The fly was the bird -of summer, trees were senators, houses ships, and even the fairies, whom -she loved better than any earthly thing, except the Duke, are changed -into blunt atoms and sharp atoms, and take part in some of those -horrible manœuvres in which she delighted to marshal the universe. -Truly, "my Lady Sanspareille hath a strange spreading wit". Worse still, -without an atom of dramatic power, she turned to play-writing. It was a -simple process. The unwieldy thoughts which turned and tumbled within -her were christened Sir Golden Riches, Moll Meanbred, Sir Puppy Dogman, -and the rest, and sent revolving in tedious debate upon the parts of the -soul, or whether virtue is better than riches, round a wise and learned -lady who answered their questions and corrected their fallacies at -considerable length in tones which we seem to have heard before. - -Sometimes, however, the Duchess walked abroad. She would issue out in -her own proper person, dressed in a thousand gems and furbelows, to -visit the houses of the neighbouring gentry. Her pen made instant report -of these excursions. She recorded how Lady C. R. "did beat her husband -in a public assembly"; Sir F. Ο. "I am sorry to hear hath undervalued -himself so much below his birth and wealth as to marry his -kitchen-maid"; "Miss P. I. has become a sanctified soul, a spiritual -sister, she has left curling her hair, black patches are become -abominable to her, laced shoes and Galoshoes are steps to pride--she -asked me what posture I thought was the best to be used in prayer". Her -answer was probably unacceptable. "I shall not rashly go there again", -she says of one such "gossip-making". She was not, we may hazard, a -welcome guest or an altogether hospitable hostess. She had a way of -"bragging of myself" which frightened visitors so that they left, nor -was she sorry to see them go. Indeed, Welbeck was the best place for -her, and her own company the most congenial, with the amiable Duke -wandering in and out, with his plays and his speculations, always ready -to answer a question or refute a slander. Perhaps it was this solitude -that led her, chaste as she was in conduct, to use language which in -time to come much perturbed Sir Egerton Brydges. She used, he -complained, "expressions and images of extraordinary coarseness as -flowing from a female of high rank brought up in courts". He forgot that -this particular female had long ceased to frequent the Court; she -consorted chiefly with fairies; and her friends were among the dead. -Naturally, then, her language was coarse. Nevertheless, though her -philosophies are futile, and her plays intolerable, and her verses -mainly dull, the vast bulk of the Duchess is leavened by a vein of -authentic fire. One cannot help following the lure of her erratic and -lovable personality as it meanders and twinkles through page after page. -There is something noble and Quixotic and high-spirited, as well as -crack-brained and bird-witted, about her. Her simplicity is so open; her -intelligence so active; her sympathy with fairies and animals so true -and tender. She has the freakishness of an elf, the irresponsibility of -some non-human creature, its heartlessness, and its charm. And although -"they", those terrible critics who had sneered and jeered at her ever -since, as a shy girl, she had not dared look her tormentors in the face -at Court, continued to mock, few of her critics, after all, had the wit -to trouble about the nature of the universe, or cared a straw for the -sufferings of the hunted hare, or longed, as she did, to talk to some -one "of Shakespeare's fools". Now, at any rate, the laugh is not all on -their side. - -But laugh they did. When the rumour spread that the crazy Duchess was -coming up from Welbeck to pay her respects at Court, people crowded the -streets to look at her, and the curiosity of Mr. Pepys twice brought him -to wait in the Park to see her pass. But the pressure of the crowd about -her coach was too great. He could only catch a glimpse of her in her -silver coach with her footmen all in velvet, a velvet cap on her head, -and her hair about her ears. He could only see for a moment between the -white curtains the face of "a very comely woman", and on she drove -through the crowd of staring Cockneys, all pressing to catch a glimpse -of that romantic lady, who stands in the picture at Welbeck, with large -melancholy eyes, and something fastidious and fantastic in her bearing, -touching a table with the tips of long pointed fingers in the calm -assurance of immortal fame. - - -[Footnote 4: _The Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, Etc._, -edited by C. H. Firth; _Poems and Fancies_, by the Duchess of Newcastle; -_The World's Olio; Orations of divers Sorts Accommodated to Divers -Places; Female Orations; Plays; Philosophical Letters_, etc., etc.] - - - - -_Rambling Round Evelyn_ - - -Should you wish to make sure that your birthday will be celebrated three -hundred years hence, your best course is undoubtedly to keep a diary. -Only first be certain that you have the courage to lock your genius in a -private book and the humour to gloat over a fame that will be yours only -in the grave. For the good diarist writes either for himself alone or -for a posterity so distant that it can safely hear every secret and -justly weigh every motive. For such an audience there is need neither of -affectation nor of restraint. Sincerity is what they ask, detail, -volume; skill with the pen comes in conveniently, but brilliance is not -necessary; genius is a hindrance even; and should you know your business -and do it manfully, posterity will let you off mixing with great men, -reporting famous affairs, or having lain with the first ladies in the -land. - -The diary, for whose sake we are remembering the three hundredth -anniversary of the birth of John Evelyn,[5] is a case in point. It is -sometimes composed like a memoir, sometimes jotted down like a calendar; -but he never used its pages to reveal the secrets of his heart, and all -that he wrote might have been read aloud in the evening with a calm -conscience to his children. If we wonder, then, why we still trouble to -read what we must consider the uninspired work of a good man we have to -confess, first that diaries are always diaries, books, that is, that we -read in convalescence, on horseback, in the grip of death; second, that -this reading, about which so many fine things have been said, is for the -most part mere dreaming and idling; lying in a chair with a book; -watching the butterflies on the dahlias; a profitless occupation which -no critic has taken the trouble to investigate, and on whose behalf only -the moralist can find a good word to say. For he will allow it to be an -innocent employment; and happiness, he will add, though derived from -trivial sources, has probably done more to prevent human beings from -changing their religions and killing their kings than either philosophy -or the pulpit. - -It may be well, indeed, before reading much further in Evelyn's book, to -decide where it is that our modern view of happiness differs from his. -Ignorance, surely, ignorance is at the bottom of it; his ignorance, and -our comparative erudition. No one can read the story of Evelyn's foreign -travels without envying in the first place his simplicity of mind, in -the second his activity. To take a simple example of the difference -between us--that butterfly will sit motionless on the dahlia while the -gardener trundles his barrow past it, but let him flick the wings with -the shadow of a rake, and off it flies, up it goes, instantly on the -alert. So, we may reflect, a butterfly sees but does not hear; and here -no doubt we are much on a par with Evelyn. But as for going into the -house to fetch a knife and with that knife dissecting a Red Admiral's -head, as Evelyn would have done, no sane person in the twentieth century -would entertain such a project for a second. Individually we may know as -little as Evelyn, but collectively we know so much that there is little -incentive to venture on private discoveries. We seek the encyclopædia, -not the scissors; and know in two minutes not only more than was known -to Evelyn in his lifetime, but that the mass of knowledge is so vast -that it is scarcely worth while to possess a single crumb. Ignorant, yet -justly confident that with his own hands he might advance not merely his -private knowledge but the knowledge of mankind, Evelyn dabbled in all -the arts and sciences, ran about the Continent for ten years, gazed with -unflagging gusto upon hairy women and rational dogs, and drew inferences -and framed speculations which are now only to be matched by listening to -the talk of old women round the village pump. The moon, they say, is so -much larger than usual this autumn that no mushrooms will grow, and the -carpenter's wife will be brought to bed of twins. So Evelyn, Fellow of -the Royal Society, a gentleman of the highest culture and intelligence, -carefully noted all comets and portents, and thought it a sinister omen -when a whale came up the Thames. In 1658, too, a whale had been seen. -"That year died Cromwell." Nature, it seems, was determined to stimulate -the devotion of her seventeenth-century admirers by displays of violence -and eccentricity from which she now refrains. There were storms, floods, -and droughts; the Thames frozen hard; comets flaring in the sky. If a -cat so much as kittened in Evelyn's bed the kitten was inevitably gifted -with eight legs, six ears, two bodies, and two tails. - -But to return to happiness. It sometimes appears that if there is an -insoluble difference between our ancestors and ourselves it is that we -draw our happiness from different sources. We rate the same things at -different values. Something of this we may ascribe to their ignorance -and our knowledge. But are we to suppose that ignorance alters the -nerves and the affections? Are we to believe that it would have been an -intolerable penance for us to live familiarly with the Elizabethans? -Should we have found it necessary to leave the room because of -Shakespeare's habits, and to have refused Queen Elizabeth's invitation -to dinner? Perhaps so. For Evelyn was a sober man of unusual refinement, -and yet he pressed into a torture chamber as we crowd to see the lions -fed. - - -. . . they first bound his wrists with a strong rope or small cable, and -one end of it to an iron ring made fast to the wall about four feet from -the floor, and then his feet with another cable, fastened about five -feet farther than his utmost length to another ring on the floor of the -room. Thus suspended, and yet lying but aslant, they slid a horse of -wood under the rope which bound his feet, which so exceedingly stiffened -it, as severed the fellow's joints in miserable sort, drawing him out at -length in an extraordinary manner, he having only a pair of linen -drawers upon his naked body . . . - - -And so on. Evelyn watched this to the end, and then remarked that "the -spectacle was so uncomfortable that I was not able to stay the sight of -another", as we might say that the lions growl so loud and the sight of -raw meat is so unpleasant that we will now visit the penguins. Allowing -for his discomfort, there is enough discrepancy between his view of pain -and ours to make us wonder whether we see any fact with the same eyes, -marry any woman from the same motives, or judge any conduct by the same -standards. To sit passive when muscles tore and bones cracked, not to -flinch when the wooden horse was raised higher and the executioner -fetched a horn and poured two buckets of water down the man's throat, to -suffer this iniquity on a suspicion of robbery which the man denied--all -this seems to put Evelyn in one of those cages where we still mentally -seclude the riff-raff of Whitechapel. Only it is obvious that we have -somehow got it wrong. If we could maintain that our susceptibility to -suffering and love of justice were proof that all our humane instincts -were as highly developed as these, then we could say that the world -improves, and we with it. But let us get on with the diary. - -In 1652, when it seemed that things had settled down unhappily enough, -"all being entirely in the rebels' hands", Evelyn returned to England -with his wife, his Tables of Veins and Arteries, his Venetian glass and -the rest of his curiosities, to lead the life of a country gentleman of -strong Royalist sympathies at Deptford. What with going to church and -going to town, settling his accounts and planting his garden--"I planted -the orchard at Sayes Court; new moon, wind west"--his time was spent -much as ours is. But there was one difference which it is difficult to -illustrate by a single quotation, because the evidence is scattered all -about in little insignificant phrases. The general effect of them is -that he used his eyes. The visible world was always close to him. The -visible world has receded so far from us that to hear all this talk of -buildings and gardens, statues and carving, as if the look of things -assailed one out of doors as well as in, and were not confined to a few -small canvases hung upon the wall, seems strange. No doubt there are a -thousand excuses for us; but hitherto we have been finding excuses for -him. Wherever there was a picture to be seen by Julio Romano, Polydore, -Guido, Raphael, or Tintoretto, a finely-built house, a prospect, or a -garden nobly designed, Evelyn stopped his coach to look at it, and -opened his diary to record his opinion. On August 27 Evelyn, with Dr. -Wren and others, was in St. Paul's surveying "the general decay of that -ancient and venerable church"; held with Dr. Wren another judgement from -the rest; and had a mind to build it with "a noble cupola, a form of -church building not as yet known in England but of wonderful grace", in -which Dr. Wren concurred. Six days later the Fire of London altered -their plans. It was Evelyn again who, walking by himself, chanced to -look in at the window of "a poor solitary thatched house in a field in -our parish", there saw a young man carving at a crucifix, was overcome -with an enthusiasm which does him the utmost credit, and carried -Grinling Gibbons and his carving to Court. - -Indeed, it is all very well to be scrupulous about the sufferings of -worms and sensitive to the dues of servant girls, but how pleasant also -if, with shut eyes, one could call up street after street of beautiful -houses. A flower is red; the apples rosy-gilt in the afternoon sun; a -picture has charm, especially as it displays the character of a -grandfather and dignifies a family descended from such a scowl; but -these are scattered fragments--little relics of beauty in a world that -has grown indescribably drab. To our charge of cruelty Evelyn might well -reply by pointing to Bayswater and the purlieus of Clapham; and if he -should assert that nothing now has character or conviction, that no -farmer in England sleeps with an open coffin at his bedside to remind -him of death, we could not retort effectually offhand. True, we like the -country. Evelyn never looked at the sky. - -But to return. After the Restoration Evelyn emerged in full possession -of a variety of accomplishments which in our time of specialists seems -remarkable enough. He was employed on public business; he was Secretary -to the Royal Society; he wrote plays and poems; he was the first -authority upon trees and gardens in England; he submitted a design for -the rebuilding of London; he went into the question of smoke and its -abatement--the lime trees in St. James's Park being, it is said, the -result of his cogitations; he was commissioned to write a history of the -Dutch war--in short, he completely outdid the Squire of "The Princess", -whom in many respects he anticipated-- - - -A lord of fat prize oxen and of sheep, -A raiser of huge melons and of pine, -A patron of some thirty charities, -A pamphleteer on guano and on grain, -A quarter sessions chairman abler none. - - -All that he was, and shared with Sir Walter another characteristic which -Tennyson does not mention. He was, we cannot help suspecting, something -of a bore, a little censorious, a little patronising, a little too sure -of his own merits, and a little obtuse to those of other people. Or what -is the quality, or absence of quality, that checks our sympathies -partly, perhaps, it is due to some inconsistency which it would be harsh -to call by so strong a name as hypocrisy. Though he deplored the vices -of his age he could never keep away from the centre of them. "The -luxurious dallying and profaneness" of the Court, the sight of "Mrs. -Nelly" looking over her garden wall and holding "very familiar -discourse" with King Charles on the green walk below, caused him acute -disgust; yet he could never decide to break with the Court and retire to -"my poor but quiet villa", which was of course the apple of his eye and -one of the show-places in England. Then, though he loved his daughter -Mary, his grief at her death did not prevent him from counting the -number of empty coaches drawn by six horses apiece that attended her -funeral. His women friends combined virtue with beauty to such an extent -that we can hardly credit them with wit into the bargain. Poor Mrs. -Godolphin at least, whom he celebrated in a sincere and touching -biography, "loved to be at funerals" and chose habitually "the dryest -and leanest morsels of meat", which may be the habits of an angel but do -not present her friendship with Evelyn in an alluring light. But it is -Pepys who sums up our case against Evelyn; Pepys who said of him after -a long morning's entertainment: "In fine a most excellent person he is -and must be allowed a little for a little conceitedness; but he may well -be so, being a man so much above others". The words exactly hit the -mark, "A most excellent person he was"; but a little conceited. - -Pepys it is who prompts us to another reflection, inevitable, -unnecessary, perhaps unkind. Evelyn was no genius. His writing is opaque -rather than transparent; we see no depths through it, nor any very -secret movements of mind or heart. He can neither make us hate a -regicide nor love Mrs. Godolphin beyond reason. But he writes a diary; -and he writes it supremely well. Even as we drowse, somehow or other the -bygone gentleman sets up, through three centuries, a perceptible tingle -of communication, so that without laying stress on anything in -particular, stopping to dream, stopping to laugh, stopping merely to -look, we are yet taking notice all the time. His garden for example--how -delightful is his disparagement of it, and how acid his criticism of the -gardens of others! Then, we may be sure, the hens at Sayes Court laid -the very best eggs in England, and when the Tsar drove a wheelbarrow -through his hedge what a catastrophe it was, and we can guess how Mrs. -Evelyn dusted and polished, and how Evelyn himself grumbled, and how -punctilious and efficient and trustworthy he was, how prone to give -advice, how ready to read his own works aloud, and how affectionate, -withal, lamenting bitterly but not effusively, for the man with the -long-drawn sensitive face was never that, the death of the little -prodigy Richard, and recording how "after evening prayers was my child -buried near the rest of his brothers--my very dear children." He was not -an artist; no phrases linger in the mind; no paragraphs build themselves -up in memory; but as an artistic method this of going on with the day's -story circumstantially, bringing in people who will never be mentioned -again, leading up to crises which never take place, introducing Sir -Thomas Browne but never letting him speak, has its fascination. All -through his pages good men, bad men, celebrities, nonentities are coming -into the room and going out again. The greater number we scarcely -notice; the door shuts upon them and they disappear. But now and again -the sight of a vanishing coat-tail suggests more than a whole figure -sitting still in a full light. They have struck no attitude, arranged no -mantle. Little they think that for three hundred years and more they -will be looked at in the act of jumping a gate, or observing, like the -old Marquis of Argyle, that the turtle doves in the aviary are owls. Our -eyes wander from one to the other; our affections settle here or -there--on hot-tempered Captain Wray, for instance, who was choleric, had -a dog that killed a goat, was for shooting the goat's owner, was for -shooting his horse when it fell down a precipice; on Mr. Saladine; on -Mr. Saladine's beautiful daughter; on Captain Wray lingering at Geneva -to make love to Mr. Saladine's daughter; on Evelyn himself most of all, -grown old, walking in his garden at Wotton, his sorrows smoothed out, -his grandson doing him credit, the Latin quotations falling pat from his -lips, his trees flourishing, and the butterflies flying and flaunting on -his dahlias too. - - -[Footnote 5: Written in 1920.] - - - -_Defoe_[6] - - -The fear which attacks the recorder of centenaries lest he should find -himself measuring a diminishing spectre and forced to foretell its -approaching dissolution is not only absent in the case of _Robinson -Crusoe_ but the mere thought of it is ridiculous. It may be true that -_Robinson Crusoe_ is two hundred years of age upon the twenty-fifth of -April 1919, but far from raising the familiar speculations as to whether -people now read it and will continue to read it, the effect of the -bi-centenary is to make us marvel that _Robinson Crusoe_, the perennial -and immortal, should have been in existence so short a time as that. The -book resembles one of the anonymous productions of the race itself -rather than the effort of a single mind; and as for celebrating its -centenary we should as soon think of celebrating the centenaries of -Stonehenge itself. Something of this we may attribute to the fact that -we have all had _Robinson Crusoe_ read aloud to us as children, and were -thus much in the same state of mind towards Defoe and his story that the -Greeks were in towards Homer. It never occurred to us that there was -such a person as Defoe, and to have been told that _Robinson Crusoe_ was -the work of a man with a pen in his hand would either have disturbed us -unpleasantly or meant nothing at all. The impressions of childhood are -those that last longest and cut deepest. It still seems that the name of -Daniel Defoe has no right to appear upon the title-page of _Robinson -Crusoe_, and if we celebrate the bi-centenary of the book we are making -a slightly unnecessary allusion to the fact that, like Stonehenge, it is -still in existence. - -The great fame of the book has done its author some injustice; for while -it has given him a kind of anonymous glory it has obscured the fact that -he was a writer of other works which, it is safe to assert, were not -read aloud to us as children. Thus when the Editor of the _Christian -World_ in the year 1870 appealed to "the boys and girls of England" to -erect a monument upon the grave of Defoe, which a stroke of lightning -had mutilated, the marble was inscribed to the memory of the author of -_Robinson Crusoe_. No mention was made of _Moll Flanders_. Considering -the topics which are dealt with in that book, and in _Roxana, Captain -Singleton, Colonel Jack_ and the rest, we need not be surprised, though -we may be indignant, at the omission. We may agree with Mr. Wright, the -biographer of Defoe, that these "are not works for the drawing-room -table". But unless we consent to make that useful piece of furniture the -final arbiter of taste, we must deplore the fact that their superficial -coarseness, or the universal celebrity of _Robinson Crusoe_, has led -them to be far less widely famed than they deserve. On any monument -worthy of the name of monument the names of _Moll Flanders_ and -_Roxana_, at least, should be carved as deeply as the name of Defoe. -They stand among the few English novels which we can call indisputably -great. The occasion of the bi-centenary of their more famous companion -may well lead us to consider in what their greatness, which has so much -in common with his, may be found to consist. - -Defoe was an elderly man when he turned novelist, many years the -predecessor of Richardson and Fielding, and one of the first indeed to -shape the novel and launch it on its way. But it is unnecessary to -labour the fact of his precedence, except that he came to his -novel-writing with certain conceptions about the art which he derived -partly from being himself one of the first to practise it. The novel had -to justify its existence by telling a true story and preaching a sound -moral. "This supplying a story by invention is certainly a most -scandalous crime," he wrote. "It is a sort of lying that makes a great -hole in the heart, in which by degrees a habit of lying enters in." -Either in the preface or in the text of each of his works, therefore, he -takes pains to insist that he has not used his invention at all but has -depended upon facts, and that his purpose has been the highly moral -desire to convert the vicious or to warn the innocent. Happily these -were principles that tallied very well with his natural disposition and -endowments. Facts had been drilled into him by sixty years of varying -fortunes before he turned his experience to account in fiction. "I have -some time ago summed up the Scenes of my life in this distich," he -wrote: - - -No man has tasted differing fortunes more, -And thirteen times I have been rich and poor. - - -He had spent eighteen months in Newgate and talked with thieves, -pirates, highwaymen, and coiners before he wrote the history of Moll -Flanders. But to have facts thrust upon you by dint of living and -accident is one thing; to swallow them voraciously and retain the -imprint of them indelibly, is another. It is not merely that Defoe knew -the stress of poverty and had talked with the victims of it, but that -the unsheltered life, exposed to circumstances and forced to shift for -itself, appealed to him imaginatively as the right matter for his art. -In the first pages of each of his great novels he reduces his hero or -heroine to such a state of unfriended misery that their existence must -be a continued struggle, and their survival at all the result of luck -and their own exertions. Moll Flanders was born in Newgate of a criminal -mother; Captain Singleton was stolen as a child and sold to the gipsies; -Colonel Jack, though "born a gentleman, was put 'prentice to a -pickpocket"; Roxana starts under better auspices, but, having married at -fifteen, she sees her husband go bankrupt and is left with five children -in "a condition the most deplorable that words can express". - -Thus each of these boys and girls has the world to begin and the battle -to fight for himself. The situation thus created was entirely to Defoe's -liking. From her very birth or with half a year's respite at most, Moll -Flanders, the most notable of them, is goaded by "that worst of devils, -poverty", forced to earn her living as soon as she can sew, driven from -place to place, making no demands upon her creator for the subtle -domestic atmosphere which he was unable to supply, but drawing upon him -for all he knew of strange people and customs. From the outset the -burden of proving her right to exist is laid upon her. She has to depend -entirely upon her own wits and judgement, and to deal with each -emergency as it arises by a rule-of-thumb morality which she has forged -in her own head. The briskness of the story is due partly to the fact -that having transgressed the accepted laws at a very early age she has -henceforth the freedom of the outcast. The one impossible event is that -she should settle down in comfort and security. But from the first the -peculiar genius of the author asserts itself, and avoids the obvious -danger of the novel of adventure. He makes us understand that Moll -Flanders was a woman on her own account and not only material for a -succession of adventures. In proof of this she begins, as Roxana also -begins, by falling passionately, if unfortunately, in love. That she -must rouse herself and marry some one else and look very closely to her -settlements and prospects is no slight upon her passion, but to be laid -to the charge of her birth; and, like all Defoe's women, she is a person -of robust understanding. Since she makes no scruple of telling lies when -they serve her purpose, there is something undeniable about her truth -when she speaks it. She has no time to waste upon the refinements of -personal affection; one tear is dropped, one moment of despair allowed, -and then "on with the story". She has a spirit that loves to breast the -storm. She delights in the exercise of her own powers. When she -discovers that the man she has married in Virginia is her own brother -she is violently disgusted; she insists upon leaving him; but as soon as -she sets foot in Bristol, "I took the diversion of going to Bath, for as -I was still far from being old so my humour, which was always gay, -continued so to an extreme". Heartless she is not, nor can any one -charge her with levity; but life delights her, and a heroine who lives -has us all in tow. Moreover, her ambition has that slight strain of -imagination in it which puts it in the category of the noble passions. -Shrewd and practical of necessity, she is yet haunted by a desire for -romance and for the quality which to her perception makes a man a -gentleman. "It was really a true gallant spirit he was of, and it was -the more grievous to me. 'Tis something of relief even to be undone by a -man of honour rather than by a scoundrel," she writes when she had -misled a highwayman as to the extent of her fortune. It is in keeping -with this temper that she should be proud of her final partner because -he refuses to work when they reach the plantations but prefers hunting, -and that she should take pleasure in buying him wigs and silver-hilted -swords "to make him appear, as he really was, a very fine gentleman". -Her very love of hot weather is in keeping, and the passion with which -she kissed the ground that her son had trod on, and her noble tolerance -of every kind of fault so long as it is not "complete baseness of -spirit, imperious, cruel, and relentless when uppermost, abject and -low-spirited when down". For the rest of the world she has nothing but -good-will. - -Since the list of the qualities and graces of this seasoned old sinner -is by no means exhausted we can well understand how it was that Borrow's -apple-woman on London Bridge called her "blessed Mary" and valued her -book above all the apples on her stall; and that Borrow, taking the book -deep into the booth, read till his eyes ached. But we dwell upon such -signs of character only by way of proof that the creator of Moll -Flanders was not, as he has been accused of being, a mere journalist and -literal recorder of facts with no conception of the nature of -psychology. It is true that his characters take shape and substance of -their own accord, as if in despite of the author and not altogether to -his liking. He never lingers or stresses any point of subtlety or -pathos, but presses on imperturbably as if they came there without his -knowledge. A touch of imagination, such as that when the Prince sits by -his son's cradle and Roxana observes how "he loved to look at it when it -was asleep", seems to mean much more to us than to him. After the -curiously modern dissertation upon the need of communicating matters of -importance to a second person lest, like the thief in Newgate, we should -talk of it in our sleep, he apologises for his digression. He seems to -have taken his characters so deeply into his mind that he lived them -without exactly knowing how; and, like all unconscious artists, he -leaves more gold in his work than his own generation was able to bring -to the surface. - -The interpretation that we put on his characters might therefore well -have puzzled him. We find for ourselves meanings which he was careful to -disguise even from himself. Thus it comes about that we admire Moll -Flanders far more than we blame her. Nor can we believe that Defoe had -made up his mind as to the precise degree of her guilt, or was unaware -that in considering the lives of the abandoned he raised many deep -questions and hinted, if he did not state, answers quite at variance -with his professions of belief. From the evidence supplied by his essay -upon the "Education of Women" we know that he had thought deeply and -much in advance of his age upon the capacities of women, which he rated -very high, and the injustice done to them, which he rated very harsh. - - -I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in the -world, considering us as a civilised and a Christian country, that we -deny the advantages of learning to women. We reproach the sex every day -with folly and impertinence; which I am confident, had they the -advantages of education equal to us, they would be guilty of less than -ourselves. - - -The advocates of women's rights would hardly care, perhaps, to claim -Moll Flanders and Roxana among their patron saints; and yet it is clear -that Defoe not only intended them to speak some very modern doctrines -upon the subject, but placed them in circumstances where their peculiar -hardships are displayed in such a way as to elicit our sympathy. -Courage, said Moll Flanders, was what women needed, and the power to -"stand their ground"; and at once gave practical demonstration of the -benefits that would result. Roxana, a lady of the same profession, -argues more subtly against the slavery of marriage. She "had started a -new thing in the world" the merchant told her; "it was a way of arguing -contrary to the general practise". But Defoe is the last writer to be -guilty of bald preaching. Roxana keeps our attention because she is -blessedly unconscious that she is in any good sense an example to her -sex and is thus at liberty to own that part of her argument is "of an -elevated strain which was really not in my thoughts at first, at all". -The knowledge of her own frailties and the honest questioning of her own -motives, which that knowledge begets, have the happy result of keeping -her fresh and human when the martyrs and pioneers of so many problem -novels have shrunken and shrivelled to the pegs and props of their -respective creeds. - -But the claim of Defoe upon our admiration does not rest upon the fact -that he can be shown to have anticipated some of the views of Meredith, -or to have written scenes which (the odd suggestion occurs) might have -been turned into plays by Ibsen. Whatever his ideas upon the position of -women, they are an incidental result of his chief virtue, which is that -he deals with the important and lasting side of things and not with the -passing and trivial. He is often dull. He can imitate the matter-of-fact -precision of a scientific traveller until we wonder that his pen could -trace or his brain conceive what has not even the excuse of truth to -soften its dryness. He leaves out the whole of vegetable nature, and a -large part of human nature. All this we may admit, though we have to -admit defects as grave in many writers whom we call great. But that does -not impair the peculiar merit of what remains. Having at the outset -limited his scope and confined his ambitions he achieves a truth of -insight which is far rarer and more enduring than the truth of fact -which he professed to make his aim. Moll Flanders and her friends -recommended themselves to him not because they were, as we should say, -"picturesque"; nor, as he affirmed, because they were examples of evil -living by which the public might profit. It was their natural veracity, -bred in them by a life of hardship, that excited his interest. For them -there were no excuses; no kindly shelter obscured their motives. Poverty -was their taskmaster. Defoe did not pronounce more than a judgement of -the lips upon their failings. But their courage and resource and -tenacity delighted him. He found their society full of good talk, and -pleasant stories, and faith in each other, and morality of a home-made -kind. Their fortunes had that infinite variety which he praised and -relished and beheld with wonder in his own life. These men and women, -above all, were free to talk openly of the passions and desires which -have moved men and women since the beginning of time, and thus even now -they keep their vitality undiminished. There is a dignity in everything -that is looked at openly. Even the sordid subject of money, which plays -so large a part in their histories, becomes not sordid but tragic when -it stands not for ease and consequence but for honour, honesty and life -itself. You may object that Defoe is humdrum, but never that he is -engrossed with petty things. - -He belongs, indeed, to the school of the great plain writers, whose work -is founded upon a knowledge of what is most persistent, though not most -seductive, in human nature. The view of London from Hungerford Bridge, -grey, serious, massive, and full of the subdued stir of traffic and -business, prosaic if it were not for the masts of the ships and the -towers and domes of the city, brings him to mind. The tattered girls -with violets in their hands at the street corners, and the old -weather-beaten women patiently displaying their matches and bootlaces -beneath the shelter of arches, seem like characters from his books. He -is of the school of Crabbe, and of Gissing, and not merely a fellow -pupil in the same stern place of learning, but its founder and master. - - -[Footnote 6: Written in 1919.] - - - - -_Addison_[7] - - -In July, 1843, Lord Macaulay pronounced the opinion that Joseph Addison -had enriched our literature with compositions "that will live as long as -the English language". But when Lord Macaulay pronounced an opinion it -was not merely an opinion. Even now, at a distance of seventy-six years, -the words seem to issue from the mouth of the chosen representative of -the people. There is an authority about them, a sonority, a sense of -responsibility, which put us in mind of a Prime Minister making a -proclamation on behalf of a great empire rather than of a journalist -writing about a deceased man of letters for a magazine. The article upon -Addison is, indeed, one of the most vigorous of the famous essays. -Florid, and at the same time extremely solid, the phrases seem to build -up a monument, at once square and lavishly festooned with ornament, -which should serve Addison for shelter so long as one stone of -Westminster Abbey stands upon another. Yet, though we may have read and -admired this particular essay times out of number (as we say when we -have read anything three times over), it has never occurred to us, -strangely enough, to believe that it is true. That is apt to happen to -the admiring reader of Macaulay's essays. While delighting in their -richness, force, and variety, and finding every judgement, however -emphatic, proper in its place, it seldom occurs to us to connect these -sweeping assertions and undeniable convictions with anything so minute -as a human being. So it is with Addison. "If we wish", Macaulay writes, -"to find anything more vivid than Addison's best portraits, we must go -either to Shakespeare or to Cervantes". "We have not the least doubt -that if Addison had written a novel on an extensive plan it would have -been superior to any that we possess." His essays, again, "fully entitle -him to the rank of a great poet"; and, to complete the edifice, we have -Voltaire proclaimed "the prince of buffoons", and together with Swift -forced to stoop so low that Addison takes rank above them both as a -humorist. - -Examined separately, such flourishes of ornament look grotesque enough, -but in their place--such is the persuasive power of design--they are -part of the decoration; they complete the monument. Whether Addison or -another is interred within, it is a very fine tomb. But now that two -centuries have passed since the real body of Addison was laid by night -under the Abbey floor, we are, through no merit of our own, partially -qualified to test the first of the flourishes on that fictitious -tombstone to which, though it may be empty, we have done homage, in a -formal kind of way, these sixty-seven years. The compositions of Addison -will live as long as the English language. Since every moment brings -proof that our mother tongue is more lusty and lively than sorts with -complete sedateness or chastity, we need only concern ourselves with the -vitality of Addison. Neither lusty nor lively is the adjective we should -apply to the present condition of the _Tatler_ and the _Spectator_. To -take a rough test, it is possible to discover how many people in the -course of a year borrow Addison's works from the public library, and a -particular instance affords us the not very encouraging information that -during nine years two people yearly take out the first volume of the -_Spectator_. The second volume is less in request than the first. The -inquiry is not a cheerful one. From certain marginal comments and pencil -marks it seems that these rare devotees seek out only the famous -passages and, as their habit is, score what we are bold enough to -consider the least admirable phrases. No; if Addison lives at all, it is -not in the public libraries. It is in libraries that are markedly -private, secluded, shaded by lilac trees and brown with folios, that he -still draws his faint, regular breath. If any man or woman is going to -solace himself with a page of Addison before the June sun is out of the -sky to-day, it is in some such pleasant retreat as this. - -Yet all over England at intervals, perhaps wide ones, we may be sure -that there are people engaged in reading Addison, whatever the year or -season. For Addison is very well worth reading. The temptation to read -Pope on Addison, Macaulay on Addison, Thackeray on Addison, Johnson on -Addison rather than Addison himself is to be resisted, for you will -find, if you study the _Tatler_ and the _Spectator_, glance at _Cato_, -and run through the remainder of the six moderate-sized volumes, that -Addison is neither Pope's Addison nor anybody else's Addison, but a -separate, independent individual still capable of casting a clear-cut -shape of himself upon the consciousness, turbulent and distracted as it -is, of nineteen hundred and nineteen. It is true that the fate of the -lesser shades is always a little precarious. They are so easily obscured -or distorted. It seems so often scarcely worth while to go through the -cherishing and humanising process which is necessary to get into touch -with a writer of the second class who may, after all, have little to -give us. The earth is crusted over them; their features are obliterated, -and perhaps it is not a head of the best period that we rub clean in the -end, but only the chip of an old pot. The chief difficulty with the -lesser writers, however, is not only the effort. It is that our -standards have changed. The things that they like are not the things -that we like; and as the charm of their writing depends much more upon -taste than upon conviction, a change of manners is often quite enough to -put us out of touch altogether. That is one of the most troublesome -barriers between ourselves and Addison. He attached great importance to -certain qualities. He had a very precise notion of what we are used to -call "niceness" in man or woman. He was extremely fond of saying that -men ought not to be atheists, and that women ought not to wear large -petticoats. This directly inspires in us not so much a sense of distaste -as a sense of difference. Dutifully, if at all, we strain our -imaginations to conceive the kind of audience to whom these precepts -were addressed. The _Tatler_ was published in 1709; the _Spectator_ a -year or two later. What was the state of England at that particular -moment? Why was Addison so anxious to insist upon the necessity of a -decent and cheerful religious belief? Why did he so constantly, and in -the main kindly, lay stress upon the foibles of women and their reform? -Why was he so deeply impressed with the evils of party government? Any -historian will explain; but it is always a misfortune to have to call in -the services of any historian. A writer should give us direct certainty; -explanations are so much water poured into the wine. As it is, we can -only feel that these counsels are addressed to ladies in hoops and -gentlemen in wigs--a vanished audience which has learnt its lesson and -gone its way and the preacher with it. We can only smile and marvel and -perhaps admire the clothes. - -And that is not the way to read. To be thinking that dead people -deserved these censures and admired this morality, judged the eloquence, -which we find so frigid, sublime, the philosophy to us so superficial, -profound, to take a collector's joy in such signs of antiquity, is to -treat literature as if it were a broken jar of undeniable age but -doubtful beauty, to be stood in a cabinet behind glass doors. The charm -which still makes _Cato_ very readable is much of this nature. When -Syphax exclaims, - - -So, where our wide Numidian wastes extend, -Sudden, th' impetuous hurricanes descend, -Wheel through the air, in circling eddies play, -Tear up the sands, and sweep whole plains away, -The helpless traveller, with wild surprise, -Sees the dry desert all around him rise, -And smother'd in the dusty whirlwind dies, - - -we cannot help imagining the thrill in the crowded theatre, the feathers -nodding emphatically on the ladies' heads, the gentlemen leaning forward -to tap their canes, and every one exclaiming to his neighbour how vastly -fine it is and crying "Bravo!" But how can we be excited? And so with -Bishop Hurd and his notes--his "finely observed", his "wonderfully -exact, both in the sentiment and expression", his serene confidence that -when "the present humour of idolising Shakespeare is over", the time will -come when _Cato_ is "supremely admired by all candid and judicious -critics". This is all very amusing and productive of pleasant fancies, -both as to the faded frippery of our ancestors' minds and the bold -opulence of our own. But it is not the intercourse of equals, let alone -that other kind of intercourse, which as it makes us contemporary with -the author, persuades us that his object is our own. Occasionally in -_Cato_ one may pick up a few lines that are not obsolete; but for the -most part the tragedy which Dr. Johnson thought "unquestionably the -noblest production of Addison's genius" has become collector's -literature. - -Perhaps most readers approach the essays also with some suspicion as to -the need of condescension in their minds. The question to be asked is -whether Addison, attached as he was to certain standards of gentility, -morality, and taste, has not become one of those people of exemplary -character and charming urbanity who must never be talked to about -anything more exciting than the weather. We have some slight suspicion -that the _Spectator_ and the _Tatler_ are nothing but talk, couched in -perfect English, about the number of fine days this year compared with -the number of wet the year before. The difficulty of getting on to equal -terms with him is shown by the little fable which he introduces into one -of the early numbers of the _Tatler_, of "a young gentleman, of moderate -understanding, but great vivacity, who . . . had got a little smattering -of knowledge, just enough to make an atheist or a freethinker, but not a -philosopher, or a man of sense". This young gentleman visits his father -in the country, and proceeds "to enlarge the narrowness of the country -notions; in which he succeeded so well, that he had seduced the butler -by his table-talk, and staggered his eldest sister. . . . 'Till one day, -talking of his setting dog . . . said 'he did not question but Tray was -as immortal as any one of the family'; and in the heat of the argument -told his father, that for his own part, 'he expected to die like a dog'. -Upon which, the old man, starting up in a very great passion, cried out, -'Then, sirrah, you shall live like one'; and taking his cane in his -hand, cudgelled him out of his system. This had so good an effect upon -him, that he took up from that day, fell to reading good books, and is -now a bencher in the Middle-Temple." There is a good deal of Addison in -that story: his dislike of "dark and uncomfortable prospects"; his -respect for "principles which are the support, happiness, and glory of -all public societies, as well as private persons"; his solicitude for -the butler; and his conviction that to read good books and become a -bencher in the Middle Temple is the proper end for a very vivacious -young gentleman. This Mr. Addison married a countess, "gave his little -senate laws", and, sending for young Lord Warwick, made that famous -remark about seeing how a Christian can die which has fallen upon such -evil days that our sympathies are with the foolish, and perhaps fuddled, -young peer rather than with the frigid gentleman, not too far gone for a -last spasm of self-complacency, upon the bed. - -Let us rub off such incrustations, so far as they are due to the -corrosion of Pope's wit or the deposit of mid-Victorian lachrymosity, -and see what, for us in our time, remains. In the first place, there -remains the not despicable virtue, after two centuries of existence, of -being readable. Addison can fairly lay claim to that; and then, slipped -in on the tide of the smooth, well-turned prose, are little eddies, -diminutive waterfalls, agreeably diversifying the polished surface. We -begin to take note of whims, fancies, peculiarities on the part of the -essayist which light up the prim, impeccable countenance of the moralist -and convince us that, however tightly he may have pursed his lips, his -eyes are very bright and not so shallow after all. He is alert to his -finger tips. Little muffs, silver garters, fringed gloves draw his -attention; he observes with a keen, quick glance, not unkindly, and full -rather of amusement than of censure. To be sure, the age was rich in -follies. Here were coffee-houses packed with politicians talking of -Kings and Emperors and letting their own small affairs go to ruin. -Crowds applauded the Italian opera every night without understanding a -word of it. Critics discoursed of the unities. Men gave a thousand -pounds for a handful of tulip roots. As for women--or "the fair sex", as -Addison liked to call them--their follies were past counting. He did his -best to count them, with a loving particularity which roused the ill -humour of Swift. But he did it very charmingly, with a natural relish -for the task, as the following passage shows: - - -I consider woman as a beautiful romantic animal, that may be adorned -with furs and feathers, pearls and diamonds, ores and silks. The lynx -shall cast its skin at her feet to make her a tippet; the peacock, -parrot, and swan, shall pay contributions to her muff; the sea shall be -searched for shells, and the rocks for gems; and every part of nature -furnish out its share towards the embellishment of a creature that is -the most consummate work of it. All this I shall indulge them in; but as -for the petticoat I have been speaking of, I neither can nor will allow -it. - - -In all these matters Addison was on the side of sense and taste and -civilisation. Of that little fraternity, often so obscure and yet so -indispensable, who in every age keep themselves alive to the importance -of art and letters and music, watching, discriminating, denouncing and -delighting, Addison was one--distinguished and strangely contemporary -with ourselves. It would have been, so one imagines, a great pleasure to -take him a manuscript; a great enlightenment, as well as a great honour, -to have his opinion. In spite of Pope, one fancies that his would have -been criticism of the best order, open-minded and generous to novelty, -and yet, in the final resort, unfaltering in its standards. The boldness -which is a proof of vigour is shown by his defence of "Chevy Chase". He -had so clear a notion of what he meant by the "very spirit and soul of -fine writing" as to track it down in an old barbarous ballad or -rediscover it in "that divine work" "Paradise Lost". Moreover, far from -being a connoisseur only of the still, settled beauties of the dead, he -was aware of the present; a severe critic of its "Gothic taste", -vigilant in protecting the rights and honours of the language, and all -in favour of simplicity and quiet. Here we have the Addison of Will's -and Button's, who, sitting late into the night and drinking more than -was good for him, gradually overcame his taciturnity and began to talk. -Then he "chained the attention of every one to him". "Addison's -conversation", said Pope, "had something in it more charming than I have -found in any other man." One can well believe it, for his essays at -their best preserve the very cadence of easy yet exquisitely modulated -conversation--the smile checked before it has broadened into laughter, -the thought lightly turned from frivolity or abstraction, the ideas -springing, bright, new, various, with the utmost spontaneity. He seems -to speak what comes into his head, and is never at the trouble of -raising his voice. But he has described himself in the character of the -lute better than any one can do it for him. - - -The lute is a character directly opposite to the drum, that sounds very -finely by itself, or in a very small concert. Its notes are exquisitely -sweet, and very low, easily drowned in a multitude of instruments, and -even lost among a few, unless you give a particular attention to it. A -lute is seldom heard in a company of more than five, whereas a drum will -show itself to advantage in an assembly of 500. The lutanists, -therefore, are men of a fine genius, uncommon reflection, great -affability, and esteemed chiefly by persons of a good taste, who are the -only proper judges of so delightful and soft a melody. - - -Addison was a lutanist. No praise, indeed, could be less appropriate -than Lord Macaulay's. To call Addison on the strength of his essays a -great poet, or to prophesy that if he had written a novel on an -extensive plan it would have been "superior to any that we possess", is -to confuse him with the drums and trumpets; it is not merely to -overpraise his merits, but to overlook them. Dr. Johnson superbly, and, -as his manner is, once and for all has summed up the quality of -Addison's poetic genius: - - -His poetry is first to be considered; of which it must be confessed that -it has not often those felicities of diction which give lustre to -sentiments, or that vigour of sentiment that animates diction; there is -little of ardour, vehemence, or transport; there is very rarely the -awfulness of grandeur, and not very often the splendour of elegance. He -thinks justly; but he thinks faintly. - - -The Sir Roger de Coverley papers are those which have the most -resemblance, on the surface, to a novel. But their merit consists in the -fact that they do not adumbrate, or initiate, or anticipate anything; -they exist, perfect, complete, entire in themselves. To read them as if -they were a first hesitating experiment containing the seed of greatness -to come is to miss the peculiar point of them. They are studies done -from the outside by a quiet spectator. When read together they compose a -portrait of the Squire and his circle all in characteristic -positions--one with his rod, another with his hounds--but each can be -detached from the rest without damage to the design or harm to himself. -In a novel, where each chapter gains from the one before it or adds to -the one that follows it, such separations would be intolerable. The -speed, the intricacy, the design, would be mutilated. These particular -qualities are perhaps lacking, but nevertheless Addison's method has -great advantages. Each of these essays is very highly finished. The -characters are defined by a succession of extremely neat, clean strokes. -Inevitably, where the sphere is so narrow--an essay is only three or -four pages in length--there is not room for great depth or intricate -subtlety. Here, from the _Spectator_, is a good example of the witty and -decisive manner in which Addison strikes out a portrait to fill the -little frame: - - -Sombrius is one of these sons of sorrow. He thinks himself obliged in -duty to be sad and disconsolate. He looks on a sudden fit of laughter as -a breach of his baptismal vow. An innocent jest startles him like -blasphemy. Tell him of one who is advanced to a title of honour, he -lifts up his hands and eyes; describe a public ceremony, he shakes his -head; shew him a gay equipage, he blesses himself. All the little -ornaments of life are pomps and vanities. Mirth is wanton, and wit -profane. He is scandalized at youth for being lively, and at childhood -for being playful. He sits at a christening, or at a marriage-feast, as -at a funeral; sighs at the conclusion of a merry story, and grows devout -when the rest of the company grow pleasant. After all Sombrius is a -religious man, and would have behaved himself very properly, had he -lived when Christianity was under a general persecution. - - -The novel is not a development from that model, for the good reason that -no development along these lines is possible. Of its kind such a -portrait is perfect; and when we find, scattered up and down the -_Spectator_ and the _Tatler_, numbers of such little masterpieces with -fancies and anecdotes in the same style, some doubt as to the narrowness -of such a sphere becomes inevitable. The form of the essay admits of its -own particular perfection; and if anything is perfect the exact -dimensions of its perfection become immaterial. One can scarcely settle -whether, on the whole, one prefers a raindrop to the River Thames. When -we have said all that we can say against them--that many are dull, -others superficial, the allegories faded, the piety conventional, the -morality trite--there still remains the fact that the essays of Addison -are perfect essays. Always at the highest point of any art there comes a -moment when everything seems in a conspiracy to help the artist, and his -achievement becomes a natural felicity on his part of which he seems, to -a later age, half-unconscious. So Addison, writing day after day, essay -after essay, knew instinctively and exactly how to do it. Whether it was -a high thing, or whether it was a low thing, whether an epic is more -profound or a lyric more passionate, undoubtedly it is due to Addison -that prose is now prosaic--the medium which makes it possible for people -of ordinary intelligence to communicate their ideas to the world. -Addison is the respectable ancestor of an innumerable progeny. Pick up -the first weekly journal and the article upon the "Delights of Summer" -or the "Approach of Age" will show his influence. But it will also show, -unless the name of Mr. Max Beerbohm, our solitary essayist, is attached -to it, that we have lost the art of writing essays. What with our views -and our virtues, our passions and profundities, the shapely silver drop, -that held the sky in it and so many bright little visions of human life, -is now nothing but a hold--all knobbed with luggage packed in a hurry. -Even so, the essayist will make an effort, perhaps without knowing it, -to write like Addison. - -In his temperate and reasonable way Addison more than once amused -himself with speculations as to the fate of his writings. He had a just -idea of their nature and value. "I have new-pointed all the batteries of -ridicule", he wrote. Yet, because so many of his darts had been directed -against ephemeral follies, "absurd fashions, ridiculous customs, and -affected forms of speech", the time would come, in a hundred years, -perhaps, when his essays, he thought, would be "like so many pieces of -old plate, where the weight will be regarded, but the fashion lost". Two -hundred years have passed; the plate is worn smooth; the pattern almost -rubbed out; but the metal is pure silver. - - -[Footnote 7: Written in 1919.] - - - - -_The Lives of the Obscure_ - - -Five shillings, perhaps, will secure a life subscription to this faded, -out-of-date, obsolete library, which with a little help from the rates, -is chiefly subsidised from the shelves of clergymen's widows, and -country gentlemen inheriting more books than their wives like to dust. -In the middle of the wide airy room, with windows that look to the sea -and let in the shouts of men crying pilchards for sale on the cobbled -street below, a row of vases stands, in which specimens of the local -flowers droop, each with its name inscribed beneath. The elderly, the -marooned, the bored, drift from newspaper to newspaper, or sit holding -their heads over back numbers of _The Illustrated London News_ and the -_Wesleyan Chronicle_. No one has spoken aloud here since the room was -opened in 1854. The obscure sleep on the walls, slouching against each -other as if they were too drowsy to stand upright. Their backs are -flaking off; their titles often vanished. Why disturb their sleep? Why -re-open those peaceful graves, the librarian seems to ask, peering over -his spectacles, and resenting the duty, which indeed has become -laborious, of retrieving from among those nameless tombstones Nos. 1763, -1080, and 606. - - - - -I - -THE TAYLORS AND THE EDGEWORTHS - - -For one likes romantically to feel oneself a deliverer advancing with -lights across the waste of years to the rescue of some stranded ghost--a -Mrs. Pilkington, a Rev. Henry Elman, a Mrs. Ann Gilbert--waiting, -appealing, forgotten, in the growing gloom. Possibly they hear one -coming. They shuffle, they preen, they bridle. Old secrets well up to -their lips. The divine relief of communication will soon again be -theirs. The dust shifts and Mrs. Gilbert--but the contact with life is -instantly salutary. Whatever Mrs. Gilbert may be doing, she is not -thinking about us. Far from it. Colchester, about the year 1800, was for -the young Taylors, as Kensington had been for their mother, "a very -Elysium". There were the Strutts, the Hills, the Stapletons; there was -poetry, philosophy, engraving. For the young Taylors were brought up to -work hard, and if, after a long day's toil upon their father's pictures, -they slipped round to dine with the Strutts they had a right to their -pleasure. Already they had won prizes in Darton and Harvey's pocketbook. -One of the Strutts knew James Montgomery, and there was talk, at those -gay parties, with the Moorish decorations and all the cats--for old Ben -Strutt was a bit of a character: did not communicate; would not let his -daughters eat meat, so no wonder they died of consumption--there was -talk of printing a joint volume to be called _The Associate Minstrels_, -to which James, if not Robert himself, might contribute. The Stapletons -were poetical, too. Moira and Bithia would wander over the old town wall -at Balkerne Hill reading poetry by moonlight. Perhaps there was a little -too much poetry in Colchester in 1800. Looking back in the middle of a -prosperous and vigorous life, Ann had to lament many broken careers, -much unfulfilled promise. The Stapletons died young, perverted, -miserable; Jacob, with his "dark, scorn-speaking countenance", who had -vowed that he would spend the night looking for Ann's lost bracelet in -the street, disappeared, "and I last heard of him vegetating among the -ruins of Rome--himself too much a ruin"; as for the Hills, their fate -was worst of all. To submit to public baptism was flighty, but to marry -Captain M.! Anybody could have warned pretty Fanny Hill against Captain -M. Yet off she drove with him in his fine phaeton. For years nothing -more was heard of her. Then one night, when the Taylors had moved to -Ongar and old Mr. and Mrs. Taylor were sitting over the fire, thinking -how, as it was nine o'clock, and the moon was full, they ought, -according to their promise, to look at it and think of their absent -children, there came a knock at the door. Mrs. Taylor went down to open -it. But who was this sad, shabby-looking woman outside? "Oh, don't you -remember the Strutts and the Stapletons, and how you warned me against -Captain M.?" cried Fanny Hill, for it was Fanny Hill--poor Fanny Hill, -all worn and sunk; poor Fanny Hill, that used to be so sprightly. She -was living in a lone house not far from the Taylors, forced to drudge -for her husband's mistress, for Captain M. had wasted all her fortune, -ruined all her life. - -Ann married Mr. G., of course--of course. The words toll persistently -through these obscure volumes. For in the vast world to which the memoir -writers admit us there is a solemn sense of something unescapable, of a -wave gathering beneath the frail flotilla and carrying it on. One thinks -of Colchester in 1800. Scribbling verses, reading Montgomery--so they -begin; the Hills, the Stapletons, the Strutts disperse and disappear as -one knew they would; but here, after long years, is Ann still -scribbling, and at last here is the poet Montgomery himself in her very -house, and she begging him to consecrate her child to poetry by just -holding him in his arms, and he refusing (for he is a bachelor), but -taking her for a walk, and they hear the thunder, and she thinks it the -artillery, and he says in a voice which she will never, never forget: -"Yes! The artillery of Heaven!" It is one of the attractions of the -unknown, their multitude, their vastness; for, instead of keeping their -identity separate, as remarkable people do, they seem to merge into one -another, their very boards and title-pages and frontispieces dissolving, -and their innumerable pages melting into continuous years so that we can -lie back and look up into the fine mist-like substance of countless -lives, and pass unhindered from century to century, from life to life. -Scenes detach themselves. We watch groups. Here is young Mr. Elman -talking to Miss Biffen at Brighton. She has neither arms nor legs; a -footman carries her in and out. She teaches miniature painting to his -sister. Then he is in the stage coach on the road to Oxford with Newman. -Newman says nothing. Elman nevertheless reflects that he has known all -the great men of his time. And so back and so forwards, he paces -eternally the fields of Sussex until, grown to an extreme old age, there -he sits in his Rectory thinking of Newman, thinking of Miss Biffen, and -making--it is his great consolation--string bags for missionaries. And -then? Go on looking. Nothing much happens. But the dim light is -exquisitely refreshing to the eyes. Let us watch little Miss Frend -trotting along the Strand with her father. They meet a man with very -bright eyes. "Mr. Blake," says Mr. Frend. It is Mrs. Dyer who pours out -tea for them in Clifford's Inn. Mr. Charles Lamb has just left the room. -Mrs. Dyer says she married George because his washerwoman cheated him -so. What do you think George paid for his shirts, she asks? Gently, -beautifully, like the clouds of a balmy evening, obscurity once more -traverses the sky, an obscurity which is not empty but thick with the -star dust of innumerable lives. And suddenly there is a rift in it, and -we see a wretched little packet-boat pitching off the Irish coast in the -middle of the nineteenth-century. There is an unmistakable air of 1840 -about the tarpaulins and the hairy monsters in sou'westers lurching and -spitting over the sloping decks, yet treating the solitary young woman -who stands in shawl and poke bonnet gazing, gazing, not without -kindness. No, no, no! She will not leave the deck. She will stand there -till it is quite dark, thank you! "Her great love of the sea . . . drew -this exemplary wife and mother every now and then irresistibly away from -home. No one but her husband knew where she had gone, and her children -learnt only later in life that on these occasions, when suddenly she -disappeared for a few days, she was taking short sea voyages . . ." a -crime which she expiated by months of work among the Midland poor. Then -the craving would come upon her, would be confessed in private to her -husband, and off she stole again--the mother of Sir George Newnes. - -One would conclude that human beings were happy, endowed with such -blindness to fate, so indefatigable an interest in their own activities, -were it not for those sudden and astonishing apparitions staring in at -us, all taut and pale in their determination never to be forgotten, men -who have just missed fame, men who have passionately desired -redress--men like Haydon, and Mark Pattison, and the Rev. Blanco White. -And in the whole world there is probably but one person who looks up for -a moment and tries to interpret the menacing face, the furious beckoning -fist, before, in the multitude of human affairs, fragments of faces, -echoes of voices, flying coat-tails, and bonnet strings disappearing -down the shrubbery walks, one's attention is distracted for ever. What -is that enormous wheel, for example, careering downhill in Berkshire in -the eighteenth-century? It runs faster and faster; suddenly a youth -jumps out from within; next moment it leaps over the edge of a chalk pit -and is dashed to smithereens. This is Edgeworth's doing--Richard Lovell -Edgeworth, we mean, the portentous bore. - -For that is the way he has come down to us in his two volumes of -memoirs--Byron's bore, Day's friend, Maria's father, the man who almost -invented the telegraph, and did, in fact, invent machines for cutting -turnips, climbing walls, contracting on narrow bridges and lifting their -wheels over obstacles--a man meritorious, industrious, advanced, but -still, as we investigate his memoirs, mainly a bore. Nature endowed him -with irrepressible energy. The blood coursed through his veins at least -twenty times faster than the normal rate. His face was red, round, -vivacious. His brain raced. His tongue never stopped talking. He had -married four wives and had nineteen children, including the novelist -Maria. Moreover, he had known every one and done everything. His energy -burst open the most secret doors and penetrated to the most private -apartments. His wife's grandmother, for instance, disappeared -mysteriously every day. Edgeworth blundered in upon her and found her, -with her white locks flowing and her eyes streaming, in prayer before a -crucifix. She was a Roman Catholic then, but why a penitent? He found -out somehow that her husband had been killed in a duel, and she had -married the man who killed him. "The consolations of religion are fully -equal to its terrors," Dick Edgeworth reflected as he stumbled out -again. Then there was the beautiful young woman in the castle among the -forests of Dauphiny. Half paralysed, unable to speak above a whisper, -there she lay when Edgeworth broke in and found her reading. Tapestries -flapped on the castle walls; fifty thousand bats--"odious animals whose -stench is uncommonly noisome"--hung in clusters in the caves beneath. -None of the inhabitants understood a word she said. But to the -Englishman she talked for hour after hour about books and politics and -religion. He listened; no doubt he talked. He sat dumbfounded. But what -could one do for her? Alas, one must leave her lying among the tusks, -and the old men, and the cross-bows, reading, reading, reading. For -Edgeworth was employed in turning the Rhone from its course. He must get -back to his job. One reflection he would make. "I determined on steadily -persevering in the cultivation of my understanding." - -He was impervious to the romance of the situations in which he found -himself. Every experience served only to fortify his character. He -reflected, he observed, he improved himself daily. You can improve, Mr. -Edgeworth used to tell his children, every day of your life. "He used to -say that with this power of improving they might in time be anything, -and without it in time they would be nothing." Imperturbable, -indefatigable, daily increasing in sturdy self-assurance, he has the -gift of the egoist. He brings out, as he bustles and bangs on his way, -the diffident, shrinking figures who would otherwise be drowned in -darkness. The aged lady, whose private penance he disturbed, is only one -of a series of figures who start up on either side of his progress, -mute, astonished, showing us in a way that is even now unmistakable, -their amazement at this well-meaning man who bursts in upon them at -their studies and interrupts their prayers. We see him through their -eyes; we see him as he does not dream of being seen. What a tyrant he -was to his first wife! How intolerably she suffered! But she never -utters a word. It is Dick Edgeworth who tells her story in complete -ignorance that he is doing anything of the kind. "It was a singular -trait of character in my wife," he observes, "who had never shown any -uneasiness at my intimacy with Sir Francis Delaval, that she should take -a strong dislike to Mr. Day. A more dangerous and seductive companion -than the one, or a more moral and improving companion than the other, -could not be found in England." It was, indeed, very singular. - -For the first Mrs. Edgeworth was a penniless girl, the daughter of a -ruined country gentleman, who sat over his fire picking cinders from the -hearth and throwing them into the grate, while from time to time he -ejaculated "Hein! Heing!" as yet another scheme for making his fortune -came into his head. She had had no education. An itinerant -writing-master had taught her to form a few words. When Dick Edgeworth -was an undergraduate and rode over from Oxford she fell in love with him -and married him in order to escape the poverty and the mystery and the -dirt, and to have a husband and children like other women. But with what -result? Gigantic wheels ran downhill with the bricklayer's son inside -them. Sailing carriages took flight and almost wrecked four stage -coaches. Machines did cut turnips, but not very efficiently. Her little -boy was allowed to roam the country like a poor man's son, bare-legged, -untaught. And Mr. Day, coming to breakfast and staying to dinner, argued -incessantly about scientific principles and the laws of nature. - -But here we encounter one of the pitfalls of this nocturnal rambling -among forgotten worthies. It is so difficult to keep, as we must with -highly authenticated people, strictly to the facts. It is so difficult -to refrain from making scenes which, if the past could be recalled, -might perhaps be found lacking in accuracy. With a character like Thomas -Day, in particular, whose history surpasses the bounds of the credible, -we find ourselves oozing amazement, like a sponge which has absorbed so -much that it can retain no more but fairly drips. Certain scenes have -the fascination which belongs rather to the abundance of fiction than to -the sobriety of fact. For instance, we conjure up all the drama of poor -Mrs. Edgeworth's daily life; her bewilderment, her loneliness, her -despair, how she must have wondered whether any one really wanted -machines to climb walls, and assured the gentlemen that turnips were -better cut simply with a knife, and so blundered and floundered and been -snubbed that she dreaded the almost daily arrival of the tall young man -with his pompous, melancholy face, marked by the smallpox, his profusion -of uncombed black hair, and his finical cleanliness of hands and person. -He talked fast, fluently, incessantly, for hours at a time about -philosophy and nature, and M. Rousseau. Yet it was her house; she had to -see to his meals, and, though he ate as though he were half asleep, his -appetite was enormous. But it was no use complaining to her husband. -Edgeworth said, "She lamented about trifles." He went on to say: "The -lamenting of a female with whom we live does not render home -delightful." And then, with his obtuse open-mindedness, he asked her -what she had to complain of? Did he ever leave her alone? In the five or -six years of their married life he had slept from home not more than -five or six times. Mr. Day could corroborate that. Mr. Day corroborated -everything that Mr. Edgeworth said. He egged him on with his -experiments. He told him to leave his son without education. He did not -care a rap what the people of Henley said. In short, he was at the -bottom of all the absurdities and extravagances which made Mrs. -Edgeworth's life a burden to her. - -Yet let us choose another scene--one of the last that poor Mrs. -Edgeworth was to behold. She was returning from Lyons, and Mr. Day was -her escort. A more singular figure, as he stood on the deck of the -packet which took them to Dover, very tall, very upright, one finger in -the breast of his coat, letting the wind blow his hair out, dressed -absurdly, though in the height of fashion, wild, romantic, yet at the -same time authoritative and pompous, could scarcely be imagined; and -this strange creature, who loathed women, was in charge of a lady who -was about to become a mother, had adopted two orphan girls, and had set -himself to win the hand of Miss Elizabeth Sneyd by standing between -boards for six hours daily in order to learn to dance. Now and again he -pointed his toe with rigid precision; then, waking from the congenial -dream into which the dark clouds, the flying waters, and the shadow of -England upon the horizon had thrown him, he rapped out an order in the -smart, affected tones of a man of the world. The sailors stared, but -they obeyed. There was something sincere about him, something proudly -indifferent to what you thought; yes, something comforting and humane, -too, so that Mrs. Edgeworth for her part was determined never to laugh -at him again. But men were strange; life was difficult, and with a sigh -of bewilderment, perhaps of relief, poor Mrs. Edgeworth landed at Dover, -was brought to bed of a daughter, and died. - -Day meanwhile proceeded to Lichfield. Elizabeth Sneyd, of course, -refused him--gave a great cry, people said; exclaimed that she had loved -Day the blackguard, but hated Day the gentleman, and rushed from the -room. And then, they said, a terrible thing happened. Mr. Day, in his -rage, bethought him of the orphan, Sabrina Sydney, whom he had bred to -be his wife; visited her at Sutton Coldfield; flew into a passion at the -sight of her; fired a pistol at her skirts, poured melted sealing wax -over her arms, and boxed her ears. "No; I could never have done that," -Mr. Edgeworth used to say, when people described the scene. And whenever -to the end of his life he thought of Thomas Day he fell silent. So -great, so passionate, so inconsistent--his life had been a tragedy, and -in thinking of his friend, the best friend he had ever had, Richard -Edgeworth fell silent. - -It is almost the only occasion upon which silence is recorded of him. To -muse, to repent, to contemplate were foreign to his nature. His wife and -friends and children are silhouetted with extreme vividness upon a broad -disc of interminable chatter. Upon no other background could we realise -so clearly the sharp fragment of his first wife, or the shades and -depths which make up the character, at once humane and brutal, advanced -and hidebound of the inconsistent philosopher, Thomas Day. But his power -is not limited to people; landscapes, groups, societies seem, even as he -describes them, to split off from him, to be projected away, so that we -are able to run just ahead of him and anticipate his coming. They are -brought out all the more vividly by the extreme incongruity which so -often marks his comment and stamps his presence; they live with a -peculiar beauty, fantastic, solemn, mysterious, in contrast with -Edgeworth, who is none of these things. In particular, he brings before -us a garden in Cheshire, the garden of a parsonage, an ancient but -commodious parsonage. - -One pushed through a white gate and found oneself in a grass court, -small but well kept, with roses growing in the hedges and grapes hanging -from the walls. But what, in the name of wonder, were those objects in -the middle of the grass plot? Through the dusk of an autumn evening -there shone out an enormous white globe. Round it at various distances -were others of different sizes--the planets and their satellites, it -seemed. But who could have placed them there, and why? The house was -silent; the windows shut; nobody was stirring. Then, furtively peeping -from behind a curtain, appeared for a second the face of an elderly man, -handsome, dishevelled, distraught. It vanished. - -In some mysterious way, human beings inflict their own vagaries upon -nature. Moths and birds must have flitted more silently through the -little garden; over everything must have brooded the same fantastic -peace. Then, red-faced, garrulous, inquisitive, in burst Richard Lovell -Edgeworth. He looked at the globes; he satisfied himself that they were -of "accurate design and workmanlike construction". He knocked at the -door. He knocked and knocked. No one came. At length, as his impatience -was overcoming him, slowly the latch was undone, gradually the door was -opened; a clergyman, neglected, unkempt, but still a gentleman, stood -before him. Edgeworth named himself, and they retired to a parlour -littered with books and papers and valuable furniture now fallen to -decay. At last, unable to control his curiosity any longer, Edgeworth -asked what were the globes in the garden? Instantly the clergyman -displayed extreme agitation. It was his son who had made them, he -exclaimed; a boy of genius, a boy of the greatest industry, and of -virtue and acquirements far beyond his age. But he had died. His wife -had died. Edgeworth tried to turn the conversation, but in vain. The -poor man rushed on passionately, incoherently about his son, his genius, -his death. "It struck me that his grief had injured his understanding," -said Edgeworth, and he was becoming more and more uncomfortable when the -door opened and a girl of fourteen or fifteen, entering with a tea-tray -in her hand, suddenly changed the course of his host's conversation. -Indeed, she was beautiful; dressed in white; her nose a shade too -prominent, perhaps--but no, her proportions were exquisitely right. "She -is a scholar and an artist!" the clergyman exclaimed as she left the -room. But why did she leave the room? If she was his daughter why did -she not preside at the tea-table? Was she his mistress? Who was she? And -why was the house in this state of litter and decay? Why was the front -door locked? Why was the clergyman apparently a prisoner, and what was -his secret story? Questions began to crowd into Edgeworth's head as he -sat drinking his tea; but he could only shake his head and make one last -reflection, "I feared that something was not right," as he shut the -white wicket gate behind him, and left alone for ever in the untidy -house among the planets and their satellites, the mad clergyman and the -lovely girl. - - - - -II - -LAETITIA PILKINGTON - - -Let us bother the librarian once again. Let us ask him to reach down, -dust, and hand over to us that little brown book over there, the Memoirs -of Mrs. Pilkington, three volumes bound in one, printed by Peter Hoey in -Dublin, MDCCLXXVI. The deepest obscurity shades her retreat; the dust -lies heavy on her tomb--one board is loose, that is to say, and nobody -has read her since early in the last century when a reader, presumably a -lady, whether disgusted by her obscenity or stricken by the hand of -death, left off in the middle and marked her place with a faded list of -goods and groceries. If ever a woman wanted a champion, it is obviously -Laetitia Pilkington. Who then was she? - -Can you imagine a very extraordinary cross between Moll Flanders and -Lady Ritchie, between a rolling and rollicking woman of the town and a -lady of breeding and refinement? Laetitia Pilkington (1712-1759) was -something of the sort—shady, shifty, adventurous, and yet, like -Thackeray's daughter, like Miss Mitford, like Madame de Sévigné and -Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth, so imbued with the old traditions of -her sex that she wrote, as ladies talk, to give pleasure. Throughout her -_Memoirs_, we can never forget that it is her wish to entertain, her -unhappy fate to sob. Dabbing her eyes and controlling her anguish, she -begs us to forgive an odious breach of manners which only the suffering -of a lifetime, the intolerable persecutions of Mr. P----n, the -malignant, she must say the h-----h, spite of Lady C----t can excuse. -For who should know better than the Earl of Killmallock's -great-granddaughter that it is the part of a lady to hide her -sufferings? Thus Laetitia is in the great tradition of English women of -letters. It is her duty to entertain; it is her instinct to conceal. -Still, though her room near the Royal Exchange is threadbare, and the -table is spread with old play-bills instead of a cloth, and the butter -is served in a shoe, and Mr. Worsdale has used the teapot to fetch small -beer that very morning, still she presides, still she entertains. Her -language is a trifle coarse, perhaps. But who taught her English? The -great Doctor Swift. - -In all her wanderings, which were many and in her failings, which were -great, she looked back to those early Irish days when Swift had pinched -her into propriety of speech. He had beaten her for fumbling at a -drawer: he had daubed her cheeks with burnt cork to try her temper; he -had bade her pull off her shoes and stockings and stand against the -wainscot and let him measure her. At first she had refused; then she had -yielded. "Why," said the Dean, "I suspected you had either broken -Stockings or foul toes, and in either case should have delighted to -expose you." Three feet two inches was all she measured, he declared, -though, as Laetitia complained, the weight of Swift's hand on her head -had made her shrink to half her size. But she was foolish to complain. -Probably she owed her intimacy to that very fact--she was only three -feet two. Swift had lived, a lifetime among the giants; now there was a -charm in dwarfs. He took the little creature into his library. "'Well,' -said he, 'I have brought you here to show you all the Money I got when I -was in the Ministry, but don't steal any of it.' 'I won't, indeed. Sir,' -said I; so he opened a Cabinet, and showed me a whole parcel of empty -drawers. 'Bless me,' says he, 'the Money is flown.'" There was a charm -in her surprise; there was a charm in her humility. He could beat her -and bully her, make her shout when he was deaf, force her husband to -drink the lees of the wine, pay their cab fares, stuff guineas into a -piece of gingerbread, and relent surprisingly, as if there were -something grimly pleasing to him in the thought of so foolish a midget -setting up to have a life and a mind of her own. For with Swift she was -herself; it was the effect of his genius. She had to pull off her -stockings if he told her to. So, though his satire terrified her, and -she found it highly unpleasant to dine at the Deanery and see him -watching, in the great glass which hung before him for that purpose, the -butler stealing beer at the sideboard, she knew that it was a privilege -to walk with him in his garden; to hear him talk of Mr. Pope and quote -Hudibras; and then be hustled back in the rain to save coach hire, and -then to sit chatting in the parlour with Mrs. Brent, the housekeeper, -about the Dean's oddity and charity, and how the sixpence he saved on -the coach he gave to the lame old man who sold gingerbread at the -corner, while the Dean dashed up the front stairs and down the back so -violently that she was afraid he would fall and hurt himself. - -But memories of great men are no infallible specific. They fall upon the -race of life like beams from a lighthouse. They flash, they shock, they -reveal, they vanish. To remember Swift was of little avail to Laetitia -when the troubles of life came thick about her. Mr. Pilkington left her -for Widow W--rr--n. Her father--her dear father--died. The sheriff's -officers insulted her. She was deserted in an empty house with two -children to provide for. The tea chest was secured, the garden gate -locked, and the bills left unpaid. And still she was young and -attractive and gay, with an inordinate passion for scribbling verses and -an incredible hunger for reading books. It was this that was her -undoing. The book was fascinating and the hour late. The gentleman would -not lend it, but would stay till she had finished. They sat in her -bedroom. It was highly indiscreet, she owned. Suddenly twelve watchmen -broke through the kitchen window, and Mr. Pilkington appeared with a -cambric handkerchief tied about his neck. Swords were drawn and heads -broken. As for her excuse, how could one expect Mr. Pilkington and the -twelve watchmen to believe that? Only reading! Only sitting up late to -finish a new book! Mr. Pilkington and the watchmen interpreted the -situation as such men would. But lovers of learning, she is persuaded, -will understand her passion and deplore its consequences. - -And now what was she to do? Reading had played her false, but still she -could write. Ever since she could form her letters, indeed, she had -written, with incredible speed and considerable grace, odes, addresses, -apostrophes to Miss Hoadley, to the Recorder of Dublin, to Dr. -Delville's place in the country. "Hail, happy Delville, blissful seat!" -"Is there a man whose fixed and steady gaze----"--the verses flowed -without the slightest difficulty on the slightest occasion. Now, -therefore, crossing to England, she set up, as her advertisement had it, -to write letters upon any subject, except the law, for twelve pence -ready money, and no trust given. She lodged opposite White's Chocolate -House, and there, in the evening, as she watered her flowers on the -leads, the noble gentlemen in the window across the road drank her -health, sent her over a bottle of burgundy; and later she heard old -Colonel----crying, "Poke after me, my lord, poke after me," as he -shepherded the D----of M--lb--gh up her dark stairs. That lovely -gentleman, who honoured his title by wearing it, kissed her, -complimented her, opened his pocketbook, and left her with a banknote -for fifty pounds upon Sir Francis Child. Such tributes stimulated her -pen to astonishing outbursts of impromptu gratitude. If, on the other -hand, a gentleman refused to buy or a lady hinted impropriety, this same -flowery pen writhed and twisted in agonies of hate and vituperation. -"Had I said that your F----r died Blaspheming the Almighty", one of her -accusations begins, but the end is unprintable. Great ladies were -accused of every depravity, and the clergy, unless their taste in poetry -was above reproach, suffered an incessant castigation. Mr. Pilkington, -she never forgot, was a clergyman. - -Slowly but surely the Earl of Killmallock's great-granddaughter -descended in the social scale. From St. James's Street and its noble -benefactors she migrated to Green Street to lodge with Lord Stair's -_valet de chambre_ and his wife, who washed for persons of distinction. -She, who had dallied with dukes, was glad for company's sake to take a -hand at quadrille with footmen and laundresses and Grub Street writers, -who, as they drank porter, sipped green tea, and smoked tobacco, told -stories of the utmost scurrility about their masters and mistresses. The -spiciness of their conversation made amends for the vulgarity of their -manners. From them Laetitia picked up those anecdotes of the great which -sprinkled her pages with dashes and served her purpose when subscribers -failed and landladies grew insolent. Indeed, it was a hard life--to -trudge to Chelsea in the snow wearing nothing but a chintz gown and be -put off with a beggarly half-crown by Sir Hans Sloane; next to tramp to -Ormond Street and extract two guineas from the odious Dr. Meade, which, -in her glee, she tossed in the air and lost in a crack of the floor; to -be insulted by footmen; to sit down to a dish of boiling water because -her landlady must not guess that a pinch of tea was beyond her means. -Twice on moonlight nights, with the lime trees in flower, she wandered -in St. James's Park and contemplated suicide in Rosamond's Pond. Once, -musing among the tombs in Westminster Abbey, the door was locked on her, -and she had to spend the night in the pulpit wrapped in a carpet from -the Communion Table to protect herself from the assaults of rats. "I -long to listen to the young-ey'd cherubims!" she exclaimed. But a very -different fate was in store for her. In spite of Mr. Colley Cibber, and -Mr. Richardson, who supplied her first with gilt-edged notepaper and -then with baby linen, those harpies, her landladies, after drinking her -ale, devouring her lobsters, and failing often for years at a time to -comb their hair, succeeded in driving Swift's friend, and the Earl's -great-granddaughter, to be imprisoned with common debtors in the -Marshalsea. - -Bitterly she cursed her husband who had made her a lady of adventure -instead of what nature intended, "a harmless household dove". More and -more wildly she ransacked her brains for anecdotes, memories, scandals, -views about the bottomless nature of the sea, the inflammable character -of the earth--anything that would fill a page and earn her a guinea. She -remembered that she had eaten plovers' eggs with Swift. "Here, Hussey," -said he, "is a Plover's egg. King William used to give crowns apiece for -them. . . ." Swift never laughed, she remembered. He used to suck in his -cheeks instead of laughing. And what else could she remember? A great -many gentlemen, a great many landladies; how the window was thrown up -when her father died, and her sister came downstairs with the -sugar-basin, laughing. All had been bitterness and struggle, except that -she had loved Shakespeare, known Swift, and kept through all the shifts -and shades of an adventurous career a gay spirit, something of a lady's -breeding, and the gallantry which, at the end of her short life, led her -to crack her joke and enjoy her duck with death at her heart and duns at -her pillow. - - - - -III - -MISS ORMEROD[8] - - -The trees stood massively in all their summer foliage spotted and -grouped upon a meadow which sloped gently down from the big white house. -There were unmistakable signs of the year 1835 both in the trees and in -the sky, for modern trees are not nearly so voluminous as these ones, -and the sky of those days had a kind of pale diffusion in its texture -which was different from the more concentrated tone of the skies we -know. - -Mr. George Ormerod stepped from the drawing-room window of Sedbury -House, Gloucestershire, wearing a tall furry hat and white trousers -strapped under his instep; he was closely, though deferentially, -followed by a lady wearing a yellow-spotted dress over a crinoline, and -behind her, singly and arm in arm, came nine children in nankeen jackets -and long white drawers. They were going to see the water let out of a -pond. - -The youngest child, Eleanor, a little girl with a pale face, rather -elongated features, and black hair, was left by herself in the -drawing-room, a large sallow apartment with pillars, two chandeliers, -for some reason enclosed in holland bags, and several octagonal tables -some of inlaid wood and others of greenish malachite. At one of these -little Eleanor Ormerod was seated in a high chair. - -"Now, Eleanor," said her mother, as the party assembled for the -expedition to the pond, "here are some pretty beetles. Don't touch the -glass. Don't get down from your chair, and when we come back little -George will tell you all about it." - -So saying, Mrs. Ormerod placed a tumbler of water containing about half -a dozen great water grubs in the middle of the malachite table, at a -safe distance from the child, and followed her husband down the slope of -old-fashioned turf towards a cluster of extremely old-fashioned sheep; -opening, directly she stepped on to the terrace, a tiny parasol of -bottle green silk with a bottle green fringe, though the sky was like -nothing so much as a flock bed covered with a counterpane of white -dimity. - -The plump pale grubs gyrated slowly round and round in the tumbler. So -simple an entertainment must surely soon have ceased to satisfy. Surely -Eleanor would shake the tumbler, upset the grubs, and scramble down from -her chair. Why, even a grown person can hardly watch those grubs -crawling down the glass wall, then floating to the surface, without a -sense of boredom not untinged with disgust. But the child sat perfectly -still. Was it her custom, then, to be entertained by the gyrations of -grubs? Her eyes were reflective, even critical. But they shone with -increasing excitement. She beat one hand upon the edge of the table. -What was the reason? One of the grubs had ceased to float: he lay at the -bottom; the rest, descending, proceeded to tear him to pieces. - -"And how has little Eleanor enjoyed herself?" asked Mr. Ormerod, in -rather a deep voice, stepping into the room and with a slight air of -heat and of fatigue upon his face. - -"Papa," said Eleanor, almost interrupting her father in her eagerness to -impart her observation, "I saw one of the grubs fall down and the rest -came and ate him!" - -"Nonsense, Eleanor," said Mr. Ormerod. "You are not telling the truth." -He looked severely at the tumbler in which the beetles were still -gyrating as before. - -"Papa, it was true!" - -"Eleanor, little girls are not allowed to contradict their fathers," -said Mrs. Ormerod, coming in through the window, and closing her green -parasol with a snap. - -"Let this be a lesson," Mr. Ormerod began, signing to the other children -to approach, when the door opened, and the servant announced, - -"Captain Fenton." - -Captain Fenton "was at times thought to be tedious in his recurrence to -the charge of the Scots Greys in which he had served at the battle of -Waterloo." - - -But what is this crowd gathered round the door of the George Hotel in -Chepstow? A faint cheer rises from the bottom of the hill. Up comes the -mail coach, horses steaming, panels mud-splashed. "Make way! Make way!" -cries the ostler and the vehicle dashes into the courtyard, pulls up -sharp before the door. Down jumps the coachman, the horses are led off, -and a fine team of spanking greys is harnessed with incredible speed in -their stead. Upon all this--coachman, horses, coach, and passengers--the -crowd looked with gaping admiration every Wednesday evening all through -the year. But to-day, the twelfth of March, 1852, as the coachman -settled his rug, and stretched his hands for the reins, he observed that -instead of being fixed upon him, the eyes of the people of Chepstow -darted this way and that. Heads were jerked. Arms flung out. Here a hat -swooped in a semi-circle. Off drove the coach almost unnoticed. As it -turned the corner all the outside passengers craned their necks, and one -gentleman rose to his feet and shouted, "There! there! there!" before he -was bowled into eternity. It was an insect--a red-winged insect. Out the -people of Chepstow poured into the high road; down the hill they ran; -always the insect flew in front of them; at length by Chepstow Bridge a -young man, throwing his bandanna over the blade of an oar, captured it -alive and presented it to a highly respectable elderly gentleman who now -came puffing upon the scene--Samuel Budge, doctor, of Chepstow. By -Samuel Budge it was presented to Miss Ormerod; by her sent to a -professor at Oxford. And he, declaring it "a fine specimen of the rose -underwinged locust" added the gratifying information that it "was the -first of the kind to be captured so far west." - - -And so, at the age of twenty-four Miss Eleanor Ormerod was thought the -proper person to receive the gift of a locust. - -When Eleanor Ormerod appeared at archery meetings and croquet -tournaments young men pulled their whiskers and young ladies looked -grave. It was so difficult to make friends with a girl who could talk of -nothing but black beetles and earwigs--"Yes, that's what she likes, -isn't it queer?--Why, the other day Ellen, Mama's maid, heard from Jane, -who's under-kitchenmaid at Sedbury House, that Eleanor tried to boil a -beetle in the kitchen saucepan and he wouldn't die, and swam round and -round, and she got into a terrible state and sent the groom all the way -to Gloucester to fetch chloroform--all for an insect, my dear!--and she -gives the cottagers shillings to collect beetles for her--and she spends -hours in her bedroom cutting them up--and she climbs trees like a boy to -find wasps' nests--oh, you can't think what they don't say about her in -the village--for she does look so odd, dressed anyhow, with that great -big nose and those bright little eyes, so like a caterpillar herself, I -always think--but of course she's wonderfully clever and very good, too, -both of them. Georgiana has a lending library for the cottagers, and -Eleanor never misses a service--but there she is--that short pale girl -in the large bonnet. Do go and talk to her, for I'm sure I'm too stupid, -but you'd find plenty to say--" But neither Fred nor Arthur, Henry nor -William found anything to say-- - - -". . . probably the lecturer would have been equally well pleased -had none of her own sex put in an appearance." - -This comment upon a lecture delivered in the year 1889 throws some -light, perhaps, upon archery meetings in the 'fifties. - - -It being nine o'clock on a February night some time about 1862 all the -Ormerods were in the library; Mr. Ormerod making architectural designs -at a table; Mrs. Ormerod lying on a sofa making pencil drawings upon -grey paper; Eleanor making a model of a snake to serve as a paper -weight; Georgiana making a copy of the font in Tidenham Church; some of -the others examining books with beautiful illustrations; while at -intervals someone rose, unlocked the wire book case, took down a volume -for instruction or entertainment, and perused it beneath the chandelier. - -Mr. Ormerod required complete silence for his studies. His word was law, -even to the dogs, who, in the absence of their master, instinctively -obeyed the eldest male person in the room. Some whispered colloquy there -might be between Mrs. Ormerod and her daughters-- - -"The draught under the pew was really worse than ever this morning, -Mama--" - -"And we could only unfasten the latch in the chancel because Eleanor -happened to have her ruler with her--" - -"--hm--m--m. Dr. Armstrong--Hm--m--m--" - -"--Anyhow things aren't as bad with us as they are at Kinghampton. They -say Mrs. Briscoe's Newfoundland dog follows her right up to the chancel -rails when she takes the sacrament--" - -"And the turkey is still sitting on its eggs in the pulpit." - ---"The period of incubation for a turkey is between three and four -weeks"--said Eleanor, thoughtfully looking up from her cast of the snake -and forgetting, in the interest of her subject, to speak in a whisper. - -"Am I to be allowed no peace in my own house?" Mr. Ormerod exclaimed -angrily, rapping with his ruler on the table, upon which Mrs. Ormerod -half shut one eye and squeezed a little blob of Chinese white on to her -high light, and they remained silent until the servants came in, when -everyone, with the exception of Mrs. Ormerod, fell on their knees. For -she, poor lady, suffered from a chronic complaint and left the family -party forever a year or two later, when the green sofa was moved into -the corner, and the drawings given to her nieces in memory of her. But -Mr. Ormerod went on making architectural drawings at nine p.m. every -night (save on Sundays when he read a sermon) until he too lay upon the -green sofa, which had not been used since Mrs. Ormerod lay there, but -still looked much the same. "We deeply felt the happiness of ministering -to his welfare," Miss Ormerod wrote, "for he would not hear of our -leaving him for even twenty-four hours and he objected to visits from my -brothers excepting occasionally for a short time. They, not being used -to the gentle ways necessary for an aged invalid, worried him . . . the -Thursday following, the 9th October, 1873, he passed gently away at the -mature age of eighty-seven years." Oh, graves in country -churchyards--respectable burials--mature old gentlemen--D.C.L., LL.D., -F.R.S., F.S.A.--lots of letters come after your names, but lots of women -are buried with you! - - -There remained the Hessian Fly and the Bot--mysterious insects! Not, one -would have thought, among God's most triumphant creations, and yet--if -you see them trader a microscope!--the Bot, obese, globular, obscene; -the Hessian, booted, spurred, whiskered, cadaverous. Next slip under the -glass an innocent grain; behold it pock-marked and livid; or take this -strip of hide, and note those odious pullulating lumps--well, what does -the landscape look like then? - -The only palatable object for the eye to rest on in acres of England is -a lump of Paris Green. But English people won't use microscopes; you -can't make them use Paris Green either—or if they do, they let it -drip. Dr. Ritzema Bos is a great stand-by. For they won't take a woman's -word. And indeed, though for the sake of the Ox Warble one must stretch -a point, there are matters, questions of stock infestation, things one -has to go into--things a lady doesn't even like to see, much less -discuss, in print--"these, I say, I intend to leave entirely to the -Veterinary surgeons. My brother--oh, he's dead now--a very good man--for -whom I collected wasps' nests--lived at Brighton and wrote about -wasps--he, I say, wouldn't let me learn anatomy, never liked me to do -more than take sections of teeth." - -Ah, but Eleanor, the Bot and the Hessian have more power over you than -Mr. Edward Ormerod himself. Under the microscope you clearly perceive -that these insects have organs, orifices, excrement; they do, most -emphatically, copulate. Escorted on the one side by the Bos or Warble, -on the other by the Hessian Fly, Miss Ormerod advanced statelily, if -slowly, into the open. Never did her features show more sublime than -when lit up by the candour of her avowal. "This is excrement; these, -though Ritzema Bos is positive to the contrary, are the generative -organs of the male. I've proved it." Upon her head the hood of Edinburgh -most fitly descended; pioneer of purity even more than of Paris Green. - - -"If you're sure I'm not in your way," said Miss Lipscomb unstrapping her -paint box and planting her tripod firmly in the path, "--I'll try to get -a picture of those lovely hydrangeas against the sky--What flowers you -have in Penzance!" - -The market gardener crossed his hands on his hoe, slowly twined a piece -of bass round his finger, looked at the sky, said something about the -sun, also about the prevalence of lady artists, and then, with a nod of -his head, observed sententiously that it was to a lady that he owed -everything he had. - -"Ah?" said Miss Lipscomb, flattered, but already much occupied with her -composition. - -"A lady with a queer-sounding name," said Mr. Pascoe, "but that's the -lady I've called my little girl after--I don't think there's such -another in Christendom." - -Of course it was Miss Ormerod, equally of course Miss Lipscomb was the -sister of Miss Ormerod's family doctor; and so she did no sketching that -morning, but left with a handsome bunch of grapes instead--for every -flower had drooped, ruin had stared him in the face--he had written, not -believing one bit what they told him--to the lady with the queer name, -back there came a book "In-ju-ri-ous In-sects," with the page turned -down, perhaps by her very hand, also a letter which he kept at home -under the clock, but he knew every word by heart, since it was due to -what she said there that he wasn't a ruined man--and the tears ran down -his face and Miss Lipscomb, clearing a space on the lodging-house table, -wrote the whole story to her brother. - -"The prejudice against Paris Green certainly seems to be dying down," -said Miss Ormerod when she read it.--"But now," she sighed rather -heavily, being no longer young and much afflicted with the gout, "now -it's the sparrows." - -One might have thought that _they_ would have left her alone--innocent -dirt-grey birds, taking more than their share of the breakfast crumbs, -otherwise inoffensive. But once you look through a microscope--once you -see the Hessian and the Bot as they really are--there's no peace for an -elderly lady pacing her terrace on a fine May morning. For example, why, -when there are crumbs enough for all, do only the sparrows get them? Why -not swallows or martins? Why--oh, here come the servants for prayers-- - -"Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us. -. . . For thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory, for ever and -ever. Amen--" - -"The Times, ma'am--" - -"Thank you, Dixon. . . . The Queen's birthday! We must drink her -Majesty's health in the old white port, Dixon. Home Rule--tut--tut--tut. -All that madman Gladstone. My father would have thought the world was -coming to an end, and I'm not at all sure that it isn't. I must talk to -Dr. Lipscomb--" - -Yet all the time in the tail of her eye she saw myriads of sparrows, and -retiring to the study proclaimed in a pamphlet of which 36,000 copies -were gratuitously distributed that the sparrow is a pest. - -"When he eats an insect," she said to her sister Georgians, "which -isn't often, it's one of the few insects that one wants to keep—one of -the very few," she added with a touch of acidity natural to one whose -investigations have all tended to the discredit of the insect race. - -"But there'll be some very unpleasant consequences to face," she -concluded--"Very unpleasant indeed." - -Happily the port was now brought in, the servants assembled; and Miss -Ormerod, rising to her feet, gave the toast "Her Blessed Majesty." She -was extremely loyal, and moreover she liked nothing better than a glass -of her father's old white port. She kept his pigtail, too, in a box. - -Such being her disposition it went hard with her to analyse the -sparrow's crop, for the sparrow she felt, symbolises something of the -homely virtue of English domestic life, and to proclaim it stuffed with -deceit was disloyal to much that she, and her fathers before her, held -dear. Sure enough the clergy--the Rev. J. E. Walker--denounced her for -her brutality; "God Save the Sparrow!" exclaimed the Animal's Friend; -and Miss Carrington, of the Humanitarian League, replied in a leaflet -described by Miss Ormerod as "spirity, discourteous, and inaccurate." - -"Well," said Miss Ormerod to her sister, "it did me no harm before to be -threatened to be shot at, also hanged in effigy, and other little -attentions." - -"Still it was very disagreeable, Eleanor--more disagreeable I believe, -to me than to you," said Georgiana. Soon Georgiana died. She had however -finished the beautiful series of insect diagrams at which she worked -every morning in the dining-room and they were presented to Edinburgh -University. But Eleanor was never the same woman after that. - -Dear forest fly--flour moths--weevils--grouse and cheese -flies--beetles--foreign correspondents--eel worms--ladybirds--wheat -midges--resignation from the Royal Agricultural Society--gall -mites--boot beetles--Announcement of honorary degree to be -conferred--feelings of appreciation and anxiety--paper on wasps--last -annual report warnings of serious illness--proposed pension--gradual -loss of strength--Finally Death. - -That is life, so they say. - - -"It does no good to keep people waiting for an answer," sighed Miss -Ormerod, "though I don't feel as able as I did since that unlucky -accident at Waterloo. And no one realises what the strain of the work -is--often I'm the only lady in the room, and the gentlemen so learned, -though I've always found them most helpful, most generous in every way. -But I'm growing old. Miss Hartwell, that's what it is. That's what led -me to be thinking of this difficult matter of flour infestation in the -middle of the road so that I didn't see the horse until he had poked his -nose into my ear. . . . Then there's this nonsense about a pension. What -could possess Mr. Barron to think of such a thing? I should feel -inexpressibly lowered if I accepted a pension. Why, I don't altogether -like writing LL.D. after my name, though Georgie would have liked it. -All I ask is to be let go on in my own quiet way. Now where is Messrs. -Langridge's sample? We must take that first. 'Gentlemen, I have examined -your sample and find . . .'" - -"If any one deserves a thorough good rest it's you. Miss Ormerod," said -Dr. Lipscomb, who had grown a little white over the ears. "I should say -the farmers of England ought to set up a statue to you, bring offerings -of corn and wine--make you a kind of Goddess, eh--what was her name?" - -"Not a very shapely figure for a Goddess," said Miss Ormerod with a -little laugh. "I should enjoy the wine though. You're not going to cut -me off my one glass of port surely?" - -"You must remember," said Dr. Lipscomb, shaking his head, "how much your -life means to others." - -"Well, I don't know about that," said Miss Ormerod, pondering a little. -"To be sure, I've chosen my epitaph. 'She introduced Paris Green into -England,' and there might be a word or two about the Hessian fly--that, -I do believe, was a good piece of work." - -"No need to think about epitaphs yet," said Dr. Lipscomb. - -"Our lives are in the hands of the Lord," said Miss Ormerod simply. - -Dr. Lipscomb bent his head and looked out of the window. Miss Ormerod -remained silent. - -"English entomologists care little or nothing for objects of practical -importance," she exclaimed suddenly. "Take this question of flour -infestation--I can't say how many grey hairs that hasn't grown me." - -"Figuratively speaking. Miss Ormerod," said Dr. Lipscomb, for her hair -was still raven black. - -"Well, I do believe all good work is done in concert," Miss Ormerod -continued. "It is often a great comfort to me to think that." - -"It's beginning to rain," said Dr. Lipscomb. "How will your enemies like -that, Miss Ormerod?" - -"Hot or cold, wet or dry, insects always flourish!" cried Miss Ormerod, -energetically sitting up in bed. - - -"Old Miss Ormerod is dead," said Mr. Drummond, opening The Times on -Saturday, July 20th, 1901. - -"Old Miss Ormerod?" asked Mrs. Drummond. - - -[Footnote 8: Founded upon the Life of Eleanor Ormerod, by Robert -Wallace Murray. 1904.] - - - - -_Jane Austen_ - - -It is probable that if Miss Cassandra Austen had had her way, we should -have had nothing of Jane Austen's except her novels. To her elder sister -alone did she write freely; to her alone she confided her hopes and, if -rumour is true, the one great disappointment of her life; but when Miss -Cassandra Austen grew old, and the growth of her sister's fame made her -suspect that a time might come when strangers would pry and scholars -speculate, she burnt, at great cost to herself, every letter that could -gratify their curiosity, and spared only what she judged too trivial to -be of interest. - -Hence our knowledge of Jane Austen is derived from a little gossip, a -few letters, and her books. As for the gossip, gossip which has survived -its day is never despicable; with a little rearrangement it suits our -purpose admirably. For example, Jane "is not at all pretty and very -prim, unlike a girl of twelve . . . Jane is whimsical and affected," -says little Philadelphia Austen of her cousin. Then we have Mrs. -Mitford, who knew the Austens as girls and thought Jane "the prettiest, -silliest, most affected, husband-hunting butterfly she ever remembers". -Next, there is Miss Mitford's anonymous friend "who visits her now [and] -says that she has stiffened into the most perpendicular, precise, -taciturn piece of 'single blessedness' that ever existed, and that, -until _Pride and Prejudice_ showed what a precious gem was hidden in -that unbending case, she was no more regarded in society than a poker or -firescreen. . . . The case is very different now," the good lady goes on; -"she is still a poker--but a poker of whom everybody is afraid. . . . -A wit, a delineator of character, who does not talk is terrific -indeed!" On the other side, of course, there are the Austens, a race -little given to panegyric of themselves, but nevertheless, they say, her -brothers "were very fond and very proud of her. They were attached to -her by her talents, her virtues, and her engaging manners, and each -loved afterwards to fancy a resemblance in some niece or daughter of his -own to the dear sister Jane, whose perfect equal they yet never expected -to see." Charming but perpendicular, loved at home but feared by -strangers, biting of tongue but tender of heart--these contrasts are by -no means incompatible, and when we turn to the novels we shall find -ourselves stumbling there too over the same complexities in the writer. - -To begin with, that prim little girl whom Philadelphia found so unlike a -child of twelve, whimsical and affected, was soon to be the authoress of -an astonishing and unchildish story, _Love and Friendship_,[9] which, -incredible though it appears, was written at the age of fifteen. It was -written, apparently, to amuse the schoolroom; one of the stories in the -same book is dedicated with mock solemnity to her brother; another is -neatly illustrated with water-colour heads by her sister. There are -jokes which, one feels, were family property; thrusts of satire, which -went home because all little Austens made mock in common of fine ladies -who "sighed and fainted on the sofa". - -Brothers and sisters must have laughed when Jane read out loud her last -hit at the vices which they all abhorred. "I die a martyr to my grief -for the loss of Augustius. One fatal swoon has cost me my life. Beware -of Swoons, Dear Laura. . . . Run mad as often as you chuse, but do not -faint. . . ." And on she rushed, as fast as she could write and quicker -than she could spell, to tell the incredible adventures of Laura and -Sophia, of Philander and Gustavus, of the gentleman who drove a coach -between Edinburgh and Stirling every other day, of the theft of the -fortune that was kept in the table drawer, of the starving mothers and -the sons who acted Macbeth. Undoubtedly, the story must have roused the -schoolroom to uproarious laughter. And yet, nothing is more obvious than -that this girl of fifteen, sitting in her private corner of the common -parlour, was writing not to draw a laugh from brother and sisters, and -not for home consumption. She was writing for everybody, for nobody, for -our age, for her own; in other words, even at that early age Jane Austen -was writing. One hears it in the rhythm and shapeliness and severity of -the sentences. "She was nothing more than a mere good tempered, civil, -and obliging young woman; as such we could scarcely dislike her--she was -only an object of contempt." Such a sentence is meant to outlast the -Christmas holidays. Spirited, easy, full of fun, verging with freedom -upon sheer nonsense,--_Love and Friendship_ is all that, but what is -this note which never merges in the rest, which sounds distinctly and -penetratingly all through the volume? It is the sound of laughter. The -girl of fifteen is laughing, in her corner, at the world. - -Girls of fifteen are always laughing. They laugh when Mr. Binney helps -himself to salt instead of sugar. They almost die of laughing when old -Mrs. Tomkins sits down upon the cat. But they are crying the moment -after. They have no fixed abode from which they see that there is -something eternally laughable in human nature, some quality in men and -women that for ever excites our satire. They do not know that Lady -Greville who snubs, and poor Maria who is snubbed, are permanent -features of every ball-room. But Jane Austen knew it from her birth -upwards. One of those fairies who perch upon cradles must have taken her -a flight through the world directly she was born. When she was laid in -the cradle again she knew not only what the world looked like, but had -already chosen her kingdom. She had agreed that if she might rule over -that territory, she would covet no other. Thus at fifteen she had few -illusions about other people and none about herself. Whatever she writes -is finished and turned and set in its relation, not to the parsonage, -but to the universe. She is impersonal; she is inscrutable. When the -writer, Jane Austen, wrote down in the most remarkable sketch in the -book a little of Lady Greville's conversation, there is no trace of -anger at the snub which the clergyman's daughter, Jane Austen, once -received. Her gaze passes straight to the mark, and we know precisely -where, upon the map of human nature, that mark is. We know because Jane -Austen kept to her compact; she never trespassed beyond her boundaries. -Never, even at the emotional age of fifteen, did she round upon herself -in shame, obliterate a sarcasm in a spasm of compassion, or blur an -outline in a mist of rhapsody. Spasms and rhapsodies, she seems to have -said, pointing with her stick, end _there_; and the boundary line is -perfectly distinct. But she does not deny that moons and mountains and -castles exist--on the other side. She has even one romance of her own. -It is for the Queen of Scots. She really admired her very much. "One of -the first characters in the world," she called her, "a bewitching -Princess whose only friend was then the Duke of Norfolk, and whose only -ones now Mr. Whitaker, Mrs. Lefroy, Mrs. Knight and myself." With these -words her passion is neatly circumscribed, and rounded with a laugh. It -is amusing to remember in what terms the young Brontës wrote, not very -much later, in their northern parsonage, about the Duke of Wellington. - -The prim little girl grew up. She became "the prettiest, silliest, most -affected husband-hunting butterfly" Mrs. Mitford ever remembered, and, -incidentally, the authoress of a novel called _Pride and Prejudice_, -which, written stealthily under cover of a creaking door, lay for many -years unpublished. A little later, it is thought, she began another -story, _The Watsons_, and being for some reason dissatisfied with it, -left it unfinished. Unfinished and unsuccessful, it may throw more light -upon its writer's genius than the polished masterpiece blazing in -universal fame. Her difficulties are more apparent in it, and the method -she took to overcome them less artfully concealed. To begin with, the -stiffness and the bareness of the first chapters prove that she was one -of those writers who lay their facts out rather baldly in the first -version and then go back and back and back and cover them with flesh and -atmosphere. How it would have been done we cannot say--by what -suppressions and insertions and artful devices. But the miracle would -have been accomplished; the dull history of fourteen years of family -life would have been converted into another of those exquisite and -apparently effortless introductions; and we should never have guessed -what pages of preliminary drudgery Jane Austen forced her pen to go -through. Here we perceive that she was no conjuror after all. Like other -writers, she had to create the atmosphere in which her own peculiar -genius could bear fruit. Here she fumbles; here she keeps us waiting. -Suddenly, she has done it; now things can happen as she likes things to -happen. The Edwards' are going to the ball. The Tomlinsons' carriage is -passing; she can tell us that Charles is "being provided with his gloves -and told to keep them on"; Tom Musgrove retreats to a remote corner with -a barrel of oysters and is famously snug. Her genius is freed and -active. At once our senses quicken; we are possessed with the peculiar -intensity which she alone can impart. But of what is it all composed? Of -a ball in a country town; a few couples meeting and taking hands in an -assembly room; a little eating and drinking; and for catastrophe, a boy -being snubbed by one young lady and kindly treated by another. There is -no tragedy and no heroism. Yet for some reason the little scene is -moving out of all proportion to its surface solemnity. We have been made -to see that if Emma acted so in the ball-room, how considerate, how -tender, inspired by what sincerity of feeling she would have shown -herself in those graver crises of life which, as we watch her, come -inevitably before our eyes. Jane Austen is thus a mistress of much -deeper emotion than appears upon the surface. She stimulates us to -supply what is not there. What she offers is, apparently, a trifle, yet -is composed of something that expands in the reader's mind and endows -with the most enduring form of life scenes which are outwardly trivial. -Always the stress is laid upon character. How, we are made to wonder, -will Emma behave when Lord Osborne and Tom Musgrove make their call at -five minutes before three, just as Mary is bringing in the tray and the -knife-case? It is an extremely awkward situation. The young men are -accustomed to much greater refinement. Emma may prove herself ill-bred, -vulgar, a nonentity. The turns and twists of the dialogue keep us on the -tenterhooks of suspense. Our attention is half upon the present moment, -half upon the future. And when, in the end, Emma behaves in such a way -as to vindicate our highest hopes of her, we are moved as if we had been -made witnesses of a matter of the highest importance. Here, indeed, in -this unfinished and in the main inferior story are all the elements of -Jane Austen's greatness. It has the permanent quality of literature. -Think away the surface animation, the likeness to life, and there -remains to provide a deeper pleasure, an exquisite discrimination of -human values. Dismiss this too from the mind and one can dwell with -extreme satisfaction upon the more abstract art which, in the ball-room -scene, so varies the emotions and proportions the parts that it is -possible to enjoy it, as one enjoys poetry, for itself, and not as a -link which carries the story this way and that. - -But the gossip says of Jane Austen that she was perpendicular, precise, -and taciturn--"a poker of whom everybody is afraid". Of this too there -are traces; she could be merciless enough; she is one of the most -consistent satirists in the whole of literature. Those first angular -chapters of _The Watsons_ prove that hers was not a prolific genius; she -had not, like Emily Brontë, merely to open the door to make herself -felt. Humbly and gaily she collected the twigs and straws out of which -the nest was to be made and placed them neatly together. The twigs and -straws were a little dry and a little dusty in themselves. There was the -big house and the little house; a tea party, a dinner party, and an -occasional picnic; life was hedged in by valuable connections and -adequate incomes; by muddy roads, wet feet, and a tendency on the part -of the ladies to get tired; a little money supported it, a little -consequence, and the education commonly enjoyed by upper middle-class -families living in the country. Vice, adventure, passion were left -outside. But of all this prosiness, of all this littleness, she evades -nothing, and nothing is slurred over. Patiently and precisely she tells -us how they "made no stop anywhere till they reached Newbury, where a -comfortable meal, uniting dinner and supper, wound up the enjoyments and -fatigues of the day". Nor does she pay to conventions merely the tribute -of lip homage; she believes in them besides accepting them. When she is -describing a clergyman, like Edmund Bertram, or a sailor, in particular, -she appears debarred by the sanctity of his office from the free use of -her chief tool, the comic genius, and is apt therefore to lapse into -decorous panegyric or matter-of-fact description. But these are -exceptions; for the most part her attitude recalls the anonymous ladies' -ejaculation--"A wit, a delineator of character, who does not talk is -terrific indeed!" She wishes neither to reform nor to annihilate; she is -silent; and that is terrific indeed. One after another she creates her -fools, her prigs, her worldlings, her Mr. Collins', her Sir Walter -Elliotts, her Mrs. Bennetts. She encircles them with the lash of a -whip-like phrase which, as it runs round them, cuts out their -silhouettes for ever. But there they remain; no excuse is found for them -and no mercy shown them. Nothing remains of Julia and Maria Bertram when -she has done with them; Lady Bertram is left "sitting and calling to Pug -and trying to keep him from the flower beds" eternally. A divine justice -is meted out; Dr. Grant, who begins by liking his goose tender, ends by -bringing on "apoplexy and death, by three great institutionary dinners -in one week". Sometimes it seems as if her creatures were born merely to -give Jane Austen the supreme delight of slicing their heads off. She is -satisfied; she is content; she would not alter a hair on anybody's head, -or move one brick or one blade of grass in a world which provides her -with such exquisite delight. - -Nor, indeed, would we. For even if the pangs of outraged vanity, or the -heat of moral wrath, urged us to improve away a world so full of spite, -pettiness, and folly, the task is beyond our powers. People are like -that--the girl of fifteen knew it; the mature woman proves it. At this -very moment some Lady Bertram finds it almost too trying to keep Pug -from the flower beds; she sends Chapman to help Miss Fanny, a little -late. The discrimination is so perfect, the satire so just that, -consistent though it is, it almost escapes our notice. No touch of -pettiness, no hint of spite, rouses us from our contemplation. Delight -strangely mingles with our amusement. Beauty illumines these fools. - -That elusive quality is indeed often made up of very different parts, -which it needs a peculiar genius to bring together. The wit of Jane -Austen has for partner the perfection of her taste. Her fool is a fool, -her snob is a snob, because he departs from the model of sanity and -sense which she has in mind, and conveys to us unmistakably even while -she makes us laugh. Never did any novelist make more use of an -impeccable sense of human values. It is against the disc of an unerring -heart, an unfailing good taste, an almost stern morality, that she shows -up those deviations from kindness, truth, and sincerity which are among -the most delightful things in English literature. She depicts a Mary -Crawford in her mixture of good and bad entirely by this means. She lets -her rattle on against the clergy, or in favour of a baronetage and ten -thousand a year with all the ease and spirit possible; but now and again -she strikes one note of her own, very quietly, but in perfect tune, and -at once all Mary Crawford's chatter, though it continues to amuse, rings -flat. Hence the depth, the beauty, the complexity of her scenes. From -such contrasts there comes a beauty, a solemnity even which are not only -as remarkable as her wit, but an inseparable part of it. In _The -Watsons_ she gives us a foretaste of this power; she makes us wonder why -an ordinary act of kindness, as she describes it, becomes so full of -meaning. In her masterpieces, the same gift is brought to perfection. -Here is nothing out of the way; it is midday in Northamptonshire; a dull -young man is talking to rather a weakly young woman on the stairs as -they go up to dress for dinner, with housemaids passing. But, from -triviality, from commonplace, their words become suddenly full of -meaning, and the moment for both one of the most memorable in their -lives. It fills itself; it shines; it glows; it hangs before us, deep, -trembling, serene for a second; next, the housemaid passes, and this -drop in which all the happiness of life has collected gently subsides -again to become part of the ebb and flow of ordinary existence. - -What more natural then, with this insight into their profundity, than -that Jane Austen should have chosen to write of the trivialities of day -to day existence, of parties, picnics, and country dances? No -"suggestions to alter her style of writing" from the Prince Regent or -Mr. Clarke could tempt her; no romance, no adventure, no politics or -intrigue could hold a candle to life on a country house staircase as she -saw it. Indeed, the Prince Regent and his librarian had run their heads -against a very formidable obstacle; they were trying to tamper with an -incorruptible conscience, to disturb an infallible discretion. The child -who formed her sentences so finely when she was fifteen never ceased to -form them, and never wrote for the Prince Regent or his Librarian, but -for the world at large. She knew exactly what her powers were, and what -material they were fitted to deal with as material should be dealt with -by a writer, whose standard of finality was high. There were impressions -that lay outside her province; emotions that by no stretch or artifice -could be properly coated and covered by her own resources. For example, -she could not make a girl talk enthusiastically of banners and chapels. -She could not throw herself wholeheartedly into a romantic moment. She -had all sorts of devices for evading scenes of passion. Nature and its -beauties she approached in a sidelong way of her own. She describes a -beautiful night without once mentioning the moon. Nevertheless, as we -read the few formal phrases about "the brilliancy of an unclouded night -and the contrast of the deep shade of the woods" the night is at once as -"solemn, and soothing, and lovely" as she tells us, quite simply, that -it was. - -The balance of her gifts was singularly perfect. Among her finished -novels there are no failures, and among her many chapters few that sink -markedly below the level of the others. But, after all, she died at the -age of forty-two. She died at the height of her powers. She was still -subject to those changes which often make the final period of a writer's -career the most interesting of all. Vivacious, irrepressible, gifted -with an invention of great vitality, there can be no doubt that she -would have written more, had she lived, and it is tempting to consider -whether she would not have written differently. The boundaries were -marked; moons, mountains, and castles lay on the other side. But was she -not sometimes tempted to trespass for a minute? Was she not beginning, -in her own gay and brilliant manner, to contemplate a little voyage of -discovery? - -Let us take _Persuasion_, the last completed novel, and look by its -light at the books she might have written had she lived. There is a -peculiar beauty and a peculiar dullness in _Persuasion_. The dullness is -that which so often marks the transition stage between two different -periods. The writer is a little bored. She has grown too familiar with -the ways of her world; she no longer notes them freshly. There is an -asperity in her comedy which suggests that she has almost ceased to be -amused by the vanities of a Sir Walter or the snobbery of a Miss -Elliott. The satire is harsh, and the comedy crude. She is no longer so -freshly aware of the amusements of daily life. Her mind is not -altogether on her object. But, while we feel that Jane Austen has done -this before, and done it better, we also feel that she is trying to do -something which she has never yet attempted. There is a new element in -_Persuasion_, the quality, perhaps, that made Dr. Whewell fire up and -insist that it was "the most beautiful of her works". She is beginning -to discover that the world is larger, more mysterious, and more romantic -than she had supposed. We feel it to be true of herself when she says of -Anne: "She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned -romance as she grew older--the natural sequel of an unnatural -beginning". She dwells frequently upon the beauty and the melancholy of -nature, upon the autumn where she had been wont to dwell upon the -spring. She talks of the "influence so sweet and so sad of autumnal -months in the country". She marks "the tawny leaves and withered -hedges". "One does not love a place the less because one has suffered in -it", she observes. But it is not only in a new sensibility to nature -that we detect the change. Her attitude to life itself is altered. She -is seeing it, for the greater part of the book, through the eyes of a -woman who, unhappy herself, has a special sympathy for the happiness and -unhappiness of others, which, until the very end, she is forced to -comment upon in silence. Therefore the observation is less of facts and -more of feelings than is usual. There is an expressed emotion in the -scene at the concert and in the famous talk about woman's constancy -which proves not merely the biographical fact that Jane Austen had -loved, but the æsthetic fact that she was no longer afraid to say so. -Experience, when it was of a serious kind, had to sink very deep, and to -be thoroughly disinfected by the passage of time, before she allowed -herself to deal with it in fiction. But now, in 1817, she was ready. -Outwardly, too, in her circumstances, a change was imminent. Her fame -had grown very slowly. "I doubt", wrote Mr. Austen Leigh, "whether it -would be possible to mention any other author of note whose personal -obscurity was so complete." Had she lived a few more years only, all -that would have been altered. She would have stayed in London, dined -out, lunched out, met famous people, made new friends, read, travelled, -and carried back to the quiet country cottage a hoard of observations to -feast upon at leisure. - -And what effect would all this have had upon the six novels that Jane -Austen did not write? She would not have written of crime, of passion, -or of adventure. She would not have been rushed by the importunity of -publishers or the flattery of friends into slovenliness or insincerity. -But she would have known more. Her sense of security would have been -shaken. Her comedy would have suffered. She would have trusted less -(this is already perceptible in _Persuasion_) to dialogue and more to -reflection to give us a knowledge of her characters. Those marvellous -little speeches which sum up, in a few minutes' chatter, all that we -need in order to know an Admiral Croft or a Mrs. Musgrove for ever, that -shorthand, hit-or-miss method which contains chapters of analysis and -psychology, would have become too crude to hold all that she now -perceived of the complexity of human nature. She would have devised a -method, clear and composed as ever, but deeper and more suggestive, for -conveying not only what people say, but what they leave unsaid; not only -what they are, but what life is. She would have stood farther away from -her characters, and seen them more as a group, less as individuals. Her -satire, while it played less incessantly, would have been more stringent -and severe. She would have been the forerunner of Henry James and of -Proust--but enough. Vain are these speculations: the most perfect artist -among women, the writer whose books are immortal, died "just as she was -beginning to feel confidence in her own success". - - -[Footnote 9: _Love and Friendship_, Chatto and Windus.] - - - - -_Modern Fiction_ - - -In making any survey, even the freest and loosest, of modern fiction it -is difficult not to take it for granted that the modern practice of the -art is somehow an improvement upon the old. With their simple tools and -primitive materials, it might be said. Fielding did well and Jane Austen -even better, but compare their opportunities with ours! Their -masterpieces certainly have a strange air of simplicity. And yet the -analogy between literature and the process, to choose an example, of -making motor cars scarcely holds good beyond the first glance. It is -doubtful whether in the course of the centuries, though we have learnt -much about making machines, we have learnt anything about making -literature. We do not come to write better; all that we can be said to -do is to keep moving, now a little in this direction, now in that, but -with a circular tendency should the whole course of the track be viewed -from a sufficiently lofty pinnacle. It need scarcely be said that we -make no claim to stand, even momentarily, upon that vantage ground. On -the flat, in the crowd, half blind with dust, we look back with envy to -those happier warriors, whose battle is won and whose achievements wear -so serene an air of accomplishment that we can scarcely refrain from -whispering that the fight was not so fierce for them as for us. It is -for the historian of literature to decide; for him to say if we are now -beginning or ending or standing in the middle of a great period of prose -fiction, for down in the plain little is visible. We only know that -certain gratitudes and hostilities inspire us; that certain paths seem -to lead to fertile land, others to the dust and the desert; and of this -perhaps it may be worth while to attempt some account. - -Our quarrel, then, is not with the classics, and if we speak of -quarrelling with Mr. Wells, Mr. Bennett, and Mr. Galsworthy it is partly -that by the mere fact of their existence in the flesh their work has a -living, breathing, every day imperfection which bids us take what -liberties with it we choose. But it is also true that, while we thank -them for a thousand gifts, we reserve our unconditional gratitude for -Mr. Hardy, for Mr. Conrad, and in a much lesser degree for the Mr. -Hudson, of _The Purple Land, Green Mansions_, and _Far Away and Long -Ago_. Mr. Wells, Mr. Bennett, and Mr. Galsworthy have excited so many -hopes and disappointed them so persistently that our gratitude largely -takes the form of thanking them for having shown us what they might have -done but have not done; what we certainly could not do, but as -certainly, perhaps, do not wish to do. No single phrase will sum up the -charge or grievance which we have to bring against a mass of work so -large in its volume and embodying so many qualities, both admirable and -the reverse. If we tried to formulate our meaning in one word we should -say that these three writers are materialists. It is because they are -concerned not with the spirit but with the body that they have -disappointed us, and left us with the feeling that the sooner English -fiction turns its back upon them, as politely as may be, and marches, if -only into the desert, the better for its soul. Naturally, no single word -reaches the centre of three separate targets. In the case of Mr. Wells -it falls notably wide of the mark. And yet even with him it indicates to -our thinking the fatal alloy in his genius, the great clod of clay that -has got itself mixed up with the purity of his inspiration. But Mr. -Bennett is perhaps the worst culprit of the three, inasmuch as he is by -far the best workman. He can make a book so well constructed and solid -in its craftsmanship that it is difficult for the most exacting of -critics to see through what chink or crevice decay can creep in. There -is not so much as a draught between the frames of the windows, or a -crack in the boards. And yet--if life should refuse to live there? That -is a risk which the creator of _The Old Wives' Tale_, George Cannon, -Edwin Clayhanger, and hosts of other figures, may well claim to have -surmounted. His characters live abundantly, even unexpectedly, but it -remains to ask how do they live, and what do they live for? More and -more they seem to us, deserting even the well-built villa in the Five -Towns, to spend their time in some softly padded first-class railway -carriage, pressing bells and buttons innumerable; and the destiny to -which they travel so luxuriously becomes more and more unquestionably an -eternity of bliss spent in the very best hotel in Brighton. It can -scarcely be said of Mr. Wells that he is a materialist in the sense that -he takes too much delight in the solidity of his fabric. His mind is too -generous in its sympathies to allow him to spend much time in making -things shipshape and substantial. He is a materialist from sheer -goodness of heart, taking upon his shoulders the work that ought to have -been discharged by Government officials, and in the plethora of his -ideas and facts scarcely having leisure to realise, or forgetting to -think important, the crudity and coarseness of his human beings. Yet -what more damaging criticism can there be both of his earth and of his -Heaven than that they are to be inhabited here and hereafter by his -Joans and his Peters? Does not the inferiority of their natures tarnish -whatever institutions and ideals may be provided for them by the -generosity of their creator? Nor, profoundly though we respect the -integrity and humanity of Mr. Galsworthy, shall we find what we seek in -his pages. - -If we fasten, then, one label on all these books, on which is one word -materialists, we mean by it that they write of unimportant things; that -they spend immense skill and immense industry making the trivial and the -transitory appear the true and the enduring. - -We have to admit that we are exacting, and, further, that we find it -difficult to justify our discontent by explaining what it is that we -exact. We frame our question differently at different times. But it -reappears most persistently as we drop the finished novel on the crest -of a sigh--Is it worth while? What is the point of it all? Can it be -that owing to one of those little deviations which the human spirit -seems to make from time to time Mr. Bennett has come down with his -magnificent apparatus for catching life just an inch or two on the wrong -side? Life escapes; and perhaps without life nothing else is worth -while. It is a confession of vagueness to have to make use of such a -figure as this, but we scarcely better the matter by speaking, as -critics are prone to do, of reality. Admitting the vagueness which -afflicts all criticism of novels, let us hazard the opinion that for us -at this moment the form of fiction most in vogue more often misses than -secures the thing we seek. Whether we call it life or spirit, truth or -reality, this, the essential thing, has moved off, or on, and refuses to -be contained any longer in such ill-fitting vestments as we provide. -Nevertheless, we go on perseveringly, conscientiously, constructing our -two and thirty chapters after a design which more and more ceases to -resemble the vision in our minds. So much of the enormous labour of -proving the solidity, the likeness to life, of the story is not merely -labour thrown away but labour misplaced to the extent of obscuring and -blotting out the light of the conception. The writer seems constrained, -not by his own free will but by some powerful and unscrupulous tyrant -who has him in thrall to provide a plot, to provide comedy, tragedy, -love, interest, and an air of probability embalming the whole so -impeccable that if all his figures were to come to life they would find -themselves dressed down to the last button of their coats in the fashion -of the hour. The tyrant is obeyed; the novel is done to a turn. But -sometimes, more and more often as time goes by, we suspect a momentary -doubt, a spasm of rebellion, as the pages fill themselves in the -customary way. Is life like this? Must novels be like this? - -Look within and life, it seems, is very far from being "like this". -Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind -receives a myriad impressions--trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or -engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an -incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape -themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls -differently from of old; the moment of importance came not here but -there; so that if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could -write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon -his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no -comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted -style, and perhaps not a single button sewn on as the Bond Street -tailors would have it. Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically -arranged; but a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding -us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not the task of -the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed -spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little -mixture of the alien and external as possible? We are not pleading -merely for courage and sincerity; we are suggesting that the proper -stuff of fiction is a little other than custom would have us believe it. - -It is, at any rate, in some such fashion as this that we seek to define -the quality which distinguishes the work of several young writers, among -whom Mr. James Joyce is the most notable, from that of their -predecessors. They attempt to come closer to life, and to preserve more -sincerely and exactly what interests and moves them, even if to do so -they must discard most of the conventions which are commonly observed by -the novelist. Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in the -order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however disconnected -and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident scores upon -the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life exists more -fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is commonly thought -small. Any one who has read _The Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man_ -or, what promises to be a far more interesting work, _Ulysses_,[10] now -appearing in the _Little Review_, will have hazarded some theory of this -nature as to Mr. Joyce's intention. On our part, with such a fragment -before us, it is hazarded rather than affirmed; but whatever the -intention of the whole there can be no question but that it is of the -utmost sincerity and that the result, difficult or unpleasant as we may -judge it, is undeniably important. In contrast with those whom we have -called materialists Mr. Joyce is spiritual; he is concerned at all costs -to reveal the flickerings of that innermost flame which flashes its -messages through the brain, and in order to preserve it he disregards -with complete courage whatever seems to him adventitious, whether it be -probability, or coherence or any other of these signposts which for -generations have served to support the imagination of a reader when -called upon to imagine what he can neither touch nor see. The scene in -the cemetery, for instance, with its brilliancy, its sordidity, its -incoherence, its sudden lightning flashes of significance, does -undoubtedly come so close to the quick of the mind that, on a first -reading at any rate, it is difficult not to acclaim a masterpiece. If we -want life itself here, surely we have it. Indeed, we find ourselves -fumbling rather awkwardly if we try to say what else we wish, and for -what reason a work of such originality yet fails to compare, for we must -take high examples, with _Youth_ or _The Mayor of Casterbridge_. It -fails because of the comparative poverty of the writer's mind, we might -say simply and have done with it. But it is possible to press a little -further and wonder whether we may not refer our sense of being in a -bright yet narrow room, confined and shut in, rather than enlarged and -set free, to some limitation imposed by the method as well as by the -mind. Is it the method that inhibits the creative power? Is it due to -the method that we feel neither jovial nor magnanimous, but centred in a -self which, in spite of its tremor of susceptibility, never embraces or -creates what is outside itself and beyond? Does the emphasis laid, -perhaps didactically, upon indecency, contribute to the effect of -something angular and isolated? Or is it merely that in any effort of -such originality it is much easier, for contemporaries especially, to -feel what it lacks than to name what it gives? In any case it is a -mistake to stand outside examining "methods". Any method is right, every -method is right, that expresses what we wish to express, if we are -writers; that brings us closer to the novelist's intention if we are -readers. This method has the merit of bringing us closer to what we were -prepared to call life itself; did not the reading of _Ulysses_ suggest -how much of life is excluded or ignored, and did it not come with a -shock to open _Tristram Shandy_ or even _Pendennis_ and be by them -convinced that there are not only other aspects of life, but more -important ones into the bargain. - -However this may be, the problem before the novelist at present, as we -suppose it to have been in the past, is to contrive means of being free -to set down what he chooses. He has to have the courage to say that what -interests him is no longer "this" but "that": out of "that" alone must -he construct his work. For the moderns "that", the point of interest, -lies very likely in the dark places of psychology. At once, therefore, -the accent falls a little differently; the emphasis is upon something -hitherto ignored; at once a different outline of form becomes necessary, -difficult for us to grasp, incomprehensible to our predecessors. No one -but a modern, perhaps no one but a Russian, would have felt the interest -of the situation which Tchekov has made into the short story which he -calls "Gusev". Some Russian soldiers lie ill on board a ship which is -taking them back to Russia. We are given a few scraps of their talk and -some of their thoughts; then one of them dies and is carried away; the -talk goes on among the others for a time, until Gusev himself dies, and -looking "like a carrot or a radish" is thrown overboard. The emphasis is -laid upon such unexpected places that at first it seems as if there were -no emphasis at all; and then, as the eyes accustom themselves to -twilight and discern the shapes of things in a room we see how complete -the story is, how profound, and how truly in obedience to his vision -Tchekov has chosen this, that, and the other, and placed them together -to compose something new. But it is impossible to say "this is comic", -or "that is tragic", nor are we certain, since short stories, we have -been taught, should be brief and conclusive, whether this, which is -vague and inconclusive, should be called a short story at all. - -The most elementary remarks upon modern English fiction can hardly avoid -some mention of the Russian influence, and if the Russians are mentioned -one runs the risk of feeling that to write of any fiction save theirs is -waste of time. If we want understanding of the soul and heart where else -shall we find it of comparable profundity? If we are sick of our own -materialism the least considerable of their novelists has by right of -birth a natural reverence for the human spirit. "Learn to make yourself -akin to people. . . . But let this sympathy be not with the mind--for it -is easy with the mind--but with the heart, with love towards them." In -every great Russian writer we seem to discern the features of a saint, -if sympathy for the sufferings of others, love towards them, endeavour -to reach some goal worthy of the most exacting demands of the spirit -constitute saintliness. It is the saint in them which confounds us with -a feeling of our own irreligious triviality, and turns so many of our -famous novels to tinsel and trickery. The conclusions of the Russian -mind, thus comprehensive and compassionate, are inevitably, perhaps, of -the utmost sadness. More accurately indeed we might speak of the -inconclusiveness of the Russian mind. It is the sense that there is no -answer, that if honestly examined life presents question after question -which must be left to sound on and on after the story is over in -hopeless interrogation that fills us with a deep, and finally it may be -with a resentful, despair. They are right perhaps; unquestionably they -see further than we do and without our gross impediments of vision. But -perhaps we see something that escapes them, or why should this voice of -protest mix itself with our gloom? The voice of protest is the voice of -another and an ancient civilisation which seems to have bred in us the -instinct to enjoy and fight rather than to suffer and understand. -English fiction from Sterne to Meredith bears witness to our natural -delight in humour and comedy, in the beauty of earth, in the activities -of the intellect, and in the splendour of the body. But any deductions -that we may draw from the comparison of two fictions so immeasurably far -apart are futile save indeed as they flood us with a view of the -infinite possibilities of the art and remind us that there is no limit -to the horizon, and that nothing--no "method", no experiment, even of -the wildest--is forbidden, but only falsity and pretence. "The proper -stuff of fiction" does not exist; everything is the proper stuff of -fiction, every feeling, every thought; every quality of brain and spirit -is drawn upon; no perception comes amiss. And if we can imagine the art -of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly -bid us break her and bully her, as well as honour and love her, for so -her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured. - - -[Footnote 10: Written April 1919.] - - - - -_Jane Eyre and -Wuthering Heights_[11] - - -Of the hundred years that have passed since Charlotte Brontë was born, -she, the centre now of so much legend, devotion, and literature, lived -but thirty-nine. It is strange to reflect how different those legends -might have been had her life reached the ordinary human span. She might -have become, like some of her famous contemporaries, a figure familiarly -met with in London and elsewhere, the subject of pictures and anecdotes -innumerable, the writer of many novels, of memoirs possibly, removed -from us well within the memory of the middle-aged in all the splendour -of established fame. She might have been wealthy, she might have been -prosperous. But it is not so. When we think of her we have to imagine -some one who had no lot in our modern world; we have to cast our minds -back to the 'fifties of the last century, to a remote parsonage upon the -wild Yorkshire moors. In that parsonage, and on those moors, unhappy and -lonely, in her poverty and her exaltation, she remains for ever. - -These circumstances, as they affected her character, may have left their -traces on her work. A novelist, we reflect, is bound to build up his -structure with much very perishable material which begins by lending it -reality and ends by cumbering it with rubbish. As we open _Jane Eyre_ -once more we cannot stifle the suspicion that we shall find her world of -imagination as antiquated, mid-Victorian, and out of date as the -parsonage on the moor, a place only to be visited by the curious, only -preserved by the pious. So we open _Jane Eyre_; and in two pages every -doubt is swept clean from our minds. - - -Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left -were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from -the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of -my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered -a pale blank of mist and cloud; near, a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat -shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and -lamentable blast. - - -There is nothing there more perishable than the moor itself, or more -subject to the sway of fashion than the "long and lamentable blast". Nor -is this exhilaration short-lived. It rushes us through the entire -volume, without giving us time to think, without letting us lift our -eyes from the page. So intense is our absorption that if some one moves -in the room the movement seems to take place not there but up in -Yorkshire. The writer has us by the hand, forces us along her road, -makes us see what she sees, never leaves us for a moment or allows us to -forget her.[12] At the end we are steeped through and through with the -genius, the vehemence, the indignation of Charlotte Brontë. Remarkable -faces, figures of strong outline and gnarled feature have flashed upon -us in passing; but it is through her eyes that we have seen them. Once -she is gone, we seek for them in vain. Think of Rochester and we have to -think of Jane Eyre. Think of the moor, and again, there is Jane Eyre. -Think of the drawing-room, even, those "white carpets on which seemed -laid brilliant garlands of flowers", that "pale Parian mantelpiece" with -its Bohemia glass of "ruby red" and the "general blending of snow and -fire"--what is all that except Jane Eyre? - -The drawbacks of being Jane Eyre are not far to seek. Always to be a -governess and always to be in love is a serious limitation in a world -which is full, after all, of people who are neither one nor the other. -The characters of a Jane Austen or of a Tolstoi have a million facets -compared with these. They live and are complex by means of their effect -upon many different people who serve to mirror them in the round. They -move hither and thither whether their creators watch them or not, and -the world in which they live seems to us an independent world which we -can visit, now that they have created it, by ourselves. Thomas Hardy is -more akin to Charlotte Brontë in the power of his personality and the -narrowness of his vision. But the differences are vast. As we read _Jude -the Obscure_ we are not rushed to a finish; we brood and ponder and -drift away from the text in plethoric trains of thought which build up -round the characters an atmosphere of question and suggestion of which -they are themselves, as often as not, unconscious. Simple peasants as -they are, we are forced to confront them with destinies and questionings -of the hugest import, so that often it seems as if the most important -characters in a Hardy novel are those which have no names. Of this -power, of this speculative curiosity, Charlotte Brontë has no trace. -She does not attempt to solve the problems of human life; she is even -unaware that such problems exist; all her force, and it is the more -tremendous for being constricted, goes into the assertion, "I love", "I -hate", "I suffer". - -For the self-centred and self-limited writers have a power denied the -more catholic and broad-minded. Their impressions are close packed and -strongly stamped between their narrow walls. Nothing issues from their -minds which has not been marked with their own impress. They learn -little from other writers, and what they adopt they cannot assimilate. -Both Hardy and Charlotte Brontë appear to have founded their styles -upon a stiff and decorous journalism. The staple of their prose is -awkward and unyielding. But both with labour and the most obstinate -integrity by thinking every thought until it has subdued words to -itself, have forged for themselves a prose which takes the mould of -their minds entire; which has, into the bargain, a beauty, a power, a -swiftness of its own. Charlotte Brontë, at least, owed nothing to the -reading of many books. She never learnt the smoothness of the -professional writer, or acquired his ability to stuff and sway his -language as he chooses. "I could never rest in communication with -strong, discreet, and refined minds, whether male or female," she -writes, as any leader-writer in a provincial journal might have written; -but gathering fire and speed goes on in her own authentic voice "till I -had passed the outworks of conventional reserve and crossed the -threshold of confidence, and won a place by their hearts' very -hearthstone". It is there that she takes her seat; it is the red and -fitful glow of the heart's fire which illumines her page. In other -words, we read Charlotte Brontë not for exquisite observation of -character--her characters are vigorous and elementary; not for -comedy--hers is grim and crude; not for a philosophic view of life--hers -is that of a country parson's daughter; but for her poetry. Probably -that is so with all writers who have, as she has, an overpowering -personality, who, as we should say in real life, have only to open the -door to make themselves felt. There is in them some untamed ferocity -perpetually at war with the accepted order of things which makes them -desire to create instantly rather than to observe patiently. This very -ardour, rejecting half shades and other minor impediments, wings its way -past the daily conduct of ordinary people and allies itself with their -more inarticulate passions. It makes them poets, or, if they choose to -write in prose, intolerant of its restrictions. Hence it is that both -Emily and Charlotte are always invoking the help of nature. They both -feel the need of some more powerful symbol of the vast and slumbering -passions in human nature than words or actions can convey. It is with a -description of a storm that Charlotte ends her finest novel _Villette_. -"The skies hang full and dark--a wrack sails from the west; the clouds -cast themselves into strange forms." So she calls in nature to describe -a state of mind which could not otherwise be expressed. But neither of -the sisters observed nature accurately as Dorothy Wordsworth observed -it, or painted it minutely as Tennyson painted it. They seized those -aspects of the earth which were most akin to what they themselves felt -or imputed to their characters, and so their storms, their moors, their -lovely spaces of summer weather are not ornaments applied to decorate a -dull page or display the writer's powers of observation--they carry on -the emotion and light up the meaning of the book. - -The meaning of a book, which lies so often apart from what happens and -what is said and consists rather in some connection which things in -themselves different have had for the writer, is necessarily hard to -grasp. Especially this is so when, like the Brontës, the writer is -poetic, and his meaning inseparable from his language, and itself rather -a mood than a particular observation. _Wuthering Heights_ is a more -difficult book to understand than _Jane Eyre_, because Emily was a -greater poet than Charlotte. When Charlotte wrote she said with -eloquence and splendour and passion "I love", "I hate", "I suffer". Her -experience, though more intense, is on a level with our own. But there -is no "I" in _Wuthering Heights_. There are no governesses. There are no -employers. There is love, but it is not the love of men and women. Emily -was inspired by some more general conception. The impulse which urged -her to create was not her own suffering or her own injuries. She looked -out upon a world cleft into gigantic disorder and felt within her the -power to unite it in a book. That gigantic ambition is to be felt -throughout the novel--a struggle, half thwarted but of superb -conviction, to say something through the mouths of her characters which -is not merely "I love" or "I hate", but "we, the whole human race" and -"you, the eternal powers . . ." the sentence remains unfinished. It is -not strange that it should be so; rather it is astonishing that she can -make us feel what she had it in her to say at all. It surges up in the -half-articulate words of Catherine Earnshaw, "If all else perished and -_he_ remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained and -he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger; I -should not seem part of it". It breaks out again in the presence of the -dead. "I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel -an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter--the eternity they -have entered--where life is boundless in its duration, and love in its -sympathy and joy in its fulness." It is this suggestion of power -underlying the apparitions of human nature, and lifting them up into the -presence of greatness that gives the book its huge stature among other -novels. But it was not enough for Emily Brontë to write a few lyrics, -to utter a cry, to express a creed. In her poems she did this once and -for all, and her poems will perhaps outlast her novel. But she was -novelist as well as poet. She must take upon herself a more laborious -and a more ungrateful task. She must face the fact of other existences, -grapple with the mechanism of external things, build up, in recognisable -shape, farms and houses and report the speeches of men and women who -existed independently of herself. And so we reach these summits of -emotion not by rant or rhapsody but by hearing a girl sing old songs to -herself as she rocks in the branches of a tree; by watching the moor -sheep crop the turf; by listening to the soft wind breathing through the -grass. The life at the farm with all its absurdities and its -improbability is laid open to us. We are given every opportunity of -comparing _Wuthering Heights_ with a real farm and Heathcliff with a -real man. How, we are allowed to ask, can there be truth or insight or -the finer shades of emotion in men and women who so little resemble what -we have seen ourselves? But even as we ask it we see in Heathcliff the -brother that a sister of genius might have seen; he is impossible we -say, but nevertheless no boy in literature has so vivid an existence as -his. So it is with the two Catherines; never could women feel as they do -or act in their manner, we say. All the same, they are the most lovable -women in English fiction. It is as if she could tear up all that we know -human beings by, and fill these unrecognisable transparences with such a -gust of life that they transcend reality. Hers, then, is the rarest of -all powers. She could free life from its dependence on facts; with a few -touches indicate the spirit of a face so that it needs no body; by -speaking of the moor make the wind blow and the thunder roar. - - -[Footnote 11: Written in 1916.] - -[Footnote 12: Charlotte and Emily Brontë had much the same sense of -colour. ". . . we saw--ah! it was beautiful--a splendid place carpeted -with crimson, and crimson-covered chairs and tables, and a pure white -ceiling bordered by gold, a shower of glass drops hanging in silver -chains from the centre, and shimmering with little soft tapers" -(_Wuthering Heights_). Yet it was merely a very pretty drawing-room, and -within it a boudoir, both spread with white carpets, on which seemed -laid brilliant garlands of flowers; both ceiled with snowy mouldings of -white grapes and vine leaves, beneath which glowed in rich contrast -crimson couches and ottomans; while the ornaments on the pale Parian -mantelpiece were of sparkling Bohemia glass, ruby red; and between the -windows large mirrors repeated the general blending of snow and fire.] - - - - -_George Eliot_ - - -To read George Eliot attentively is to become aware how little one knows -about her. It is also to become aware of the credulity, not very -creditable to one's insight, with which, half consciously and partly -maliciously, one had accepted the late Victorian version of a deluded -woman who held phantom sway over subjects even more deluded than -herself. At what moment, and by what means her spell was broken it is -difficult to ascertain. Some people attribute it to the publication of -her _Life_. Perhaps George Meredith, with his phrase about the -"mercurial little showman" and the "errant woman" on the daïs, gave -point and poison to the arrows of thousands incapable of aiming them so -accurately, but delighted to let fly. She became one of the butts for -youth to laugh at, the convenient symbol of a group of serious people -who were all guilty of the same idolatry and could be dismissed with the -same scorn. Lord Acton had said that she was greater than Dante; Herbert -Spencer exempted her novels, as if they were not novels, when he banned -all fiction from the London Library. She was the pride and paragon of -her sex. Moreover, her private record was not more alluring than her -public. Asked to describe an afternoon at the Priory, the story-teller -always intimated that the memory of those serious Sunday afternoons had -come to tickle his sense of humour. He had been so much alarmed by the -grave lady in her low chair; he had been so anxious to say the -intelligent thing. Certainly, the talk had been very serious, as a note -in the fine clear hand of the great novelist bore witness. It was dated -on the Monday morning, and she accused herself of having spoken without -due forethought of Marivaux when she meant another; but no doubt, she -said, her listener had already supplied the correction. Still, the -memory of talking about Marivaux to George Eliot on a Sunday afternoon -was not a romantic memory. It had faded with the passage of the years. -It had not become picturesque. - -Indeed, one cannot escape the conviction that the long, heavy face with -its expression of serious and sullen and almost equine power has stamped -itself depressingly upon the minds of people who remember George Eliot, -so that it looks out upon them from her pages. Mr. Gosse has lately -described her as he saw her driving through London in a victoria-- - - -a large, thick-set sybil, dreamy and immobile, whose massive features, -somewhat grim when seen in profile, were incongruously bordered by a -hat, always in the height of Paris fashion, which in those days commonly -included an immense ostrich feather. - - -Lady Ritchie, with equal skill, has left a more intimate indoor -portrait: - - -She sat by the fire in a beautiful black satin gown, with a green shaded -lamp on the table beside her, where I saw German books lying and -pamphlets and ivory paper-cutters. She was very quiet and noble, with -two steady little eyes and a sweet voice. As I looked I felt her to be a -friend, not exactly a personal friend, but a good and benevolent -impulse. - - -A scrap of her talk is preserved. "We ought to respect our influence," -she said. "We know by our own experience how very much others affect our -lives, and we must remember that we in turn must have the same effect -upon others." Jealously treasured, committed to memory, one can imagine -recalling the scene, repeating the words, thirty years later and -suddenly, for the first time, bursting into laughter. - -In all these records one feels that the recorder, even when he was in -the actual presence, kept his distance and kept his head, and never read -the novels in later years with the light of a vivid, or puzzling, or -beautiful personality dazzling in his eyes. In fiction, where so much of -personality is revealed, the absence of charm is a great lack; and her -critics, who have been, of course, mostly of the opposite sex, have -resented, half consciously perhaps, her deficiency in a quality which is -held to be supremely desirable in women. George Eliot was not charming; -she was not strongly feminine; she had none of those eccentricities and -inequalities of temper which give to so many artists the endearing -simplicity of children. One feels that to most people, as to Lady -Ritchie, she was "not exactly a personal friend, but a good and -benevolent impulse". But if we consider these portraits more closely we -shall find that they are all the portraits of an elderly celebrated -woman, dressed in black satin, driving in her victoria, a woman who has -been through her struggle and issued from it with a profound desire to -be of use to others, but with no wish for intimacy, save with the little -circle who had known her in the days of her youth. We know very little -about the days of her youth; but we do know that the culture, the -philosophy, the fame, and the influence were all built upon a very -humble foundation--she was the grand-daughter of a carpenter. - -The first volume of her life is a singularly depressing record. In it we -see her raising herself with groans and struggles from the intolerable -boredom of petty provincial society (her father had risen in the world -and become more middle class, but less picturesque) to be the assistant -editor of a highly intellectual London review, and the esteemed -companion of Herbert Spencer. The stages are painful as she reveals them -in the sad soliloquy in which Mr. Cross condemned her to tell the story -of her life. Marked in early youth as one "sure to get something up very -soon in the way of a clothing club", she proceeded to raise funds for -restoring a church by making a chart of ecclesiastical history; and that -was followed by a loss of faith which so disturbed her father that he -refused to live with her. Next came the struggle with the translation of -Strauss, which, dismal and "soul-stupefying" in itself, can scarcely -have been made less so by the usual feminine tasks of ordering a -household and nursing a dying father, and the distressing conviction, to -one so dependent upon affection, that by becoming a blue-stocking she -was forfeiting her brother's respect. "I used to go about like an owl," -she said, "to the great disgust of my brother." "Poor thing," wrote a -friend who saw her toiling through Strauss with a statue of the risen -Christ in front of her, "I do pity her sometimes, with her pale sickly -face and dreadful headaches, and anxiety, too, about her father." Yet, -though we cannot read the story without a strong desire that the stages -of her pilgrimage might have been made, if not more easy, at least more -beautiful, there is a dogged determination in her advance upon the -citadel of culture which raises it above our pity. Her development was -very slow and very awkward, but it had the irresistible impetus behind -it of a deep-seated and noble ambition. Every obstacle at length was -thrust from her path. She knew every one. She read everything. Her -astonishing intellectual vitality had triumphed. Youth was over, but -youth had been full of suffering. Then, at the age of thirty-five, at -the height of her powers, and in the fullness of her freedom, she made -the decision which was of such profound moment to her and still matters -even to us, and went to Weimar, alone with George Henry Lewes. - -The books which followed so soon after her union testify in the fullest -manner to the great liberation which had come to her with personal -happiness. In themselves they provide us with a plentiful feast. Yet at -the threshold of her literary career one may find in some of the -circumstances of her life influences that turned her mind to the past, -to the country village, to the quiet and beauty and simplicity of -childish memories and away from herself and the present. We understand -how it was that her first book was _Scenes of Clerical Life_, and not -_Middlemarch_. Her union with Lewes had surrounded her with affection, -but in view of the circumstances and of the conventions it had also -isolated her. "I wish it to be understood," she wrote in 1857, "that I -should never invite any one to come and see me who did not ask for the -invitation." She had been "cut off from what is called the world", she -said later, but she did not regret it. By becoming thus marked, first by -circumstances and later, inevitably, by her fame, she lost the power to -move on equal terms unnoted among her kind; and the loss for a novelist -was serious. Still, basking in the light and sunshine of _Scenes of -Clerical Life_, feeling the large mature mind spreading itself with a -luxurious sense of freedom in the world of her "remotest past", to speak -of loss seems inappropriate. Everything to such a mind was gain. All -experience filtered down through layer after layer of perception and -reflection, enriching and nourishing. The utmost we can say, in -qualifying her attitude towards fiction by what little we know of her -life, is that she had taken to heart certain lessons not usually learnt -early, if learnt at all, among which, perhaps, the most branded upon her -was the melancholy virtue of tolerance; her sympathies are with the -everyday lot, and play most happily in dwelling upon the homespun of -ordinary joys and sorrows. She has none of that romantic intensity which -is connected with a sense of one's own individuality, unsated and -unsubdued, cutting its shape sharply upon the background of the world. -What were the loves and sorrows of a snuffy old clergyman, dreaming over -his whisky, to the fiery egotism of Jane Eyre? The beauty of those first -books. _Scenes of Clerical Life, Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss_, is -very great. It is impossible to estimate the merit of the Poysers, the -Dodsons, the Gilfils, the Bartons, and the rest with all their -surroundings and dependencies, because they have put on flesh and blood -and we move among them, now bored, now sympathetic, but always with that -unquestioning acceptance of all that they say and do, which we accord to -the great originals only. The flood of memory and humour which she pours -so spontaneously into one figure, one scene after another, until the -whole fabric of ancient rural England is revived, has so much in common -with a natural process that it leaves us with little consciousness that -there is anything to criticise. We accept; we feel the delicious warmth -and release of spirit which the great creative writers alone procure for -us. As one comes back to the books after years of absence they pour out, -even against our expectation, the same store of energy and heat, so that -we want more than anything to idle in the warmth as in the sun beating -down from the red orchard wall. If there is an element of unthinking -abandonment in thus submitting to the humours of Midland farmers and -their wives, that, too, is right in the circumstances. We scarcely wish -to analyse what we feel to be so large and deeply human. And when we -consider how distant in time the world of Shepperton and Hayslope is, -and how remote the minds of farmer and agricultural labourers from those -of most of George Eliot's readers, we can only attribute the ease and -pleasure with which we ramble from house to smithy, from cottage parlour -to rectory garden, to the fact that George Eliot makes us share their -lives, not in a spirit of condescension or of curiosity, but in a spirit -of sympathy. She is no satirist. The movement of her mind was too slow -and cumbersome to lend itself to comedy. But she gathers in her large -grasp a great bunch of the main elements of human nature and groups them -loosely together with a tolerant and wholesome understanding which, as -one finds upon re-reading, has not only kept her figures fresh and free, -but has given them an unexpected hold upon our laughter and tears. There -is the famous Mrs. Poyser. It would have been easy to work her -idiosyncrasies to death, and, as it is, perhaps, George Eliot gets her -laugh in the same place a little too often. But memory, after the book -is shut, brings out, as sometimes in real life, the details and -subtleties which some more salient characteristic has prevented us from -noticing at the time. We recollect that her health was not good. There -were occasions upon which she said nothing at all. She was patience -itself with a sick child. She doted upon Totty. Thus one can muse and -speculate about the greater number of George Eliot's characters and -find, even in the least important, a roominess and margin where those -qualities lurk which she has no call to bring from their obscurity. - -But in the midst of all this tolerance and sympathy there are, even in -the early books, moments of greater stress. Her humour has shown itself -broad enough to cover a wide range of fools and failures, mothers and -children, dogs and flourishing midland fields, farmers, sagacious or -fuddled over their ale, horse-dealers, inn-keepers, curates, and -carpenters. Over them all broods a certain romance, the only romance -that George Eliot allowed herself--the romance of the past. The books -are astonishingly readable and have no trace of pomposity or pretence. -But to the reader who holds a large stretch of her early work in view it -will become obvious that the mist of recollection gradually withdraws. -It is not that her power diminishes, for, to our thinking, it is at its -highest in the mature _Middlemarch_, the magnificent book which with all -its imperfections is one of the few English novels written for grown-up -people. But the world of fields and farms no longer contents her. In -real life she had sought her fortunes elsewhere; and though to look back -into the past was calming and consoling, there are, even in the early -works, traces of that troubled spirit, that exacting and questioning and -baffled presence who was George Eliot herself. In _Adam Bede_ there is a -hint of her in Dinah. She shows herself far more openly and completely -in Maggie in _The Mill on the Floss_. She is Janet in _Janet's -Repentance_, and Romola, and Dorothea seeking wisdom and finding one -scarcely knows what in marriage with Ladislaw. Those who fall foul of -George Eliot do so, we incline to think, on account of her heroines; and -with good reason; for there is no doubt that they bring out the worst of -her, lead her into difficult places, make her self-conscious, didactic, -and occasionally vulgar. Yet if you could delete the whole sisterhood -you would leave a much smaller and a much inferior world, albeit a world -of greater artistic perfection and far superior jollity and comfort. In -accounting for her failure, in so far as it was a failure, one -recollects that she never wrote a story until she was thirty-seven, and -that by the time she was thirty-seven she had come to think of herself -with a mixture of pain and something like resentment. For long she -preferred not to think of herself at all. Then, when the first flush of -creative energy was exhausted and self-confidence had come to her, she -wrote more and more from the personal standpoint, but she did so without -the unhesitating abandonment of the young. Her self-consciousness is -always marked when her heroines say what she herself would have said. -She disguised them in every possible way. She granted them beauty and -wealth into the bargain; she invented, more improbably, a taste for -brandy. But the disconcerting and stimulating fact remained that she was -compelled by the very power of her genius to step forth in person upon -the quiet bucolic scene. - -The noble and beautiful girl who insisted upon being born into the Mill -on the Floss is the most obvious example of the ruin which a heroine can -strew about her. Humour controls her and keeps her lovable so long as -she is small and can be satisfied by eloping with the gipsies or -hammering nails into her doll; but she develops; and before George Eliot -knows what has happened she has a full-grown woman on her hands -demanding what neither gipsies nor dolls, nor St. Ogg's itself is -capable of giving her. First Philip Wakem is produced, and later Stephen -Guest. The weakness of the one and the coarseness of the other have -often been pointed out; but both, in their weakness and coarseness, -illustrate not so much George Eliot's inability to draw the portrait of -a man, as the uncertainty, the infirmity, and the fumbling which shook -her hand when she had to conceive a fit mate for a heroine. She is in -the first place driven beyond the home world she knew and loved, and -forced to set foot in middle-class drawing-rooms where young men sing -all the summer morning and young women sit embroidering smoking-caps for -bazaars. She feels herself out of her element, as her clumsy satire of -what she calls "good society" proves. - - -Good society has its claret and its velvet carpets, its dinner -engagements six weeks deep, its opera, and its faery ball rooms . . . -gets its science done by Faraday and its religion by the superior clergy -who are to be met in the best houses; how should it have need of belief -and emphasis? - - -There is no trace of humour or insight there, but only the -vindictiveness of a grudge which we feel to be personal in its origin. -But terrible as the complexity of our social system is in its demands -upon the sympathy and discernment of a novelist straying across the -boundaries, Maggie Tulliver did worse than drag George Eliot from her -natural surroundings. She insisted upon the introduction of the great -emotional scene. She must love; she must despair; she must be drowned -clasping her brother in her arms. The more one examines the great -emotional scenes the more nervously one anticipates the brewing and -gathering and thickening of the cloud which will burst upon our heads at -the moment of crisis in a shower of disillusionment and verbosity. It is -partly that her hold upon dialogue, when it is not dialect, is slack; -and partly that she seems to shrink with an elderly dread of fatigue -from the effort of emotional concentration. She allows her heroines to -talk too much. She has little verbal felicity. She lacks the unerring -taste which chooses one sentence and compresses the heart of the scene -within that. "Whom are you going to dance with?" asked Mr. Knightley, at -the Westons' ball. "With you, if you will ask me," said Emma; and she -has said enough. Mrs. Casaubon would have talked for an hour and we -should have looked out of the window. - -Yet, dismiss the heroines without sympathy, confine George Eliot to the -agricultural world of her "remotest past", and you not only diminish her -greatness but lose her true flavour. That greatness is here we can have -no doubt. The width of the prospect, the large strong outlines of the -principal features, the ruddy light of the early books, the searching -power and reflective richness of the later tempt us to linger and -expatiate beyond our limits. But it is upon the heroines that we would -cast a final glance. "I have always been finding out my religion since I -was a little girl," says Dorothea Casaubon. "I used to pray so much--now -I hardly ever pray. I try not to have desires merely for myself. . . ." -She is speaking for them all. That is their problem. They cannot live -without religion, and they start out on the search for one when they are -little girls. Each has the deep feminine passion for goodness, which -makes the place where she stands in aspiration and agony the heart of -the book--still and cloistered like a place of worship, but that she no -longer knows to whom to pray. In learning they seek their goal; in the -ordinary tasks of womanhood; in the wider service of their kind. They do -not find what they seek, and we cannot wonder. The ancient consciousness -of woman, charged with suffering and sensibility, and for so many ages -dumb, seems in them to have brimmed and overflowed and uttered a demand -for something--they scarcely know what--for something that is perhaps -incompatible with the facts of human existence. George Eliot had far too -strong an intelligence to tamper with those facts, and too broad a -humour to mitigate the truth because it was a stern one. Save for the -supreme courage of their endeavour, the struggle ends, for her heroines, -in tragedy, or in a compromise that is even more melancholy. But their -story is the incomplete version of the story of George Eliot herself. -For her, too, the burden and the complexity of womanhood were not -enough; she must reach beyond the sanctuary and pluck for herself the -strange bright fruits of art and knowledge. Clasping them as few women -have ever clasped them, she would not renounce her own inheritance--the -difference of view, the difference of standard--nor accept an -inappropriate reward. Thus we behold her, a memorable figure, -inordinately praised and shrinking from her fame, despondent, reserved, -shuddering back into the arms of love as if there alone were -satisfaction and, it might be, justification, at the same time reaching -out with "a fastidious yet hungry ambition" for all that life could -offer the free and inquiring mind and confronting her feminine -aspirations with the real world of men. Triumphant was the issue for -her, whatever it may have been for her creations, and as we recollect -all that she dared and achieved, how with every obstacle against -her--sex and health and convention--she sought more knowledge and more -freedom till the body, weighted with its double burden, sank worn out, -we must lay upon her grave whatever we have it in our power to bestow of -laurel and rose. - - - - -_The Russian Point of View_ - - -Doubtful as we frequently are whether either the French or the -Americans, who have so much in common with us, can yet understand -English literature, we must admit graver doubts whether, for all their -enthusiasm, the English can understand Russian literature. Debate might -protract itself indefinitely as to what we mean by "understand". -Instances will occur to everybody of American writers in particular who -have written with the highest discrimination of our literature and of -ourselves; who have lived a lifetime among us, and finally have taken -legal steps to become subjects of King George. For all that, have they -understood us, have they not remained to the end of their days -foreigners? Could any one believe that the novels of Henry James were -written by a man who had grown-up in the society which he describes, or -that his criticism of English writers was written by a man who had read -Shakespeare without any sense of the Atlantic Ocean and two or three -hundred years on the far side of it separating his civilisation -from ours? A special acuteness and detachment, a sharp angle of -vision the foreigner will often achieve; but not that absence of -self-consciousness, that ease and fellowship and sense of common values -which make for intimacy, and sanity, and the quick give and take of -familiar intercourse. - -Not only have we all this to separate us from Russian literature, but a -much more serious barrier--the difference of language. Of all those who -feasted upon Tolstoi, Dostoevsky, and Tchekov during the past twenty -years, not more than one or two perhaps have been able to read them in -Russian. Our estimate of their qualities has been formed by critics who -have never read a word of Russian, or seen Russia, or even heard the -language spoken by natives; who have had to depend, blindly and -implicitly, upon the work of translators. - -What we are saying amounts to this, then, that we have judged a whole -literature stripped of its style. When you have changed every word in a -sentence from Russian to English, have thereby altered the sense a -little, the sound, weight, and accent of the words in relation to each -other completely, nothing remains except a crude and coarsened version -of the sense. Thus treated, the great Russian writers are like men -deprived by an earthquake or a railway accident not only of all their -clothes, but also of something subtler and more important--their -manners, the idiosyncrasies of their characters. What remains is, as the -English have proved by the fanaticism of their admiration, something -very powerful and very impressive, but it is difficult to feel sure, in -view of these mutilations, how far we can trust ourselves not to impute, -to distort, to read into them an emphasis which is false. - -They have lost their clothes, we say, in some terrible catastrophe, for -some such figure as that describes the simplicity, the humanity, -startled out of all effort to hide and disguise its instincts, which -Russian literature, whether it is due to translation, or to some more -profound cause, makes upon us. We find these qualities steeping it -through, as obvious in the lesser writers as in the greater. "Learn to -make yourselves akin to people. I would even like to add: make yourself -indispensable to them. But let this sympathy be not with the mind--for -it is easy with the mind--but with the heart, with love towards them." -"From the Russian," one would say instantly, wherever one chanced on -that quotation. The simplicity, the absence of effort, the assumption -that in a world bursting with misery the chief call upon us is to -understand our fellow-sufferers, "and not with the mind--for it is easy -with the mind--but with the heart"--this is the cloud which broods above -the whole of Russian literature, which lures us from our own parched -brilliancy and scorched thoroughfares to expand in its shade--and of -course with disastrous results. We become awkward and self-conscious; -denying our own qualities, we write with an affectation of goodness and -simplicity which is nauseating in the extreme. We cannot say "Brother" -with simple conviction. There is a story by Mr. Galsworthy in which one -of the characters so addresses another (they are both in the depths of -misfortune). Immediately everything becomes strained and affected. The -English equivalent for "Brother" is "Mate"--a very different word, with -something sardonic in it, an indefinable suggestion of humour. Met -though they are in the depths of misfortune the two Englishmen who thus -accost each other will, we are sure, find a job, make their fortunes, -spend the last years of their lives in luxury, and leave a sum of money -to prevent poor devils from calling each other "Brother" on the -Embankment. But it is common suffering, rather than common happiness, -effort, or desire that produces the sense of brotherhood. It is the -"deep sadness" which Dr. Hagberg Wright finds typical of the Russian -people that creates their literature. - -A generalisation of this kind will, of course, even if it has some -degree of truth when applied to the body of literature, be changed -profoundly when a writer of genius sets to work on it. At once other -questions arise. It is seen that an "attitude" is not simple; it is -highly complex. Men reft of their coats and their manners, stunned by a -railway accident, say hard things, harsh things, unpleasant things, -difficult things, even if they say them with the abandonment and -simplicity which catastrophe has bred in them. Our first impressions of -Tchekov are not of simplicity but of bewilderment. What is the point of -it, and why does he make a story out of this? we ask as we read story -after story. A man falls in love with a married woman, and they part and -meet, and in the end are left talking about their position and by what -means they can be free from "this intolerable bondage". - -"'How? How?' he asked, clutching his head. . . . And it seemed as though -in a little while the solution would be found and then a new and -splendid life would begin." That is the end. A postman drives a student -to the station and all the way the student tries to make the postman -talk, but he remains silent. Suddenly the postman says unexpectedly, -"It's against the regulations to take any one with the post." And he -walks up and down the platform with a look of anger on his face. "With -whom was he angry? Was it with people, with poverty, with the autumn -nights?" Again, that story ends. - -But is it the end, we ask? We have rather the feeling that we have -overrun our signals; or it is as if a tune had stopped short without the -expected chords to close it. These stories are inconclusive, we say, and -proceed to frame a criticism based upon the assumption that stories -ought to conclude in a way that we recognise. In so doing we raise the -question of our own fitness as readers. Where the tune is familiar and -the end emphatic--lovers united, villains discomfited, intrigues -exposed--as it is in most Victorian fiction, we can scarcely go wrong, -but where the tune is unfamiliar and the end a note of interrogation or -merely the information that they went on talking, as it is in Tchekov, -we need a very daring and alert sense of literature to make us hear the -tune, and in particular those last notes which complete the harmony. -Probably we have to read a great many stories before we feel, and the -feeling is essential to our satisfaction, that we hold the parts -together, and that Tchekov was not merely rambling disconnectedly, but -struck now this note, now that with intention, in order to complete his -meaning. - -We have to cast about in order to discover where the emphasis in these -strange stories rightly comes. Tchekov's own words give us a lead in the -right direction. ". . . such a conversation as this between us", he -says, "would have been unthinkable for our parents. At night they did -not talk, but slept sound; we, our generation, sleep badly, are -restless, but talk a great deal, and are always trying to settle whether -we are right or not." Our literature of social satire and psychological -finesse both sprang from that restless sleep, that incessant talking; -but after all, there is an enormous difference between Tchekov and Henry -James, between Tchekov and Bernard Shaw. Obviously--but where does it -arise? Tchekov, too, is aware of the evils and injustices of the social -state; the condition of the peasants appals him, but the reformer's zeal -is not his--that is not the signal for us to stop. The mind interests -him enormously; he is a most subtle and delicate analyst of human -relations. But again, no; the end is not there. Is it that he is -primarily interested not in the soul's relation with other souls, but -with the soul's relation to health--with the soul's relation to -goodness? These stories are always showing us some affectation, pose, -insincerity. Some woman has got into a false relation; some man has been -perverted by the inhumanity of his circumstances. The soul is ill; the -soul is cured; the soul is not cured. Those are the emphatic points in -his stories. - -Once the eye is used to these shades, half the "conclusions" of fiction -fade into thin air; they show like transparences with a light behind -them--gaudy, glaring, superficial. The general tidying up of the last -chapter, the marriage, the death, the statement of values so sonorously -trumpeted forth, so heavily underlined, become of the most rudimentary -kind. Nothing is solved, we feel; nothing is rightly held together. On -the other hand, the method which at first seemed so casual, -inconclusive, and occupied with trifles, now appears the result of an -exquisitely original and fastidious taste, choosing boldly, arranging -infallibly, and controlled by an honesty for which we can find no match -save among the Russians themselves. There may be no answer to these -questions, but at the same time let us never manipulate the evidence so -as to produce something fitting, decorous, agreeable to our vanity. This -may not be the way to catch the ear of the public; after all, they are -used to louder music, fiercer measures; but as the tune sounded, so he -has written it. In consequence, as we read these little stories about -nothing at all, the horizon widens; the soul gains an astonishing sense -of freedom. - -In reading Tchekov we find ourselves repeating the word "soul" again and -again. It sprinkles his pages. Old drunkards use it freely; ". . . you -are high up in the service, beyond all reach, but haven't real soul, my -dear boy . . . there's no strength in it." Indeed, it is the soul that -is the chief character in Russian fiction. Delicate and subtle in -Tchekov, subject to an infinite number of humours and distempers, it is -of greater depth and volume in Dostoevsky, liable to violent diseases -and raging fevers, but still the predominant concern. Perhaps that is -why it needs so great an effort on the part of an English reader to read -_The Brothers Karamazov_ or _The Possessed_ a second time. The "soul" is -alien to him. It is even antipathetic. It has little sense of humour and -no sense of comedy. It is formless. It has slight connection with the -intellect. It is confused, diffuse, tumultuous, incapable, it seems, of -submitting to the control of logic or the discipline of poetry. The -novels of Dostoevsky are seething whirlpools, gyrating sandstorms, -waterspouts which hiss and boil and suck us in. They are composed purely -and wholly of the stuff of the soul. Against our wills we are drawn in, -whirled round, blinded, suffocated, and at the same time filled with a -giddy rapture. Out of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading. We -open the door and find ourselves in a room full of Russian generals, the -tutors of Russian generals, their step-daughters and cousins and crowds -of miscellaneous people who are all talking at the tops of their voices -about their most private affairs. But where are we? Surely it is the -part of a novelist to inform us whether we are in an hotel, a flat, or -hired lodging. Nobody thinks of explaining. We are souls, tortured, -unhappy souls, whose only business it is to talk, to reveal, to confess, -to draw up at whatever rending of flesh and nerve those crabbed sins -which crawl on the sand at the bottom of us. But, as we listen, our -confusion slowly settles. A rope is flung to us; we catch hold of a -soliloquy; holding on by the skin of our teeth, we are rushed through -the water; feverishly, wildly, we rush on and on, now submerged, now in -a moment of vision understanding more than we have ever understood -before, and receiving such revelations as we are wont to get only from -the press of life at its fullest. As we fly we pick it all up--the names -of the people, their relationships, that they are staying in an hotel at -Roulettenburg, that Polina is involved in an intrigue with the Marquis -de Grieux--but what unimportant matters these are compared with the -soul! It is the soul that matters, its passion, its tumult, its -astonishing medley of beauty and vileness. And if our voices suddenly -rise into shrieks of laughter, or if we are shaken by the most violent -sobbing, what more natural?--it hardly calls for remark. The pace at -which we are living is so tremendous that sparks must rush off our -wheels as we fly. Moreover, when the speed is thus increased and the -elements of the soul are seen, not separately in scenes of humour or -scenes of passion as our slower English minds conceive them, but -streaked, involved, inextricably confused, a new panorama of the human -mind is revealed. The old divisions melt into each other. Men are at the -same time villains and saints; their acts are at once beautiful and -despicable. We love and we hate at the same time. There is none: of that -precise division between good and bad to which we are used. Often those -for whom we feel most affection are the greatest criminals, and the most -abject sinners move us to the strongest admiration as well as love. - -Dashed to the crest of the waves, bumped and battered on the stones at -the bottom, it is difficult for an English reader to feel at ease. The -process to which he is accustomed in his own literature is reversed. If -we wished to tell the story of a General's love affair (and we should -find it very difficult in the first place not to laugh at a General), we -should begin with his house; we should solidify his surroundings. Only -when all was ready should we attempt to deal with the General himself. -Moreover, it is not the samovar but the teapot that rules in England; -time is limited; space crowded; the influence of other points of view, -of other books, even of other ages, makes itself felt. Society is sorted -out into lower, middle, and upper classes, each with its own traditions, -its own manners, and, to some extent, its own language. Whether he -wishes it or not, there is a constant pressure upon an English novelist -to recognise these barriers, and, in consequence, order is imposed on -him and some kind of form; he is inclined to satire rather than to -compassion, to scrutiny of society rather than understanding of -individuals themselves. - -No such restraints were laid on Dostoevsky. It is all the same to him -whether you are noble or simple, a tramp or a great lady. Whoever you -are, you are the vessel of this perplexed liquid, this cloudy, yeasty, -precious stuff, the soul. The soul is not restrained by barriers. It -overflows, it floods, it mingles with the souls of others. The simple -story of a bank clerk who could not pay for a bottle of wine spreads, -before we know what is happening, into the lives of his father-in-law -and the five mistresses whom his father-in-law treated abominably, and -the postman's life, and the charwoman's, and the Princesses' who lodged -in the same block of flats; for nothing is outside Dostoevsky's -province; and when he is tired, he does not stop, he goes on. He cannot -restrain himself. Out it tumbles upon us, hot, scalding, mixed, -marvellous, terrible, oppressive--the human soul. - -There remains the greatest of all novelists--for what else can we call -the author of _War and Peace_? Shall we find Tolstoi, too, alien, -difficult, a foreigner? Is there some oddity in his angle of vision -which, at any rate until we have become disciples and so lost our -bearings, keeps us at arm's length in suspicion and bewilderment? From -his first words we can be sure of one thing at any rate--here is a man -who sees what we see, who proceeds, too, as we are accustomed to -proceed, not from the inside outwards, but from the outside inwards. -Here is a world in which the postman's knock is heard at eight o'clock, -and people go to bed between ten and eleven. Here is a man, too, who is -no savage, no child of nature; he is educated; he has had every sort of -experience. He is one of those born aristocrats who have used their -privileges to the full. He is metropolitan, not suburban. His senses, -his intellect, are acute, powerful, and well nourished. There is -something proud and superb in the attack of such a mind and such a body -upon life. Nothing seems to escape him. Nothing glances off him -unrecorded. Nobody, therefore, can so convey the excitement of sport, -the beauty of horses, and all the fierce desirability of the world to -the senses of a strong young man. Every twig, every feather sticks to -his magnet. He notices the blue or red of a child's frock; the way a -horse shifts its tail; the sound of a cough; the action of a man trying -to put his hands into pockets that have been sewn up. And what his -infallible eye reports of a cough or a trick of the hands his infallible -brain refers to something hidden in the character so that we know his -people, not only by the way they love and their views on politics and -the immortality of the soul, but also by the way they sneeze and choke. -Even in a translation we feel that we have been set on a mountain-top -and had a telescope put into our hands. Everything is astonishingly -clear and absolutely sharp. Then, suddenly, just as we are exulting, -breathing deep, feeling at once braced and purified, some -detail--perhaps the head of a man--comes at us out of the picture in an -alarming way, as if extruded by the very intensity of its life. -"Suddenly a strange thing happened to me: first I ceased to see what was -around me; then his face seemed to vanish till only the eyes were left, -shining over against mine; next the eyes seemed to be in my own head, -and then all became confused--I could see nothing and was forced to shut -my eyes, in order to break loose from the feeling of pleasure and fear -which his gaze was producing in me. . . ." Again and again we share -Masha's feelings in _Family Happiness_. One shuts one's eyes to escape -the feeling of pleasure and fear. Often it is pleasure that is -uppermost. In this very story there are two descriptions, one of a girl -walking in a garden at night with her lover, one of a newly married -couple prancing down their drawing-room, which so convey the feeling of -intense happiness that we shut the book to feel it better. But always -there is an element of fear which makes us, like Masha, wish to escape -from the gaze which Tolstoi fixes on us. Does it arise from the sense, -which in real life might harass us, that such happiness as he describes -is too intense to last, that we are on the edge of disaster? Or is it -not that the very intensity of our pleasure is somehow questionable and -forces us to ask, with Pozdnyshev in the Kreutzer Sonata, "But why -live?" Life dominates Tolstoi as the soul dominates Dostoevsky. There is -always at the centre of all the brilliant and flashing petals of the -flower this scorpion, "Why live?" There is always at the centre of the -book some Olenin, or Pierre, or Levin who gathers into himself all -experience, turns the world round between his fingers, and never ceases -to ask even as he enjoys it, what is the meaning of it, and what should -be our aims. It is not the priest who shatters our desires most -effectively; it is the man who has known them, and loved them himself. -When he derides them, the world indeed turns to dust and ashes beneath -our feet. Thus fear mingles with our pleasure, and of the three great -Russian writers, it is Tolstoi who most enthralls us and most repels. - -But the mind takes its bias from the place of its birth, and no doubt, -when it strikes upon a literature so alien as the Russian, flies off at -a tangent far from the truth. - - - - -_Outlines_ - - -I - -MISS MITFORD - - -Speaking truthfully, _Mary Russell Mitford and Her Surroundings_ is not -a good book. It neither enlarges the mind nor purifies the heart. There -is nothing in it about Prime Ministers and not very much about Miss -Mitford. Yet, as one is setting out to speak the truth, one must own -that there are certain books which can be read without the mind and -without the heart, but still with considerable enjoyment. To come to the -point, the great merit of these scrapbooks, for they can scarcely be -called biographies, is that they license mendacity. One cannot believe -what Miss Hill says about Miss Mitford, and thus one is free to invent -Miss Mitford for oneself. Not for a second do we accuse Miss Hill of -telling lies. That infirmity is entirely ours. For example: "Alresford -was the birthplace of one who loved nature as few have loved her, and -whose writings 'breathe the air of the hayfields and the scent of the -hawthorn boughs', and seem to waft to us 'the sweet breezes that blow -over ripened cornfields and daisied meadows'." It is perfectly true that -Miss Mitford was born at Alresford, and yet, when it is put like that, -we doubt whether she was ever born at all. Indeed she was, says Miss -Hill; she was born "on the 16th December, 1787. 'A pleasant house in -truth it was,' Miss Mitford writes. 'The breakfast-room . . . was a -lofty and spacious apartment.'" So Miss Mitford was born in the -breakfast-room about eight-thirty on a snowy morning between the -Doctor's second and third cups of tea. "Pardon me," said Mrs. Mitford, -turning a little pale, but not omitting to add the right quantity of -cream to her husband's tea, "I feel . . ." That is the way in which -Mendacity begins. There is something plausible and even ingenious in her -approaches. The touch about the cream, for instance, might be called -historical, for it is well known that when Mary won £20,000 in the -Irish lottery, the Doctor spent it all upon Wedgwood china, the winning -number being stamped upon the soup plates in the middle of an Irish -harp, the whole being surmounted by the Mitford arms, and encircled by -the motto of Sir John Bertram, one of William the Conqueror's knights, -from whom the Mitfords claimed descent. "Observe," says Mendacity, "with -what an air the Doctor drinks his tea, and how she, poor lady, contrives -to curtsey as she leaves the room." Tea? I inquire, for the Doctor, -though a fine figure of a man, is already purple and profuse, and foams -like a crimson cock over the frill of his fine laced shirt. "Since the -ladies have left the room," Mendacity begins, and goes on to make up a -pack of lies with the sole object of proving that Dr. Mitford kept a -mistress in the purlieus of Reading and paid her money on the pretence -that he was investing it in a new method of lighting and heating houses -invented by the Marquis de Chavannes. It came to the same thing in the -end--to the King's Bench Prison, that is to say; but instead of allowing -us to recall the literary and historical associations of the place, -Mendacity wanders off to the window and distracts us again by the -platitudinous remark that it is still snowing. There is something very -charming in an ancient snowstorm. The weather has varied almost as much -in the course of generations as mankind. The snow of those days was more -formally shaped and a good deal softer than the snow of ours, just as an -eighteenth-century cow was no more like our cows than she was like the -florid and fiery cows of Elizabethan pastures. Sufficient attention has -scarcely been paid to this aspect of literature, which, it cannot be -denied, has its importance. - -Our brilliant young men might do worse, when in search of a subject, -than devote a year or two to cows in literature, snow in literature, the -daisy in Chaucer and in Coventry Patmore. At any rate, the snow falls -heavily. The Portsmouth mail-coach has already lost its way; several -ships have foundered, and Margate pier has been totally destroyed. At -Hatfield Peveral twenty sheep have been buried, and though one supports -itself by gnawing wurzels which it has found near it, there is grave -reason to fear that the French king's coach has been blocked on the road -to Colchester. It is now the 16th of February, 1808. - -Poor Mrs. Mitford! Twenty-one years ago she left the breakfast-room, and -no news has yet been received of her child. Even Mendacity is a little -ashamed of itself, and, picking up _Mary Russell Mitford and Her -Surroundings_, assures us that everything will come right if we possess -ourselves in patience. The French king's coach was on its way to -Bocking; at Bocking lived Lord and Lady Charles Murray-Aynsley; and Lord -Charles was shy. Lord Charles had always been shy. Once when Mary -Mitford was five years old—sixteen years, that is, before the sheep -were lost and the French king went to Bocking--Mary "threw him into an -agony of blushing by running up to his chair in mistake for that of my -papa". He had indeed to leave the room. Miss Hill, who, somewhat -strangely, finds the society of Lord and Lady Charles pleasant, does not -wish to quit it without "introducing an incident in connection with them -which took place in the month of February, 1808". But is Miss Mitford -concerned in it? we ask, for there must be an end of trifling. To some -extent, that is to say, Lady Charles was a cousin of the Mitfords, and -Lord Charles was shy. Mendacity is quite ready to deal with "the -incident" even on these terms; but, we repeat, we have had enough of -trifling. Miss Mitford may not be a great woman; for all we know she was -not even a good one; but we have certain responsibilities as a reviewer -which we are not going to evade. - -There is, to begin with, English literature. A sense of the beauty of -nature has never been altogether absent, however much the cow may change -from age to age, from English poetry. Nevertheless, the difference -between Pope and Wordsworth in this respect is very considerable. -_Lyrical Ballads_ was published in 1798; _Our Village_ in 1824. One -being in verse and the other in prose, it is not necessary to labour a -comparison which contains, however, not only the elements of justice, -but the seeds of many volumes. Like her great predecessor, Miss Mitford -much preferred the country to the town; and thus, perhaps, it may not be -inopportune to dwell for a moment upon the King of Saxony, Mary Anning, -and the ichthyosaurus. Let alone the fact that Mary Anning and Mary -Mitford had a Christian name in common, they are further connected by -what can scarcely be called a fact, but may, without hazard, be called a -probability. Miss Mitford was looking for fossils at Lyme Regis only -fifteen years before Mary Anning found one. The King of Saxony visited -Lyme in 1844, and seeing the head of an ichthyosaurus in Mary Anning's -window, asked her to drive to Pinny and explore the rocks. While they -were looking for fossils, an old woman seated herself in the King's -coach--was she Mary Mitford? Truth compels us to say that she was not; -but there is no doubt, and we are not trifling when we say it, that Mary -Mitford often expressed a wish that she had known Mary Anning, and it is -singularly unfortunate to have to state that she never did. For we have -reached the year 1844; Mary Mitford is fifty-seven years of age, and so -far, thanks to Mendacity and its trifling ways, all we know of her is -that she did not know Mary Anning, had not found an ichthyosaurus, had -not been out in a snowstorm, and had not seen the King of France. - -It is time to wring the creature's neck, and begin again at the very -beginning. - -What considerations, then, had weight with Miss Hill when she decided to -write _Mary Russell Mitford and Her Surroundings_? Three emerge from the -rest, and may be held of paramount importance. In the first place. Miss -Mitford was a lady; in the second, she was born in the year 1787; and in -the third, the stock of female characters who lend themselves to -biographic treatment by their own sex is, for one reason or another, -running short. For instance, little is known of Sappho, and that little -is not wholly to her credit. Lady Jane Grey has merit, but is undeniably -obscure. Of George Sand, the more we know the less we approve. George -Eliot was led into evil ways which not all her philosophy can excuse. -The Brontës, however highly we rate their genius, lacked that -indefinable something which marks the lady; Harriet Martineau was an -atheist; Mrs. Browning was a married woman; Jane Austen, Fanny Burney, -and Maria Edgeworth have been done already; so that, what with one thing -and another, Mary Russell Mitford is the only woman left. - -There is no need to labour the extreme importance of the date when we -see the word "surroundings" on the back, of a book. Surroundings, as -they are called, are invariably eighteenth-century surroundings. When we -come, as of course we do, to that phrase which relates how "as we looked -upon the steps leading down from the upper room, we fancied we saw the -tiny figure jumping from step to step", it would be the grossest outrage -upon our sensibilities to be told that those steps were Athenian, -Elizabethan, or Parisian. They were, of course, eighteenth-century -steps, leading down from the old panelled room into the shady garden, -where, tradition has it, William Pitt played marbles, or, if we like to -be bold, where on still summer days we can almost fancy that we hear the -drums of Bonaparte on the coast of France. Bonaparte is the limit of the -imagination on one side, as Monmouth is on the other; it would be fatal -if the imagination took to toying with Prince Albert or sporting with -King John. But fancy knows her place, and there is no need to labour the -point that her place is the eighteenth-century. The other point is more -obscure. One must be a lady. Yet what that means, and whether we like -what it means, may both be doubtful. If we say that Jane Austen was a -lady and that Charlotte Brontë was not one, we do as much as need be -done in the way of definition, and commit ourselves to neither side. - -It is undoubtedly because of their reticence that Miss Hill is on the -side of the ladies. They sigh things off and they smile things off, but -they never seize the silver table by the legs or dash the teacups on the -floor. It is in many ways a great convenience to have a subject who can -be trusted to live a long life without once raising her voice. Sixteen -years is a considerable stretch of time, but of a lady it is enough to -say, "Here Mary Mitford passed sixteen years of her life and here she -got to know and love not only their own beautiful grounds but also every -turn of the surrounding shady lanes." Her loves were vegetable, and her -lanes were shady. Then, of course, she was educated at the school where -Jane Austen and Mrs. Sherwood had been educated. She visited Lyme Regis, -and there is mention of the Cobb. She saw London from the top of St. -Paul's, and London was much smaller then than it is now. She changed -from one charming house to another, and several distinguished literary -gentlemen paid her compliments and came to tea. When the dining-room -ceiling fell down it did not fall on her head, and when she took a -ticket in a lottery she did win the prize. If in the foregoing sentences -there are any words of more than two syllables, it is our fault and not -Miss Hill's; and to do that writer justice, there are not many whole -sentences in the book which are neither quoted from Miss Mitford nor -supported by the authority of Mr. Crissy. - -But how dangerous a thing is life! Can one be sure that anything not -wholly made of mahogany will to the very end stand empty in the sun? -Even cupboards have their secret springs, and when, inadvertently we are -sure, Miss Hill touches this one, out, terrible to relate, topples a -stout old gentleman. In plain English, Miss Mitford had a father. There -is nothing actually improper in that. Many women have had fathers. But -Miss Mitford's father was kept in a cupboard; that is to say, he was not -a nice father. Miss Hill even goes so far as to conjecture that when "an -imposing procession of neighbours and friends" followed him to the -grave, "we cannot help thinking that this was more to show sympathy and -respect for Miss Mitford than from special respect for him". Severe as -the judgement is, the gluttonous, bibulous, amorous old man did -something to deserve it. The less said about him the better. Only, if -from your earliest childhood your father has gambled and speculated, -first with your mother's fortune, then with your own, spent your -earnings, driven you to earn more, and spent that too; if in old age he -has lain upon a sofa and insisted that fresh air is bad for daughters, -if, dying at length, he has left debts that can only be paid by selling -everything you have or sponging upon the charity of friends--then even a -lady sometimes raises her voice. Miss Mitford herself spoke out once. -"It was grief to go; there I had toiled and striven and tasted as deeply -of bitter anxiety, of fear, and of hope as often falls to the lot of -woman." What language for a lady to use! for a lady, too, who owns a -teapot. There is a drawing of the teapot at the bottom of the page. But -it is now of no avail; Miss Mitford has smashed it to smithereens. That -is the worst of writing about ladies; they have fathers as well as -teapots. On the other hand, some pieces of Dr. Mitford's Wedgwood dinner -service are still in existence, and a copy of Adam's Geography, which -Mary won as a prize at school, is "in our temporary possession". If -there is nothing improper in the suggestion, might not the next book be -devoted entirely to them? - - - - -II - -DR. BENTLEY - - -As we saunter through those famous courts where Dr. Bentley once reigned -supreme we sometimes catch sight of a figure hurrying on its way to -Chapel or Hall which, as it disappears, draws our thoughts -enthusiastically after it. For that man, we are told, has the whole of -Sophocles at his finger-ends; knows Homer by heart; reads Pindar as we -read the _Times_; and spends his life, save for these short excursions -to eat and pray, wholly in the company of the Greeks. It is true that -the infirmities of our education prevent us from appreciating his -emendations as they deserve; his life's work is a sealed book to us; -none the less, we treasure up the last flicker of his black gown, and -feel as if a bird of Paradise had flashed by us, so bright is his -spirit's raiment, and in the murk of a November evening we had been -privileged to see it winging its way to roost in fields of amaranth and -beds of moly. Of all men, great scholars are the most mysterious, the -most august. Since it is unlikely that we shall ever be admitted to -their intimacy, or see much more of them than a black gown crossing a -court at dusk, the best we can do is to read their lives--for example, -the _Life of Dr. Bentley_ by Bishop Monk. - -There we shall find much that is odd and little that is reassuring. The -greatest of our scholars, the man who read Greek as the most expert of -us read English not merely with an accurate sense of meaning and grammar -but with a sensibility so subtle and widespread that he perceived -relations and suggestions of language which enabled him to fetch up from -oblivion lost lines and inspire new life into the little fragments that -remained, the man who should have been steeped in beauty (if what they -say of the Classics is true) as a honey-pot is ingrained with sweetness -was, on the contrary, the most quarrelsome of mankind. - -"I presume that there are not many examples of an individual who has -been a party in six distinct suits before the Court of King's Bench -within the space of three years", his biographer remarks; and adds that -Bentley won them all. It is difficult to deny his conclusion that though -Dr. Bentley might have been a first-rate lawyer or a great soldier "such -a display suited any character rather than that of a learned and -dignified clergyman". Not all these disputes, however, sprung from his -love of literature. The charges against which he had to defend himself -were directed against him as Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He -was habitually absent from chapel; his expenditure upon building and -upon his household was excessive; he used the college seal at meetings -which did not consist of the statutable number of sixteen, and so on. In -short, the career of the Master of Trinity was one continuous series of -acts of aggression and defiance, in which Dr. Bentley treated the -Society of Trinity College as a grown man might treat an importunate -rabble of street boys. Did they dare to hint that the staircase at the -Lodge which admitted four persons abreast was quite wide enough?--did -they refuse to sanction his expenditure upon a new one? Meeting them in -the Great Court one evening after chapel he proceeded urbanely to -question them. They refused to budge. Whereupon, with a sudden -alteration of colour and voice, Bentley demanded whether "they had -forgotten his rusty sword?" Mr. Michael Hutchinson and some others, upon -whose backs the weight of that weapon would have first descended, -brought pressure upon their seniors. The bill for £350 was paid and -their preferment secured. But Bentley did not wait for this act of -submission to finish his staircase. - -So it went on, year after year. Nor was the arrogance of his behaviour -always justified by the splendour or utility of the objects he had in -view--the creation of the Backs, the erection of an observatory, the -foundation of a laboratory. More trivial desires were gratified with the -same tyranny. Sometimes he wanted coal; sometimes bread and ale; and -then Madame Bentley, sending her servant with a snuff-box in token of -authority, got from the butteries at the expense of the college a great -deal more of these commodities than the college thought that Dr. Bentley -ought to require. Again, when he had four pupils to lodge with him who -paid him handsomely for their board, it was drawn from the College, at -the command of the snuff-box, for nothing. The principles of "delicacy -and good feeling" which the Master might have been expected to observe -(great scholar as he was, steeped in the wine of the classics) went for -nothing. His argument that the "few College loaves" upon which the four -young patricians were nourished were amply repaid by the three sash -windows which he had put into their rooms at his own expense failed to -convince the Fellows. And when, on Trinity Sunday 1719, the Fellows -found the famous College ale not to their liking, they were scarcely -satisfied when the butler told them that it had been brewed by the -Master's orders, from the Master's malt, which was stored in the -Master's granary, and though damaged by "an insect called the weevil" -had been paid for at the very high rates which the Master demanded. - -Still these battles over bread and beer are trifles and domestic trifles -at that. His conduct in his profession will throw more light upon our -inquiry. For, released from brick and building, bread and beer, -patricians and their windows, it may be found that he expanded in the -atmosphere of Homer, Horace, and Manilius, and proved in his study the -benign nature of those influences which have been wafted down to us -through the ages. But there the evidence is even less to the credit of -the dead languages. He acquitted himself magnificently, all agree, in -the great controversy about the letters of Phalaris. His temper was -excellent and his learning prodigious. But that triumph was succeeded by -a series of disputes which force upon us the extraordinary spectacle of -men of learning and genius, of authority and divinity, brawling about -Greek and Latin texts, and calling each other names for all the world -like bookies on a racecourse or washerwomen in a back street. For this -vehemence of temper and virulence of language were not confined to -Bentley alone; they appear unhappily characteristic of the profession as -a whole. Early in life, in the year 1691, a quarrel was fastened upon -him by his brother chaplain Hody for writing Malelas, not as Hody -preferred, Malela. A controversy in which Bentley displayed learning and -wit, and Hody accumulated endless pages of bitter argument against the -letter _s_ ensued. Hody was worsted, and "there is too much reason to -believe, that the offence given by this trivial cause was never -afterwards healed". Indeed, to mend a line was to break a friendship. -James Gronovius of Leyden--"homunculus eruditione mediocri, ingenio -nullo", as Bentley called him--attacked Bentley for ten years because -Bentley had succeeded in correcting a fragment of Callimachus where he -had failed. - -But Gronovius was by no means the only scholar who resented the success -of a rival with a rancour that grey hairs and forty years spent in -editing the classics failed to subdue. In all the chief towns of Europe -lived men like the notorious de Pauw of Utrecht, "a person who has -justly been considered the pest and disgrace of letters", who, when a -new theory or new edition appeared, banded themselves together to deride -and humiliate the scholar. . . all his writings". Bishop Monk remarks of -de Pauw, "prove him to be devoid of candour, good faith, good manners, -and every gentlemanly feeling: and while he unites all the defects and -bad qualities that were ever found in a critic or commentator, he adds -one peculiar to himself, an incessant propensity to indecent allusions." -With such tempers and such habits it is not strange that the scholars of -those days sometimes ended lives made intolerable by bitterness, -poverty, and neglect by their own hands, like Johnson, who after a -lifetime spent in the detection of minute errors of construction, went -mad and drowned himself in the meadows near Nottingham. On May 20, 1712, -Trinity College was shocked to find that the professor of Hebrew, Dr. -Sike, had hanged himself "some time this evening, before candlelight, in -his sash". When Kuster died, it was reported that he, too, had killed -himself. And so, in a sense, he had. For when his body was opened "there -was found a cake of sand along the lower region of his belly. This, I -take it, was occasioned by his sitting nearly double, and writing on a -very low table, surrounded with three or four circles of books placed on -the ground, which was the situation we usually found him in." The minds -of poor schoolmasters, like John Ker of the dissenting Academy, who had -had the high gratification of dining with Dr. Bentley at the Lodge, when -the talk fell upon the use of the word _equidem_, were so distorted by a -lifetime of neglect and study that they went home, collected all uses of -the word _equidem_ which contradicted the Doctor's opinion, returned to -the Lodge, anticipating in their simplicity a warm welcome, met the -Doctor issuing to dine with the Archbishop of Canterbury, followed him -down the street in spite of his indifference and annoyance, and, being -refused even a word of farewell, went home to brood over their injuries -and wait the day of revenge. - -But the bickerings and animosities of the smaller fry were magnified, -not obliterated, by the Doctor himself in the conduct of his own -affairs. The courtesy and good temper which he had shown in his early -controversies had worn away. ". . . a course of violent animosities and -the indulgence of unrestrained indignation for many years had impaired -both his taste and judgement in controversy", and he condescended, -though the subject in dispute was the Greek Testament, to call his -antagonist "maggot", "vermin", "gnawing rat", and "cabbage head", to -refer to the darkness of his complexion, and to insinuate that his wits -were crazed, which charge he supported by dwelling on the fact that his -brother, a clergyman, wore a beard to his girdle. - -Violent, pugnacious, and unscrupulous. Dr. Bentley survived these storms -and agitations, and remained, though suspended from his degrees and -deprived of his mastership, seated at the Lodge imperturbably. Wearing a -broad-brimmed hat indoors to protect his eyes, smoking his pipe, -enjoying his port, and expounding to his friends his doctrine of the -digamma, Bentley lived those eighty years which, he said, were long -enough "to read everything which was worth reading", "Et tunc", he -added, in his peculiar manner. - - -Et tunc magna mei sub terris ibit imago. - - -A small square stone marked his grave in Trinity College, but the -Fellows refused to record upon it the fact that he had been their -Master. - -But the strangest sentence in this strange story has yet to be written, -and Bishop Monk writes it as if it were a commonplace requiring no -comment. "For a person who was neither a poet, nor possessed of poetical -taste to venture upon such a task was no common presumption." The task -was to detect every slip of language in _Paradise Lost_, and all -instances of bad taste and incorrect imagery. The result was notoriously -lamentable. Yet in what, we may ask, did it differ from those in which -Bentley was held to have acquitted himself magnificently? And if Bentley -was incapable of appreciating the poetry of Milton, how can we accept -his verdict upon Horace and Homer? And if we cannot trust implicitly to -scholars, and if the study of Greek is supposed to refine the manners -and purify the soul--but enough. Our scholar has returned from Hall; his -lamp is lit; his studies are resumed; and it is time that our profane -speculations should have an end. Besides, all this happened many, many -years ago. - - - - -III - -LADY DOROTHY NEVILL - - -She had stayed, in a humble capacity, for a week in the ducal household. -She had seen the troops of highly decorated human beings descending in -couples to eat, and ascending in couples to bed. She had, -surreptitiously, from a gallery, observed the Duke himself dusting the -miniatures in the glass cases, while the Duchess let her crochet fall -from her hands as if in utter disbelief that the world had need of -crochet. From an upper window she had seen, as far as eye could reach, -gravel paths swerving round isles of greenery and losing themselves in -little woods designed to shed the shade without the severity of forests; -she had watched the ducal carriage bowling in and out of the prospect, -and returning a different way from the way it went. And what was her -verdict? "A lunatic asylum." - -It is true that she was a lady's-maid, and that Lady Dorothy Nevill, had -she encountered her on the stairs, would have made an opportunity to -point out that that is a very different thing from being a lady. - - -My mother never failed to point out the folly of work-women, shop-girls, -and the like calling each other "Ladies". All this sort of thing seemed -to her to be mere vulgar humbug, and she did not fail to say so. - - -What can we point out to Lady Dorothy Nevill? that with all her -advantages she had never learned to spell? that she could not write a -grammatical sentence? that she lived for eighty-seven years and did -nothing but put food into her mouth and slip gold through her fingers? -But delightful though it is to indulge in righteous indignation, it is -misplaced if we agree with the lady's-maid that high birth is a form of -congenital insanity, that the sufferer merely inherits the diseases of -his ancestors, and endures them, for the most part very stoically, in -one of those comfortably padded lunatic asylums which are known, -euphemistically, as the stately homes of England. - -Moreover, the Walpoles are not ducal. Horace Walpole's mother was a Miss -Shorter; there is no mention of Lady Dorothy's mother in the present -volume, but her great-grandmother was Mrs. Oldfield the actress, and, to -her credit. Lady Dorothy was "exceedingly proud" of the fact. Thus she -was not an extreme case of aristocracy; she was confined rather to a -bird-cage than to an asylum; through the bars she saw people walking at -large, and once or twice she made a surprising little flight into the -open air. A gayer, brighter, more vivacious specimen of the caged tribe -can seldom have existed; so that one is forced at times to ask whether -what we call living in a cage is not the fate that wise people, -condemned to a single sojourn upon earth, would choose. To be at large -is, after all, to be shut out; to waste most of life in accumulating the -money to buy and the time to enjoy what the Lady Dorothys find -clustering and glowing about their cradles when their eyes first -open--as hers opened in the year 1826 at number eleven Berkeley Square. -Horace Walpole had lived there. Her father, Lord Orford, gambled it away -in one night's play the year after she was born. But Wolterton Hall, in -Norfolk, was full of carving and mantelpieces, and there were rare trees -in the garden, and a large and famous lawn. No novelist could wish a -more charming and even romantic environment in which to set the story of -two little girls, growing up, wild yet secluded, reading Bossuet with -their governess, and riding out on their ponies at the head of the -tenantry on polling day. Nor can one deny that to have had the author of -the following letter among one's ancestors would have been a source of -inordinate pride. It is addressed to the Norwich Bible Society, which -had invited Lord Orford to become its president: - - -I have long been addicted to the Gaming Table. I have lately taken to -the Turf. I fear I frequently blaspheme. But I have never distributed -religious tracts. All this was known to you and your Society. -Notwithstanding which you think me a fit person to be your president. -God forgive your hypocrisy. - - -It was not Lord Orford who was in the cage on that occasion. But, alas! -Lord Orford owned another country house, Ilsington Hall, in Dorsetshire, -and there Lady Dorothy came in contact first with the mulberry tree, and -later with Mr. Thomas Hardy; and we get our first glimpse of the bars. -We do not pretend to the ghost of an enthusiasm for Sailors' Homes in -general; no doubt mulberry trees are much nicer to look at; but when it -comes to calling people "vandals" who cut them down to build houses, and -to having footstools made from the wood, and to carving upon those -footstools inscriptions which testify that "often and often has King -George III. taken his tea" under this very footstool, then we want to -protest--"Surely you must mean Shakespeare?" But as her subsequent -remarks upon Mr. Hardy tend to prove, Lady Dorothy does not mean -Shakespeare. She "warmly appreciated" the works of Mr. Hardy, and used -to complain "that the county families were too stupid to appreciate his -genius at its proper worth". George the Third drinking his tea; the -county families failing to appreciate Mr. Hardy: Lady Dorothy is -undoubtedly behind the bars. - -Yet no story more aptly illustrates the barrier which we perceive -hereafter between Lady Dorothy and the outer world than the story of -Charles Darwin and the blankets. Among her recreations Lady Dorothy made -a hobby of growing orchids, and thus got into touch with "the great -naturalist". Mrs. Darwin, inviting her to stay with them, remarked with -apparent simplicity that she had heard that people who moved much in -London society were fond of being tossed in blankets. "I am afraid," her -letter ended, "we should hardly be able to offer you anything of that -sort." Whether in fact the necessity of tossing Lady Dorothy in a -blanket had been seriously debated at Down, or whether Mrs. Darwin -obscurely hinted her sense of some incongruity between her husband and -the lady of the orchids, we do not know. But we have a sense of two -worlds in collision; and it is not the Darwin world that emerges in -fragments. More and more do we see Lady Dorothy hopping from perch to -perch, picking at groundsel here, and at hempseed there, indulging in -exquisite trills and roulades, and sharpening her beak against a lump of -sugar in a large, airy, magnificently equipped bird-cage. The cage was -full of charming diversions. Now she illuminated leaves which had been -macerated to skeletons; now she interested herself in improving the -breed of donkeys; next she took up the cause of silkworms, almost -threatened Australia with a plague of them, and "actually succeeded in -obtaining enough silk to make a dress"; again she was the first to -discover that wood, gone green with decay, can be made, at some expense, -into little boxes; she went into the question of funguses and -established the virtues of the neglected English truffle; she imported -rare fish; spent a great deal of energy in vainly trying to induce -storks and Cornish choughs to breed in Sussex; painted on china; -emblazoned heraldic arms, and, attaching whistles to the tails of -pigeons, produced wonderful effects "as of an aerial orchestra" when -they flew through the air. To the Duchess of Somerset belongs the credit -of investigating the proper way of cooking guinea-pigs; but Lady Dorothy -was one of the first to serve up a dish of these little creatures at -luncheon in Charles Street. - -But all the time the door of the cage was ajar. Raids were made into -what Mr. Nevill calls "Upper Bohemia"; from which Lady Dorothy returned -with "authors, journalists, actors, actresses, or other agreeable and -amusing people". Lady Dorothy's judgement is proved by the fact that -they seldom misbehaved, and some indeed became quite domesticated, and -wrote her "very gracefully turned letters". But once or twice she made a -flight beyond the cage herself. "These horrors", she said, alluding to -the middle class, "are so clever and we are so stupid; but then look how -well they are educated, while our children learn nothing but how to -spend their parents' money!" She brooded over the fact. Something was -going wrong. She was too shrewd and too honest not to lay the blame -partly at least upon her own class. "I suppose she can just about read?" -she said of one lady calling herself cultured; and of another, "She is -indeed curious and well adapted to open bazaars." But to our thinking -her most remarkable flight took place a year or two before her death, in -the Victoria and Albert Museum: - - -I do so agree with you, she wrote--though I ought not to say so--that -the upper class are very--I don't know what to say--but they seem to -take no interest in anything--but golfing, etc. One day I was at the -Victoria and Albert Museum, just a few sprinkles of legs, for I am sure -they looked too frivolous to have bodies and souls attached to them--but -what softened the sight to my eyes were 2 little Japs poring over each -article with a handbook . . . our bodies, of course, giggling and -looking at nothing. Still worse, not one soul of the higher class -visible: in fact I never heard of any one of them knowing of the place, -and for this we are spending millions--it is all too painful. - - -It was all too painful, and the guillotine, she felt, loomed ahead. That -catastrophe she was spared, for who could wish to cut off the head of a -pigeon with a whistle attached to its tail? But if the whole bird-cage -had been overturned and the aerial orchestra sent screaming and -fluttering through the air, we can be sure, as Mr. Joseph Chamberlain -told her, that her conduct would have been "a credit to the British -aristocracy". - - - - -IV - -ARCHBISHOP THOMSON - - -The origin of Archbishop Thomson was obscure. His great-uncle "may -reasonably be supposed" to have been "an ornament to the middle -classes". His aunt married a gentleman who was present at the murder of -Gustavus III. of Sweden; and his father met his death at the age of -eighty-seven by treading on a cat in the early hours of the morning. The -physical vigour which this anecdote implies was combined in the -Archbishop with powers of intellect which promised success in whatever -profession he adopted. At Oxford it seemed likely that he would devote -himself to philosophy or science. While reading for his degree he found -time to write the _Outlines of the Laws of Thought_, which "immediately -became a recognised text-book for Oxford classes". But though poetry, -philosophy, medicine, and the law held out their temptations he put such -thoughts aside, or never entertained them, having made up his mind from -the first to dedicate himself to Divine service. The measure of his -success in the more exalted sphere is attested by the following facts: -Ordained deacon in 1842 at the age of twenty-three, he became Dean and -Bursar of Queen's College, Oxford, in 1845; Provost in 1855, Bishop of -Gloucester and Bristol in 1861, and Archbishop of York in 1862. Thus at -the early age of forty-three he stood next in rank to the Archbishop of -Canterbury himself; and it was commonly though erroneously expected that -he would in the end attain to that dignity also. - -It is a matter of temperament and belief whether you read this list with -respect or with boredom; whether you look upon an archbishop's hat as a -crown or as an extinguisher. If, like the present reviewer, you are -ready to hold the simple faith that the outer order corresponds to the -inner--that a vicar is a good man, a canon a better man, and an -archbishop the best man of all--you will find the study of the -Archbishop's life one of extreme fascination. He has turned aside from -poetry and philosophy and law, and specialised in virtue. He has -dedicated himself to the service of the Divine. His spiritual -proficiency has been such that he has developed from deacon to dean, -from dean to bishop, and from bishop to archbishop in the short space of -twenty years. As there are only two archbishops in the whole of England -the inference seems to be that he is the second best man in England; his -hat is the proof of it. Even in a material sense his hat was one of the -largest; it was larger than Mr. Gladstone's; larger than Thackeray's; -larger than Dickens'; it was in fact, so his hatter told him and we are -inclined to agree, an "eight full". Yet he began much as other men -begin. He struck an undergraduate in a fit of temper and was rusticated; -he wrote a text-book of logic and rowed a very good oar. But after he -was ordained his diary shows that the specialising process had begun. He -thought a great deal about the state of his soul; about "the monstrous -tumour of Simony"; about Church reform; and about the meaning of -Christianity. "Self-renunciation," he came to the conclusion, "is the -foundation of Christian Religion and Christian Morals. . . . The highest -wisdom is that which can enforce and cultivate this self-renunciation. -Hence (against Cousin) I hold that religion is higher far than -philosophy." There is one mention of chemists and capillarity, but -science and philosophy were, even at this early stage, in danger of -being crowded out. Soon the diary takes a different tone. "He seems," -says his biographer, "to have had no time for committing his thoughts to -paper"; he records his engagements only, and he dines out almost every -night. Sir Henry Taylor, whom he met at one of these parties, described -him as "simple, solid, good, capable, and pleasing". Perhaps it was his -solidity combined with his "eminently scientific" turn of mind, his -blandness as well as his bulk, that impressed some of these great people -with the confidence that in him the Church had found a very necessary -champion. His "brawny logic" and massive frame seemed to fit him to -grapple with a task that taxed the strongest--how, that is, to reconcile -the scientific discoveries of the age with religion, and even prove them -"some of its strongest witnesses for the truth". If any one could do -this Thomson could; his practical ability, unhampered by any mystical or -dreaming tendency, had already proved itself in the conduct of the -business affairs of his College. From Bishop he became almost instantly -Archbishop; and in becoming Archbishop he became Primate of England, -Governor of the Charterhouse and King's College, London, patron of one -hundred and twenty livings, with the Archdeaconries of York, Cleveland, -and the East Riding in his gift, and the Canonries and Prebends in York -Minster. Bishopthorpe itself was an enormous palace; he was -immediately faced by the "knotty question" of whether to buy all the -furniture--"much of it only poor stuff"--or to furnish the house anew, -which would cost a fortune. Moreover there were seven cows in the park; -but these, perhaps, were counterbalanced by nine children in the -nursery. Then the Prince and Princess of Wales came to stay, and the -Archbishop took upon himself the task of furnishing the Princess's -apartments. He went up to London and bought eight Moderator lamps, two -Spanish figures holding candles, and reminded himself of the necessity -of buying "soap for Princess". But meanwhile far more serious matters -claimed every ounce of his strength. Already he had been exhorted to -"wield the sure lance of your brawny logic against the sophistries" of -the authors of _Essays and Reviews_, and had responded in a work called -_Aids to Faith_. Near at hand the town of Sheffield, with its large -population of imperfectly educated working men, was a breeding ground of -scepticism and discontent. The Archbishop made it his special charge. He -was fond of watching the rolling of armour plate, and constantly -addressed meetings of working men. "Now what are these Nihilisms, and -Socialisms, and Communisms, and Fenianisms, and Secret Societies--what -do they all mean?" he asked. "Selfishness," he replied, and "assertion -of one class against the rest is at the bottom of them all." There was a -law of nature, he said, by which wages went up and wages went down. "You -must accept the declivity as well as the ascent. . . . If we could only -get people to learn that, then things would go on a great deal better -and smoother." And the working men of Sheffield responded by giving him -five hundred pieces of cutlery mounted in sterling silver. But -presumably there were a certain number of knives among the spoons and -the forks. - -Bishop Colenso, however, was far more troublesome than the working men -of Sheffield; and the Ritualists vexed him so persistently that even his -vast strength felt the strain. The questions which were referred to him -for decision were peculiarly fitted to tease and annoy even a man of his -bulk and his blandness. Shall a drunkard found dead in a ditch, or a -burglar who has fallen through a skylight, be given the benefit of the -Burial Service? he was asked. The question of lighted candles was "most -difficult"; the wearing of coloured stoles and the administration of the -mixed chalice taxed him considerably; and finally there was the Rev. -John Purchas, who, dressed in cope, alb, biretta and stole "cross-wise", -lit candles and extinguished them "for no special reason"; filled a -vessel with black powder and rubbed it into the foreheads of his -congregation; and hung over the Holy Table "a figure, image, or stuffed -skin of a dove, in a flying attitude". The Archbishop's temper, usually -so positive and imperturbable, was gravely ruffled. "Will there ever -come a time when it will be thought a crime to have striven to keep the -Church of England as representing the common sense of the Nation?" he -asked. "I suppose it may, but I shall not see it. I have gone through a -good deal, but I do not repent of having done my best." If, for a -moment, the Archbishop himself could ask such a question, we must -confess to a state of complete bewilderment. What has become of our -superlatively good man? He is harassed and cumbered; spends his time -settling questions about stuffed pigeons and coloured petticoats; writes -over eighty letters before breakfast sometimes; scarcely has time to run -over to Paris and buy his daughter a bonnet; and in the end has to ask -himself whether one of these days his conduct will not be considered a -crime. - -Was it a crime? And if so, was it his fault? Did he not start out in the -belief that Christianity had something to do with renunciation and was -not entirely a matter of common sense? If honours and obligations, pomps -and possessions, accumulated and encrusted him, how, being an -Archbishop, could he refuse to accept them? Princesses must have their -soap; palaces must have their furniture; children must have their cows. -And, pathetic though it seems, he never completely lost his interest in -science. He wore a pedometer; he was one of the first to use a camera; -he believed in the future of the typewriter; and in his last years he -tried to mend a broken clock. He was a delightful father too; he wrote -witty, terse, sensible letters; his good stories were much to the point; -and he died in harness. Certainly he was a very able man, but if we -insist upon goodness--is it easy, is it possible, for a good man to be -an Archbishop? - - - - -_The Patron and the Crocus_ - - -Young men and women beginning to write are generally given the plausible -but utterly impracticable advice to write what they have to write as -shortly as possible, as clearly as possible, and without other thought -in their minds except to say exactly what is in them. Nobody ever adds -on these occasions the one thing needful: "And be sure you choose your -patron wisely", though that is the gist of the whole matter. For a book -is always written for somebody to read, and, since the patron is not -merely the paymaster, but also in a very subtle and insidious way the -instigator and inspirer of what is written, it is of the utmost -importance that he should be a desirable man. - -But who, then, is the desirable man--the patron who will cajole the best -out of the writer's brain and bring to birth the most varied and -vigorous progeny of which he is capable? Different ages have answered -the question differently. The Elizabethans, to speak roughly, -chose the aristocracy to write for and the playhouse public. The -eighteenth-century patron was a combination of coffee-house wit and Grub -Street bookseller. In the nineteenth-century the great writers wrote for -the half-crown magazines and the leisured classes. And looking back and -applauding the splendid results of these different alliances, it all -seems enviably simple, and plain as a pikestaff compared with our own -predicament--for whom should we write? For the present supply of patrons -is of unexampled and bewildering variety. There is the daily Press, the -weekly Press, the monthly Press; the English public and the American -public; the best-seller public and the worst-seller public; the -high-brow public and the red-blood public; all now organised -self-conscious entities capable through their various mouthpieces of -making their needs known and their approval or displeasure felt. Thus -the writer who has been moved by the sight of the first crocus in -Kensington Gardens has, before he sets pen to paper, to choose from a -crowd of competitors the particular patron who suits him best. It is -futile to say, "Dismiss them all; think only of your crocus", because -writing is a method of communication; and the crocus is an imperfect -crocus until it has been shared. The first man or the last may write for -himself alone, but he is an exception and an unenviable one at that, and -the gulls are welcome to his works if the gulls can read them. - -Granted, then, that every writer has some public or other at the end of -his pen, the high-minded will say that it should be a submissive public, -accepting obediently whatever he likes to give it. Plausible as the -theory sounds, great risks are attached to it. For in that case the -writer remains conscious of his public, yet is superior to it--an -uncomfortable and unfortunate combination, as the works of Samuel -Butler, George Meredith, and Henry James may be taken to prove. Each -despised the public; each desired a public; each failed to attain a -public; and each wreaked his failure upon the public by a succession, -gradually increasing in intensity, of angularities, obscurities, and -affectations which no writer whose patron was his equal and friend would -have thought it necessary to inflict. Their crocuses in consequence are -tortured plants, beautiful and bright, but with something wry-necked -about them, malformed, shrivelled on the one side, overblown on the -other. A touch of the sun would have done them a world of good. Shall we -then rush to the opposite extreme and accept (if in fancy alone) the -flattering proposals which the editors of the _Times_ and the _Daily -News_ may be supposed to make us--"Twenty pounds down for your crocus in -precisely fifteen hundred words, which shall blossom upon every -breakfast table from John o' Groats to the Land's End before nine -o'clock to-morrow morning with the writer's name attached"? - -But will one crocus be enough, and must it not be a very brilliant -yellow to shine so far, to cost so much, and to have one's name attached -to it? The Press is undoubtedly a great multiplier of crocuses. But if -we look at some of these plants, we shall find that they are only very -distantly related to the original little yellow or purple flower which -pokes up through the grass in Kensington Gardens about this time of -year. The newspaper crocus is amazing but still a very different plant. -It fills precisely the space allotted to it. It radiates a golden glow. -It is genial, affable, warm-hearted. It is beautifully finished, too, -for let nobody think that the art of "our dramatic critic" of the -_Times_ or of Mr. Lynd of the _Daily News_ is an easy one. It is no -despicable feat to start a million brains running at nine o'clock in the -morning, to give two million eyes something bright and brisk and amusing -to look at. But the night comes and these flowers fade. So little bits -of glass lose their lustre if you take them out of the sea; great prima -donnas howl like hyenas if you shut them up in telephone boxes; and the -most brilliant of articles when removed from its element is dust and -sand and the husks of straw. Journalism embalmed in a book is -unreadable. - -The patron we want, then, is one who will help us to preserve our -flowers from decay. But as his qualities change from age to age, and it -needs considerable integrity and conviction not to be dazzled by the -pretensions or bamboozled by the persuasions of the competing crowd, -this business of patron-finding is one of the tests and trials of -authorship. To know whom to write for is to know how to write. Some of -the modern patron's qualities are, however, fairly plain. The writer -will require at this moment, it is obvious, a patron with the -book-reading habit rather than the play-going habit. Nowadays, too, he -must be instructed in the literature of other times and races. But there -are other qualities which our special weaknesses and tendencies demand -in him. There is the question of indecency, for instance, which plagues -us and puzzles us much more than it did the Elizabethans. The -twentieth-century patron must be immune from shock. He must distinguish -infallibly between the little clod of manure which sticks to the crocus -of necessity, and that which is plastered to it out of bravado. He must -be a judge, too, of those social influences which inevitably play so -large a part in modern literature, and able to say which matures and -fortifies, which inhibits and makes sterile. Further, there is emotion -for him to pronounce on, and in no department can he do more useful work -than in bracing a writer against sentimentality on the one hand and a -craven fear of expressing his feeling on the other. It is worse, he will -say, and perhaps more common, to be afraid of feeling than to feel too -much. He will add, perhaps, something about language, and point out how -many words Shakespeare used and how much grammar Shakespeare violated, -while we, though we keep our fingers so demurely to the black notes on -the piano, have not appreciably improved upon _Antony and Cleopatra_. -And if you can forget your sex altogether, he will say, so much the -better; a writer has none. But all this is by the way--elementary and -disputable. The patron's prime quality is something different, only to -be expressed perhaps by the use of that convenient word which cloaks so -much--atmosphere. It is necessary that the patron should shed and -envelop the crocus in an atmosphere which makes it appear a plant of the -very highest importance, so that to misrepresent it is the one outrage -not to be forgiven this side of the grave. He must make us feel that a -single crocus, if it be a real crocus, is enough for him; that he does -not want to be lectured, elevated, instructed, or improved; that he is -sorry that he bullied Carlyle into vociferation, Tennyson into idyllics, -and Ruskin into insanity; that he is now ready to efface himself or -assert himself as his writers require; that he is bound to them by a -more than maternal tie; that they are twins indeed, one dying if the -other dies, one flourishing if the other flourishes; that the fate of -literature depends upon their happy alliance--all of which proves, as we -began by saying, that the choice of a patron is of the highest -importance. But how to choose rightly? How to write well? Those are the -questions. - - - - -_The Modern Essay_ - - -As Mr. Rhys truly says, it is unnecessary to go profoundly into the -history and origin of the essay--whether it derives from Socrates or -Siranney the Persian--since, like all living things, its present is more -important than its past. Moreover, the family is widely spread; and -while some of its representatives have risen in the world and wear their -coronets with the best, others pick up a precarious living in the gutter -near Fleet Street. The form, too, admits variety. The essay can be short -or long, serious or trifling, about God and Spinoza, or about turtles -and Cheapside. But as we turn over the pages of these five little -volumes,[13] containing essays written between 1870 and 1920, certain -principles appear to control the chaos, and we detect in the short -period under review something like the progress of history. - -Of all forms of literature, however, the essay is the one which least -calls for the use of long words. The principle which controls it is -simply that it should give pleasure; the desire which impels us when we -take it from the shelf is simply to receive pleasure. Everything in an -essay must be subdued to that end. It should lay us under a spell with -its first word, and we should only wake, refreshed, with its last. In -the interval we may pass through the most various experiences of -amusement, surprise, interest, indignation; we may soar to the heights -of fantasy with Lamb or plunge to the depths of wisdom with Bacon, but -we must never be roused. The essay must lap us about and draw its -curtain across the world. - -So great a feat is seldom accomplished, though the fault may well be as -much on the reader's side as on the writer's. Habit and lethargy have -dulled his palate. A novel has a story, a poem rhyme; but what art can -the essayist use in these short lengths of prose to sting us wide awake -and fix us in a trance which is not sleep but rather an intensification -of life--a basking, with every faculty alert, in the sun of pleasure? He -must know--that is the first essential--how to write. His learning may -be as profound as Mark Pattison's, but in an essay it must be so fused -by the magic of writing that not a fact juts out, not a dogma tears the -surface of the texture. Macaulay in one way, Froude in another, did this -superbly over and over again. They have blown more knowledge into us in -the course of one essay than the innumerable chapters of a hundred -text-books. But when Mark Pattison has to tell us, in the space of -thirty-five little pages, about Montaigne, we feel that he had not -previously assimilated M. Grün. M. Grün was a gentleman who once wrote -a bad book. M. Grün and his book should have been embalmed for our -perpetual delight in amber. But the process is fatiguing; it requires -more time and perhaps more temper than Pattison had at his command. He -served M. Grün up raw, and he remains a crude berry among the cook -meats, upon which our teeth must grate for ever. Something of the sort -applies to Matthew Arnold and a certain translator of Spinoza. Literal -truth-telling and finding fault with a culprit for his good are out of -place in an essay, where everything should be for our good and rather -for eternity than for the March number of the _Fortnightly Review_. But -if the voice of the scold should never be heard in this narrow plot, -there is another voice which is as a plague of locusts--the voice of a -man stumbling drowsily among loose words, clutching aimlessly at vague -ideas, the voice, for example, of Mr. Hutton in the following passage: - - -Add to this that his married life was very brief, only seven years and a -half, being unexpectedly cut short, and that his passionate reverence -for his wife's memory and genius--in his own words, "a religion"--was -one which, as he must have been perfectly sensible, he could not make to -appear otherwise than extravagant, not to say an hallucination, in the -eyes of the rest of mankind, and yet that he was possessed by an -irresistible yearning to attempt to embody it in all the tender and -enthusiastic hyperbole of which it is so pathetic to find a man who -gained his fame by his "dry-light" a master, and it is impossible not to -feel that the human incidents in Mr. Mill's career are very sad. - - -A book could take that blow, but it sinks an essay. A biography in two -volumes is indeed the proper depositary; for there, where the licence is -so much wider, and hints and glimpses of outside things make part of the -feast (we refer to the old type of Victorian volume), these yawns and -stretches hardly matter, and have indeed some positive value of their -own. But that value, which is contributed by the reader, perhaps -illicitly, in his desire to get as much into the book from all possible -sources as he can, must be ruled out here. - -There is no room for the impurities of literature in an essay. Somehow -or other, by dint of labour or bounty of nature, or both combined, the -essay must be pure--pure like water or pure like wine, but pure from -dullness, deadness, and deposits of extraneous matter. Of all writers in -the first volume, Walter Pater best achieves this arduous task, because -before setting out to write his essay ("Notes on Leonardo da Vinci") he -has somehow contrived to get his material fused. He is a learned man, -but it is not knowledge of Leonardo that remains with us, but a vision, -such as we get in a good novel where everything contributes to bring the -writer's conception as a whole before us. Only here, in the essay, where -the bounds are so strict and facts have to be used in their nakedness, -the true writer like Walter Pater makes these limitations yield their -own quality. Truth will give it authority; from its narrow limits he -will get shape and intensity; and then there is no more fitting place -for some of those ornaments which the old writers loved and we, by -calling them ornaments, presumably despise. Nowadays nobody would have -the courage to embark on the once famous description of Leonardo's lady -who has - - -learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas and -keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with -Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, -as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary . . . - - -The passage is too thumb-marked to slip naturally into the context. But -when we come unexpectedly upon "the smiling of women and the motion of -great waters", or upon "full of the refinement of the dead, in sad, -earth-coloured raiment, set with pale stones", we suddenly remember that -we have ears and we have eyes, and that the English language fills a -long array of stout volumes with innumerable words, many of which are of -more than one syllable. The only living Englishman who ever looks into -these volumes is, of course, a gentleman of Polish extraction. But -doubtless our abstention saves us much gush, much rhetoric, much -high-stepping and cloud-prancing, and for the sake of the prevailing -sobriety and hard-headedness we should be willing to barter the -splendour of Sir Thomas Browne and the vigour of Swift. - -Yet, if the essay admits more properly than biography or fiction of -sudden boldness and metaphor, and can be polished till every atom of its -surface shines, there are dangers in that too. We are soon in sight of -ornament. Soon the current, which is the life-blood of literature, runs -slow; and instead of sparkling and flashing or moving with a quieter -impulse which has a deeper excitement, words coagulate together in -frozen sprays which, like the grapes on a Christmas-tree, glitter for a -single night, but are dusty and garish the day after. The temptation to -decorate is great where the theme may be of the slightest. What is there -to interest another in the fact that one has enjoyed a walking tour, or -has amused oneself by rambling down Cheapside and looking at the turtles -in Mr. Sweeting's shop window? Stevenson and Samuel Butler chose very -different methods of exciting our interest in these domestic themes. -Stevenson, of course, trimmed and polished and set out his matter in the -traditional eighteenth-century form. It is admirably done, but we cannot -help feeling anxious, as the essay proceeds, lest the material may give -out under the craftsman's fingers. The ingot is so small, the -manipulation so incessant. And perhaps that is why the peroration-- - - -To sit still and contemplate--to remember the faces of women without -desire, to be pleased by the great deeds of men without envy, to be -everything and everywhere in sympathy and yet content to remain where -and what you are-- - - -has the sort of insubstantiality which suggests that by the time he got -to the end he had left himself nothing solid to work with. Butler -adopted the very opposite method. Think your own thoughts, he seems to -say, and speak them as plainly as you can. These turtles in the shop -window which appear to leak out of their shells through heads and feet -suggest a fatal faithfulness to a fixed idea. And so, striding -unconcernedly from one idea to the next, we traverse a large stretch of -ground; observe that a wound in the solicitor is a very serious thing; -that Mary Queen of Scots wears surgical boots and is subject to fits -near the Horse Shoe in Tottenham Court Road; take it for granted that no -one really cares about Æschylus; and so, with many amusing anecdotes -and some profound reflections, reach the peroration, which is that, as -he had been told not to see more in Cheapside than he could get into -twelve pages of the _Universal Review_, he had better stop. And yet -obviously Butler is at least as careful of our pleasure as Stevenson; -and to write like oneself and call it not writing is a much harder -exercise in style than to write like Addison and call it writing well. - -But, however much they differ individually, the Victorian essayists yet -had something in common. They wrote at greater length than is now usual, -and they wrote for a public which had not only time to sit down to its -magazine seriously, but a high, if peculiarly Victorian, standard of -culture by which to judge it. It was worth while to speak out upon -serious matters in an essay; and there was nothing absurd in writing as -well as one possibly could when, in a month or two, the same public -which had welcomed the essay in a magazine would carefully read it once -more in a book. But a change came from a small audience of cultivated -people to a larger audience of people who were not quite so cultivated. -The change was not altogether for the worse. In volume III. we find Mr. -Birrell and Mr. Beerbohm. It might even be said that there was a -reversion to the classic type, and that the essay by losing its size and -something of its sonority was approaching more nearly the essay of -Addison and Lamb. At any rate, there is a great gulf between Mr. Birrell -on Carlyle and the essay which one may suppose that Carlyle would have -written upon Mr. Birrell. There is little similarity between _A Cloud of -Pinafores_, by Max Beerbohm, and _A Cynic's Apology_, by Leslie Stephen. -But the essay is alive; there is no reason to despair. As the conditions -change so the essayist, most sensitive of all plants to public opinion, -adapts himself, and if he is good makes the best of the change, and if -he is bad the worst. Mr. Birrell is certainly good; and so we find that, -though he has dropped a considerable amount of weight, his attack is -much more direct and his movement more supple. But what did Mr. Beerbohm -give to the essay and what did he take from it? That is a much more -complicated question, for here we have an essayist who has concentrated -on the work and is without doubt the prince of his profession. - -What Mr. Beerbohm gave was, of course, himself. This presence, which has -haunted the essay fitfully from the time of Montaigne, had been in exile -since the death of Charles Lamb. Matthew Arnold was never to his readers -Matt, nor Walter Pater affectionately abbreviated in a thousand homes to -Wat. They gave us much, but that they did not give. Thus, some time in -the nineties, it must have surprised readers accustomed to exhortation, -information, and denunciation to find themselves familiarly addressed by -a voice which seemed to belong to a man no larger than themselves. He -was affected by private joys and sorrows, and had no gospel to preach -and no learning to impart. He was himself, simply and directly, and -himself he has remained. Once again we have an essayist capable of using -the essayist's most proper but most dangerous and delicate tool. He has -brought personality into literature, not unconsciously and impurely, but -so consciously and purely that we do not know whether there is any -relation between Max the essayist and Mr. Beerbohm the man. We only know -that the spirit of personality permeates every word that he writes. The -triumph is the triumph of style. For it is only by knowing how to write -that you can make use in literature of your self; that self which, while -it is essential to literature, is also its most dangerous antagonist. -Never to be yourself and yet always--that is the problem. Some of the -essayists in Mr. Rhys' collection, to be frank, have not altogether -succeeded in solving it. We are nauseated by the sight of trivial -personalities decomposing in the eternity of print. As talk, no doubt, -it was charming, and certainly the writer is a good fellow to meet over -a bottle of beer. But literature is stern; it is no use being charming, -virtuous, or even learned and brilliant into the bargain, unless, she -seems to reiterate, you fulfil her first condition--to know how to -write. - -This art is possessed to perfection by Mr. Beerbohm. But he has not -searched the dictionary for polysyllables. He has not moulded firm -periods or seduced our ears with intricate cadences and strange -melodies. Some of his companions--Henley and Stevenson, for example--are -momentarily more impressive. But _A Cloud of Pinafores_ had in it that -indescribable inequality, stir, and final expressiveness which belong to -life and to life alone. You have not finished with it because you have -read it, any more than friendship is ended because it is time to part. -Life wells up and alters and adds. Even things in a book-case change if -they are alive; we find ourselves wanting to meet them again; we find -them altered. So we look back upon essay after essay by Mr. Beerbohm, -knowing that, come September or May, we shall sit down with them and -talk. Yet it is true that the essayist is the most sensitive of all -writers to public opinion. The drawing-room is the place where a great -deal of reading is done nowadays, and the essays of Mr. Beerbohm lie, -with an exquisite appreciation of all that the position exacts, upon the -drawing-room table. There is no gin about; no strong tobacco; no puns, -drunkenness, or insanity. Ladies and gentlemen talk together, and some -things, of course, are not said. - -But if it would be foolish to attempt to confine Mr. Beerbohm to one -room, it would be still more foolish, unhappily, to make him, the -artist, the man who gives us only his best, the representative of our -age. There are no essays by Mr. Beerbohm in the fourth or fifth volumes -of the present collection. His age seems already a little distant, and -the drawing-room table, as it recedes, begins to look rather like an -altar where, once upon a time, people deposited offerings--fruit from -their own orchards, gifts carved with their own hands. Now once more the -conditions have changed. The public needs essays as much as ever, and -perhaps even more. The demand for the light middle not exceeding fifteen -hundred words, or in special cases seventeen hundred and fifty, much -exceeds the supply. Where Lamb wrote one essay and Max perhaps writes -two, Mr. Belloc at a rough computation produces three hundred and -sixty-five. They are very short, it is true. Yet with what dexterity the -practised essayist will utilise his space--beginning as close to the top -of the sheet as possible, judging precisely how far to go, when to turn, -and how, without sacrificing a hair's-breadth of paper, to wheel about -and alight accurately upon the last word his editor allows! As a feat of -skill it is well worth watching. But the personality upon which Mr. -Belloc, like Mr. Beerbohm, depends suffers in the process. It comes to -us not with the natural richness of the speaking voice, but strained and -thin and full of mannerisms and affectations, like the voice of a man -shouting through a megaphone to a crowd on a windy day. "Little friends, -my readers," he says in the essay called "An Unknown Country", and he -goes on to tell us how-- - - -There was a shepherd the other day at Findon Fair who had come from the -east by Lewes with sheep, and who had in his eyes that reminiscence of -horizons which makes the eyes of shepherds and of mountaineers different -from the eyes of other men. . . . I went with him to hear what he had to -say, for shepherds talk quite differently from other men. - - -Happily this shepherd had little to say, even under the stimulus of the -inevitable mug of beer, about the Unknown Country, for the only remark -that he did make proves him either a minor poet, unfit for the care of -sheep, or Mr. Belloc himself masquerading with a fountain pen. That is -the penalty which the habitual essayist must now be prepared to face. He -must masquerade. He cannot afford the time either to be himself or to be -other people. He must skim the surface of thought and dilute the -strength of personality. He must give us a worn weekly halfpenny instead -of a solid sovereign once a year. - -But it is not Mr. Belloc only who has suffered from the prevailing -conditions. The essays which bring the collection to the year 1920 may -not be the best of their authors' work, but, if we except writers like -Mr. Conrad and Mr. Hudson, who have strayed into essay writing -accidentally, and concentrate upon those who write essays habitually, we -shall find them a good deal affected by the change in their -circumstances. To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to -write for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired people -coming home in the evening, is a heart-breaking task for men who know -good writing from bad. They do it, but instinctively draw out of harm's -way anything precious that might be damaged by contact with the public, -or anything sharp that might irritate its skin. And so, if one reads Mr. -Lucas, Mr. Lynd, or Mr. Squire in the bulk, one feels that a common -greyness silvers everything. They are as far removed from the -extravagant beauty of Walter Pater as they are from the intemperate -candour of Leslie Stephen. Beauty and courage are dangerous spirits to -battle in a column and a half; and thought, like a brown paper parcel in -a waistcoat pocket, has a way of spoiling the symmetry of an article. It -is a kind, tired, apathetic world for which they write, and the marvel -is that they never cease to attempt, at least, to write well. - -But there is no need to pity Mr. Clutton Brock for this change in the -essayist's conditions. He has clearly made the best of his circumstances -and not the worst. One hesitates even to say that he has had to make any -conscious effort in the matter, so naturally has he effected the -transition from the private essayist to the public, from the -drawing-room to the Albert Hall. Paradoxically enough, the shrinkage in -size has brought about a corresponding expansion of individuality. We -have no longer the "I" of Max and of Lamb, but the "we" of public bodies -and other sublime personages. It is "we" who go to hear the _Magic -Flute_; "we" who ought to profit by it; "we", in some mysterious way, -who, in our corporate capacity, once upon a time actually wrote it. For -music and literature and art must submit to the same generalisation or -they will not carry to the farthest recesses of the Albert Hall. That -the voice of Mr. Clutton Brock, so sincere and so disinterested, carries -such a distance and reaches so many without pandering to the weakness of -the mass or its passions must be a matter of legitimate satisfaction to -us all. But while "we" are gratified, "I", that unruly partner in the -human fellowship, is reduced to despair. "I" must always think things -for himself, and feel things for himself. To share them in a diluted -form with the majority of well-educated and well-intentioned men and -women is for him sheer agony; and while the rest of us listen intently -and profit profoundly, "I" slips off to the woods and the fields and -rejoices in a single blade of grass or a solitary potato. - -In the fifth volume of modern essays, it seems, we have got some way -from pleasure and the art of writing. But in justice to the essayists of -1920 we must be sure that we are not praising the famous because they -have been praised already and the dead because we shall never meet them -wearing spats in Piccadilly. We must know what we mean when we say that -they can write and give us pleasure. We must compare them; we must bring -out the quality. We must point to this and say it is good because it is -exact, truthful, and imaginative: - - -Nay, retire men cannot when they would; neither will they, when it were -Reason; but are impatient of Privateness, even in age and sickness, -which require the shadow: like old Townsmen: that will still be sitting -at their street door, though thereby they offer Age to Scorn . . . - - -and to this, and say it is bad because it is loose, plausible, and -commonplace: - - -With courteous and precise cynicism on his lips, he thought of quiet -virginal chambers, of waters singing under the moon, of terraces where -taintless music sobbed into the open night, of pure maternal mistresses -with protecting arms and vigilant eyes, of fields slumbering in the -sunlight, of leagues of ocean heaving under warm tremulous heavens, of -hot ports, gorgeous and perfumed. . . . - - -It goes on, but already we are bemused with sound and neither feel nor -hear. The comparison makes us suspect that the art of writing has for -backbone some fierce attachment to an idea. It is on the back of an -idea, something believed in with conviction or seen with precision and -thus compelling words to its shape, that the diverse company which -included Lamb and Bacon, and Mr. Beerbohm and Hudson, and Vernon Lee and -Mr. Conrad, and Leslie Stephen and Butler and Walter Pater reaches the -farther shore. Very various talents have helped or hindered the passage -of the idea into words. Some scrape through painfully; others fly with -every wind favouring. But Mr. Belloc and Mr. Lucas and Mr. Lynd and Mr. -Squire are not fiercely attached to anything in itself. They share the -contemporary dilemma--that lack of an obstinate conviction which lifts -ephemeral sounds through the misty sphere of anybody's language to the -land where there is a perpetual marriage, a perpetual union. Vague as -all definitions are, a good essay must have this permanent quality about -it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that -shuts us in, not out. - - -[Footnote 13: _Modern English Essays_, edited by Ernest Rhys, -5 vols. (Dent).] - - - - -_Joseph Conrad_[14] - - -Suddenly, without giving us time to arrange our thoughts or prepare our -phrases, our guest has left us; and his withdrawal without farewell or -ceremony is in keeping with his mysterious arrival, long years ago, to -take up his lodging in this country. For there was always an air of -mystery about him. It was partly his Polish birth, partly his memorable -appearance, partly his preference for living in the depths of the -country, out of ear-shot of gossips, beyond reach of hostesses, so that -for news of him one had to depend upon the evidence of simple visitors -with a habit of ringing door-bells who reported of their unknown host -that he had the most perfect manners, the brightest eyes, and spoke -English with a strong foreign accent. - -Still, though it is the habit of death to quicken and focus our -memories, there clings to the genius of Conrad something essentially, -and not accidentally, difficult of approach. His reputation of later -years was, with one obvious exception, undoubtedly the highest in -England; yet he was not popular. He was read with passionate delight by -some; others he left cold and lustreless. Among his readers were people -of the most opposite ages and sympathies. Schoolboys of fourteen, -driving their way through Marryat, Scott, Henty, and Dickens, swallowed -him down with the rest; while the seasoned and the fastidious, who in -process of time have eaten their way to the heart of literature and -there turn over and over a few precious crumbs, set Conrad scrupulously -upon their banqueting table. One source of difficulty and disagreement -is, of course, to be found, where men have at all times found it, in his -beauty. One opens his pages and feels as Helen must have felt when she -looked in her glass and realised that, do what she would, she could -never in any circumstances pass for a plain woman. So Conrad had been -gifted, so he had schooled himself, and such was his obligation to a -strange language wooed characteristically for its Latin qualities rather -than its Saxon that it seemed impossible for him to make an ugly or -insignificant movement of the pen. His mistress, his style, is a little -somnolent sometimes in repose. But let somebody speak to her, and then -how magnificently she bears down upon us, with what colour, triumph, and -majesty! Yet it is arguable that Conrad would have gained both in credit -and in popularity if he had written what he had to write without this -incessant care for appearances. They block and impede and distract, his -critics say, pointing to those famous passages which it is becoming the -habit to lift from their context and exhibit among other cut flowers of -English prose. He was self-conscious and stiff and ornate, they -complain, and the sound of his own voice was dearer to him than the -voice of humanity in its anguish. The criticism is familiar, and as -difficult to refute as the remarks of deaf people when _Figaro_ is -played. They see the orchestra; far off they hear a dismal scrape of -sound; their own remarks are interrupted, and, very naturally, they -conclude that the ends of life would be better served if instead of -scraping Mozart those fifty fiddlers broke stones upon the road. That -beauty teaches, that beauty is a disciplinarian, how are we to convince -them, since her teaching is inseparable from the sound of her voice and -to that they are deaf? But read Conrad, not in birthday books but in the -bulk, and he must be lost indeed to the meaning of words who does not -hear in that rather stiff and sombre music, with its reserve, its pride, -its vast and implacable integrity, how it is better to be good than bad, -how loyalty is good and honesty and courage, though ostensibly Conrad is -concerned merely to show us the beauty of a night at sea. But it is ill -work dragging such intimations from their element. Dried in our little -saucers, without the magic and mystery of language, they lose their -power to excite and goad; they lose the drastic power which is a -constant quality of Conrad's prose. - -For it was by virtue of something drastic in him, the qualities of a -leader and captain, that Conrad kept his hold over boys and young -people. Until _Nostromo_ was written his characters, as the young were -quick to perceive, were fundamentally simple and heroic, however subtle -the mind and indirect the method of their creator. They were seafarers, -used to solitude and silence. They were in conflict with Nature, but at -peace with man. Nature was their antagonist; she it was who drew forth -honour, magnanimity, loyalty, the qualities proper to man; she who in -sheltered bays reared to womanhood beautiful girls unfathomable and -austere. Above all, it was Nature who turned out such gnarled and tested -characters as Captain Whalley and old Singleton, obscure but glorious in -their obscurity, who were to Conrad the pick of our race, the men whose -praises he was never tired of celebrating: - - -They had been strong as those are strong who know neither doubts nor -hopes. They had been impatient and enduring, turbulent and devoted, -unruly and faithful. Well-meaning people had tried to represent these -men as whining over every mouthful of their food, as going about their -work in fear of their lives. But in truth they had been men who knew -toil, privation, violence, debauchery--but knew not fear, and had no -desire of spite in their hearts. Men hard to manage, but easy to -inspire; voiceless men--but men enough to scorn in their hearts the -sentimental voices that bewailed the hardness of their fate. It was a -fate unique and their own; the capacity to bear it appeared to them the -privilege of the chosen! Their generation lived inarticulate and -indispensable, without knowing the sweetness of affections or the refuge -of a home--and died free from the dark menace of a narrow grave. They -were the everlasting children of the mysterious sea. - - -Such were the characters of the early books--_Lord Jim, Typhoon, The -Nigger of the "Narcissus", Youth_; and these books, in spite of the -changes and fashions, are surely secure of their place among our -classics. But they reach this height by means of qualities which the -simple story of adventure, as Marryat told it, or Fenimore Cooper, has -no claim to possess. For it is clear that to admire and celebrate such -men and such deeds, romantically, wholeheartedly and with the fervour -of a lover, one must be possessed of the double vision; one must be at -once inside and out. To praise their silence one must possess a voice. -To appreciate their endurance one must be sensitive to fatigue. One must -be able to live on equal terms with the Whalleys and the Singletons and -yet hide from their suspicious eyes the very qualities which enable one -to understand them. Conrad alone was able to live that double life, for -Conrad was compound of two men; together with the sea captain dwelt that -subtle, refined, and fastidious analyst whom he called Marlow. "A most -discreet, understanding man", he said of Marlow. - -Marlow was one of those born observers who are happiest in retirement. -Marlow liked nothing better than to sit on deck, in some obscure creek -of the Thames, smoking and recollecting; smoking and speculating; -sending after his smoke beautiful rings of words until all the summer's -night became a little clouded with tobacco smoke. Marlow, too, had a -profound respect for the men with whom he had sailed; but he saw the -humour of them. He nosed out and described in masterly fashion those -livid creatures who prey successfully upon the clumsy veterans. He had a -flair for human deformity; his humour was sardonic. Nor did Marlow live -entirely wreathed in the smoke of his own cigars. He had a habit of -opening his eyes suddenly and looking--at a rubbish heap, at a port, at -a shop counter--and then complete in its burning ring of light that -thing is flashed bright upon the mysterious background. Introspective -and analytical, Marlow was aware of this peculiarity. He said the power -came to him suddenly. He might, for instance, overhear a French officer -murmur "Mon Dieu, how the time passes!" - - -Nothing [he comments] could have been more commonplace than this remark; -but its utterance coincided for me with a moment of vision. It's -extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull -ears, with dormant thoughts. . . . Nevertheless, there can be but few of -us who had never known one of these rare moments of awakening, when we -see, hear, understand, ever so much--everything--in a flash, before we -fall back again into our agreeable somnolence. I raised my eyes when he -spoke, and I saw him as though I had never seen him before. - - -Picture after picture he painted thus upon that dark background; ships -first and foremost, ships at anchor, ships flying before the storm, -ships in harbour; he painted sunsets and dawns; he painted the night; he -painted the sea in every aspect; he painted the gaudy brilliancy of -Eastern ports, and men and women, their houses and their attitudes. He -was an accurate and unflinching observer, schooled to that "absolute -loyalty towards his feelings and sensations", which, Conrad wrote, "an -author should keep hold of in his most exalted moments of creation". And -very quietly and compassionately Marlow sometimes lets fall a few words -of epitaph which remind us, with all that beauty and brilliancy before -our eyes, of the darkness of the background. - -Thus a rough-and-ready distinction would make us say that it is Marlow -who comments, Conrad who creates. It would lead us, aware that we are on -dangerous ground, to account for that change which, Conrad tells us, -took place when he had finished the last story in the _Typhoon_ -volume--"a subtle change in the nature of the inspiration"--by some -alteration in the relationship of the two old friends. ". . . it seemed -somehow that there was nothing more in the world to write about." It was -Conrad, let us suppose, Conrad the creator, who said that, looking back -with sorrowful satisfaction upon the stories he had told; feeling as he -well might that he could never better the storm in _The Nigger of the -"Narcissus_", or render more faithful tribute to the qualities of -British seamen than he had done already in _Youth_ and _Lord Jim_. It -was then that Marlow, the commentator, reminded him how, in the course -of nature, one must grow old, sit smoking on deck, and give up -sea-faring. But, he reminded him, those strenuous years had deposited -their memories; and he even went so far perhaps as to hint that, though -the last word might have been said about Captain Whalley and his -relation to the universe, there remained on shore a number of men and -women whose relationships, though of a more personal kind, might be -worth looking into. If we further suppose that there was a volume of -Henry James on board and that Marlow gave his friend the book to take to -bed with him, we may seek support in the fact that it was in 1905 that -Conrad wrote a very fine essay upon that master. - -For some years, then, it was Marlow who was the dominant partner. -_Nostromo, Chance, The Arrow of Gold_ represent that stage of the -alliance which some will continue to find the richest of all. The human -heart is more intricate than the forest, they will say; it has its -storms; it has its creatures of the night; and if as novelist you wish -to test man in all his relationships, the proper antagonist is man; his -ordeal is in society, not solitude. For them there will always be a -peculiar fascination in the books where the light of those brilliant -eyes falls not only upon the waste of waters but upon the heart in its -perplexity. But it must be admitted that, if Marlow thus advised Conrad -to shift his angle of vision, the advice was bold. For the vision of a -novelist is both complex and specialised; complex, because behind his -characters and apart from them must stand something stable to which he -relates them; specialised because since he is a single person with one -sensibility the aspects of life in which he can believe with conviction -are strictly limited. So delicate a balance is easily disturbed. After -the middle period Conrad never again was able to bring his figures into -perfect relation with their background. He never believed in his later -and more highly sophisticated characters as he had believed in his early -seamen. When he had to indicate their relation to that other unseen -world of novelists, the world of values and convictions, he was far less -sure what those values were. Then, over and over again, a single phrase, -"He steered with care", coming at the end of a storm, carried in it a -whole morality. But in this more crowded and complicated world such -terse phrases became less and less appropriate. Complex men and women of -many interests and relations would not submit to so summary a judgement; -or, if they did, much that was important in them escaped the verdict. -And yet it was very necessary to Conrad's genius, with its luxuriant and -romantic power, to have some law by which its creations could be tried. -Essentially--such remained his creed--this world of civilised and -self-conscious people is based upon "a few very simple ideas"; but -where, in the world of thoughts and personal relations, are we to find -them? There are no masts in drawing-rooms; the typhoon does not test the -worth of politicians and business men. Seeking and not finding such -supports, the world of Conrad's later period has about it an involuntary -obscurity, an inconclusiveness, almost a disillusionment which baffles -and fatigues. We lay hold in the dusk only of the old nobilities and -sonorities: fidelity, compassion, honour, service--beautiful always, but -now a little wearily reiterated, as if times had changed. Perhaps it was -Marlow who was at fault. His habit of mind was a trifle sedentary. He -had sat upon deck too long; splendid in soliloquy, he was less apt in -the give and take of conversation; and those "moments of vision" -flashing and fading, do not serve as well as steady lamplight to -illumine the ripple of life and its long, gradual years. Above all, -perhaps, he did not take into account how, if Conrad was to create, it -was essential first that he should believe. - -Therefore, though we shall make expeditions into the later books and -bring back wonderful trophies, large tracts of them will remain by most -of us untrodden. It is the earlier books--_Youth, Lord Jim, Typhoon, The -Nigger of the "Narcissus"_--that we shall read in their entirety. For -when the question is asked, what of Conrad will survive and where in the -ranks of novelists we are to place him, these books, with their air of -telling us something very old and perfectly true, which had lain hidden -but is now revealed, will come to mind and make such questions and -comparisons seem a little futile. Complete and still, very chaste and -very beautiful, they rise in the memory as, on these hot summer nights, -in their slow and stately way first one star comes out and then another. - - -[Footnote 14: August, 1924.] - - - - -_How It Strikes a -Contemporary_ - - -In the first place a contemporary can scarcely fail to be struck by the -fact that two critics at the same table at the same moment will -pronounce completely different opinions about the same book. Here, on -the right, it is declared a masterpiece of English prose; on the left, -simultaneously, a mere mass of waste-paper which, if the fire could -survive it, should be thrown upon the flames. Yet both critics are in -agreement about Milton and about Keats. They display an exquisite -sensibility and have undoubtedly a genuine enthusiasm. It is only when -they discuss the work of contemporary writers that they inevitably come -to blows. The book in question, which is at once a lasting contribution -to English literature and a mere farrago of pretentious mediocrity, was -published about two months ago. That is the explanation; that is why -they differ. - -The explanation is a strange one. It is equally disconcerting to the -reader who wishes to take his bearings in the chaos of contemporary -literature and to the writer who has a natural desire to know whether -his own work, produced with infinite pains and in almost utter darkness, -is likely to burn for ever among the fixed luminaries of English letters -or, on the contrary, to put out the fire. But if we identify ourselves -with the reader and explore his dilemma first, our bewilderment is -short-lived enough. The same thing has happened so often before. We have -heard the doctors disagreeing about the new and agreeing about the old -twice a year on the average, in spring and autumn, ever since Robert -Elsmere, or was it Stephen Phillips, somehow pervaded the atmosphere, -and there was the same disagreement among grown-up people about them. It -would be much more marvellous, and indeed much more upsetting, if, for a -wonder, both gentlemen agreed, pronounced Blank's book an undoubted -masterpiece, and thus faced us with the necessity of deciding whether we -should back their judgement to the extent of ten and sixpence. Both are -critics of reputation; the opinions tumbled out so spontaneously here -will be starched and stiffened into columns of sober prose which will -uphold the dignity of letters in England and America. - -It must be some innate cynicism, then, some ungenerous distrust of -contemporary genius, which determines us automatically as the talk goes -on that, were they to agree--which they show no signs of doing--half a -guinea is altogether too large a sum to squander upon contemporary -enthusiasms, and the case will be met quite adequately by a card to the -library. Still the question remains, and let us put it boldly to the -critics themselves. Is there no guidance nowadays for a reader who -yields to none in reverence for the dead, but is tormented by the -suspicion that reverence for the dead is vitally connected with -understanding of the living? After a rapid survey both critics are -agreed that there is unfortunately no such person. For what is their own -judgement worth where new books are concerned? Certainly not ten and -sixpence. And from the stores of their experience they proceed to bring -forth terrible examples of past blunders; crimes of criticism which, if -they had been committed against the dead and not against the living, -would have lost them their jobs and imperilled their reputations. The -only advice they can offer is to respect one's own instincts, to follow -them fearlessly and, rather than submit them to the control of any -critic or reviewer alive, to check them by reading and reading again the -masterpieces of the past. - -Thanking them humbly, we cannot help reflecting that it was not always -so. Once upon a time, we must believe, there was a rule, a discipline, -which controlled the great republic of readers in a way which is now -unknown. That is not to say that the great critic--the Dryden, the -Johnson, the Coleridge, the Arnold--was an impeccable judge of -contemporary work, whose verdicts stamped the book indelibly and saved -the reader the trouble of reckoning the value for himself. The mistakes -of these great men about their own contemporaries are too notorious to -be worth recording. But the mere fact of their existence had a -centralising influence. That alone, it is not fantastic to suppose, -would have controlled the disagreements of the dinner-table and given to -random chatter about some book just out an authority now entirely to -seek. The diverse schools would have debated as hotly as ever, but at -the back of every reader's mind would have been the consciousness that -there was at least one man who kept the main principles of literature -closely in view; who, if you had taken to him some eccentricity of the -moment, would have brought it into touch with permanence and tethered it -by his own authority in the contrary blasts of praise and blame.[15] But -when it comes to the making of a critic, nature must be generous and -society ripe. The scattered dinner-tables of the modern world, the chase -and eddy of the various currents which compose the society of our time, -could only be dominated by a giant of fabulous dimensions. And where is -even the very tall man whom we have the right to expect? Reviewers we -have but no critic; a million competent and incorruptible policemen but -no judge. Men of taste and learning and ability are for ever lecturing -the young and celebrating the dead. But the too frequent result of their -able and industrious pens is a desiccation of the living tissues of -literature into a network of little bones. Nowhere shall we find the -downright vigour of a Dryden, or Keats with his fine and natural -bearing, his profound insight and sanity, or Flaubert and the tremendous -power of his fanaticism, or Coleridge, above all, brewing in his head -the whole of poetry and letting issue now and then one of those profound -general statements which are caught up by the mind when hot with the -friction of reading as if they were of the soul of the book itself. - -And to all this, too, the critics generously agree. A great critic, they -say, is the rarest of beings. But should one miraculously appear, how -should we maintain him, on what should we feed him? Great critics, if -they are not themselves great poets, are bred from the profusion of the -age. There is some great man to be vindicated, some school to be founded -or destroyed. But our age is meagre to the verge of destitution. There -is no name which dominates the rest. There is no master in whose -workshop the young are proud to serve apprenticeship. Mr. Hardy has long -since withdrawn from the arena, and there is something exotic about the -genius of Mr. Conrad which makes him not so much an influence as an -idol, honoured and admired, but aloof and apart. As for the rest, though -they are many and vigorous and in the full flood of creative activity, -there is none whose influence can seriously affect his contemporaries, -or penetrate beyond our day to that not very distant future which it -pleases us to call immortality. If we make a century our test, and ask -how much of the work produced in these days in England will be in -existence then, we shall have to answer not merely that we cannot agree -upon the same book, but that we are more than doubtful whether such a -book there is. It is an age of fragments. A few stanzas, a few pages, a -chapter here and there, the beginning of this novel, the end of that, -are equal to the best of any age or author. But can we go to posterity -with a sheaf of loose pages, or ask the readers of those days, with the -whole of literature before them, to sift our enormous rubbish heaps for -our tiny pearls? Such are the questions which the critics might lawfully -put to their companions at table, the novelists and poets. - -At first the weight of pessimism seems sufficient to bear down all -opposition. Yes, it is a lean age, we repeat, with much to justify its -poverty; but, frankly, if we pit one century against another the -comparison seems overwhelmingly against us. _Waverley, The Excursion, -Kubla Khan, Don Juan, Hazlitt's Essays, Pride and Prejudice, Hyperion_, -and _Prometheus Unbound_ were all published between 1800 and 1821. Our -century has not lacked industry; but if we ask for masterpieces it -appears on the face of it that the pessimists are right. It seems as if -an age of genius must be succeeded by an age of endeavour; riot and -extravagance by cleanliness and hard work. All honour, of course, to -those who have sacrificed their immortality to set the house in order. -But if we ask for masterpieces, where are we to look? A little poetry, -we may feel sure, will survive; a few poems by Mr. Yeats, by Mr. Davies, -by Mr. De la Mare. Mr. Lawrence, of course, has moments of greatness, -but hours of something very different. Mr. Beerbohm, in his way, is -perfect, but it is not a big way. Passages in _Far Away and Long Ago_ -will undoubtedly go to posterity entire. _Ulysses_ was a memorable -catastrophe--immense in daring, terrific in disaster. And so, picking -and choosing, we select now this, now that, hold it up for display, hear -it defended or derided, and finally have to meet the objection that even -so we are only agreeing with the critics that it is an age incapable of -sustained effort, littered with fragments, and not seriously to be -compared with the age that went before. - -But it is just when opinions universally prevail and we have added lip -service to their authority that we become sometimes most keenly -conscious that we do not believe a word that we are saying. It is a -barren and exhausted age, we repeat; we must look back with envy to the -past. Meanwhile it is one of the first fine days of spring. Life is not -altogether lacking in colour. The telephone, which interrupts the most -serious conversations and cuts short the most weighty observations, has -a romance of its own. And the random talk of people who have no chance -of immortality and thus can speak their minds out has a setting, often, -of lights, streets, houses, human beings, beautiful or grotesque, which -will weave itself into the moment for ever. But this is life; the talk -is about literature. We must try to disentangle the two, and justify the -rash revolt of optimism against the superior plausibility, the finer -distinction, of pessimism. - -Our optimism, then, is largely instinctive. It springs from the fine day -and the wine and the talk; it springs from the fact that when life -throws up such treasures daily, daily suggests more than the most -voluble can express, much though we admire the dead, we prefer life as -it is. There is something about the present which we would not exchange, -though we were offered a choice of all past ages to live in. And modern -literature, with all its imperfections, has the same hold on us and the -same fascination. It is like a relation whom we snub and scarify daily, -but, after all, cannot do without. It has the same endearing quality of -being that which we are, that which we have made, that in which we live, -instead of being something, however august, alien to ourselves and -beheld from the outside. Nor has any generation more need than ours to -cherish its contemporaries. We are sharply cut off from our -predecessors. A shift in the scale--the war, the sudden slip of masses -held in position for ages--has shaken the fabric from top to bottom, -alienated us from the past and made us perhaps too vividly conscious of -the present. Every day we find ourselves doing, saying, or thinking -things that would have been impossible to our fathers. And we feel the -differences which have not been noted far more keenly than the -resemblances which have been very perfectly expressed. New books lure us -to read them partly in the hope that they will reflect this -rearrangement of our attitude--these scenes, thoughts, and apparently -fortuitous groupings of incongruous things which impinge upon us with so -keen a sense of novelty--and, as literature does, give it back into our -keeping, whole and comprehended. Here indeed there is every reason for -optimism. No age can have been more rich than ours in writers determined -to give expression to the differences which separate them from the past -and not to the resemblances which connect them with it. It would be -invidious to mention names, but the most casual reader dipping into -poetry, into fiction, into biography can hardly fail to be impressed by -the courage, the sincerity, in a word, by the widespread originality of -our time. But our exhilaration is strangely curtailed. Book after book -leaves us with the same sense of promise unachieved, of intellectual -poverty, of brilliance which has been snatched from life but not -transmuted into literature. Much of what is best in contemporary work -has the appearance of being noted under pressure, taken down in a bleak -shorthand which preserves with astonishing brilliance the movements and -expressions of the figures as they pass across the screen. But the flash -is soon over, and there remains with us a profound dissatisfaction. The -irritation is as acute as the pleasure was intense. - -After all, then, we are back at the beginning, vacillating from extreme -to extreme, at one moment enthusiastic, at the next pessimistic, unable -to come to any conclusion about our contemporaries. We have asked the -critics to help us, but they have deprecated the task. Now, then, is the -time to accept their advice and correct these extremes by consulting the -masterpieces of the past. We feel ourselves indeed driven to them, -impelled not by calm judgement but by some imperious need to anchor our -instability upon their security. But, honestly, the shock of the -comparison between past and present is at first disconcerting. -Undoubtedly there is a dullness in great books. There is an unabashed -tranquillity in page after page of Wordsworth and Scott and Miss Austen -which is sedative to the verge of somnolence. Opportunities occur and -they neglect them. Shades and subtleties accumulate and they ignore -them. They seem deliberately to refuse to gratify those senses which are -stimulated so briskly by the moderns; the senses of sight, of sound, of -touch--above all, the sense of the human being, his depth and the -variety of his perceptions, his complexity, his confusion, his self, in -short. There is little of all this in the works of Wordsworth and Scott -and Jane Austen. From what, then, arises that sense of security which -gradually, delightfully, and completely overcomes us? It is the power of -their belief--their conviction, that imposes itself upon us. In -Wordsworth, the philosophic poet, this is obvious enough. But it is -equally true of the careless Scott, who scribbled masterpieces to build -castles before breakfast, and of the modest maiden lady who wrote -furtively and quietly simply to give pleasure. In both there is the same -natural conviction that life is of a certain quality. They have their -judgement of conduct. They know the relations of human beings towards -each other and towards the universe. Neither of them probably has a word -to say about the matter outright, but everything depends on it. Only -believe, we find ourselves saying, and all the rest will come of itself. -Only believe, to take a very simple instance which the recent -publication of _The Watsons_ brings to mind, that a nice girl will -instinctively try to soothe the feelings of a boy who has been snubbed -at a dance, and then, if you believe it implicitly and unquestioningly, -you will not only make people a hundred years later feel the same thing, -but you will make them feel it as literature. For certainty of that kind -is the condition which makes it possible to write. To believe that your -impressions hold good for others is to be released from the cramp and -confinement of personality. It is to be free, as Scott was free, to -explore with a vigour which still holds us spell-bound the whole world -of adventure and romance. It is also the first step in that mysterious -process in which Jane Austen was so great an adept. The little grain of -experience once selected, believed in, and set outside herself, could be -put precisely in its place, and she was then free to make of it, by a -process which never yields its secrets to the analyst, into that -complete statement which is literature. - -So then our contemporaries afflict us because they have ceased to -believe. The most sincere of them will only tell us what it is that -happens to himself. They cannot make a world, because they are not free -of other human beings. They cannot tell stories because they do not -believe the stories are true. They cannot generalise. They depend on -their senses and emotions, whose testimony is trustworthy, rather than -on their intellects whose message is obscure. And they have perforce to -deny themselves the use of some of the most powerful and some of the -most exquisite of the weapons of their craft. With the whole wealth of -the English language at the back of them, they timidly pass about from -hand to hand and book to book only the meanest copper coins. Set down at -a fresh angle of the eternal prospect they can only whip out their -notebooks and record with agonised intensity the flying gleams, which -light on what? and the transitory splendours, which may, perhaps, -compose nothing whatever. But here the critics interpose, and with some -show of justice. - -If this description holds good, they say, and is not, as it may well be, -entirely dependent upon our position at the table and certain purely -personal relationships to mustard pots and flower vases, then the risks -of judging contemporary work are greater than ever before. There is -every excuse for them if they are wide of the mark; and no doubt it -would be better to retreat, as Matthew Arnold advised, from the burning -ground of the present to the safe tranquillity of the past. "We enter on -burning ground," wrote Matthew Arnold, "as we approach the poetry of -times so near to us, poetry like that of Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth, -of which the estimates are so often not only personal, but personal with -passion," and this, they remind us, was written in the year 1880. -Beware, they say, of putting under the microscope one inch of a ribbon -which runs many miles; things sort themselves out if you wait; -moderation and a study of the classics are to be recommended. Moreover, -life is short; the Byron centenary is at hand; and the burning question -of the moment is, did he, or did he not, marry his sister? To sum up, -then--if indeed any conclusion is possible when everybody is talking at -once and it is time to be going--it seems that it would be wise for the -writers of the present to renounce for themselves the hope of creating -masterpieces. Their poems, plays, biographies, novels are not books but -notebooks, and Time, like a good schoolmaster, will take them in his -hands, point to their blots and erasions, and tear them across; but he -will not throw them into the waste-paper basket. He will keep them -because other students will find them very useful. It is from notebooks -of the present that the masterpieces of the future are made. Literature, -as the critics were saying just now, has lasted long, has undergone many -changes, and it is only a short sight and a parochial mind that will -exaggerate the importance of these squalls, however they may agitate the -little boats now tossing out at sea. The storm and the drenching are on -the surface; and continuity and calm are in the depths. - -As for the critics whose task it is to pass judgement upon the books of -the moment, whose work, let us admit, is difficult, dangerous, and often -distasteful, let us ask them to be generous of encouragement, but -sparing of those wreaths and coronets which are so apt to get awry, and -fade, and make the wearers, in six months time, look a little -ridiculous. Let them take a wider, a less personal view of modern -literature, and look indeed upon the writers as if they were engaged -upon some vast building, which being built by common effort, the -separate workmen may well remain anonymous. Let them slam the door upon -the cosy company where sugar is cheap and butter plentiful, give over, -for a time at least, the discussion of that fascinating topic--whether -Byron married his sister--and, withdrawing, perhaps, a handsbreadth from -the table where we sit chattering, say something interesting about -literature. Let us buttonhole them as they leave, and recall to their -memory that gaunt aristocrat. Lady Hester Stanhope, who kept a -milk-white horse in her stable in readiness for the Messiah and was for -ever scanning the mountain tops, impatiently but with confidence, for -signs of his approach, and ask them to follow her example; scan the -horizon; see the past in relation to the future; and so prepare the way -for masterpieces to come. - - -[Footnote 15: How violent these are two quotations will show. "It [Told -by _an Idiot_] should be read as the _Tempest_ should be read, and as -_Gulliver's Travels_ should be read, for if Miss Macaulay's poetic gift -happens to be less sublime than those of the author of the _Tempest_, -and if her irony happens to be less tremendous than that of the author -of _Gulliver's Travels_, her justice and wisdom are no less noble than -theirs."--_The Daily News._ - -The next day we read: "For the rest one can only say that if Mr. Eliot -had been pleased to write in demotic English _The Waste Land_ might not -have been, as it just is to all but anthropologists, and literati, so -much waste-paper."--_The Manchester Guardian._] - - -[Illustration] - - -*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMMON READER *** - -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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padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} -.poem span.i1 {display: block; margin-left: .45em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} -.poem span.i2 {display: block; margin-left: 1em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} -.poem span.i3 {display: block; margin-left: 2em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} -.poem span.i4 {display: block; margin-left: 3em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} -.poem span.i6 {display: block; margin-left: 4em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} -.poem span.i7 {display: block; margin-left: 5em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} -.poem span.i8 {display: block; margin-left: 7em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} -.poem span.i9 {display: block; margin-left: 10em; padding-left: 3em; text-indent: -3em;} - -/* Transcriber's notes */ -.transnote {background-color: #E6E6FA; - color: black; - font-size:smaller; - padding:0.5em; - margin-bottom:5em; - margin-top:2em; - font-family:sans-serif, serif; } - - </style> - </head> -<body> - -<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Common Reader, by Virginia Woolf</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -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 <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. 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. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: The Common Reader</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Virginia Woolf</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: February 04, 2021 [eBook #64457]</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Laura Natal Rodrigues at Free Literature (Images generously made available by Hathi Trust Digital Library.)</div> - -<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMMON READER ***</div> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 500px;"> -<img src="images/common_cover.jpg" width="500" alt="" /> -</div> - - -<h2><i>THE</i></h2> - -<h2>COMMON READER</h2> - - - -<h4>BY</h4> - -<h3>VIRGINIA A WOOLF</h3> - - - -<div class="blockquot-half"> -<p>". . . I rejoice to concur with the common -reader; for by the common sense of readers, -uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all the -refinements of subtlety and the dogmatism of -learning, must be generally decided all claim to -poetical honors."</p> - -<p style="margin-left: 40%;">DR. JOHNSON, <i>Life of Gray.</i></p> -</div> - - - - -<h5><i>New York</i></h5> - -<h4>HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY</h4> - -<hr class="r5" /> - - -<h5>COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY<br /> -HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.</h5> - -<hr class="r5" /> - -<h4>TO</h4> - - -<h4>LYTTON STRACHEY</h4> - -<hr class="r5" /> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<blockquote> -<p>Some of these papers appeared originally in the <i>Times Literary -Supplement</i> and the <i>Dial</i>. I have to thank the Editors for -allowing me to reprint them here; some are based upon articles written for -various newspapers, while others appear now for the first time.</p> -</blockquote> - -<hr class="r5" /> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><i>CONTENTS</i></h4> - -<p><a href="#The_Common_Reader">The Common Reader</a><br /> -<a href="#The_Pastons_and_Chaucer">The Pastons and Chaucer</a><br /> -<a href="#On_Not_Knowing_Greek">On Not Knowing Greek</a><br /> -<a href="#The_Elizabethan">The Elizabethan Lumber Room</a><br /> -<a href="#Notes">Notes on an Elizabethan Play</a><br /> -<a href="#Montaigne">Montaigne</a><br /> -<a href="#The_Duchess">The Duchess of Newcastle</a><br /> -<a href="#Rambling_Round_Evelyn">Rambling Round Evelyn</a><br /> -<a href="#Defoe">Defoe</a><br /> -<a href="#Addison">Addison</a><br /> -<br /> -<a href="#The_Lives_of_the_Obscure">The Lives of the Obscure</a><br /> -I. <a href="#The_Taylors">The Taylors and the Edgeworths</a><br /> -II. <a href="#Laetitia_Pilkington">Laetitia Pilkington</a><br /> -III. <a href="#Miss_Ormerod">Miss Ormerod</a><br /> -<br /> -<a href="#Jane_Austen">Jane Austen</a><br /> -<a href="#Modern_Fiction">Modern Fiction</a><br /> -<a href="#Jane_Eyre">"Jane Eyre" and "Wuthering Heights"</a><br /> -<a href="#George_Eliot">George Eliot</a><br /> -<a href="#The_Russian">The Russian Point of View</a><br /> -<br /> -<a href="#Outlines">Outlines—</a><br /> -I. <a href="#Miss_Mitford">Miss Mitford</a><br /> -II. <a href="#Dr_Bentley">Dr. Bentley</a><br /> -III. <a href="#Lady_Dorothy_Nevill">Lady Dorothy Nevill</a><br /> -IV. <a href="#Archbishop_Thomson">Archbishop Thomson</a><br /> -<br /> -<a href="#The_Patron">The Patron and the Crocus</a><br /> -<a href="#The_Modern_Essay">The Modern Essay</a><br /> -<a href="#Joseph_Conrad">Joseph Conrad</a><br /> -<a href="#How_It">How It Strikes a Contemporary</a></p> - -<hr class="r5" /> - - - -<h4>THE COMMON READER</h4> - -<p><br /></p> - - -<h4><a id="The_Common_Reader"><i>The Common Reader</i></a></h4> - - -<p>There is a sentence in Dr. Johnson's Life of Gray which might well be -written up in all those rooms, too humble to be called libraries, yet -full of books, where the pursuit of reading is carried on by private -people. ". . . I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the -common sense of readers, uncorrupted by literary prejudices, after all -the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be -finally decided all claim to poetical honours." It defines their -qualities; it dignifies their aims; it bestows upon a pursuit which -devours a great deal of time, and is yet apt to leave behind it nothing -very substantial, the sanction of the great man's approval.</p> - -<p>The common reader, as Dr. Johnson implies, differs from the critic and -the scholar. He is worse educated, and nature has not gifted him so -generously. He reads for his own pleasure rather than to impart -knowledge or correct the opinions of others. Above all, he is guided by -an instinct to create for himself, out of whatever odds and ends he can -come by, some kind of whole—a portrait of a man, a sketch of an age, -a theory of the art of writing. He never ceases, as he reads, to run up -some rickety and ramshackle fabric which shall give him the temporary -satisfaction of looking sufficiently like the real object to allow of -affection, laughter, and argument. Hasty, inaccurate, and superficial, -snatching now this poem, now that scrap of old furniture without caring -where he finds it or of what nature it may be so long as it serves his -purpose and rounds his structure, his deficiencies as a critic are too -obvious to be pointed out; but if he has, as Dr. Johnson maintained, -some say in the final distribution of poetical honours, then, perhaps, -it may be worth while to write down a few of the ideas and opinions -which, insignificant in themselves, yet contribute to so mighty a -result.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="The_Pastons_and_Chaucer"><i>The Pastons and Chaucer</i></a><a name="FNanchor_1_1" id="FNanchor_1_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_1_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a></h4> - - -<p>The tower of Caister Castle still rises ninety feet into the air, and -the arch still stands from which Sir John Fastolf's barges sailed out to -fetch stone for the building of the great castle. But now jackdaws nest -on the tower, and of the castle, which once covered six acres of ground, -only ruined walls remain, pierced by loop-holes and surmounted by -battlements, though there are neither archers within nor cannon without. -As for the "seven religious men" and the "seven poor folk" who should, -at this very moment, be praying for the souls of Sir John and his -parents, there is no sign of them nor sound of their prayers. The place -is a ruin. Antiquaries speculate and differ.</p> - -<p>Not so very far off lie more ruins—the ruins of Bromholm Priory, -where John Paston was buried, naturally enough, since his house was only a -mile or so away, lying on low ground by the sea, twenty miles north of -Norwich. The coast is dangerous, and the land, even in our time, -inaccessible. Nevertheless the little bit of wood at Bromholm, the -fragment of the true Cross, brought pilgrims incessantly to the Priory, -and sent them away with eyes opened and limbs straightened. But some of -them with their newly-opened eyes saw a sight which shocked them—the -grave of John Paston in Bromholm Priory without a tombstone. The news -spread over the country-side. The Pastons had fallen; they that had been -so powerful could no longer afford a stone to put above John Paston's -head. Margaret, his widow, could not pay her debts; the eldest son, Sir -John, wasted his property upon women and tournaments, while the younger, -John also, though a man of greater parts, thought more of his hawks than -of his harvests.</p> - -<p>The pilgrims of course were liars, as people whose eyes have just been -opened by a piece of the true Cross have every right to be; but their -news, none the less, was welcome. The Pastons had risen in the world. -People said even that they had been bondmen not so very long ago. At any -rate, men still living could remember John's grandfather Clement tilling -his own land, a hard-working peasant; and William, Clement's son, -becoming a judge and buying land; and John, William's son, marrying well -and buying more land and quite lately inheriting the vast new castle at -Caister, and all Sir John's lands in Norfolk and Suffolk. People said -that he had forged the old knight's will. What wonder, then, that he -lacked a tombstone? But, if we consider the character of Sir John -Paston, John's eldest son, and his upbringing and his surroundings, and -the relations between himself and his father as the family letters -reveal them, we shall see how difficult it was, and how likely to be -neglected—this business of making his father's tombstone.</p> - -<p>For let us imagine, in the most desolate part of England known to us at -the present moment, a raw, new-built house, without telephone, bathroom, -or drains, arm-chairs or newspapers, and one shelf perhaps of books, -unwieldy to hold, expensive to come by. The windows look out upon a few -cultivated fields and a dozen hovels, and beyond them there is the sea -on one side, on the other a vast fen. A single road crosses the fen, but -there is a hole in it, which, one of the farm hands reports, is big -enough to swallow a carriage. And, the man adds, Tom Topcroft, the mad -bricklayer, has broken loose again and ranges the country half-naked, -threatening to kill any one who approaches him. That is what they talk -about at dinner in the desolate house, while the chimney smokes -horribly, and the draught lifts the carpets on the floor. Orders are -given to lock all gates at sunset, and, when the long dismal evening has -worn itself away, simply and solemnly, girt about with dangers as they -are, these isolated men and women fall upon their knees in prayer.</p> - -<p>In the fifteenth century, however, the wild landscape was broken -suddenly and very strangely by vast piles of brand-new masonry. There -rose out of the sand-hills and heaths of the Norfolk coast a huge bulk -of stone, like a modern hotel in a watering-place; but there was no -parade, no lodging houses, and no pier at Yarmouth then, and this -gigantic building on the outskirts of the town was built to house one -solitary old gentleman without any children—Sir John Fastolf, who had -fought at Agincourt and acquired great wealth. He had fought at -Agincourt and got but little reward. No one took his advice. Men spoke -ill of him behind his back. He was well aware of it; his temper was none -the sweeter for it. He was a hot-tempered old man, powerful, embittered -by a sense of grievance. But whether on the battlefield or at court he -thought perpetually of Caister, and how, when his duties allowed, he -would settle down on his father's land and live in a great house of his -own building.</p> - -<p>The gigantic structure of Caister Castle was in progress not so many -miles away when the little Pastons were children. John Paston, the -father, had charge of some part of the business, and the children -listened, as soon as they could listen at all, to talk of stone and -building, of barges gone to London and not yet returned, of the -twenty-six private chambers, of the hall and chapel; of foundations, -measurements, and rascally work-people. Later, in 1454, when the work -was finished and Sir John had come to spend his last years at Caister, -they may have seen for themselves the mass of treasure that was stored -there; the tables laden with gold and silver plate; the wardrobes -stuffed with gowns of velvet and satin and cloth of gold, with hoods and -tippets and beaver hats and leather jackets and velvet doublets; and how -the very pillow-cases on the beds were of green and purple silk. There -were tapestries everywhere. The beds were laid and the bedrooms hung -with tapestries representing sieges, hunting and hawking, men fishing, -archers shooting, ladies playing on their harps, dallying with ducks, or -a giant "bearing the leg of a bear in his hand". Such were the fruits of -a well-spent life. To buy land, to build great houses, to stuff these -houses full of gold and silver plate (though the privy might well be in -the bedroom), was the proper aim of mankind. Mr. and Mrs. Paston spent -the greater part of their energies in the same exhausting occupation. -For since the passion to acquire was universal, one could never rest -secure in one's possessions for long. The outlying parts of one's -property were in perpetual jeopardy. The Duke of Norfolk might covet -this manor, the Duke of Suffolk that. Some trumped-up excuse, as for -instance that the Pastons were bondmen, gave them the right to seize the -house and batter down the lodges in the owner's absence. And how could -the owner of Paston and Mauteby and Drayton and Gresham be in five or -six places at once, especially now that Caister Castle was his, and he -must be in London trying to get his rights recognised by the King? The -King was mad too, they said; did not know his own child, they said; or -the King was in flight; or there was civil war in the land. Norfolk was -always the most distressed of counties and its country gentlemen the -most quarrelsome of mankind. Indeed, had Mrs. Paston chosen, she could -have told her children how when she was a young woman a thousand men -with bows and arrows and pans of burning fire had marched upon Gresham -and broken the gates and mined the walls of the room where she sat -alone. But much worse things than that had happened to women. She -neither bewailed her lot nor thought herself a heroine. The long, long -letters which she wrote so laboriously in her clear cramped hand to her -husband, who was (as usual) away, make no mention of herself. The sheep -had wasted the hay. Heyden's and Tuddenham's men were out. A dyke had -been broken and a bullock stolen. They needed treacle badly, and really -she must have stuff for a dress.</p> - -<p>But Mrs. Paston did not talk about herself.</p> - -<p>Thus the little Pastons would see their mother writing or dictating page -after page, hour after hour, long, long letters, but to interrupt a -parent who writes so laboriously of such important matters would have -been a sin. The prattle of children, the lore of the nursery or -schoolroom, did not find its way into these elaborate communications. -For the most part her letters are the letters of an honest bailiff to -his master, explaining, asking advice, giving news, rendering accounts. -There was robbery and manslaughter; it was difficult to get in the -rents; Richard Calle had gathered but little money; and what with one -thing and another Margaret had not had time to make out, as she should -have done, the inventory of the goods which her husband desired. Well -might old Agnes, surveying her son's affairs rather grimly from a -distance, counsel him to contrive it so that "ye may have less to do in -the world; your father said. In little business lieth much rest. This -world is but a thoroughfare, and full of woe; and when we depart -therefrom, right nought bear with us but our good deeds and ill."</p> - -<p>The thought of death would thus come upon them in a clap. Old Fastolf, -cumbered with wealth and property, had his vision at the end of Hell -fire, and shrieked aloud to his executors to distribute alms, and see -that prayers were said "in perpetuum", so that his soul might escape the -agonies of purgatory. William Paston, the judge, was urgent too that the -monks of Norwich should be retained to pray for his soul "for ever". The -soul was no wisp of air, but a solid body capable of eternal suffering, -and the fire that destroyed it was as fierce as any that burnt on mortal -grates. For ever there would be monks and the town of Norwich, and for -ever the Chapel of Our Lady in the town of Norwich. There was something -matter-of-fact, positive, and enduring in their conception both of life -and of death.</p> - -<p>With the plan of existence so vigorously marked out, children of course -were well beaten, and boys and girls taught to know their places. They -must acquire land; but they must obey their parents. A mother would -clout her daughter's head three times a week and break the skin if she -did not conform to the laws of behaviour. Agnes Paston, a lady of birth -and breeding, beat her daughter Elizabeth. Margaret Paston, a -softer-hearted woman, turned her daughter out of the house for loving -the honest bailiff Richard Calle. Brothers would not suffer their -sisters to marry beneath them, and "sell candle and mustard in -Framlingham". The fathers quarrelled with the sons, and the mothers, -fonder of their boys than of their girls, yet bound by all law and -custom to obey their husbands, were torn asunder in their efforts to -keep the peace. With all her pains, Margaret failed to prevent rash acts -on the part of her eldest son John, or the bitter words with which his -father denounced him. He was a "drone among bees", the father burst out, -"which labour for gathering honey in the fields, and the drone doth -naught but taketh his part of it". He treated his parents with -insolence, and yet was fit for no charge of responsibility abroad.</p> - -<p>But the quarrel was ended, very shortly, by the death (22nd May 1466) of -John Paston, the father, in London. The body was brought down to -Bromholm to be buried. Twelve poor men trudged all the way bearing -torches beside it. Alms were distributed; masses and dirges were said. -Bells were rung. Great quantities of fowls, sheep, pigs, eggs, bread, -and cream were devoured, ale and wine drunk, and candles burnt. Two -panes were taken from the church windows to let out the reek of the -torches. Black cloth was distributed, and a light set burning on the -grave. But John Paston, the heir, delayed to make his father's -tombstone.</p> - -<p>He was a young man, something over twenty-four years of age. The -discipline and the drudgery of a country life bored him. When he ran -away from home, it was, apparently, to attempt to enter the King's -household. Whatever doubts, indeed, might be cast by their enemies on -the blood of the Pastons, Sir John was unmistakably a gentleman. He had -inherited his lands; the honey was his that the bees had gathered with -so much labour. He had the instincts of enjoyment rather than of -acquisition, and with his mother's parsimony was strangely mixed -something of his father's ambition. Yet his own indolent and luxurious -temperament took the edge from both. He was attractive to women, liked -society and tournaments, and court life and making bets, and sometimes, -even, reading books. And so life, now that John Paston was buried, -started afresh upon rather a different foundation. There could be little -outward change indeed. Margaret still ruled the house. She still ordered -the lives of the younger children as she had ordered the lives of the -elder. The boys still needed to be beaten into book-learning by their -tutors, the girls still loved the wrong men and must be married to the -right. Rents had to be collected; the interminable lawsuit for the -Fastolf property dragged on. Battles were fought; the roses of York and -Lancaster alternately faded and flourished. Norfolk was full of poor -people seeking redress for their grievances, and Margaret worked for her -son as she had worked for her husband, with this significant change -only, that now, instead of confiding in her husband, she took the advice -of her priest.</p> - -<p>But inwardly there was a change. It seems at last as if the hard outer -shell had served its purpose and something sensitive, appreciative, and -pleasure-loving had formed within. At any rate Sir John, writing to his -brother John at home, strayed sometimes from the business on hand to -crack a joke, to send a piece of gossip, or to instruct him, knowingly -and even subtly, upon the conduct of a love affair. Be "as lowly to the -mother as ye list, but to the maid not too lowly, nor that ye be too -glad to speed, nor too sorry to fail. And I shall always be your herald -both here, if she come hither, and at home, when I come home, which I -hope hastily within XI. days at the furthest." And then a hawk was to be -bought, a hat, or new silk laces sent down to John in Norfolk, -prosecuting his suit flying his hawks, and attending with considerable -energy and not too nice a sense of honesty to the affairs of the Paston -estates.</p> - -<p>The lights had long since burnt out on John Paston's grave. But still -Sir John delayed; no tomb replaced them. He had his excuses; what with -the business of the lawsuit, and his duties at Court, and the -disturbance of the civil wars, his time was occupied and his money -spent. But perhaps something strange had happened to Sir John himself, -and not only to Sir John dallying in London, but to his sister Margery -falling in love with the bailiff, and to Walter making Latin verses at -Eton, and to John flying his hawks at Paston. Life was a little more -various in its pleasures. They were not quite so sure as the elder -generation had been of the rights of man and of the dues of God, of the -horrors of death, and of the importance of tombstones. Poor Margaret -Paston scented the change and sought uneasily, with the pen which had -marched so stiffly through so many pages, to lay bare the root of her -troubles. It was not that the lawsuit saddened her; she was ready to -defend Caister with her own hands if need be, "though I cannot well -guide nor rule soldiers", but there was something wrong with the family -since the death of her husband and master. Perhaps her son had failed in -his service to God; he had been too proud or too lavish in his -expenditure; or perhaps he had shown too little mercy to the poor. -Whatever the fault might be, she only knew that Sir John spent twice as -much money as his father for less result; that they could scarcely pay -their debts without selling land, wood, or household stuff ("It is a -death to me to think if it"); while every day people spoke ill of them -in the country because they left John Paston to lie without a tombstone. -The money that might have bought it, or more land, and more goblets and -more tapestry, was spent by Sir John on clocks and trinkets, and upon -paying a clerk to copy out Treatises upon Knighthood and other such -stuff. There they stood at Paston—eleven volumes, with the poems of -Lydgate and Chaucer among them, diffusing a strange air into the gaunt, -comfortless house, inviting men to indolence and vanity, distracting -their thoughts from business, and leading them not only to neglect their -own profit but to think lightly of the sacred dues of the dead.</p> - -<p>For sometimes, instead of riding off on his horse to inspect his crops -or bargain with his tenants, Sir John would sit, in broad daylight, -reading. There, on the hard chair in the comfortless room with the wind -lifting the carpet and the smoke stinging his eyes, he would sit reading -Chaucer, wasting his time, dreaming—or what strange intoxication was -it that he drew from books? Life was rough, cheerless, and disappointing. -A whole year of days would pass fruitlessly in dreary business, like -dashes of rain on the window pane. There was no reason in it as there -had been for his father; no imperative need to establish a family and -acquire an important position for children who were not born, or if -born, had no right to bear their father's name. But Lydgate's poems or -Chaucer's, like a mirror in which figures move brightly, silently, and -compactly, showed him the very skies, fields, and people whom he knew, -but rounded and complete. Instead of waiting listlessly for news from -London or piecing out from his mother's gossip some country tragedy of -love and jealousy, here, in a few pages, the whole story was laid before -him. And then as he rode or sat at table he would remember some -description or saying which bore upon the present moment and fixed it, -or some string of words would charm him, and putting aside the pressure -of the moment, he would hasten home to sit in his chair and learn the -end of the story.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>To learn the end of the story—Chaucer can still make us wish to do -that. He has pre-eminently that story-teller's gift, which is almost the -rarest gift among writers at the present day. Nothing happens to us as -it did to our ancestors; events are seldom important; if we recount -them, we do not really believe in them; we have perhaps things of -greater interest to say, and for these reasons natural story-tellers -like Mr. Garnett, whom we must distinguish from self-conscious -story-tellers like Mr. Masefield, have become rare. For the -story-teller, besides his indescribable zest for facts, must tell his -story craftily, without undue stress or excitement, or we shall swallow -it whole and jumble the parts together; he must let us stop, give us -time to think and look about us, yet always be persuading us to move on. -Chaucer was helped to this to some extent by the time of his birth; and -in addition he had another advantage over the moderns which will never -come the way of English poets again. England was an unspoilt country. -His eyes rested on a virgin land, all unbroken grass and wood except for -the small towns and an occasional castle in the building. No villa roofs -peered through Kentish tree-tops; no factory chimney smoked on the -hillside. The state of the country, considering how poets go to Nature, -how they use her for their images and their contrasts even when they do -not describe her directly, is a matter of some importance. Her -cultivation or her savagery influences the poet far more profoundly than -the prose writer. To the modern poet, with Birmingham, Manchester, and -London the size they are, the country is the sanctuary of moral -excellence in contrast with the town which is the sink of vice. It is a -retreat, the haunt of modesty and virtue, where men go to hide and -moralise. There is something morbid, as if shrinking from human contact, -in the nature worship of Wordsworth, still more in the microscopic -devotion which Tennyson lavished upon the petals of roses and the buds -of lime trees. But these were great poets. In their hands, the country -was no mere jeweller's shop, or museum of curious objects to be -described, even more curiously, in words. Poets of smaller gift, since -the view is so much spoilt, and the garden or the meadow must replace -the barren heath and the precipitous mountain-side, are now confined to -little landscapes, to birds' nests, to acorns with every wrinkle drawn -to the life. The wider landscape is lost.</p> - -<p>But to Chaucer the country was too large and too wild to be altogether -agreeable. He turned instinctively, as if he had painful experience of -their nature, from tempests and rocks to the bright May day and the -jocund landscape, from the harsh and mysterious to the gay and definite. -Without possessing a tithe of the virtuosity in word-painting which is -the modern inheritance, he could give, in a few words, or even, when we -come to look, without a single word of direct description, the sense of -the open air.</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">And se the fresshe floures how they sprynge</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>—that is enough.</p> - -<p>Nature, uncompromising, untamed, was no looking-glass for happy faces, -or confessor of unhappy souls. She was herself; sometimes, therefore, -disagreeable enough and plain, but always in Chaucer's pages with the -hardness and the freshness of an actual presence. Soon, however, we -notice something of greater importance than the gay and picturesque -appearance of the mediaeval world—the solidity which plumps it out, -the conviction which animates the characters. There is immense variety in -the <i>Canterbury Tales</i>, and yet, persisting underneath, one consistent -type. Chaucer has his world; he has his young men; he has his young -women. If one met them straying in Shakespeare's world one would know -them to be Chaucer's, not Shakespeare's. He wants to describe a girl, -and this is what she looks like:</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">Ful semely hir wimpel pinched was,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Hir nose tretys; hir eyen greye as glas;</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Hir mouth ful smal, and ther-to soft and reed;</span><br /> -<span class="i2">But sikerly she hadde a fair foreheed;</span><br /> -<span class="i2">It was almost a spanne brood, I trowe;</span><br /> -<span class="i2">For, hardily, she was nat undergrowe.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>Then he goes on to develop her; she was a girl, a virgin, cold in her -virginity:</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">I am, thou woost, yet of thy companye,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">A mayde, and love hunting and venerye,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">And for to walken in the wodes wilde,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">And noght to been a wyf and be with childe.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>Next he bethinks him how</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">Discreet she was in answering alway;</span><br /> -<span class="i2">And though she had been as wise as Pallas</span><br /> -<span class="i2">No countrefeted termes hadde she</span><br /> -<span class="i2">To seme wys; but after hir degree</span><br /> -<span class="i2">She spak, and alle hir wordes more and lesse</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Souninge in vertu and in gentillesse.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>Each of these quotations, in fact, comes from a different Tale, but they -are parts, one feels, of the same personage, whom he had in mind, -perhaps unconsciously, when he thought of a young girl, and for this -reason, as she goes in and out of the <i>Canterbury Tales</i> bearing -different names, she has a stability which is only to be found where the -poet has made up his mind about young women, of course, but also about -the world they live in, its end, its nature, and his own craft and -technique, so that his mind is free to apply its force fully to its -object. It does not occur to him that his Griselda might be improved or -altered. There is no blur about her, no hesitation; she proves nothing; -she is content to be herself. Upon her, therefore, the mind can rest -with that unconscious ease which allows it, from hints and suggestions, -to endow her with many more qualities than are actually referred to. -Such is the power of conviction, a rare gift, a gift shared in our day -by Joseph Conrad in his earlier novels, and a gift of supreme -importance, for upon it the whole weight of the building depends. Once -believe in Chaucer's young men and women and we have no need of -preaching or protest. We know what he finds good, what evil; the less -said the better. Let him get on with his story, paint knights and -squires, good women and bad, cooks, shipmen, priests, and we will supply -the landscape, give his society its belief, its standing towards life -and death, and make of the journey to Canterbury a spiritual -pilgrimage.</p> - -<p>This simple faithfulness to his own conceptions was easier then than now -in one respect at least, for Chaucer could write frankly where we must -either say nothing or say it slyly. He could sound every note in the -language instead of finding a great many of the best gone dumb from -disuse, and thus, when struck by daring fingers, giving off a loud -discordant jangle out of keeping with the rest. Much of Chaucer—a -few lines perhaps in each of the Tales—is improper and gives us as we -read it the strange sensation of being naked to the air after being muffled -in old clothing. And, as a certain kind of humour depends upon being -able to speak without self-consciousness of the parts and functions of -the body, so with the advent of decency literature lost the use of one -of its limbs. It lost its power to create the Wife of Bath, Juliet's -nurse, and their recognisable though already colourless relation, Moll -Flanders. Sterne, from fear of coarseness, is forced into indecency. He -must be witty, not humorous. He must hint instead of speaking outright. -Nor can we believe, with Mr. Joyce's <i>Ulysses</i> before us, that -laughter of the old kind will ever be heard again.</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">But, lord Christ! When that it remembreth me</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Up-on my yowthe, and on my Iolitee,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">It tikleth me aboute myn herte rote.</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Unto this day it doth myn herte bote</span><br /> -<span class="i2">That I have had my world as in my tyme.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>The sound of that old woman's voice is still.</p> - -<p>But there is another and more important reason for the surprising -brightness, the still effective merriment of the <i>Canterbury Tales</i>. -Chaucer was a poet; but he never flinched from the life that was being -lived at the moment before his eyes. A farmyard, with its straw, its -dung, its cocks and its hens is not (we have come to think) a poetic -subject; poets seem either to rule out the farmyard entirely or to -require that it shall be a farmyard in Thessaly and its pigs of -mythological origin. But Chaucer says outright:</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">Three large sowes hadde she, and namo,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Three kyn, and eek a sheep that highte Malle;</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>or again,</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">A yard she hadde, enclosed al aboute</span><br /> -<span class="i2">With stikkes, and a drye ditch with-oute.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>He is unabashed and unafraid. He will always get close up to his -object—an old man's chin—</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">With thikke bristles of his berde unsofte,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Lyk to the skin of houndfish, sharp as brere;</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>or an old man's neck—</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">The slakke skin aboute his nekke shaketh</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Whyl that he sang;</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>and he will tell you what his characters wore, how they looked, what -they ate and drank, as if poetry could handle the common facts of this -very moment of Tuesday, the sixteenth day of April, 1387, without -dirtying her hands. If he withdraws to the time of the Greeks or the -Romans, it is only that his story leads him there. He has no desire to -wrap himself round in antiquity, to take refuge in age, or to shirk the -associations of common grocer's English.</p> - -<p>Therefore when we say that we know the end of the journey, it is hard to -quote the particular lines from which we take our knowledge. He fixed -his eyes upon the road before him, not upon the world to come. He was -little given to abstract contemplation. He deprecated, with peculiar -archness, any competition with the scholars and divines:</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">The answere of this I lete to divynis,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">But wel I woot, that in this world grey pyne is.</span><br /> -<br /> -<span class="i2">What is this world? What asketh men to have?</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Now with his love, now in the colde grave</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Allone, withouten any companye,</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>he asks, or ponders</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i7">O cruel goddes, that governe</span><br /> -<span class="i2">This world with binding of your worde eterne,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">And wryten in the table of athamaunt</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Your parlement, and your eterne graunt,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">What is mankinde more un-to yow holde</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Than is the sheepe, that rouketh in the folde?</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>Questions press upon him; he asks questions, but he is too true a poet -to answer them; he leaves them unsolved, uncramped by the solution of -the moment, thus fresh for the generations that come after him. In his -life, too, it would be impossible to write him down a man of this party -or of that, a democrat or an aristocrat. He was a staunch churchman, but -he laughed at priests. He was an able public servant and a courtier, but -his views upon sexual morality were extremely lax. He sympathised with -poverty, but did nothing to improve the lot of the poor. It is safe to -say that not a single law has been framed or one stone set upon another -because of anything that Chaucer said or wrote; and yet, as we read him, -we are of course absorbing morality at every pore. For among writers -there are two kinds: there are the priests who take you by the hand and -lead you straight up to the mystery; there are the laymen who imbed -their doctrines in flesh and blood and make a complete model of the -world without excluding the bad or laying stress upon the good. -Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley are among the priests; they give us -text after text to be hung upon the wall, saying after saying to be laid -upon the heart like an amulet against disaster—</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i1">Farewell, farewell, the heart that lives alone</span><br /> -<br /> -<span class="i2">He prayeth best that loveth best</span><br /> -<span class="i2">All things both great and small</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>—such lines of exhortation and command spring to memory instantly. -But Chaucer lets us go our ways doing the ordinary things with the ordinary -people. His morality lies in the way men and women behave to each other. -We see them eating, drinking, laughing, and making love, and come to -feel without a word being said what their standards are and so are -steeped through and through with their morality. There can be no more -forcible preaching than this where all actions and passions are -represented, and instead of being solemnly exhorted we are left to stray -and stare and make out a meaning for ourselves. It is the morality of -ordinary intercourse, the morality of the novel, which parents and -librarians rightly judge to be far more persuasive than the morality of -poetry.</p> - -<p>And so, when we shut Chaucer, we feel that without a word being said the -criticism is complete; what we are saying, thinking, reading, doing has -been commented upon. Nor are we left merely with the sense, powerful -though that is, of having been in good company and got used to the ways -of good society. For as we have jogged through the real, the unadorned -country-side, with first one good fellow cracking his joke or singing -his song and then another, we know that though this world resembles, it -is not in fact our daily world. It is the world of poetry. Everything -happens here more quickly and more intensely, and with better order than -in life or in prose; there is a formal elevated dullness which is part -of the incantation of poetry; there are lines speaking half a second in -advance what we were about to say, as if we read our thoughts before -words cumbered them; and lines which we go back to read again with that -heightened quality, that enchantment which keeps them glittering in the -mind long afterwards. And the whole is held in its place, and its -variety and divagations ordered by the power which is among the most -impressive of all—the shaping power, the architect's power. It is the -peculiarity of Chaucer, however, that though we feel at once this -quickening, this enchantment, we cannot prove it by quotation. From most -poets quotation is easy and obvious; some metaphor suddenly flowers; -some passage breaks off from the rest. But Chaucer is very equal, very -even-paced, very unmetaphorical. If we take six or seven lines in the -hope that the quality will be contained in them it has escaped.</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">My lord, ye woot that in my fadres place,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Ye dede me strepe out of my povre wede,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">And richely me cladden, o your grace</span><br /> -<span class="i2">To yow broghte I noght elles, out of drede,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">But feyth and nakedness and maydenhede.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>In its place that seemed not only memorable and moving but fit to set -beside striking beauties. Cut out and taken separately it appears -ordinary and quiet. Chaucer, it seems, has some art by which the most -ordinary words and the simplest feelings when laid side by side make -each other shine; when separated lose their lustre. Thus the pleasure he -gives us is different from the pleasure that other poets give us, -because it is more closely connected with what we have ourselves felt or -observed. Eating, drinking and fine weather, the May, cocks and hens, -millers, old peasant women, flowers—there is a special stimulus in -seeing all these common things so arranged that they affect us as poetry -affects us, and are yet bright, sober, precise as we see them out of -doors. There is a pungency in this unfigurative language; a stately and -memorable beauty in the undraped sentences which follow each other like -women so slightly veiled that you see the lines of their bodies as they -go—</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">And she set down hir water pot anon</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Biside the threshold in an oxe's stall.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>And then, as the procession takes its way, tranquilly, beautifully, out -from behind peeps the face of Chaucer, grinning, malicious, in league -with all foxes, donkeys, and hens, to mock the pomp and ceremonies of -life—witty, intellectual, French, at the same time based upon a broad -bottom of English humour.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>So Sir John read his Chaucer in the comfortless room with the wind -blowing and the smoke stinging, and left his father's tombstone unmade. -But no book, no tomb, had power to hold him long. He was one of those -ambiguous characters who haunt the boundary line where one age merges in -another and are not able to inhabit either. At one moment he was all for -buying books cheap; next he was off to France and told his mother, "My -mind is now not most upon books". In his own house, where his mother -Margaret was perpetually making out inventories or confiding in Gloys -the priest, he had no peace or comfort. There was always reason on her -side; she was a brave woman, for whose sake one must put up with the -priest's insolence and choke down one's rage when the grumbling broke -into open abuse, and "Thou proud priest" and "Thou proud Squire" were -bandied angrily about the room. All this, with the discomforts of life -and the weakness of his own character, drove him to loiter in pleasanter -places, to put off coming, to put off writing, to put off, year after -year, the making of his father's tombstone.</p> - -<p>Yet John Paston had now lain for twelve years under the bare ground. The -Prior of Bromholm sent word that the grave cloth was in tatters, and he -had tried to patch it himself. Worse still, for a proud woman like -Margaret Paston, the country people murmured at the Pastons' lack of -piety, and other families she heard, of no greater standing than theirs, -spent money in pious restoration in the very church where her husband -lay unremembered. At last, turning from tournaments and Chaucer and -Mistress Anne Hault, Sir John bethought him of a piece of cloth of gold -which had been used to cover his father's hearse and might now be sold -to defray the expenses of his tomb. Margaret had it in safe keeping; she -had hoarded it and cared for it, and spent twenty marks on its repair. -She grudged it; but there was no help for it. She sent it him, still -distrusting his intentions or his power to put them into effect. "If you -sell it to any other use," she wrote, "by my troth I shall never trust -you while I live."</p> - -<p>But this final act, like so many that Sir John had undertaken in the -course of his life, was left undone. A dispute with the Duke of Suffolk -in the year 1479 made it necessary for him to visit London in spite of -the epidemic of sickness that was abroad; and there, in dirty lodgings, -alone, busy to the end with quarrels, clamorous to the end for money. -Sir John died and was buried at Whitefriars in London. He left a natural -daughter; he left a considerable number of books; but his father's tomb -was still unmade.</p> - -<p>The four thick volumes of the Paston letters, however, swallow up this -frustrated man as the sea absorbs a raindrop. For, like all collections -of letters, they seem to hint that we need not care overmuch for the -fortunes of individuals. The family will go on whether Sir John lives or -dies. It is their method to heap up in mounds of insignificant and often -dismal dust the innumerable trivialities of daily life, as it grinds -itself out, year after year. And then suddenly they blaze up; the day -shines out, complete, alive, before our eyes. It is early morning and -strange men have been whispering among the women as they milk. It is -evening, and there in the churchyard Warne's wife bursts out against old -Agnes Paston: "All the devils of Hell draw her soul to Hell." Now it is -the autumn in Norfolk and Cecily Dawne comes whining to Sir John for -clothing. "Moreover, Sir, liketh it your mastership to understand that -winter and cold weather draweth nigh and I have few clothes but of your -gift." There is the ancient day, spread out before us, hour by hour.</p> - -<p>But in all this there is no writing for writing's sake; no use of the -pen to convey pleasure or amusement or any of the million shades of -endearment and intimacy which have filled so many English letters since. -Only occasionally, under stress of anger for the most part, does -Margaret Paston quicken into some shrewd saw or solemn curse. "Men cut -large thongs here out of other men's leather. . . . We beat the bushes -and other men have the birds. . . . Haste reweth . . . which is to my -heart a very spear." That is her eloquence and that her anguish. Her -sons, it is true, bend their pens more easily to their will. They jest -rather stiffly; they hint rather clumsily; they make a little scene like -a rough puppet show of the old priest's anger and give a phrase or two -directly as they were spoken in person. But when Chaucer lived he must -have heard this very language, matter of fact, unmetaphorical, far -better fitted for narrative than for analysis, capable of religious -solemnity or of broad humour, but very stiff material to put on the lips -of men and women accosting each other face to face. In short it is easy -to see, from the Paston letters, why Chaucer wrote not <i>Lear</i> or -<i>Romeo and Juliet</i>, but the <i>Canterbury Tales</i>.</p> - -<p>Sir John was buried; and John the younger brother succeeded in his turn. -The Paston letters go on; life at Paston continues much the same as -before. Over it all broods a sense of discomfort and nakedness; of -unwashed limbs thrust into splendid clothing; of tapestry blowing on the -draughty walls; of the bedroom with its privy; of winds sweeping -straight over land unmitigated by hedge or town; of Caister Castle -covering with solid stone six acres of ground, and of the plain-faced -Pastons indefatigably accumulating wealth, treading out the roads of -Norfolk, and persisting with an obstinate courage which does them -infinite credit in furnishing the bareness of England.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_1_1" id="Footnote_1_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_1_1"><span class="label">[1]</span></a><i>The Paston Letters</i>, edited by Dr. James -Gairdner (1904), 4 vols.</p></div> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="On_Not_Knowing_Greek"><i>On Not Knowing Greek</i></a></h4> - - -<p>For it is vain and foolish to talk of Knowing Greek, since in our -ignorance we should be at the bottom of any class of schoolboys, since -we do not know how the words sounded, or where precisely we ought to -laugh, or how the actors acted, and between this foreign people and -ourselves there is not only difference of race and tongue but a -tremendous breach of tradition. All the more strange, then, is it that -we should wish to know Greek, try to know Greek, feel for ever drawn -back to Greek, and be for ever making up some notion of the meaning of -Greek, though from what incongruous odds and ends, with what slight -resemblance to the real meaning of Greek, who shall say?</p> - -<p>It is obvious in the first place that Greek literature is the impersonal -literature. Those few hundred years that separate John Paston from -Plato, Norwich from Athens, make a chasm which the vast tide of European -chatter can never succeed in crossing. When we read Chaucer, we are -floated up to him insensibly on the current of our ancestors' lives, and -later, as records increase and memories lengthen, there is scarcely a -figure which has not its nimbus of association, its life and letters, -its wife and family, its house, its character, its happy or dismal -catastrophe. But the Greeks remain in a fastness of their own. Fate has -been kind there too. She has preserved them from vulgarity, Euripides -was eaten by dogs; Æschylus killed by a stone; Sappho leapt from a -cliff. We know no more of them than that. We have their poetry, and that -is all.</p> - -<p>But that is not, and perhaps never can be, wholly true. Pick up any play -by Sophocles, read—</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">Son of him who led our hosts at Troy of old, son of</span><br /> -<span class="i3">Agamemnon,</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>and at once the mind begins to fashion itself surroundings. It makes -some background, even of the most provisional sort, for Sophocles; it -imagines some village, in a remote part of the country, near the sea. -Even nowadays such villages are to be found in the wilder parts of -England, and as we enter them we can scarcely help feeling that here, in -this cluster of cottages, cut off from rail or city, are all the -elements of a perfect existence. Here is the Rectory; here the Manor -house, the farm and the cottages; the church for worship, the club for -meeting, the cricket field for play. Here life is simply sorted out into -its main elements. Each man and woman has his work; each works for the -health or happiness of others. And here, in this little community, -characters become part of the common stock; the eccentricities of the -clergyman are known; the great ladies' defects of temper; the -blacksmith's feud with the milkman, and the loves and matings of the -boys and girls. Here life has cut the same grooves for centuries; -customs have arisen; legends have attached themselves to hilltops and -solitary trees, and the village has its history, its festivals, and its -rivalries.</p> - -<p>It is the climate that is impossible. If we try to think of Sophocles -here, we must annihilate the smoke and the damp and the thick wet mists. -We must sharpen the lines of the hills. We must imagine a beauty of -stone and earth rather than of woods and greenery. With warmth and -sunshine and months of brilliant, fine weather, life of course is -instantly changed; it is transacted out of doors, with the result, known -to all who visit Italy, that small incidents are debated in the street, -not in the sitting-room, and become dramatic; make people voluble; -inspire in them that sneering, laughing, nimbleness of wit and tongue -peculiar to the Southern races, which has nothing in common with the -slow reserve, the low half-tones, the brooding introspective melancholy -of people accustomed to live more than half the year indoors.</p> - -<p>That is the quality that first strikes us in Greek literature, the -lightning-quick, sneering, out-of-doors manner. It is apparent in the -most august as well as in the most trivial places. Queens and Princesses -in this very tragedy by Sophocles stand at the door bandying words like -village women, with a tendency, as one might expect, to rejoice in -language, to split phrases into slices, to be intent on verbal victory. -The humour of the people was not good natured like that of our postmen -and cabdrivers. The taunts of men lounging at the street corners had -something cruel in them as well as witty. There is a cruelty in Greek -tragedy which is quite unlike our English brutality: Is not Pentheus, -for example, that highly respectable man, made ridiculous in the -<i>Bacchæ</i> before he is destroyed? In fact, of course, these Queens and -Princesses were out of doors, with the bees buzzing past them, shadows -crossing them, and the wind taking their draperies. They were speaking -to an enormous audience rayed round them on one of those brilliant -southern days when the sun is so hot and yet the air so exciting. The -poet, therefore, had to bethink him, not of some theme which could be -read for hours by people in privacy, but of something emphatic, -familiar, brief, that would carry, instantly and directly, to an -audience of seventeen thousand people, perhaps, with ears and eyes eager -and attentive, with bodies whose muscles would grow stiff if they sat -too long without diversion. Music and dancing he would need, and -naturally would choose one of those legends, like our Tristram and -Iseult, which are known to every one in outline, so that a great fund of -emotion is ready prepared, but can be stressed in a new place by each -new poet.</p> - -<p>Sophocles would take the old story of Electra, for instance, but would -at once impose his stamp upon it. Of that, in spite of our weakness and -distortion, what remains visible to us? That his genius was of the -extreme kind in the first place; that he chose a design which, if it -failed, would show its failure in gashes and ruin, not in the gentle -blurring of some insignificant detail; which, if it succeeded, would cut -each stroke to the bone, would stamp each finger-print in marble. His -Electra stands before us like a figure so tightly bound that she can -only move an inch this way, an inch that. But each movement must tell to -the utmost, or, bound as she is, denied the relief of all hints, -repetitions, suggestions, she will be nothing but a dummy, tightly -bound. Her words in crisis are, as a matter of fact, bare; mere cries of -despair, joy, hate</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">οἲ 'γὼ τάλαιν', ὄλωλα τῇδ' ὲν ἡμέρᾀ.</span><br /> -<span class="i2">παῖσον, εἰ σθένεις, διπλῆν.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>But these cries give angle and outline to the play. It is thus, with a -thousand differences of degree, that in English literature Jane Austen -shapes a novel. There comes a moment—"I will dance with you," says -Emma—which rises higher than the rest, which, though not eloquent in -itself, or violent, or made striking by beauty of language, has the -whole weight of the book behind it. In Jane Austen, too, we have the -same sense, though the ligatures are much less tight, that her figures -are bound, and restricted to a few definite movements. She, too, in her -modest, everyday prose, chose the dangerous art where one slip means -death.</p> - -<p>But it is not so easy to decide what it is that gives these cries of -Electra in her anguish their power to cut and wound and excite. It is -partly that we know her, that we have picked up from little turns and -twists of the dialogue hints of her character, of her appearance, which, -characteristically, she neglected; of something suffering in her, -outraged and stimulated to its utmost stretch of capacity, yet, as she -herself knows ("my behaviour is unseemly and becomes me ill"), blunted -and debased by the horror of her position, an unwed girl made to witness -her mother's vileness and denounce it in loud, almost vulgar, -clamour to the world at large. It is partly, too, that we know in -the same way that Clytemnestra is no unmitigated villainess. -"δεινὸν τὸ τίκτειν ἐστίν," she says—"there is a strange power in -motherhood". It is no murderess, violent and unredeemed, whom Orestes -kills within the house, and Electra bids him utterly destroy—"strike -again". No; the men and women standing out in the sunlight before the -audience on the hillside were alive enough, subtle enough, not mere -figures, or plaster casts of human beings.</p> - -<p>Yet it is not because we can analyse them into feelings that they -impress us. In six pages of Proust we can find more complicated and varied -emotions than in the whole of the <i>Electra</i>. But in the <i>Electra</i> -or in the <i>Antigone</i> we are impressed by something different, by -something perhaps more impressive—by heroism itself, by fidelity -itself. In spite of the labour and the difficulty it is this that draws -us back and back to the Greeks; the stable, the permanent, the original -human being is to be found there. Violent emotions are needed to rouse -him into action, but when thus stirred by death, by betrayal, by some -other primitive calamity, Antigone and Ajax and Electra behave in the -way in which we should behave thus struck down; the way in which -everybody has always behaved; and thus we understand them more easily -and more directly than we understand the characters in the <i>Canterbury -Tales</i>. These are the originals, Chaucer's the varieties of the human -species.</p> - -<p>It is true, of course, that these types of the original man or woman, -these heroic Kings, these faithful daughters, these tragic Queens who -stalk through the ages always planting their feet in the same places, -twitching their robes with the same gestures, from habit not from -impulse, are among the greatest bores and the most demoralising -companions in the world. The plays of Addison, Voltaire, and a host of -others are there to prove it. But encounter them in Greek. Even in -Sophocles, whose reputation for restraint and mastery has filtered down -to us from the scholars, they are decided, ruthless, direct. A fragment -of their speech broken off would, we feel, colour oceans and oceans of -the respectable drama. Here we meet them before their emotions have been -worn into uniformity. Here we listen to the nightingale whose song -echoes through English literature singing in her own Greek tongue. For -the first time Orpheus with his lute makes men and beasts follow him. -Their voices ring out clear and sharp; we see the hairy tawny bodies at -play in the sunlight among the olive trees, not posed gracefully on -granite plinths in the pale corridors of the British Museum. And then -suddenly, in the midst of all this sharpness and compression, Electra, -as if she swept her veil over her face and forbade us to think of her -any more, speaks of that very nightingale: "that bird distraught with -grief, the messenger of Zeus. Ah, queen of sorrow, Niobe, thee I deem -divine—thee; who evermore weepest in thy rocky tomb".</p> - -<p>And as she silences her own complaint, she perplexes us again with the -insoluble question of poetry and its nature, and why, as she speaks -thus, her words put on the assurance of immortality. For they are Greek; -we cannot tell how they sounded; they ignore the obvious sources of -excitement; they owe nothing of their effect to any extravagance of -expression, and certainly they throw no light upon the speaker's -character or the writer's. But they remain, something that has been -stated and must eternally endure.</p> - -<p>Yet in a play how dangerous this poetry, this lapse from the particular -to the general must of necessity be, with the actors standing there in -person, with their bodies and their faces passively waiting to be made -use of! For this reason the later plays of Shakespeare, where there is -more of poetry than of action, are better read than seen, better -understood by leaving out the actual body than by having the body, with -all its associations and movements, visible to the eye. The intolerable -restrictions of the drama could be loosened, however, if a means could -be found by which what was general and poetic, comment, not action, -could be freed without interrupting the movement of the whole. It is -this that the choruses supply; the old men or women who take no active -part in the drama, the undifferentiated voices who sing like birds in -the pauses of the wind; who can comment, or sum up, or allow the poet to -speak himself or supply, by contrast, another side to his conception. -Always in imaginative literature, where characters speak for themselves -and the author has no part, the need of that voice is making itself -felt. For though Shakespeare (unless we consider that his fools and -madmen supply the part) dispensed with the chorus, novelists are always -devising some substitute—Thackeray speaking in his own person, -Fielding coming out and addressing the world before his curtain rises. So -to grasp the meaning of the play the chorus is of the utmost importance. -One must be able to pass easily into those ecstasies, those wild and -apparently irrelevant utterances, those sometimes obvious and -commonplace statements, to decide their relevance or irrelevance, and -give them their relation to the play as a whole.</p> - -<p>We must "be able to pass easily"; but that of course is exactly what we -cannot do. For the most part the choruses, with all their obscurities, -must be spelt out and their symmetry mauled. But we can guess that -Sophocles used them not to express something outside the action of the -play, but to sing the praises of some virtue, or the beauties of some -place mentioned in it. He selects what he wishes to emphasise and sings -of white Colonus and its nightingale, or of love unconquered in fight. -Lovely, lofty, and serene his choruses grow naturally out of his -situations, and change, not the point of view, but the mood. In -Euripides, however, the situations are not contained within themselves; -they give off an atmosphere of doubt, of suggestion, of questioning; but -if we look to the choruses to make this plain we are often baffled -rather than instructed. At once in the <i>Bacchæ</i> we are in the world of -psychology and doubt; the world where the mind twists facts and changes -them and makes the familiar aspects of life appear new and questionable. -What is Bacchus, and who are the Gods, and what is man's duty to them, -and what the rights of his subtle brain? To these questions the chorus -makes no reply, or replies mockingly, or speaks darkly as if the -straitness of the dramatic form had tempted Euripides to violate it in -order to relieve his mind of its weight. Time is so short and I have so -much to say, that unless you will allow me to place together two -apparently unrelated statements and trust to you to pull them together, -you must be content with a mere skeleton of the play I might have given -you. Such is the argument. Euripides therefore suffers less than -Sophocles and less than Æschylus from being read privately in a room, -and not seen on a hillside in the sunshine. He can be acted in the mind; -he can comment upon the questions of the moment; more than the others he -will vary in popularity from age to age.</p> - -<p>If then in Sophocles the play is concentrated in the figures themselves, -and in Euripides is to be retrieved from flashes of poetry and questions -far flung and unanswered, Æschylus makes these little dramas (the -<i>Agamemnon</i> has 1663 lines; <i>Lear</i> about 2600), tremendous by -stretching every phrase to the utmost, by sending them floating forth in -metaphors, by bidding them rise up and stalk eyeless and majestic through -the scene. To understand him it is not so necessary to understand Greek as -to understand poetry. It is necessary to take that dangerous leap -through the air without the support of words which Shakespeare also asks -of us. For words, when opposed to such a blast of meaning, must give -out, must be blown astray, and only by collecting in companies convey -the meaning which each one separately is too weak to express. Connecting -them in a rapid flight of the mind we know instantly and instinctively -what they mean, but could not decant that meaning afresh into any other -words. There is an ambiguity which is the mark of the highest poetry; we -cannot know exactly what it means. Take this from the Agamemnon for -instance—</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">ὀμμάτων δ ἐν ἀχηνίαις ἔρρει πᾶσ' Ἀφροδίτα.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>The meaning is just on the far side of language. It is the meaning which -in moments of astonishing excitement and stress we perceive in our minds -without words; it is the meaning that Dostoevsky (hampered as he was by -prose and as we are by translation) leads us to by some astonishing run -up the scale of emotions and points at but cannot indicate; the meaning -that Shakespeare succeeds in snaring.</p> - -<p>Æschylus thus will not give, as Sophocles gives, the very words that -people might have spoken, only so arranged that they have in some -mysterious way a general force, a symbolic power, nor like Euripides -will he combine incongruities and thus enlarge his little space, as a -small room is enlarged by mirrors in odd corners. By the bold and running -use of metaphor he will amplify and give us, not the thing itself, but -the reverberation and reflection which, taken into his mind, the thing -has made; close enough to the original to illustrate it, remote enough -to heighten, enlarge, and make splendid.</p> - -<p>For none of these dramatists had the license which belongs to the -novelist, and, in some degree, to all writers of printed books, of -modelling their meaning with an infinity of slight touches which can -only be properly applied by reading quietly, carefully, and sometimes -two or three times over. Every sentence had to explode on striking the -ear, however slowly and beautifully the words might then descend, and -however enigmatic might their final purport be. No splendour or richness -of metaphor could have saved the <i>Agamemnon</i> if either images or -allusions of the subtlest or most decorative had got between us and the -naked cry</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">ὀτοτοτοῖ πόποι δᾶ. ὢ 'πολλον, ὢ 'πολλον.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>Dramatic they had to be at whatever cost.</p> - -<p>But winter fell on these villages, darkness and extreme cold descended -on the hillside. There must have been some place indoors where men -could retire, both in the depths of winter and in the summer heats, -where they could sit and drink, where they could lie stretched at their -ease, where they could talk. It is Plato, of course, who reveals the -life indoors, and describes how, when a party of friends met and had -eaten not at all luxuriously and drunk a little wine, some handsome boy -ventured a question, or quoted an opinion, and Socrates took it up, -fingered it, turned it round, looked at it this way and that, swiftly -stripped it of its inconsistencies and falsities and brought the whole -company by degrees to gaze with him at the truth. It is an exhausting -process; to contract painfully upon the exact meaning of words; to judge -what each admission involves; to follow intently, yet critically, the -dwindling and changing of opinion as it hardens and intensifies into -truth. Are pleasure and good the same? Can virtue be taught? Is virtue -knowledge? The tired or feeble mind may easily lapse as the remorseless -questioning proceeds; but no one, however weak, can fail, even if he -does not learn more from Plato, to love knowledge better. For as the -argument mounts from step to step, Protagoras yielding, Socrates pushing -on, what matters is not so much the end we reach as our manner of -reaching it. That all can feel—the indomitable honesty, the courage, -the love of truth which draw Socrates and us in his wake to the summit -where, if we too may stand for a moment, it is to enjoy the greatest -felicity of which we are capable.</p> - -<p>Yet such an expression seems ill fitted to describe the state of mind of -a student to whom, after painful argument, the truth has been revealed. -But truth is various; truth comes to us in different disguises; it is -not with the intellect alone that we perceive it. It is a winter's -night; the tables are spread at Agathon's house; the girl is playing the -flute; Socrates has washed himself and put on sandals; he has stopped in -the hall; he refuses to move when they send for him. Now Socrates has -done; he is bantering Alcibiades; Alcibiades takes a fillet and binds it -round "this wonderful fellow's head". He praises Socrates. "For he cares -not for mere beauty, but despises more than any one can imagine all -external possessions, whether it be beauty or wealth or glory, or any -other thing for which the multitude felicitates the possessor. He -esteems these things and us who honour them, as nothing, and lives among -men, making all the objects of their admiration the playthings of his -irony. But I know not if any one of you has ever seen the divine images -which are within, when he has been opened and is serious. I have seen -them, and they are so supremely beautiful, so golden, divine, and -wonderful, that everything which Socrates commands surely ought to be -obeyed even like the voice of a God." All this flows over the arguments -of Plato—laughter and movement; people getting up and going out; the -hour changing; tempers being lost; jokes cracked; the dawn rising. -Truth, it seems, is various; Truth is to be pursued with all our -faculties. Are we to rule out the amusements, the tendernesses, the -frivolities of friendship because we love truth? Will truth be quicker -found because we stop our ears to music and drink no wine, and sleep -instead of talking through the long winter's night? It is not to the -cloistered disciplinarian mortifying himself in solitude that we are to -turn, but to the well-sunned nature, the man who practises the art of -living to the best advantage, so that nothing is stunted but some things -are permanently more valuable than others.</p> - -<p>So in these dialogues we are made to seek truth with every part of us. -For Plato, of course, had the dramatic genius. It is by means of that, -by an art which conveys in a sentence or two the setting and the -atmosphere, and then with perfect adroitness insinuates itself into the -coils of the argument without losing its liveliness and grace, and then -contracts to bare statement, and then, mounting, expands and soars in -that higher air which is generally reached only by the more extreme -measures of poetry—it is this art which plays upon us in so many ways -at once and brings us to an exultation of mind which can only be reached -when all the powers are called upon to contribute their energy to the -whole.</p> - -<p>But we must beware. Socrates did not care for "mere beauty", by which he -meant, perhaps, beauty as ornament. A people who judged as much as the -Athenians did by ear, sitting out-of-doors at the play or listening to -argument in the market-place, were far less apt than we are to break off -sentences and appreciate them apart from the context. For them there -were no Beauties of Hardy, Beauties of Meredith, Sayings from George -Eliot. The writer had to think more of the whole and less of the detail. -Naturally, living in the open, it was not the lip or the eye that struck -them, but the carriage of the body and the proportions of its parts. -Thus when we quote and extract we do the Greeks more damage than we do -the English. There is a bareness and abruptness in their literature -which grates upon a taste accustomed to the intricacy and finish of -printed books. We have to stretch our minds to grasp a whole devoid of -the prettiness of detail or the emphasis of eloquence. Accustomed to -look directly and largely rather than minutely and aslant, it was safe -for them to step into the thick of emotions which blind and bewilder an -age like our own. In the vast catastrophe of the European war our -emotions had to be broken up for us, and put at an angle from us, before -we could allow ourselves to feel them in poetry or fiction. The only -poets who spoke to the purpose spoke in the sidelong, satiric manner of -Wilfrid Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. It was not possible for them to be -direct without being clumsy; or to speak simply of emotion without being -sentimental. But the Greeks could say, as if for the first time, "Yet -being dead they have not died". They could say, "If to die nobly is the -chief part of excellence, to us out of all men Fortune gave this lot; -for hastening to set a crown of freedom on Greece we lie possessed of -praise that grows not old". They could march straight up, with their -eyes open; and thus fearlessly approached, emotions stand still and -suffer themselves to be looked at.</p> - -<p>But again (the question comes back and back), Are we reading Greek as it -was written when we say this? When we read these few words cut on a -tombstone, a stanza in a chorus, the end or the opening of a dialogue of -Plato's, a fragment of Sappho, when we bruise our minds upon some -tremendous metaphor in the <i>Agamemnon</i> instead of stripping the branch -of its flowers instantly as we do in reading <i>Lear</i>—are we not -reading wrongly? losing our sharp sight in the haze of associations? -reading into Greek poetry not what they have but what we lack? Does not the -whole of Greece heap itself behind every line of its literature? They -admit us to a vision of the earth unravaged, the sea unpolluted, the -maturity, tried but unbroken, of mankind. Every word is reinforced by a -vigour which pours out of olive-tree and temple and the bodies of the -young. The nightingale has only to be named by Sophocles and she sings; -the grove has only to be called ἄβατον, "untrodden", and we -imagine the twisted branches and the purple violets. Back and back we -are drawn to steep ourselves in what, perhaps, is only an image of the -reality, not the reality itself, a summer's day imagined in the heart of -a northern winter. Chief among these sources of glamour and perhaps -misunderstanding is the language. We can never hope to get the whole -fling of a sentence in Greek as we do in English. We cannot hear it, now -dissonant, now harmonious, tossing sound from line to line across a -page. We cannot pick up infallibly one by one all those minute signals -by which a phrase is made to hint, to turn, to live. Nevertheless it is -the language that has us most in bondage; the desire for that which -perpetually lures us back. First there is the compactness of the -expression. Shelley takes twenty-one words in English to translate -thirteen words of Greek.</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">πᾶς γοῦν ποιητὴς γίγνεται, κἂν ἄμουσος ᾖ τὸ πρίν, οὗ ἂν Ἕρως</span><br /> -<span class="i0">ἅψηται</span> -</div></div> - -<blockquote> -<p>. . . For every one, even if before he were ever so undisciplined, -becomes a poet as soon as he is touched by love.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>Every ounce of fat has been pared off, leaving the flesh firm. Then, -spare and bare as it is, no language can move more quickly, dancing, -shaking, all alive, but controlled. Then there are the words themselves -which, in so many instances, we have made expressive to us of our own -emotions, <i>thalassa, thanatos, anthos, aster</i>—to take the first -that come to hand; so clear, so hard, so intense, that to speak plainly yet -fittingly without blurring the outline or clouding the depths Greek is -the only expression. It is useless, then, to read Greek in translations. -Translators can but offer us a vague equivalent; their language is -necessarily full of echoes and associations. Professor Mackail says -"wan", and the age of Burne-Jones and Morris is at once evoked. Nor can -the subtler stress, the flight and the fall of the words, be kept even -by the most skilful of scholars—</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>. . . thee, who evermore weepest in thy rocky tomb</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>is not</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">ἅτ' ἐν τάφῳ πετραίῳ,</span><br /> -<span class="i4">αἰ, δακρύεις.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>Further, in reckoning the doubts and difficulties there is this -important problem—Where are we to laugh in reading Greek? There is a -passage in the <i>Odyssey</i> where laughter begins to steal upon us, but -if Homer were looking we should probably think it better to control our -merriment. To laugh instantly it is almost necessary (though -Aristophanes may supply us with an exception) to laugh in English. -Humour, after all, is closely bound up with a sense of the body. When we -laugh at the humour of Wycherley, we are laughing with the body of that -burly rustic who was our common ancestor on the village green. The -French, the Italians, the Americans, who derive physically from so -different a stock, pause, as we pause in reading Homer, to make sure -that they are laughing in the right place, and the pause is fatal. Thus -humour is the first of the gifts to perish in a foreign tongue, and when -we turn from Greek to Elizabethan literature it seems, after a long -silence, as if our great age were ushered in by a burst of laughter.</p> - -<p>These are all difficulties, sources of misunderstanding, of distorted -and romantic, of servile and snobbish passion. Yet even for the -unlearned some certainties remain. Greek is the impersonal literature; -it is also the literature of masterpieces. There are no schools; no -forerunners; no heirs. We cannot trace a gradual process working in many -men imperfectly until it expresses itself adequately at last in one. -Again, there is always about Greek literature that air of vigour which -permeates an "age", whether it is the age of Æschylus, or Racine, or -Shakespeare. One generation at least in that fortunate time is blown on -to be writers to the extreme; to attain that unconsciousness which means -that the consciousness is stimulated to the highest extent; to surpass -the limits of small triumphs and tentative experiments. Thus we have -Sappho with her constellations of adjectives, Plato daring extravagant -flights of poetry in the midst of prose; Thucydides, constricted and -contracted; Sophocles gliding like a shoal of trout smoothly and -quietly, apparently motionless, and then with a flicker of fins off and -away; while in the <i>Odyssey</i> we have what remains the triumph of -narrative, the clearest and at the same time the most romantic story of -the fortunes of men and women.</p> - -<p>The <i>Odyssey</i> is merely a story of adventure, the instinctive -story-telling of a sea-faring race. So we may begin it, reading quickly -in the spirit of children wanting amusement to find out what happens -next. But here is nothing immature; here are full-grown people, crafty, -subtle, and passionate. Nor is the world itself a small one, since the -sea which separates island from island has to be crossed by little -hand-made boats and is measured by the flight of the sea-gulls. It is -true that the islands are not thickly populated, and the people, though -everything is made by hand, are not closely kept at work. They have had -time to develop a very dignified, a very stately society, with an -ancient tradition of manners behind it, which makes every relation at -once orderly, natural, and full of reserve. Penelope crosses the room; -Telemachus goes to bed; Nausicaa washes her linen; and their actions -seem laden with beauty because they do not know that they are beautiful, -have been born to their possessions, are no more self-conscious than -children, and yet, all those thousands of years ago, in their little -islands, know all that is to be known. With the sound of the sea in -their ears, vines, meadows, rivulets about them, they are even more -aware than we are of a ruthless fate. There is a sadness at the back of -life which they do not attempt to mitigate. Entirely aware of their own -standing in the shadow, and yet alive to every tremor and gleam of -existence, there they endure, and it is to the Greeks that we turn when -we are sick of the vagueness, of the confusion, of the Christianity and -its consolations, of our own age.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="The_Elizabethan"><i>The Elizabethan Lumber<br /> -Room</i></a></h4> - - -<p>These magnificent volumes<a name="FNanchor_2_1" id="FNanchor_2_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_2_1" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> are not often, perhaps, read through. Part -of their charm consists in the fact that Hakluyt is not so much a book -as a great bundle of commodities loosely tied together, an emporium, a -lumber room strewn with ancient sacks, obsolete nautical instruments, -huge bales of wool, and little bags of rubies and emeralds. One is for -ever untying this packet here, sampling that heap over there, wiping the -dust off some vast map of the world, and sitting down in semi-darkness -to snuff the strange smells of silks and leathers and ambergris, while -outside tumble the huge waves of the uncharted Elizabethan sea.</p> - -<p>For this jumble of seeds, silks, unicorns' horns, elephants' teeth, -wool, common stones, turbans, and bars of gold, these odds and ends of -priceless value and complete worthlessness, were the fruit of -innumerable voyages, traffics, and discoveries to unknown lands in the -reign of Queen Elizabeth. The expeditions were manned by "apt young men" -from the West country, and financed in part by the great Queen herself. -The ships, says Froude, were no bigger than modern yachts. There in the -river by Greenwich the fleet lay gathered, close to the Palace. "The -Privy council looked out of the windows of the court . . . the ships -thereupon discharge their ordnance . . . and the mariners they shouted -in such sort that the sky rang again with the noise thereof." Then, as -the ships swung down the tide, one sailor after another walked the -hatches, climbed the shrouds, stood upon the mainyards to wave his -friends a last farewell. Many would come back no more. For directly -England and the coast of France were beneath the horizon, the ships -sailed into the unfamiliar; the air had its voices, the sea its lions and -serpents, its evaporations of fire and tumultuous whirlpools. But God too -was very close; the clouds but sparely hid the divinity Himself; the limbs -of Satan were almost visible. Familiarly the English sailors pitted their -God against the God of the Turks, who "can speake never a word for -dulnes, much lesse can he helpe them in such an extremitie. . . . -But howsoever their God behaved himself, our God showed himself a God -indeed. . ." God was as near by sea as by land, said Sir Humphrey -Gilbert, riding through the storm. Suddenly one light disappeared; Sir -Humphrey Gilbert had gone beneath the waves; when morning came, they -sought his ship in vain. Sir Hugh Willoughby sailed to discover the -North-West Passage and made no return. The Earl of Cumberland's men, -hung up by adverse winds off the coast of Cornwall for a fortnight, -licked the muddy water off the deck in agony. And sometimes a ragged and -worn-out man came knocking at the door of an English country house and -claimed to be the boy who had left it years ago to sail the seas. "Sir -William his father, and my lady his mother knew him not to be their son, -until they found a secret mark, which was a wart upon one of his knees." -But he had with him a black stone, veined with gold, or an ivory tusk, -or a silver ingot, and urged on the village youth with talk of gold -strewn over the land as stones are strewn in the fields of England. One -expedition might fail, but what if the passage to the fabled land of -uncounted riches lay only a little further up the coast? What if the -known world was only the prelude to some more splendid panorama? When, -after the long voyage, the ships dropped anchor in the great river of -the Plate and the men went exploring through the undulating lands, -startling grazing herds of deer, seeing the limbs of savages between the -trees, they filled their pockets with pebbles that might be emeralds or -sand that might be gold; or sometimes, rounding a headland, they saw, -far off, a string of savages slowly descending to the beach bearing on -their heads and linking their shoulders together with heavy burdens for -the Spanish King.</p> - -<p>These are the fine stories used effectively all through the West country -to decoy "the apt young men" lounging by the harbour-side to leave their -nets and fish for gold. But the voyagers were sober merchants into the -bargain, citizens with the good of English trade and the welfare of -English work-people at heart. The captains are reminded how necessary it -is to find a market abroad for English wool; to discover the herb from -which blue dyes are made; above all to make inquiry as to the methods of -producing oil, since all attempts to make it from radish seed have -failed. They are reminded of the misery of the English poor, whose -crimes, brought about by poverty, make them "daily consumed by the -gallows". They are reminded how the soil of England had been enriched by -the discoveries of travellers in the past; how Dr. Linaker brought seeds -of the damask rose and tulipas, and how beasts and plants and herbs, -"without which our life were to be said barbarous", have all come to -England gradually from abroad. In search of markets and of goods, of the -immortal fame success would bring them, the apt young men set sail for -the North, and were left, a little company of isolated Englishmen -surrounded by snow and the huts of savages, to make what bargains they -could and pick up what knowledge they might before the ships returned in -the summer to fetch them home again. There they endured, an isolated -company, burning on the rim of the dark. One of them, carrying a charter -from his company in London, went inland as far as Moscow, and there saw -the Emperor "sitting in his chair of estate with his crown on his head, -and a staff of goldsmiths' work in his left hand". All the ceremony that -he saw is carefully written out, and the sight upon which the English -merchant first set eyes has the brilliancy of a Roman vase dug up and -stood for a moment in the sun, until, exposed to the air, seen by -millions of eyes, it dulls and crumbles away. There, all these -centuries, on the outskirts of the world, the glories of Moscow, the -glories of Constantinople have flowered unseen. The Englishman was -bravely dressed for the occasion, led "three fair mastiffs in coats of -red cloth", and carried a letter from Elizabeth "the paper whereof did -smell most fragrantly of camphor and ambergris, and the ink of perfect -musk". And sometimes, since trophies from the amazing new world were -eagerly awaited at home, together with unicorns' horns and lumps of -ambergris and the fine stories of the engendering of whales and -"debates" of elephants and dragons whose blood, mixed, congealed into -vermilion, a living sample would be sent, a live savage caught somewhere -off the coast of Labrador, taken to England, and shown about like a wild -beast. Next year they brought him back, and took a woman savage on board -to keep him company. When they saw each other they blushed; they blushed -profoundly, but the sailors, though they noted it, knew not why. Later -the two savages set up house together on board ship, she attending to -his wants, he nursing her in sickness. But, as the sailors noted again, -the savages lived together in perfect chastity.</p> - -<p>All this, the new words, the new ideas, the waves, the savages, the -adventures, found their way naturally into the plays which were being -acted on the banks of the Thames. There was an audience quick to seize -upon the coloured and the high-sounding; to associate those</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i4">frigates bottom'd with rich Sethin planks,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Topt with the lofty firs of Lebanon</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>with the adventures of their own sons and brothers abroad. The Verneys, -for example, had a wild boy who had gone as pirate, turned Turk, and -died out there, sending back to Claydon to be kept as relics of him some -silk, a turban, and a pilgrim's staff. A gulf lay between the spartan -domestic housecraft of the Paston women and the refined tastes of the -Elizabethan Court ladies, who, grown old, says Harrison, spent their -time reading histories, or "writing volumes of their own, or translating -of other men's into our English and Latin tongue", while the younger -ladies played the lute and the citharne and spent their leisure in the -enjoyment of music. Thus, with singing and with music, springs into -existence the characteristic Elizabethan extravagance; the dolphins and -lavoltas of Greene; the hyperbole, more surprising in a writer so terse -and muscular, of Ben Jonson. Thus we find the whole of Elizabethan -literature strewn with gold and silver; with talk of Guiana's -rarities, and references to that America—"O my America! my -new-foundland"—which was not merely a land on the map, but -symbolised the unknown territories of the soul. So, over the water, the -imagination of Montaigne brooded in fascination upon savages, cannibals, -society, and government.</p> - -<p>But the mention of Montaigne suggests that though the influence of the -sea and the voyages, of the lumber-room crammed with sea beasts and -horns and ivory and old maps and nautical instruments, helped to inspire -the greatest age of English poetry, its effects were by no means so -beneficial upon English prose. Rhyme and metre helped the poets to keep -the tumult of their perceptions in order. But the prose writer, without -these restrictions, accumulated clauses, petered out in interminable -catalogues, tripped and stumbled over the convolutions of his own rich -draperies. How little Elizabethan prose was fit for its office, how -exquisitely French prose was already adapted, can be seen by comparing -a passage from Sidney's <i>Defense of Poesie</i> with one from Montaigne's -Essays.</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>He beginneth not with obscure definitions, which must blur the margent -with interpretations, and load the memory with doubtfulness: but he -cometh to you with words set in delightful proportion, either -accompanied with, or prepared for the well enchanting Skill of Music, -and with a tale (forsooth) he cometh unto you, with a tale which holdeth -children from play, and old men from the Chimney corner; and pretending -no more, doth intend the winning of the mind from wickedness to virtue; -even as the child is often brought to take most wholesome things by -hiding them in such other as have a pleasant taste: which if one should -begin to tell them the nature of the <i>Aloës</i> or <i>Rhubarbarum</i> -they should receive, would sooner take their physic at their ears than at -their mouth, so is it in men (most of which are childish in the best -things, till they be cradled in their graves) glad they will be to hear -the tales of Hercules. . . .</p></blockquote> - - -<p>And so it runs on for seventy-six words more. Sidney's prose is an -uninterrupted monologue, with sudden flashes of felicity and splendid -phrases, which lends itself to lamentations and moralities, to long -accumulations and catalogues, but is never quick, never colloquial, -unable to grasp a thought closely and firmly, or to adapt itself -flexibly and exactly to the chops and changes of the mind. Compared with -this, Montaigne is master of an instrument which knows its own powers -and limitations, and is capable of insinuating itself into crannies and -crevices which poetry can never reach; of cadences different but no less -beautiful; capable of subtleties and intensities which Elizabethan prose -entirely ignores. He is considering the way in which certain of the -ancients met death:</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>. . . ils l'ont faicte couler et glisser parmy la lascheté de leurs -occupations accoustumées entre des garses et bons compaignons; nul -propos de consolation, nulle mention de testament, nulle affectation -ambitieuse de constance, nul discours de leur condition future; mais -entre les jeux, les festins, facecies, entretiens communs et populaires, -et la musique, et des vers amoureux.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>An age seems to separate Sidney from Montaigne. The English compared -with the French are as boys compared with men.</p> - -<p>But the Elizabethan prose writers, if they have the formlessness of -youth have, too, its freshness and audacity. In the same essay Sidney -shapes language, masterfully and easily, to his liking; freely and -naturally reaches his hand for a metaphor. To bring this prose to -perfection (and Dryden's prose is very near perfection) only the -discipline of the stage was necessary and the growth of -self-consciousness. It is in the plays, and especially in the comic -passages of the plays, that the finest Elizabethan prose is to be found. -The stage was the nursery where prose learnt to find its feet. For on -the stage people had to meet, to quip and crank, to suffer -interruptions, to talk of ordinary things.</p> - -<blockquote> -<p><i>Cler</i>. A box of her autumnal face, her pieced beauty! there's no -man can be admitted till she be ready now-a-days, till she has painted, and -perfumed, and washed, and scoured, but the boy here; and him she wipes -her oiled lips upon, like a sponge. I have made a song (I pray thee hear -it) on the subject. [Page sings]</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">Still to be neat, still to be drest &c.</span> -</div></div> - -<p><i>True</i>. And I am clearly on the other side: I love a good dressing -before any beauty o' the world. O, a woman is then like a delicate -garden; nor is there one kind of it; she may vary every hour; take often -counsel of her glass, and choose the best. If she have good ears, show -them; good hair, lay it out; good legs, wear short clothes; a good hand, -discover it often: practise any art to mend breath, cleanse teeth, -repair eyebrows; paint and profess it.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>So the talk runs in Ben Jonson's <i>Silent Woman</i>, knocked into shape -by interruptions, sharpened by collisions, and never allowed to settle into -stagnancy or swell into turbidity. But the publicity of the stage and -the perpetual presence of a second person were hostile to that growing -consciousness of one's self, that brooding in solitude over the -mysteries of the soul, which, as the years went by, sought expression -and found a champion in the sublime genius of Sir Thomas Browne. His -immense egotism has paved the way for all psychological novelists, -autobiographers, confession-mongers, and dealers in the curious shades -of our private life. He it was who first turned from the contacts of men -with men to their lonely life within. "The world that I regard is -myself; it is the microcosm of my own frame that I cast mine eye on; for -the other I use it but like my globe, and turn it round sometimes for my -recreation." All was mystery and darkness as the first explorer walked -the catacombs swinging his lanthorn. "I feel sometimes a hell within -myself; Lucifer keeps his court in my breast; Legion is revived in me." -In these solitudes there were no guides and no companions. "I am in the -dark to all the world, and my nearest friends behold me but in a cloud." -The strangest thoughts and imaginings have play with him as he goes -about his work, outwardly the most sober of mankind and esteemed the -greatest physician in Norwich. He has wished for death. He has doubted -all things. What if we are asleep in this world and the conceits of life -are as mere dreams? The tavern music, the Ave Mary bell, the broken pot -that the workman has dug out of the field—at the sight and sound of -them he stops dead, as if transfixed by the astonishing vista that opens -before his imagination. "We carry with us the wonders we seek without -us; there is all Africa and her prodigies in us." A halo of wonder -encircles everything that he sees; he turns his light gradually upon the -flowers and insects and grasses at his feet so as to disturb nothing in -the mysterious processes of their existence. With the same awe, mixed -with a sublime complacency, he records the discovery of his own -qualities and attainments. He was charitable and brave and averse from -nothing. He was full of feeling for others and merciless upon himself. -"For my conversation, it is like the sun's, with all men, and with a -friendly aspect to good and bad." He knows six languages, the laws, the -customs and policies of several states, the names of all the -constellations and most of the plants of his country, and yet, so -sweeping is his imagination, so large the horizon in which he sees this -little figure walking that "methinks I do not know so many as when I did -but know a hundred, and had scarcely ever simpled further than -Cheapside".</p> - -<p>He is the first of the autobiographers. Swooping and soaring at the -highest altitudes he stoops suddenly with loving particularity upon the -details of his own body. His height was moderate, he tells us, his eyes -large and luminous; his skin dark but constantly suffused with blushes. -He dressed very plainly. He seldom laughed. He collected coins, kept -maggots in boxes, dissected the lungs of frogs, braved the stench of the -spermaceti whale, tolerated Jews, had a good word for the deformity of -the toad, and combined a scientific and sceptical attitude towards most -things with an unfortunate belief in witches. In short, as we say when -we cannot help laughing at the oddities of people we admire most, he was -a character, and the first to make us feel that the most sublime -speculations of the human imagination are issued from a particular man, -whom we can love. In the midst of the solemnities of the Urn Burial we -smile when he remarks that afflictions induce callosities. The smile -broadens to laughter as we mouth out the splendid pomposities, the -astonishing conjectures of the <i>Religio Medici</i>. Whatever he writes is -stamped with his own idiosyncrasy, and we first become conscious of -impurities which hereafter stain literature with so many freakish -colours that, however hard we try, make it difficult to be certain -whether we are looking at a man or his writing. Now we are in the -presence of sublime imagination; now rambling through one of the finest -lumber rooms in the world—a chamber stuffed from floor to ceiling -with ivory, old iron, broken pots, urns, unicorns' horns, and magic glasses -full of emerald lights and blue mystery.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_2_1" id="Footnote_2_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_2_1"><span class="label">[2]</span></a><i>Hakluyf's Collection of the Early Voyages, Travels, -and Discoveries of the English Nation</i>, five volumes, 4 to, 1810.</p></div> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="Notes"><i>Notes on an Elizabethan<br /> -Play</i></a></h4> - - -<p>There are, it must be admitted, some highly formidable tracts in English -literature, and chief among them that jungle, forest, and wilderness -which is the Elizabethan drama. For many reasons, not here to be -examined, Shakespeare stands out, Shakespeare who has had the light on -him from his day to ours, Shakespeare who towers highest when looked at -from the level of his own contemporaries. But the plays of the lesser -Elizabethans—Greene, Dekker, Peele, Chapman, Beaumont and -Fletcher,—to adventure into that wilderness is for the ordinary -reader an ordeal, an upsetting experience which plies him with questions, -harries him with doubts, alternately delights and vexes him with pleasures -and pains. For we are apt to forget, reading, as we tend to do, only the -masterpieces of a bygone age how great a power the body of a literature -possesses to impose itself: how it will not suffer itself to be read -passively, but takes us and reads us; flouts our preconceptions; questions -principles which we had got into the habit of taking for granted, and, in -fact, splits us into two parts as we read, making us, even as we enjoy, -yield our ground or stick to our guns.</p> - -<p>At the outset in reading an Elizabethan play we are overcome by the -extraordinary discrepancy between the Elizabethan view of reality and -our own. The reality to which we have grown accustomed, is, speaking -roughly, based upon the life and death of some knight called Smith, who -succeeded his father in the family business of pitwood importers, timber -merchants and coal exporters, was well known in political, temperance, -and church circles, did much for the poor of Liverpool, and died last -Wednesday of pneumonia while on a visit to his son at Muswell Hill. That -is the world we know. That is the reality which our poets and novelists -have to expound and illuminate. Then we open the first Elizabethan play -that comes to hand and read how</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i9">I once did see</span><br /> -<span class="i2">In my young travels through Armenia</span><br /> -<span class="i2">An angry unicorn in his full career</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Charge with too swift a foot a jeweller</span><br /> -<span class="i2">That watch'd him for the treasure of his brow</span><br /> -<span class="i2">And ere he could get shelter of a tree</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Nail him with his rich antlers to the earth.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>Where is Smith, we ask, where is Liverpool? And the groves of -Elizabethan drama echo "Where?" Exquisite is the delight, sublime the -relief of being set free to wander in the land of the unicorn and the -jeweller among dukes and grandees, Gonzaloes and Bellimperias, who spend -their lives in murder and intrigue, dress up as men if they are women, -as women if they are men, see ghosts, run mad, and die in the greatest -profusion on the slightest provocation, uttering as they fall -imprecations of superb vigour or elegies of the wildest despair. But -soon the low, the relentless voice, which if we wish to identify it we -must suppose typical of a reader fed on modern English literature, and -French and Russian, asks why, then, with all this to stimulate and -enchant these old plays are for long stretches of time so intolerably -dull? Is it not that literature, if it is to keep us on the alert -through five acts or thirty-two chapters must somehow be based on Smith, -have one toe touching Liverpool, take off into whatever heights it -pleases from reality? We are not so purblind as to suppose that a man -because his name is Smith and he lives at Liverpool is therefore "real". -We know indeed that this reality is a chameleon, quality, the fantastic -becoming as we grow used to it often the closest to the truth, the sober -the furthest from it, and nothing proving a writer's greatness more than -his capacity to consolidate his scene by the use of what, until he -touched them, seemed wisps of cloud and threads of gossamer. Our -contention merely is that there is a station, somewhere in mid-air, -whence Smith and Liverpool can be seen to the best advantage; that the -great artist is the man who knows where to place himself above the -shifting scenery; that while he never loses sight of Liverpool he never -sees it in the wrong perspective. The Elizabethans bore us, then, -because their Smiths are all changed to dukes, their Liverpools to -fabulous islands and palaces in Genoa. Instead of keeping a proper poise -above life they soar miles into the empyrean, where nothing is visible -for long hours at a time but clouds at their revelry, and a cloud -landscape is not ultimately satisfactory to human eyes. The Elizabethans -bore us because they suffocate our imaginations rather than set them to -work.</p> - -<p>Still, though potent enough, the boredom of an Elizabethan play is of a -different quality altogether from the boredom which a nineteenth-century -play, a Tennyson or a Henry Taylor play, inflicts. The riot of images, -the violent volubility of language, all that cloys and satiates in the -Elizabethans yet appears to be drawn up with a roar as a feeble fire is -sucked up by a newspaper. There is, even in the worst, an intermittent -bawling vigour which gives us the sense in our quiet arm-chairs of -ostlers and orange-girls catching up the lines, flinging them back, -hissing or stamping applause. But the deliberate drama of the Victorian -age is evidently written in a study. It has for audience ticking clocks -and rows of classics bound in half morocco. There is no stamping, no -applause. It does not, as, with all its faults, the Elizabethan audience -did, leaven the mass with fire. Rhetorical and bombastic, the lines are -flung and hurried into existence and reach the same impromptu -felicities, have the same lip-moulded profusion and unexpectedness, -which speech sometimes achieves, but seldom in our day the deliberate, -solitary pen. Indeed half the work of the dramatists one feels was done -in the Elizabethan age by the public.</p> - -<p>Against that, however, is to be set the fact that the influence of the -public was in many respects detestable. To its door we must lay the -greatest infliction that Elizabethan drama puts upon us—the plot; the -incessant, improbable, almost unintelligible convolutions which -presumably gratified the spirit of an excitable and unlettered public -actually in the playhouse, but only confuse and fatigue a reader with -the book before him. Undoubtedly something must happen; undoubtedly a -play where nothing happens is an impossibility. But we have a right to -demand (since the Greeks have proved that it is perfectly possible) that -what happens shall have an end in view. It shall agitate great emotions; -bring into existence memorable scenes; stir the actors to say what could -not be said without this stimulus. Nobody can fail to remember the plot -of the <i>Antigone</i>, because what happens is so closely bound up with -the emotions of the actors that we remember the people and the plot at one -and the same time. But who can tell us what happens in the <i>White -Devil</i>, or the <i>Maid's Tragedy</i>, except by remembering the story -apart from the emotions which it has aroused? As for the lesser -Elizabethans, like Greene and Kyd, the complexities of their plots are so -great, and the violence which those plots demand so terrific, that the -actors themselves are obliterated and emotions which, according to our -convention at least, deserve the most careful investigation, the most -delicate analysis, are clean sponged off the slate. And the result is -inevitable. Outside Shakespeare and perhaps Ben Jonson, there are no -characters in Elizabethan drama, only violences whom we know so little -that we can scarcely care what becomes of them. Take any hero or heroine -in those early plays—Bellimperia in the <i>Spanish Tragedy</i> will -serve as well as another—and can we honestly say that we care a jot -for the unfortunate lady who runs the whole gamut of human misery to kill -herself in the end? No more than for an animated broomstick, we must -reply, and in a work dealing with men and women the prevalence of -broomsticks is a drawback. But the Spanish Tragedy is admittedly a crude -forerunner, chiefly valuable because such primitive efforts lay bare the -formidable framework which greater dramatists could modify, but had to -use. Ford, it is claimed, is of the school of Stendhal and of Flaubert; -Ford is a psychologist. Ford is an analyst. "This man", says Mr. -Havelock Ellis, "writes of women not as a dramatist nor as a lover, but -as one who has searched intimately and felt with instinctive sympathy -the fibres of their hearts."</p> - -<p>The play—<i>'Tis pity she's a Whore</i>—upon which this -judgement is chiefly based shows us the whole nature of Annabella spun from -pole to pole in a series of tremendous vicissitudes. First, her brother -tells her that he loves her; next she confesses her love for him; next -finds herself with child by him; next forces herself to marry Soranzo; next -is discovered; next repents; finally is killed, and it is her lover and -brother who kills her. To trace the trail of feelings which such crises -and calamities might be expected to breed in a woman of ordinary -sensibility might have filled volumes. A dramatist of course has no -volumes to fill. He is forced to contract. Even so, he can illumine; he -can reveal enough for us to guess the rest. But what is it that we know -without using microscopes and splitting hairs about the character of -Annabella? Gropingly we make out that she is a spirited girl, with her -defiance of her husband when he abuses her, her snatches of Italian -song, her ready wit, her simple glad love-making. But of character as we -understand the word there is no trace. We do not know how she reaches -her conclusions, only that she has reached them. Nobody describes her. -She is always at the height of her passion, never at its approach. -Compare her with Anna Karenina. The Russian woman is flesh and blood, -nerves and temperament, has heart, brain, body and mind where the -English girl is flat and crude as a face painted on a playing card; she -is without depth, without range, without intricacy. But as we say this -we know that we have missed something. We have let the meaning of the -play slip through our hands. We have ignored the emotion which has been -accumulating because it has accumulated in places where we have not -expected to find it. We have been comparing the play with prose, and the -play, after all, is poetry.</p> - -<p>The play is poetry we say, and the novel prose. Let us attempt to -obliterate detail, and place the two before us side by side, feeling, so -far as we can, the angles and edges of each, recalling each, so far as -we are able, as a whole. Then, at once, the prime differences emerge; -the long leisurely accumulated novel; the little contracted play; the -emotion all split up, dissipated and then woven together, slowly and -gradually massed into a whole, in the novel; the emotion concentrated, -generalised, heightened in the play. What moments of intensity, what -phrases of astonishing beauty the play shot at us!</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i9">O, my lords,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">I but deceived your eyes with antic gesture,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">When one news straight came huddling on another</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Of death! and death! and death! still I danced forward.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>or</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i4">You have oft for these two lips</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Neglected cassia or the natural sweets</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Of the spring-violet: they are not yet much wither'd.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>With all her reality, Anna Karenina could never say</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i7">"You have oft, for these two lips</span><br /> -<span class="i4">Neglected cassia".</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>Some of the most profound of human emotions are therefore beyond her -reach. The extremes of passion are not for the novelist; the perfect -marriages of sense and sound are not for him; he must tame his swiftness -to sluggardry; keep his eyes on the ground not on the sky: suggest by -description, not reveal by illumination. Instead of singing</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">Lay a garland on my hearse</span><br /> -<span class="i3">Of the dismal yew;</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Maidens, willow branches bear;</span><br /> -<span class="i3">Say I died true,</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>he must enumerate the chrysanthemums fading on the grave and the -undertakers' men snuffling past in their four-wheelers. How then can we -compare this lumbering and lagging art with poetry? Granted all the -little dexterities by which the novelist makes us know the individual -and recognise the real, the dramatist goes beyond the single and the -separate, shows us not Annabella in love, but love itself; not Anna -Karenina throwing herself under the train, but ruin and death and the</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i3">. . . soul, like a ship in a black storm,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">. . . driven, I know not whither.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>So with pardonable impatience we might exclaim as we shut our -Elizabethan play. But what then is the exclamation with which we close -<i>War and Peace</i>? Not one of disappointment; we are not left lamenting -the superficiality, upbraiding the triviality of the novelist's art. Rather -we are made more than ever aware of the inexhaustible richness of human -sensibility. Here, in the play, we recognise the general; here, in the -novel, the particular. Here we gather all our energies into a bunch and -spring. Here we extend and expand and let come slowly in from all -quarters deliberate impressions, accumulated messages. The mind is so -saturated with sensibility, language so inadequate to its experience, -that far from ruling off one form of literature or decreeing its -inferiority to others we complain that they are still unable to keep -pace with the wealth of material, and wait impatiently the creation of -what may yet be devised to liberate us of the enormous burden of the -unexpressed.</p> - -<p>Thus, in spite of dullness, bombast, rhetoric, and confusion we still -read the lesser Elizabethans, still find ourselves adventuring in the -land of the jeweller and the unicorn. The familiar factories of -Liverpool fade into thin air and we scarcely recognise any likeness -between the knight who imported timber and died of pneumonia at Muswell -Hill and the Armenian Duke who fell like a Roman on his sword while the -owl shrieked in the ivy and the Duchess gave birth to a still-born babe -'mongst women howling. To join those territories and recognise the same -man in different disguises we have to adjust and revise. But make the -necessary alterations in perspective, draw in those filaments of -sensibility which the moderns have so marvellously developed, use -instead the ear and the eye which the moderns have so basely starved, -hear words as they are laughed and shouted, not as they are printed in -black letters on the page, see before your eyes the changing faces and -living bodies of men and women, put yourself, in short, into a -different, but not more elementary stage of your reading development and -then the true merits of Elizabethan drama will assert themselves. The -power of the whole is undeniable. Theirs, too, is the word-coining -genius, as if thought plunged into a sea of words and came up dripping. -Theirs is that broad humour based upon the nakedness of the body, which, -however arduously the public spirited may try, is impossible, since the -body is draped. Then at the back of this, imposing not unity but some -sort of stability, is what we may briefly call a sense of the presence -of the Gods. He would be a bold critic who should attempt to impose any -creed upon the swarm and variety of the Elizabethan dramatists, and yet -it implies some timidity if we take it for granted that a whole -literature with common characteristics is a mere evaporation of high -spirits, a money-making enterprise, a fluke of the mind which, owing to -favourable circumstances, came off successfully. Even in the jungle and -the wilderness the compass still points.</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i3">"Lord, Lord, that I were dead!"</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>they are for ever crying.</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">O thou soft natural death that art joint-twin</span><br /> -<span class="i2">To sweetest slumber——</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>The pageant of the world is marvellous, but the pageant of the world -is vanity.</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i9">glories</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Of human greatness are but pleasing dreams</span><br /> -<span class="i2">And shadows soon decaying: on the stage</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Of my mortality my youth hath acted</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Some scenes of vanity——</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>To die and be quit of it all is their desire; the bell -that tolls throughout the drama is death and disenchantment.</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">All life is but a wandering to find home,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">When we're gone, we're there.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>Ruin, weariness, death, perpetually death, stand grimly to confront the -other presence of Elizabethan drama which is life: life compact of -frigates, fir trees and ivory, of dolphins and the juice of July -flowers, of the milk of unicorns and panthers' breath, of ropes of -pearl, brains of peacocks and Cretan wine. To this, life at its most -reckless and abundant, they reply</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">Man is a tree that hath no top in cares,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">No root in comforts; all his power to live</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Is given to no end but t' have power to grieve.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>It is this echo flung back and back from the other side of the play -which, if it has not the name, still has the effect of the presence of -the Gods.</p> - -<p>So we ramble through the jungle, forest, and wilderness of Elizabethan -drama. So we consort with Emperors and clowns, jewellers and unicorns, -and laugh and exult and marvel at the splendour and humour and fantasy -of it all. A noble rage consumes us when the curtain falls; we are bored -too, and nauseated by the wearisome old tricks and florid bombast. A -dozen deaths of full-grown men and women move us less than the suffering -of one of Tolstoi's flies. Wandering in the maze of the impossible and -tedious story suddenly some passionate intensity seizes us; some -sublimity exalts, or some melodious snatch of song enchants. It is a -world full of tedium and delight; pleasure and curiosity, of extravagant -laughter, poetry, and splendour. But gradually it comes over us, what -then are we being denied? What is it that we are coming to want so -persistently that unless we get it instantly we must seek elsewhere? It -is solitude. There is no privacy here. Always the door opens and some -one comes in. All is shared, made visible, audible, dramatic. Meanwhile, -as if tired with company, the mind steals off to muse in solitude; to -think, not to act; to comment, not to share; to explore its own -darkness, not the bright-lit-up surfaces of others. It turns to Donne, -to Montaigne, to Sir Thomas Browne—the keepers of the keys of -solitude.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="Montaigne"><i>Montaigne</i></a></h4> - - -<p>Once at Bar-le-Duc Montaigne saw a portrait which René, King of Sicily, -had painted of himself, and asked, "Why is it not, in like manner, -lawful for every one to draw himself with a pen, as he did with a -crayon?" Off-hand one might reply, Not only is it lawful, but nothing -could be easier. Other people may evade us, but our own features are -almost too familiar. Let us begin. And then, when we attempt the task, -the pen falls from our fingers; it is a matter of profound, mysterious, -and overwhelming difficulty.</p> - -<p>After all, in the whole of literature, how many people have succeeded in -drawing themselves with a pen? Only Montaigne and Pepys and Rousseau -perhaps. The <i>Religio Medici</i> is a coloured glass through which darkly -one sees racing stars and a strange and turbulent soul. A bright -polished mirror reflects the face of Boswell peeping between other -people's shoulders in the famous biography. But this talking of oneself, -following one's own vagaries, giving the whole map, weight, colour, and -circumference of the soul in its confusion, its variety, its -imperfection—this art belonged to one man only: to Montaigne. As the -centuries go by, there is always a crowd before that picture, gazing -into its depths, seeing their own faces reflected in it, seeing more the -longer they look, never being able to say quite what it is that they -see. New editions testify to the perennial fascination. Here is the -Navarre Society in England reprinting in five fine volumes<a name="FNanchor_3_1" id="FNanchor_3_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_3_1" class="fnanchor">[3]</a> Cotton's -translation; while in France the firm of Louis Conard is issuing the -complete works of Montaigne with the various readings in an edition to -which Dr. Armaingaud has devoted a long lifetime of research.</p> - -<p>To tell the truth about oneself, to discover oneself near at hand, is -not easy.</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>We hear of but two or three of the ancients who have beaten this road -[said Montaigne]. No one since has followed the track; 'tis a rugged -road, more so than it seems, to follow a pace so rambling and uncertain, -as that of the soul; to penetrate the dark profundities of its intricate -internal windings; to choose and lay hold of so many little nimble -motions; 'tis a new and extraordinary undertaking, and that withdraws us -from the common and most recommended employments of the world.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>There is, in the first place, the difficulty of expression. We all -indulge in the strange, pleasant process called thinking, but when it -comes to saying, even to some one opposite, what we think, then how -little we are able to convey! The phantom is through the mind and out of -the window before we can lay salt on its tail, or slowly sinking and -returning to the profound darkness which it has lit up momentarily with -a wandering light. Face, voice, and accent eke out our words and impress -their feebleness with character in speech. But the pen is a rigid -instrument; it can say very little; it has all kinds of habits and -ceremonies of its own. It is dictatorial too: it is always making -ordinary men into prophets, and changing the natural stumbling trip of -human speech into the solemn and stately march of pens. It is for this -reason that Montaigne stands out from the legions of the dead with such -irrepressible vivacity. We can never doubt for an instant that his book -was himself. He refused to teach; he refused to preach; he kept on -saying that he was just like other people. All his effort was to write -himself down, to communicate, to tell the truth, and that is a "rugged -road, more than it seems".</p> - -<p>For beyond the difficulty of communicating oneself, there is the supreme -difficulty of being oneself. This soul, or life within us, by no means -agrees with the life outside us. If one has the courage to ask her what -she thinks, she is always saying the very opposite to what other people -say. Other people, for instance, long ago made up their minds that old -invalidish gentlemen ought to stay at home and edify the rest of us by -the spectacle of their connubial fidelity. The soul of Montaigne said, -on the contrary, that it is in old age that one ought to travel, and -marriage, which, rightly, is very seldom founded on love, is apt to -become, towards the end of life, a formal tie better broken up. Again -with politics, statesmen are always praising the greatness of Empire, -and preaching the moral duty of civilising the savage. But look at the -Spanish in Mexico, cried Montaigne in a burst of rage. "So many cities -levelled with the ground, so many nations exterminated . . . and the -richest and most beautiful part of the world turned upside down for the -traffic of pearl and pepper! Mechanic victories!" And then when the -peasants came and told him that they had found a man dying of wounds and -deserted him for fear lest justice might incriminate them, Montaigne -asked:</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>What could I have said to these people? 'Tis certain that this office of -humanity would have brought them into trouble. . . . There is nothing so -much, nor so grossly, nor so ordinarily faulty as the laws.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>Here the soul, getting restive, is lashing out at the more palpable -forms of Montaigne's great bugbears, convention and ceremony. But watch -her as she broods over the fire in the inner room of that tower which, -though detached from the main building, has so wide a view over the -estate. Really she is the strangest creature in the world, far from -heroic, variable as a weathercock, "bashful, insolent; chaste, lustful; -prating, silent; laborious, delicate; ingenious, heavy; melancholic, -pleasant; lying, true; knowing, ignorant; liberal, covetous, and -prodigal"—in short, so complex, so indefinite, corresponding so -little to the version which does duty for her in public, that a man might -spend his life merely in trying to run her to earth. The pleasure of the -pursuit more than rewards one for any damage that it may inflict upon -one's worldly prospects. The man who is aware of himself is henceforward -independent; and he is never bored, and life is only too short, and he -is steeped through and through with a profound yet temperate happiness. -He alone lives, while other people, slaves of ceremony, let life slip -past them in a kind of dream. Once conform, once do what other people do -because they do it, and a lethargy steals over all the finer nerves and -faculties of the soul. She becomes all outer show and inward emptiness; -dull, callous, and indifferent.</p> - -<p>Surely then, if we ask this great master of the art of life to tell us -his secret, he will advise us to withdraw to the inner room of our tower -and there turn the pages of books, pursue fancy after fancy as they -chase each other up the chimney, and leave the government of the world to -others. Retirement and contemplation—these must be the main elements -of his prescription. But no; Montaigne is by no means explicit. It is -impossible to extract a plain answer from that subtle, half smiling, -half melancholy man, with the heavy-lidded eyes and the dreamy, -quizzical expression. The truth is that life in the country, with one's -books and vegetables and flowers, is often extremely dull. He could -never see that his own green peas were so much better than other people's. -Paris was the place he loved best in the whole world—"jusques -à ses verrues et à ses tâches". As for reading, he could seldom read -any book for more than an hour at a time, and his memory was so bad that -he forgot what was in his mind as he walked from one room to another. -Book learning is nothing to be proud of, and as for the achievements of -science, what do they amount to? He had always mixed with clever men, -and his father had a positive veneration for them, but he had observed -that, though they have their fine moments, their rhapsodies, their -visions, the cleverest tremble on the verge of folly. Observe yourself: -one moment you are exalted; the next a broken glass puts your nerves on -edge. All extremes are dangerous. It is best to keep in the middle of -the road, in the common ruts, however muddy. In writing choose the -common words; avoid rhapsody and eloquence—yet, it is true, poetry is -delicious; the best prose is that which is most full of poetry.</p> - -<p>It appears, then, that we are to aim at a democratic simplicity. We may -enjoy our room in the tower, with the painted walls and the commodious -bookcases, but down in the garden there is a man digging who buried his -father this morning, and it is he and his like who live the real life -and speak the real language. There is certainly an element of truth in -that. Things are said very finely at the lower end of the table. There -are perhaps more of the qualities that matter among the ignorant than -among the learned. But again, what a vile thing the rabble is! "the -mother of ignorance, injustice, and inconstancy. Is it reasonable that -the life of a wise man should depend upon the judgment of fools?" Their -minds are weak, soft and without power of resistance. They must be told -what it is expedient for them to know. It is not for them to face facts -as they are. The truth can only be known by the well-born soul—"l'âme -bien née". Who, then, are these well-born souls, whom we would imitate, -if only Montaigne would enlighten us more precisely?</p> - -<p>But no. "Je n'enseigne poinct; je raconte." After all, how could he -explain other people's souls when he could say nothing "entirely simply -and solidly, without confusion or mixture, in one word", about his own, -when indeed it became daily more and more in the dark to him? One -quality or principle there is perhaps—that one must not lay down -rules. The souls whom one would wish to resemble, like Étienne de La -Boétie, for example, are always the supplest. "C'est estre, mais ce n'est -pas vivre, que de se tenir attaché et obligé par nécessité à un seul -train." The laws are mere conventions, utterly unable to keep touch with -the vast variety and turmoil of human impulses; habits and customs are a -convenience devised for the support of timid natures who dare not allow -their souls free play. But we, who have a private life and hold it -infinitely the dearest of our possessions, suspect nothing so much as an -attitude. Directly we begin to protest, to attitudinise, to lay down -laws, we perish. We are living for others, not for ourselves. We must -respect those who sacrifice themselves in the public service, load them -with honours, and pity them for allowing, as they must, the inevitable -compromise; but for ourselves let us fly fame, honour, and all offices -that put us under an obligation to others. Let us simmer over our -incalculable cauldron, our enthralling confusion, our hotch-potch of -impulses, our perpetual miracle—for the soul throws up wonders every -second. Movement and change are the essence of our being; rigidity is -death; conformity is death: let us say what comes into our heads, repeat -ourselves, contradict ourselves, fling out the wildest nonsense, and -follow the most fantastic fancies without caring what the world does or -thinks or says. For nothing matters except life; and, of course, order.</p> - -<p>This freedom, then, which is the essence of our being, has to be -controlled. But it is difficult to see what power we are to invoke to -help us, since every restraint of private opinion or public law has been -derided, and Montaigne never ceases to pour scorn upon the misery, the -weakness, the vanity of human nature. Perhaps, then, it will be well to -turn to religion to guide us? "Perhaps" is one of his favourite -expressions; "perhaps" and "I think" and all those words which qualify -the rash assumptions of human ignorance. Such words help one to muffle -up opinions which it would be highly impolitic to speak outright. For -one does not say everything; there are some things which at present it -is advisable only to hint. One writes for a very few people, who -understand. Certainly, seek the Divine guidance by all means, but -meanwhile there is, for those who live a private life, another monitor, -an invisible censor within, "un patron au dedans", whose blame is much -more to be dreaded than any other because he knows the truth; nor is -there anything sweeter than the chime of his approval. This is the judge -to whom we must submit; this is the censor who will help us to achieve -that order which is the grace of a well-born soul. For "C'est une vie -exquise, celle qui se maintient en ordre jusques en son privé". But he -will act by his own light; by some internal balance will achieve that -precarious and everchanging poise which, while it controls, in no way -impedes the soul's freedom to explore and experiment. Without other -guide, and without precedent, undoubtedly it is far more difficult to -live well the private life than the public. It is an art which each must -learn separately, though there are, perhaps, two or three men, like -Homer, Alexander the Great, and Epaminondas among the ancients, and -Étienne de La Boétie among the moderns, whose example may help us. But -it is an art; and the very material in which it works is variable and -complex and infinitely mysterious—human nature. To human nature we -must keep close. ". . . il faut vivre entre les vivants". We must dread any -eccentricity or refinement which cuts us off from our fellow-beings. -Blessed are those who chat easily with their neighbours about their -sport or their buildings or their quarrels, and honestly enjoy the talk -of carpenters and gardeners. To communicate is our chief business; -society and friendship our chief delights; and reading, not to acquire -knowledge, not to earn a living, but to extend our intercourse beyond -our own time and province. Such wonders there are in the world; halcyons -and undiscovered lands, men with dogs' heads and eyes in their chests, -and laws and customs, it may well be, far superior to our own. Possibly -we are asleep in this world; possibly there is some other which is -apparent to beings with a sense which we now lack.</p> - -<p>Here then, in spite of all contradictions and of all qualifications, is -something definite. These essays are an attempt to communicate a soul. -On this point at least he is explicit. It is not fame that he wants; it -is not that men shall quote him in years to come; he is setting up no -statue in the market-place; he wishes only to communicate his soul. -Communication is health; communication is truth; communication is -happiness. To share is our duty; to go down boldly and bring to light -those hidden thoughts which are the most diseased; to conceal nothing; -to pretend nothing; if we are ignorant to say so; if we love our friends -to let them know it.</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>". . . car, comme je scay par une trop certaine expérience, il n'est -aucune si douce consolation en la perte de nos amis que celle que nous -aporte la science de n'avoir rien oublié à leur dire et d'avoir eu -avec eux une parfaite et entière communication."</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>There are people who, when they travel, wrap themselves up "se -défendans de la contagion d'un air incogneu" in silence and suspicion. -When they dine they must have the same food they get at home. Every -sight and custom is bad unless it resembles those of their own village. -They travel only to return. That is entirely the wrong way to set about -it. We should start without any fixed idea where we are going to spend -the night, or when we propose to come back; the journey is everything. -Most necessary of all, but rarest good fortune, we should try to find -before we start some man of our own sort who will go with us and to whom -we can say the first thing that comes into our heads. For pleasure has -no relish unless we share it. As for the risks—that we may catch cold -or get a headache—it is always worth while to risk a little illness -for the sake of pleasure. "Le plaisir est des principales espèces du -profit." Besides if we do what we like, we always do what is good for -us. Doctors and wise men may object, but let us leave doctors and wise -men to their own dismal philosophy. For ourselves, who are ordinary men -and women, let us return thanks to Nature for her bounty by using every -one of the senses she has given us; vary our state as much as possible; -turn now this side, now that, to the warmth, and relish to the full -before the sun goes down the kisses of youth and the echoes of a -beautiful voice singing Catullus. Every season is likeable, and wet days -and fine, red wine and white, company and solitude. Even sleep, that -deplorable curtailment of the joy of life, can be full of dreams; and -the most common actions—a walk, a talk, solitude in one's own -orchard—can be enhanced and lit up by the association of the mind. -Beauty is everywhere, and beauty is only two fingers' breadth from -goodness. So, in the name of health and sanity, let us not dwell on the -end of the journey. Let death come upon us planting our cabbages, or on -horseback, or let us steal away to some cottage and there let strangers -close our eyes, for a servant sobbing or the touch of a hand would break -us down. Best of all, let death find us at our usual occupations, among -girls and good fellows who make no protests, no lamentations; let him -find us "parmy les jeux, les festins, faceties, entretiens communs et -populaires, et la musique, et des vers amoureux". But enough of death; -it is life that matters.</p> - -<p>It is life that emerges more and more clearly as these essays reach not -their end, but their suspension in full career. It is life that becomes -more and more absorbing as death draws near, one's self, one's soul, -every fact of existence: that one wears silk stockings summer and -winter; puts water in one's wine; has one's hair cut after dinner; must -have glass to drink from; has never worn spectacles; has a loud voice; -carries a switch in one's hand; bites one's tongue; fidgets with one's -feet; is apt to scratch one's ears; likes meat to be high; rubs one's -teeth with a napkin (thank God, they are good!); must have curtains to -one's bed; and, what is rather curious, began by liking radishes, then -disliked them, and now likes them again. No fact is too little to let it -slip through one's fingers and besides the interest of facts themselves, -there is the strange power we have of changing facts by the force of the -imagination. Observe how the soul is always casting her own lights and -shadows; makes the substantial hollow and the frail substantial; fills -broad daylight with dreams; is as much excited by phantoms as by -reality; and in the moment of death sports with a trifle. Observe, too, -her duplicity, her complexity. She hears of a friend's loss and -sympathises, and yet has a bitter-sweet malicious pleasure in the -sorrows of others. She believes; at the same time she does not believe. -Observe her extraordinary susceptibility to impressions, especially in -youth. A rich man steals because his father kept him short of money as a -boy. This wall one builds not for oneself, but because one's father -loved building. In short the soul is all laced about with nerves and -sympathies which affect her every action, and yet, even now in 1580, no -one has any clear knowledge—such cowards we are, such lovers of the -smooth conventional ways—how she works or what she is except that of -all things she is the most mysterious, and one's self the greatest -monster and miracle in the world. ". . . plus je me hante et connois, -plus ma difformité m'estonne, moins je m'entens en moy." Observe, -observe perpetually, and, so long as ink and paper exist, "sans cesse et -sans travail" Montaigne will write.</p> - -<p>But there remains one final question which, if we could make him look up -from his enthralling occupation, we should like to put to this great -master of the art of life. In these extraordinary volumes of short and -broken, long and learned, logical and contradictory statements, we have -heard the very pulse and rhythm of the soul, beating day after day, year -after year through a veil which, as time goes on, fines itself almost to -transparency. Here is some one who succeeded in the hazardous enterprise -of living; who served his country and lived retired; was landlord, -husband, father; entertained kings, loved women, and mused for hours -alone over old books. By means of perpetual experiment and observation -of the subtlest he achieved at last a miraculous adjustment of all these -wayward parts that constitute the human soul. He laid hold of the beauty -of the world with all his fingers. He achieved happiness. If he had had -to live again, he said, he would have lived the same life over. But, as -we watch with absorbed interest the enthralling spectacle of a soul -living openly beneath our eyes, the question frames itself, Is pleasure -the end of all? Whence this overwhelming interest in the nature of the -soul? Why this overmastering desire to communicate with others? Is the -beauty of this world enough, or is there, elsewhere, some explanation of -the mystery? To this what answer can there be? There is none. There is -only one more question: "Que scais-je?"</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_3_1" id="Footnote_3_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_3_1"><span class="label">[3]</span></a><i>Essays of Montaigne</i>, translated by Charles Cotton, -5 vols. The Navarre Society, £6: 6s. net</p></div> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="The_Duchess"><i>The Duchess of Newcastle</i></a><a name="FNanchor_4_1" id="FNanchor_4_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_4_1" class="fnanchor">[4]</a></h4> - - -<p>". . . All I desire is fame", wrote Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of -Newcastle. And while she lived her wish was granted. Garish in her -dress, eccentric in her habits, chaste in her conduct, coarse in her -speech, she succeeded during her lifetime in drawing upon herself the -ridicule of the great and the applause of the learned. But the last -echoes of that clamour have now all died away; she lives only in the few -splendid phrases that Lamb scattered upon her tomb; her poems, her plays, -her philosophies, her orations, her discourses—all those folios and -quartos in which, she protested, her real life was shrined—moulder -in the gloom of public libraries, or are decanted into tiny thimbles -which hold six drops of their profusion. Even the curious student, -inspired by the words of Lamb, quails before the mass of her mausoleum, -peers in, looks about him, and hurries out again, shutting the door.</p> - -<p>But that hasty glance has shown him the outlines of a memorable figure. -Born (it is conjectured) in 1624, Margaret was the youngest child of a -Thomas Lucas, who died when she was an infant, and her upbringing was -due to her mother, a lady of remarkable character, of majestic grandeur -and beauty "beyond the ruin of time". "She was very skilful in leases, -and setting of lands and court keeping, ordering of stewards, and the -like affairs." The wealth which thus accrued she spent, not on marriage -portions, but on generous and delightful pleasures, "out of an opinion -that if she bred us with needy necessity it might chance to create in us -sharking qualities". Her eight sons and daughters were never beaten, but -reasoned with, finely and gayly dressed, and allowed no conversation -with servants, not because they are servants but because servants "are -for the most part ill-bred as well as meanly born". The daughters were -taught the usual accomplishments "rather for formality than for -benefit", it being their mother's opinion that character, happiness, and -honesty were of greater value to a woman than fiddling and singing, or -"the prating of several languages".</p> - -<p>Already Margaret was eager to take advantage of such indulgence to -gratify certain tastes. Already she liked reading better than -needlework, dressing and "inventing fashions" better than reading, and -writing best of all. Sixteen paper books of no title, written in -straggling letters, for the impetuosity of her thought always outdid the -pace of her fingers, testify to the use she made of her mother's -liberality. The happiness of their home life had other results as well. -They were a devoted family. Long after they were married, Margaret -noted, these handsome brothers and sisters, with their well-proportioned -bodies, their clear complexions, brown hair, sound teeth, "tunable -voices", and plain way of speaking, kept themselves "in a flock -together". The presence of strangers silenced them. But when they were -alone, whether they walked in Spring Gardens or Hyde Park, or had music, -or supped in barges upon the water, their tongues were loosed and they -made "very merry amongst themselves, . . . judging, condemning, -approving, commending, as they thought good".</p> - -<p>The happy family life had its effect upon Margaret's character. As a -child, she would walk for hours alone, musing and contemplating and -reasoning with herself of "everything her senses did present". She took -no pleasure in activity of any kind. Toys did not amuse her, and she -could neither learn foreign languages nor dress as other people did. Her -great pleasure was to invent dresses for herself, which nobody else was -to copy, "for", she remarks, "I always took delight in a singularity, -even in accoutrements of habits".</p> - -<p>Such a training, at once so cloistered and so free, should have bred a -lettered old maid, glad of her seclusion, and the writer perhaps of some -volume of letters or translations from the classics, which we should -still quote as proof of the cultivation of our ancestresses. But there -was a wild streak in Margaret, a love of finery and extravagance and -fame, which was for ever upsetting the orderly arrangements of nature. -When she heard that the Queen, since the outbreak of the Civil War, had -fewer maids-of-honour than usual, she had "a great desire" to become one -of them. Her mother let her go against the judgement of the rest of the -family, who, knowing that she had never left home and had scarcely been -beyond their sight, justly thought that she might behave at Court to her -disadvantage. "Which indeed I did," Margaret confessed; "for I was so -bashful when I was out of my mother's, brothers', and sisters' sight -that . . . I durst neither look up with my eyes, nor speak, nor be any -way sociable, insomuch as I was thought a natural fool." The courtiers -laughed at her; and she retaliated in the obvious way. People were -censorious; men were jealous of brains in a woman; women suspected -intellect in their own sex; and what other lady, she might justly ask, -pondered as she walked on the nature of matter and whether snails have -teeth? But the laughter galled her, and she begged her mother to let her -come home. This being refused, wisely as the event turned out, she -stayed on for two years (1643-45), finally going with the Queen to -Paris, and there, among the exiles who came to pay their respects to the -Court, was the Marquis of Newcastle. To the general amazement, the -princely nobleman, who had led the King's forces to disaster with -indomitable courage but little skill, fell in love with the shy, silent, -strangely dressed maid-of-honour. It was not "amorous love, but honest, -honourable love", according to Margaret. She was no brilliant match; she -had gained a reputation for prudery and eccentricity. What, then, could -have made so great a nobleman fall at her feet? The onlookers were full -of derision, disparagement, and slander. "I fear", Margaret wrote to the -Marquis, "others foresee we shall be unfortunate, though we see it not -ourselves, or else there would not be such pains to untie the knot of -our affections." Again, "Saint Germains is a place of much slander, and -thinks I send too often to you". "Pray consider", she warned him, "that -I have enemies." But the match was evidently perfect. The Duke, with his -love of poetry and music and play-writing, his interest in philosophy, -his belief "that nobody knew or could know the cause of anything", his -romantic and generous temperament, was naturally drawn to a woman who -wrote poetry herself, was also a philosopher of the same way of -thinking, and lavished upon him not only the admiration of a -fellow-artist, but the gratitude of a sensitive creature who had been -shielded and succoured by his extraordinary magnanimity. "He did -approve", she wrote, "of those bashful fears which many condemned, . . . -and though I did dread marriage and shunned men's company as much as I -could, yet I . . . had not the power to refuse him." She kept him -company during the long years of exile; she entered with sympathy, if -not with understanding, into the conduct and acquirements of those -horses which he trained to such perfection that the Spaniards crossed -themselves and cried "Miraculo!" as they witnessed their corvets, -voltoes, and pirouettes; she believed that the horses even made a -"trampling action" for joy when he came into the stables; she pleaded -his cause in England during the Protectorate; and, when the Restoration -made it possible for them to return to England, they lived together in -the depths of the country in the greatest seclusion and perfect -contentment, scribbling plays, poems, philosophies, greeting each -other's works with raptures of delight, and confabulating doubtless upon -such marvels of the natural world as chance threw their way. They were -laughed at by their contemporaries; Horace Walpole sneered at them. But -there can be no doubt that they were perfectly happy.</p> - -<p>For now Margaret could apply herself uninterruptedly to her writing. She -could devise fashions for herself and her servants. She could scribble -more and more furiously with fingers that became less and less able to -form legible letters. She could even achieve the miracle of getting her -plays acted in London and her philosophies humbly perused by men of -learning. There they stand, in the British Museum, volume after volume, -swarming with a diffused, uneasy, contorted vitality. Order, continuity, -the logical development of her argument are all unknown to her. No fears -impede her. She has the irresponsibility of a child and the arrogance of -a Duchess. The wildest fancies come to her, and she canters away on -their backs. We seem to hear her, as the thoughts boil and bubble, -calling to John, who sat with a pen in his hand next door, to come -quick, "John, John, I conceive!" And down it goes—whatever it may be; -sense or nonsense; some thought on women's education—"Women live like -Bats or Owls, labour like Beasts, and die like Worms, . . . the best -bred women are those whose minds are civilest"; some speculation that had -struck her perhaps walking that afternoon alone—why "hogs have the -measles", why "dogs that rejoice swing their tails", or what the stars -are made of, or what this chrysalis is that her maid has brought her, -and she keeps warm in a corner of her room. On and on, from subject to -subject she flies, never stopping to correct, "for there is more -pleasure in making than in mending", talking aloud to herself of all those -matters that filled her brain to her perpetual diversion—of wars, -and boarding-schools, and cutting down trees, of grammar and morals, of -monsters and the British, whether opium in small quantities is good for -lunatics, why it is that musicians are mad. Looking upwards, she -speculates still more ambitiously upon the nature of the moon, and if -the stars are blazing jellies; looking downwards she wonders if the -fishes know that the sea is salt; opines that our heads are full of -fairies, "dear to God as we are"; muses whether there are not other -worlds than ours, and reflects that the next ship may bring us word of a -new one. In short, "we are in utter darkness". Meanwhile, what a rapture -is thought!</p> - -<p>As the vast books appeared from the stately retreat at Welbeck the usual -censors made the usual objections, and had to be answered, despised, or -argued with, as her mood varied, in the preface to every work. They -said, among other things, that her books were not her own, because she -used learned terms, and "wrote of many matters outside her ken". She -flew to her husband for help, and he answered, characteristically, that -the Duchess "had never conversed with any professed scholar in learning -except her brother and myself". The Duke's scholarship, moreover, was of -a peculiar nature. "I have lived in the great world a great while, and -have thought of what has been brought to me by the senses, more than was -put into me by learned discourse; for I do not love to be led by the -nose, by authority, and old authors; <i>ipse dixit</i> will not serve my -turn." And then she takes up the pen and proceeds, with the importunity -and indiscretion of a child, to assure the world that her ignorance is -of the finest quality imaginable. She has only seen Des Cartes and -Hobbes, not questioned them; she did indeed ask Mr. Hobbes to dinner, -but he could not come; she often does not listen to a word that is said -to her; she does not know any French, though she lived abroad for five -years; she has only read the old philosophers in Mr. Stanley's account -of them; of Des Cartes she has read but half of his work on Passion; and -of Hobbes only "the little book called <i>De Cive</i>", all of which is -infinitely to the credit of her native wit, so abundant that outside -succour pained it, so honest that it would not accept help from others. -It was from the plain of complete ignorance, the untilled field of her -own consciousness, that she proposed to erect a philosophic system that -was to oust all others. The results were not altogether happy. Under the -pressure of such vast structures, her natural gift, the fresh and -delicate fancy which had led her in her first volume to write charmingly -of Queen Mab and fairyland, was crushed out of existence.</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">The palace of the Queen wherein she dwells,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Its fabric's built all of hodmandod shells;</span><br /> -<span class="i2">The hangings of a Rainbow made that's thin,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Shew wondrous fine, when one first enters in;</span><br /> -<span class="i2">The chambers made of Amber that is clear,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Do give a fine sweet smell, if fire be near;</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Her bed a cherry stone, is carved throughout,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">And with a butterfly's wing hung about;</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Her sheets are of the skin of Dove's eyes made</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Where on a violet bud her pillow's laid.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>So she could write when she was young. But her fairies, if they survived -at all, grew up into hippopotami. Too generously her prayer was -granted:</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">Give me the free and noble style,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Which seems uncurb'd, though it be wild.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>She became capable of involutions, and contortions and conceits of which -the following is among the shortest, but not the most terrific:</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">The human head may be likened to a town:</span><br /> -<span class="i2">The mouth when full, begun</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Is market day, when empty, market's done;</span><br /> -<span class="i2">The city conduct, where the water flows,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Is with two spouts, the nostrils and the nose.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>She similised, energetically, incongruously, eternally; the sea became a -meadow, the sailors shepherds, the mast a maypole. The fly was the bird -of summer, trees were senators, houses ships, and even the fairies, whom -she loved better than any earthly thing, except the Duke, are changed -into blunt atoms and sharp atoms, and take part in some of those -horrible manœuvres in which she delighted to marshal the universe. -Truly, "my Lady Sanspareille hath a strange spreading wit". Worse still, -without an atom of dramatic power, she turned to play-writing. It was a -simple process. The unwieldy thoughts which turned and tumbled within -her were christened Sir Golden Riches, Moll Meanbred, Sir Puppy Dogman, -and the rest, and sent revolving in tedious debate upon the parts of the -soul, or whether virtue is better than riches, round a wise and learned -lady who answered their questions and corrected their fallacies at -considerable length in tones which we seem to have heard before.</p> - -<p>Sometimes, however, the Duchess walked abroad. She would issue out in -her own proper person, dressed in a thousand gems and furbelows, to -visit the houses of the neighbouring gentry. Her pen made instant report -of these excursions. She recorded how Lady C. R. "did beat her husband -in a public assembly"; Sir F. Ο. "I am sorry to hear hath undervalued -himself so much below his birth and wealth as to marry his -kitchen-maid"; "Miss P. I. has become a sanctified soul, a spiritual -sister, she has left curling her hair, black patches are become -abominable to her, laced shoes and Galoshoes are steps to pride—she -asked me what posture I thought was the best to be used in prayer". Her -answer was probably unacceptable. "I shall not rashly go there again", -she says of one such "gossip-making". She was not, we may hazard, a -welcome guest or an altogether hospitable hostess. She had a way of -"bragging of myself" which frightened visitors so that they left, nor -was she sorry to see them go. Indeed, Welbeck was the best place for -her, and her own company the most congenial, with the amiable Duke -wandering in and out, with his plays and his speculations, always ready -to answer a question or refute a slander. Perhaps it was this solitude -that led her, chaste as she was in conduct, to use language which in -time to come much perturbed Sir Egerton Brydges. She used, he -complained, "expressions and images of extraordinary coarseness as -flowing from a female of high rank brought up in courts". He forgot that -this particular female had long ceased to frequent the Court; she -consorted chiefly with fairies; and her friends were among the dead. -Naturally, then, her language was coarse. Nevertheless, though her -philosophies are futile, and her plays intolerable, and her verses -mainly dull, the vast bulk of the Duchess is leavened by a vein of -authentic fire. One cannot help following the lure of her erratic and -lovable personality as it meanders and twinkles through page after page. -There is something noble and Quixotic and high-spirited, as well as -crack-brained and bird-witted, about her. Her simplicity is so open; her -intelligence so active; her sympathy with fairies and animals so true -and tender. She has the freakishness of an elf, the irresponsibility of -some non-human creature, its heartlessness, and its charm. And although -"they", those terrible critics who had sneered and jeered at her ever -since, as a shy girl, she had not dared look her tormentors in the face -at Court, continued to mock, few of her critics, after all, had the wit -to trouble about the nature of the universe, or cared a straw for the -sufferings of the hunted hare, or longed, as she did, to talk to some -one "of Shakespeare's fools". Now, at any rate, the laugh is not all on -their side.</p> - -<p>But laugh they did. When the rumour spread that the crazy Duchess was -coming up from Welbeck to pay her respects at Court, people crowded the -streets to look at her, and the curiosity of Mr. Pepys twice brought him -to wait in the Park to see her pass. But the pressure of the crowd about -her coach was too great. He could only catch a glimpse of her in her -silver coach with her footmen all in velvet, a velvet cap on her head, -and her hair about her ears. He could only see for a moment between the -white curtains the face of "a very comely woman", and on she drove -through the crowd of staring Cockneys, all pressing to catch a glimpse -of that romantic lady, who stands in the picture at Welbeck, with large -melancholy eyes, and something fastidious and fantastic in her bearing, -touching a table with the tips of long pointed fingers in the calm -assurance of immortal fame.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_4_1" id="Footnote_4_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_4_1"><span class="label">[4]</span></a><i>The Life of William Cavendish, Duke of Newcastle, Etc.</i>, -edited by C. H. Firth; <i>Poems and Fancies</i>, by the Duchess of -Newcastle; <i>The World's Olio; Orations of divers Sorts Accommodated to -Divers Places; Female Orations; Plays; Philosophical Letters</i>, etc., -etc.</p></div> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="Rambling_Round_Evelyn"><i>Rambling Round Evelyn</i></a></h4> - - -<p>Should you wish to make sure that your birthday will be celebrated three -hundred years hence, your best course is undoubtedly to keep a diary. -Only first be certain that you have the courage to lock your genius in a -private book and the humour to gloat over a fame that will be yours only -in the grave. For the good diarist writes either for himself alone or -for a posterity so distant that it can safely hear every secret and -justly weigh every motive. For such an audience there is need neither of -affectation nor of restraint. Sincerity is what they ask, detail, -volume; skill with the pen comes in conveniently, but brilliance is not -necessary; genius is a hindrance even; and should you know your business -and do it manfully, posterity will let you off mixing with great men, -reporting famous affairs, or having lain with the first ladies in the -land.</p> - -<p>The diary, for whose sake we are remembering the three hundredth -anniversary of the birth of John Evelyn,<a name="FNanchor_5_1" id="FNanchor_5_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_5_1" class="fnanchor">[5]</a> is a case in point. It is -sometimes composed like a memoir, sometimes jotted down like a calendar; -but he never used its pages to reveal the secrets of his heart, and all -that he wrote might have been read aloud in the evening with a calm -conscience to his children. If we wonder, then, why we still trouble to -read what we must consider the uninspired work of a good man we have to -confess, first that diaries are always diaries, books, that is, that we -read in convalescence, on horseback, in the grip of death; second, that -this reading, about which so many fine things have been said, is for the -most part mere dreaming and idling; lying in a chair with a book; -watching the butterflies on the dahlias; a profitless occupation which -no critic has taken the trouble to investigate, and on whose behalf only -the moralist can find a good word to say. For he will allow it to be an -innocent employment; and happiness, he will add, though derived from -trivial sources, has probably done more to prevent human beings from -changing their religions and killing their kings than either philosophy -or the pulpit.</p> - -<p>It may be well, indeed, before reading much further in Evelyn's book, to -decide where it is that our modern view of happiness differs from his. -Ignorance, surely, ignorance is at the bottom of it; his ignorance, and -our comparative erudition. No one can read the story of Evelyn's foreign -travels without envying in the first place his simplicity of mind, in -the second his activity. To take a simple example of the difference -between us—that butterfly will sit motionless on the dahlia while the -gardener trundles his barrow past it, but let him flick the wings with -the shadow of a rake, and off it flies, up it goes, instantly on the -alert. So, we may reflect, a butterfly sees but does not hear; and here -no doubt we are much on a par with Evelyn. But as for going into the -house to fetch a knife and with that knife dissecting a Red Admiral's -head, as Evelyn would have done, no sane person in the twentieth century -would entertain such a project for a second. Individually we may know as -little as Evelyn, but collectively we know so much that there is little -incentive to venture on private discoveries. We seek the encyclopædia, -not the scissors; and know in two minutes not only more than was known -to Evelyn in his lifetime, but that the mass of knowledge is so vast -that it is scarcely worth while to possess a single crumb. Ignorant, yet -justly confident that with his own hands he might advance not merely his -private knowledge but the knowledge of mankind, Evelyn dabbled in all -the arts and sciences, ran about the Continent for ten years, gazed with -unflagging gusto upon hairy women and rational dogs, and drew inferences -and framed speculations which are now only to be matched by listening to -the talk of old women round the village pump. The moon, they say, is so -much larger than usual this autumn that no mushrooms will grow, and the -carpenter's wife will be brought to bed of twins. So Evelyn, Fellow of -the Royal Society, a gentleman of the highest culture and intelligence, -carefully noted all comets and portents, and thought it a sinister omen -when a whale came up the Thames. In 1658, too, a whale had been seen. -"That year died Cromwell." Nature, it seems, was determined to stimulate -the devotion of her seventeenth-century admirers by displays of violence -and eccentricity from which she now refrains. There were storms, floods, -and droughts; the Thames frozen hard; comets flaring in the sky. If a -cat so much as kittened in Evelyn's bed the kitten was inevitably gifted -with eight legs, six ears, two bodies, and two tails.</p> - -<p>But to return to happiness. It sometimes appears that if there is an -insoluble difference between our ancestors and ourselves it is that we -draw our happiness from different sources. We rate the same things at -different values. Something of this we may ascribe to their ignorance -and our knowledge. But are we to suppose that ignorance alters the -nerves and the affections? Are we to believe that it would have been an -intolerable penance for us to live familiarly with the Elizabethans? -Should we have found it necessary to leave the room because of -Shakespeare's habits, and to have refused Queen Elizabeth's invitation -to dinner? Perhaps so. For Evelyn was a sober man of unusual refinement, -and yet he pressed into a torture chamber as we crowd to see the lions -fed.</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>. . . they first bound his wrists with a strong rope or small cable, and -one end of it to an iron ring made fast to the wall about four feet from -the floor, and then his feet with another cable, fastened about five -feet farther than his utmost length to another ring on the floor of the -room. Thus suspended, and yet lying but aslant, they slid a horse of -wood under the rope which bound his feet, which so exceedingly stiffened -it, as severed the fellow's joints in miserable sort, drawing him out at -length in an extraordinary manner, he having only a pair of linen -drawers upon his naked body . . .</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>And so on. Evelyn watched this to the end, and then remarked that "the -spectacle was so uncomfortable that I was not able to stay the sight of -another", as we might say that the lions growl so loud and the sight of -raw meat is so unpleasant that we will now visit the penguins. Allowing -for his discomfort, there is enough discrepancy between his view of pain -and ours to make us wonder whether we see any fact with the same eyes, -marry any woman from the same motives, or judge any conduct by the same -standards. To sit passive when muscles tore and bones cracked, not to -flinch when the wooden horse was raised higher and the executioner -fetched a horn and poured two buckets of water down the man's throat, to -suffer this iniquity on a suspicion of robbery which the man -denied—all this seems to put Evelyn in one of those cages where we -still mentally seclude the riff-raff of Whitechapel. Only it is obvious -that we have somehow got it wrong. If we could maintain that our -susceptibility to suffering and love of justice were proof that all our -humane instincts were as highly developed as these, then we could say that -the world improves, and we with it. But let us get on with the diary.</p> - -<p>In 1652, when it seemed that things had settled down unhappily enough, -"all being entirely in the rebels' hands", Evelyn returned to England -with his wife, his Tables of Veins and Arteries, his Venetian glass and -the rest of his curiosities, to lead the life of a country gentleman of -strong Royalist sympathies at Deptford. What with going to church and -going to town, settling his accounts and planting his garden—"I -planted the orchard at Sayes Court; new moon, wind west"—his time was -spent much as ours is. But there was one difference which it is difficult -to illustrate by a single quotation, because the evidence is scattered all -about in little insignificant phrases. The general effect of them is -that he used his eyes. The visible world was always close to him. The -visible world has receded so far from us that to hear all this talk of -buildings and gardens, statues and carving, as if the look of things -assailed one out of doors as well as in, and were not confined to a few -small canvases hung upon the wall, seems strange. No doubt there are a -thousand excuses for us; but hitherto we have been finding excuses for -him. Wherever there was a picture to be seen by Julio Romano, Polydore, -Guido, Raphael, or Tintoretto, a finely-built house, a prospect, or a -garden nobly designed, Evelyn stopped his coach to look at it, and -opened his diary to record his opinion. On August 27 Evelyn, with Dr. -Wren and others, was in St. Paul's surveying "the general decay of that -ancient and venerable church"; held with Dr. Wren another judgement from -the rest; and had a mind to build it with "a noble cupola, a form of -church building not as yet known in England but of wonderful grace", in -which Dr. Wren concurred. Six days later the Fire of London altered -their plans. It was Evelyn again who, walking by himself, chanced to -look in at the window of "a poor solitary thatched house in a field in -our parish", there saw a young man carving at a crucifix, was overcome -with an enthusiasm which does him the utmost credit, and carried -Grinling Gibbons and his carving to Court.</p> - -<p>Indeed, it is all very well to be scrupulous about the sufferings of -worms and sensitive to the dues of servant girls, but how pleasant also -if, with shut eyes, one could call up street after street of beautiful -houses. A flower is red; the apples rosy-gilt in the afternoon sun; a -picture has charm, especially as it displays the character of a -grandfather and dignifies a family descended from such a scowl; but -these are scattered fragments—little relics of beauty in a world that -has grown indescribably drab. To our charge of cruelty Evelyn might well -reply by pointing to Bayswater and the purlieus of Clapham; and if he -should assert that nothing now has character or conviction, that no -farmer in England sleeps with an open coffin at his bedside to remind -him of death, we could not retort effectually offhand. True, we like the -country. Evelyn never looked at the sky.</p> - -<p>But to return. After the Restoration Evelyn emerged in full possession -of a variety of accomplishments which in our time of specialists seems -remarkable enough. He was employed on public business; he was Secretary -to the Royal Society; he wrote plays and poems; he was the first -authority upon trees and gardens in England; he submitted a design for -the rebuilding of London; he went into the question of smoke and its -abatement—the lime trees in St. James's Park being, it is said, the -result of his cogitations; he was commissioned to write a history of the -Dutch war—in short, he completely outdid the Squire of "The -Princess", whom in many respects he anticipated—</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">A lord of fat prize oxen and of sheep,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">A raiser of huge melons and of pine,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">A patron of some thirty charities,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">A pamphleteer on guano and on grain,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">A quarter sessions chairman abler none.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>All that he was, and shared with Sir Walter another characteristic which -Tennyson does not mention. He was, we cannot help suspecting, something -of a bore, a little censorious, a little patronising, a little too sure -of his own merits, and a little obtuse to those of other people. Or what -is the quality, or absence of quality, that checks our sympathies -partly, perhaps, it is due to some inconsistency which it would be harsh -to call by so strong a name as hypocrisy. Though he deplored the vices -of his age he could never keep away from the centre of them. "The -luxurious dallying and profaneness" of the Court, the sight of "Mrs. -Nelly" looking over her garden wall and holding "very familiar -discourse" with King Charles on the green walk below, caused him acute -disgust; yet he could never decide to break with the Court and retire to -"my poor but quiet villa", which was of course the apple of his eye and -one of the show-places in England. Then, though he loved his daughter -Mary, his grief at her death did not prevent him from counting the -number of empty coaches drawn by six horses apiece that attended her -funeral. His women friends combined virtue with beauty to such an extent -that we can hardly credit them with wit into the bargain. Poor Mrs. -Godolphin at least, whom he celebrated in a sincere and touching -biography, "loved to be at funerals" and chose habitually "the dryest -and leanest morsels of meat", which may be the habits of an angel but do -not present her friendship with Evelyn in an alluring light. But it is -Pepys who sums up our case against Evelyn; Pepys who said of him after -a long morning's entertainment: "In fine a most excellent person he is -and must be allowed a little for a little conceitedness; but he may well -be so, being a man so much above others". The words exactly hit the -mark, "A most excellent person he was"; but a little conceited.</p> - -<p>Pepys it is who prompts us to another reflection, inevitable, -unnecessary, perhaps unkind. Evelyn was no genius. His writing is opaque -rather than transparent; we see no depths through it, nor any very -secret movements of mind or heart. He can neither make us hate a -regicide nor love Mrs. Godolphin beyond reason. But he writes a diary; -and he writes it supremely well. Even as we drowse, somehow or other the -bygone gentleman sets up, through three centuries, a perceptible tingle -of communication, so that without laying stress on anything in -particular, stopping to dream, stopping to laugh, stopping merely to look, -we are yet taking notice all the time. His garden for example—how -delightful is his disparagement of it, and how acid his criticism of the -gardens of others! Then, we may be sure, the hens at Sayes Court laid -the very best eggs in England, and when the Tsar drove a wheelbarrow -through his hedge what a catastrophe it was, and we can guess how Mrs. -Evelyn dusted and polished, and how Evelyn himself grumbled, and how -punctilious and efficient and trustworthy he was, how prone to give -advice, how ready to read his own works aloud, and how affectionate, -withal, lamenting bitterly but not effusively, for the man with the -long-drawn sensitive face was never that, the death of the little -prodigy Richard, and recording how "after evening prayers was my child -buried near the rest of his brothers—my very dear children." He was -not an artist; no phrases linger in the mind; no paragraphs build -themselves up in memory; but as an artistic method this of going on with -the day's story circumstantially, bringing in people who will never be -mentioned again, leading up to crises which never take place, introducing -Sir Thomas Browne but never letting him speak, has its fascination. All -through his pages good men, bad men, celebrities, nonentities are coming -into the room and going out again. The greater number we scarcely -notice; the door shuts upon them and they disappear. But now and again -the sight of a vanishing coat-tail suggests more than a whole figure -sitting still in a full light. They have struck no attitude, arranged no -mantle. Little they think that for three hundred years and more they -will be looked at in the act of jumping a gate, or observing, like the -old Marquis of Argyle, that the turtle doves in the aviary are owls. Our -eyes wander from one to the other; our affections settle here or -there—on hot-tempered Captain Wray, for instance, who was choleric, -had a dog that killed a goat, was for shooting the goat's owner, was for -shooting his horse when it fell down a precipice; on Mr. Saladine; on -Mr. Saladine's beautiful daughter; on Captain Wray lingering at Geneva -to make love to Mr. Saladine's daughter; on Evelyn himself most of all, -grown old, walking in his garden at Wotton, his sorrows smoothed out, -his grandson doing him credit, the Latin quotations falling pat from his -lips, his trees flourishing, and the butterflies flying and flaunting on -his dahlias too.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_5_1" id="Footnote_5_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_5_1"><span class="label">[5]</span></a>Written in 1920.</p></div> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="Defoe"><i>Defoe</i></a><a name="FNanchor_6_1" id="FNanchor_6_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_6_1" class="fnanchor">[6]</a></h4> - - -<p>The fear which attacks the recorder of centenaries lest he should find -himself measuring a diminishing spectre and forced to foretell its -approaching dissolution is not only absent in the case of <i>Robinson -Crusoe</i> but the mere thought of it is ridiculous. It may be true that -<i>Robinson Crusoe</i> is two hundred years of age upon the twenty-fifth of -April 1919, but far from raising the familiar speculations as to whether -people now read it and will continue to read it, the effect of the -bi-centenary is to make us marvel that <i>Robinson Crusoe</i>, the -perennial and immortal, should have been in existence so short a time as -that. The book resembles one of the anonymous productions of the race -itself rather than the effort of a single mind; and as for celebrating its -centenary we should as soon think of celebrating the centenaries of -Stonehenge itself. Something of this we may attribute to the fact that we -have all had <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> read aloud to us as children, and were -thus much in the same state of mind towards Defoe and his story that the -Greeks were in towards Homer. It never occurred to us that there was such -a person as Defoe, and to have been told that <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> was -the work of a man with a pen in his hand would either have disturbed us -unpleasantly or meant nothing at all. The impressions of childhood are -those that last longest and cut deepest. It still seems that the name of -Daniel Defoe has no right to appear upon the title-page of <i>Robinson -Crusoe</i>, and if we celebrate the bi-centenary of the book we are making -a slightly unnecessary allusion to the fact that, like Stonehenge, it is -still in existence.</p> - -<p>The great fame of the book has done its author some injustice; for while -it has given him a kind of anonymous glory it has obscured the fact that -he was a writer of other works which, it is safe to assert, were not -read aloud to us as children. Thus when the Editor of the <i>Christian -World</i> in the year 1870 appealed to "the boys and girls of England" to -erect a monument upon the grave of Defoe, which a stroke of lightning -had mutilated, the marble was inscribed to the memory of the author -of <i>Robinson Crusoe</i>. No mention was made of <i>Moll Flanders</i>. -Considering the topics which are dealt with in that book, and in <i>Roxana, -Captain Singleton, Colonel Jack</i> and the rest, we need not be surprised, -though we may be indignant, at the omission. We may agree with Mr. Wright, -the biographer of Defoe, that these "are not works for the drawing-room -table". But unless we consent to make that useful piece of furniture the -final arbiter of taste, we must deplore the fact that their superficial -coarseness, or the universal celebrity of <i>Robinson Crusoe</i>, has led -them to be far less widely famed than they deserve. On any monument -worthy of the name of monument the names of <i>Moll Flanders</i> and -<i>Roxana</i>, at least, should be carved as deeply as the name of Defoe. -They stand among the few English novels which we can call indisputably -great. The occasion of the bi-centenary of their more famous companion -may well lead us to consider in what their greatness, which has so much -in common with his, may be found to consist.</p> - -<p>Defoe was an elderly man when he turned novelist, many years the -predecessor of Richardson and Fielding, and one of the first indeed to -shape the novel and launch it on its way. But it is unnecessary to -labour the fact of his precedence, except that he came to his -novel-writing with certain conceptions about the art which he derived -partly from being himself one of the first to practise it. The novel had -to justify its existence by telling a true story and preaching a sound -moral. "This supplying a story by invention is certainly a most -scandalous crime," he wrote. "It is a sort of lying that makes a great -hole in the heart, in which by degrees a habit of lying enters in." -Either in the preface or in the text of each of his works, therefore, he -takes pains to insist that he has not used his invention at all but has -depended upon facts, and that his purpose has been the highly moral -desire to convert the vicious or to warn the innocent. Happily these -were principles that tallied very well with his natural disposition and -endowments. Facts had been drilled into him by sixty years of varying -fortunes before he turned his experience to account in fiction. "I have -some time ago summed up the Scenes of my life in this distich," he -wrote:</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">No man has tasted differing fortunes more,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">And thirteen times I have been rich and poor.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>He had spent eighteen months in Newgate and talked with thieves, -pirates, highwaymen, and coiners before he wrote the history of Moll -Flanders. But to have facts thrust upon you by dint of living and -accident is one thing; to swallow them voraciously and retain the -imprint of them indelibly, is another. It is not merely that Defoe knew -the stress of poverty and had talked with the victims of it, but that -the unsheltered life, exposed to circumstances and forced to shift for -itself, appealed to him imaginatively as the right matter for his art. -In the first pages of each of his great novels he reduces his hero or -heroine to such a state of unfriended misery that their existence must -be a continued struggle, and their survival at all the result of luck -and their own exertions. Moll Flanders was born in Newgate of a criminal -mother; Captain Singleton was stolen as a child and sold to the gipsies; -Colonel Jack, though "born a gentleman, was put 'prentice to a -pickpocket"; Roxana starts under better auspices, but, having married at -fifteen, she sees her husband go bankrupt and is left with five children -in "a condition the most deplorable that words can express".</p> - -<p>Thus each of these boys and girls has the world to begin and the battle -to fight for himself. The situation thus created was entirely to Defoe's -liking. From her very birth or with half a year's respite at most, Moll -Flanders, the most notable of them, is goaded by "that worst of devils, -poverty", forced to earn her living as soon as she can sew, driven from -place to place, making no demands upon her creator for the subtle -domestic atmosphere which he was unable to supply, but drawing upon him -for all he knew of strange people and customs. From the outset the -burden of proving her right to exist is laid upon her. She has to depend -entirely upon her own wits and judgement, and to deal with each -emergency as it arises by a rule-of-thumb morality which she has forged -in her own head. The briskness of the story is due partly to the fact -that having transgressed the accepted laws at a very early age she has -henceforth the freedom of the outcast. The one impossible event is that -she should settle down in comfort and security. But from the first the -peculiar genius of the author asserts itself, and avoids the obvious -danger of the novel of adventure. He makes us understand that Moll -Flanders was a woman on her own account and not only material for a -succession of adventures. In proof of this she begins, as Roxana also -begins, by falling passionately, if unfortunately, in love. That she -must rouse herself and marry some one else and look very closely to her -settlements and prospects is no slight upon her passion, but to be laid -to the charge of her birth; and, like all Defoe's women, she is a person -of robust understanding. Since she makes no scruple of telling lies when -they serve her purpose, there is something undeniable about her truth -when she speaks it. She has no time to waste upon the refinements of -personal affection; one tear is dropped, one moment of despair allowed, -and then "on with the story". She has a spirit that loves to breast the -storm. She delights in the exercise of her own powers. When she -discovers that the man she has married in Virginia is her own brother -she is violently disgusted; she insists upon leaving him; but as soon as -she sets foot in Bristol, "I took the diversion of going to Bath, for as -I was still far from being old so my humour, which was always gay, -continued so to an extreme". Heartless she is not, nor can any one -charge her with levity; but life delights her, and a heroine who lives -has us all in tow. Moreover, her ambition has that slight strain of -imagination in it which puts it in the category of the noble passions. -Shrewd and practical of necessity, she is yet haunted by a desire for -romance and for the quality which to her perception makes a man a -gentleman. "It was really a true gallant spirit he was of, and it was -the more grievous to me. 'Tis something of relief even to be undone by a -man of honour rather than by a scoundrel," she writes when she had -misled a highwayman as to the extent of her fortune. It is in keeping -with this temper that she should be proud of her final partner because -he refuses to work when they reach the plantations but prefers hunting, -and that she should take pleasure in buying him wigs and silver-hilted -swords "to make him appear, as he really was, a very fine gentleman". -Her very love of hot weather is in keeping, and the passion with which -she kissed the ground that her son had trod on, and her noble tolerance -of every kind of fault so long as it is not "complete baseness of -spirit, imperious, cruel, and relentless when uppermost, abject and -low-spirited when down". For the rest of the world she has nothing but -good-will.</p> - -<p>Since the list of the qualities and graces of this seasoned old sinner -is by no means exhausted we can well understand how it was that Borrow's -apple-woman on London Bridge called her "blessed Mary" and valued her -book above all the apples on her stall; and that Borrow, taking the book -deep into the booth, read till his eyes ached. But we dwell upon such -signs of character only by way of proof that the creator of Moll -Flanders was not, as he has been accused of being, a mere journalist and -literal recorder of facts with no conception of the nature of -psychology. It is true that his characters take shape and substance of -their own accord, as if in despite of the author and not altogether to -his liking. He never lingers or stresses any point of subtlety or -pathos, but presses on imperturbably as if they came there without his -knowledge. A touch of imagination, such as that when the Prince sits by -his son's cradle and Roxana observes how "he loved to look at it when it -was asleep", seems to mean much more to us than to him. After the -curiously modern dissertation upon the need of communicating matters of -importance to a second person lest, like the thief in Newgate, we should -talk of it in our sleep, he apologises for his digression. He seems to -have taken his characters so deeply into his mind that he lived them -without exactly knowing how; and, like all unconscious artists, he -leaves more gold in his work than his own generation was able to bring -to the surface.</p> - -<p>The interpretation that we put on his characters might therefore well -have puzzled him. We find for ourselves meanings which he was careful to -disguise even from himself. Thus it comes about that we admire Moll -Flanders far more than we blame her. Nor can we believe that Defoe had -made up his mind as to the precise degree of her guilt, or was unaware -that in considering the lives of the abandoned he raised many deep -questions and hinted, if he did not state, answers quite at variance -with his professions of belief. From the evidence supplied by his essay -upon the "Education of Women" we know that he had thought deeply and -much in advance of his age upon the capacities of women, which he rated -very high, and the injustice done to them, which he rated very harsh.</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>I have often thought of it as one of the most barbarous customs in the -world, considering us as a civilised and a Christian country, that we -deny the advantages of learning to women. We reproach the sex every day -with folly and impertinence; which I am confident, had they the -advantages of education equal to us, they would be guilty of less than -ourselves.</p></blockquote> - - -<p>The advocates of women's rights would hardly care, perhaps, to claim -Moll Flanders and Roxana among their patron saints; and yet it is clear -that Defoe not only intended them to speak some very modern doctrines -upon the subject, but placed them in circumstances where their peculiar -hardships are displayed in such a way as to elicit our sympathy. -Courage, said Moll Flanders, was what women needed, and the power to -"stand their ground"; and at once gave practical demonstration of the -benefits that would result. Roxana, a lady of the same profession, -argues more subtly against the slavery of marriage. She "had started a -new thing in the world" the merchant told her; "it was a way of arguing -contrary to the general practise". But Defoe is the last writer to be -guilty of bald preaching. Roxana keeps our attention because she is -blessedly unconscious that she is in any good sense an example to her -sex and is thus at liberty to own that part of her argument is "of an -elevated strain which was really not in my thoughts at first, at all". -The knowledge of her own frailties and the honest questioning of her own -motives, which that knowledge begets, have the happy result of keeping -her fresh and human when the martyrs and pioneers of so many problem -novels have shrunken and shrivelled to the pegs and props of their -respective creeds.</p> - -<p>But the claim of Defoe upon our admiration does not rest upon the fact -that he can be shown to have anticipated some of the views of Meredith, -or to have written scenes which (the odd suggestion occurs) might have -been turned into plays by Ibsen. Whatever his ideas upon the position of -women, they are an incidental result of his chief virtue, which is that -he deals with the important and lasting side of things and not with the -passing and trivial. He is often dull. He can imitate the matter-of-fact -precision of a scientific traveller until we wonder that his pen could -trace or his brain conceive what has not even the excuse of truth to -soften its dryness. He leaves out the whole of vegetable nature, and a -large part of human nature. All this we may admit, though we have to -admit defects as grave in many writers whom we call great. But that does -not impair the peculiar merit of what remains. Having at the outset -limited his scope and confined his ambitions he achieves a truth of -insight which is far rarer and more enduring than the truth of fact -which he professed to make his aim. Moll Flanders and her friends -recommended themselves to him not because they were, as we should say, -"picturesque"; nor, as he affirmed, because they were examples of evil -living by which the public might profit. It was their natural veracity, -bred in them by a life of hardship, that excited his interest. For them -there were no excuses; no kindly shelter obscured their motives. Poverty -was their taskmaster. Defoe did not pronounce more than a judgement of -the lips upon their failings. But their courage and resource and -tenacity delighted him. He found their society full of good talk, and -pleasant stories, and faith in each other, and morality of a home-made -kind. Their fortunes had that infinite variety which he praised and -relished and beheld with wonder in his own life. These men and women, -above all, were free to talk openly of the passions and desires which -have moved men and women since the beginning of time, and thus even now -they keep their vitality undiminished. There is a dignity in everything -that is looked at openly. Even the sordid subject of money, which plays -so large a part in their histories, becomes not sordid but tragic when -it stands not for ease and consequence but for honour, honesty and life -itself. You may object that Defoe is humdrum, but never that he is -engrossed with petty things.</p> - -<p>He belongs, indeed, to the school of the great plain writers, whose work -is founded upon a knowledge of what is most persistent, though not most -seductive, in human nature. The view of London from Hungerford Bridge, -grey, serious, massive, and full of the subdued stir of traffic and -business, prosaic if it were not for the masts of the ships and the -towers and domes of the city, brings him to mind. The tattered girls -with violets in their hands at the street corners, and the old -weather-beaten women patiently displaying their matches and bootlaces -beneath the shelter of arches, seem like characters from his books. He -is of the school of Crabbe, and of Gissing, and not merely a fellow -pupil in the same stern place of learning, but its founder and master.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_6_1" id="Footnote_6_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_6_1"><span class="label">[6]</span></a>Written in 1919.</p></div> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="Addison"><i>Addison</i></a><a name="FNanchor_7_1" id="FNanchor_7_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_7_1" class="fnanchor">[7]</a></h4> - - -<p>In July, 1843, Lord Macaulay pronounced the opinion that Joseph Addison -had enriched our literature with compositions "that will live as long as -the English language". But when Lord Macaulay pronounced an opinion it -was not merely an opinion. Even now, at a distance of seventy-six years, -the words seem to issue from the mouth of the chosen representative of -the people. There is an authority about them, a sonority, a sense of -responsibility, which put us in mind of a Prime Minister making a -proclamation on behalf of a great empire rather than of a journalist -writing about a deceased man of letters for a magazine. The article upon -Addison is, indeed, one of the most vigorous of the famous essays. -Florid, and at the same time extremely solid, the phrases seem to build -up a monument, at once square and lavishly festooned with ornament, -which should serve Addison for shelter so long as one stone of -Westminster Abbey stands upon another. Yet, though we may have read and -admired this particular essay times out of number (as we say when we -have read anything three times over), it has never occurred to us, -strangely enough, to believe that it is true. That is apt to happen to -the admiring reader of Macaulay's essays. While delighting in their -richness, force, and variety, and finding every judgement, however -emphatic, proper in its place, it seldom occurs to us to connect these -sweeping assertions and undeniable convictions with anything so minute -as a human being. So it is with Addison. "If we wish", Macaulay writes, -"to find anything more vivid than Addison's best portraits, we must go -either to Shakespeare or to Cervantes". "We have not the least doubt -that if Addison had written a novel on an extensive plan it would have -been superior to any that we possess." His essays, again, "fully entitle -him to the rank of a great poet"; and, to complete the edifice, we have -Voltaire proclaimed "the prince of buffoons", and together with Swift -forced to stoop so low that Addison takes rank above them both as a -humorist.</p> - -<p>Examined separately, such flourishes of ornament look grotesque enough, -but in their place—such is the persuasive power of design—they -are part of the decoration; they complete the monument. Whether Addison or -another is interred within, it is a very fine tomb. But now that two -centuries have passed since the real body of Addison was laid by night -under the Abbey floor, we are, through no merit of our own, partially -qualified to test the first of the flourishes on that fictitious -tombstone to which, though it may be empty, we have done homage, in a -formal kind of way, these sixty-seven years. The compositions of Addison -will live as long as the English language. Since every moment brings -proof that our mother tongue is more lusty and lively than sorts with -complete sedateness or chastity, we need only concern ourselves with the -vitality of Addison. Neither lusty nor lively is the adjective -we should apply to the present condition of the <i>Tatler</i> and the -<i>Spectator</i>. To take a rough test, it is possible to discover how many -people in the course of a year borrow Addison's works from the public -library, and a particular instance affords us the not very encouraging -information that during nine years two people yearly take out the first -volume of the <i>Spectator</i>. The second volume is less in request than -the first. The inquiry is not a cheerful one. From certain marginal -comments and pencil marks it seems that these rare devotees seek out only -the famous passages and, as their habit is, score what we are bold enough -to consider the least admirable phrases. No; if Addison lives at all, it is -not in the public libraries. It is in libraries that are markedly -private, secluded, shaded by lilac trees and brown with folios, that he -still draws his faint, regular breath. If any man or woman is going to -solace himself with a page of Addison before the June sun is out of the -sky to-day, it is in some such pleasant retreat as this.</p> - -<p>Yet all over England at intervals, perhaps wide ones, we may be sure -that there are people engaged in reading Addison, whatever the year or -season. For Addison is very well worth reading. The temptation to read -Pope on Addison, Macaulay on Addison, Thackeray on Addison, Johnson on -Addison rather than Addison himself is to be resisted, for you will -find, if you study the <i>Tatler</i> and the <i>Spectator</i>, glance at -<i>Cato</i>, and run through the remainder of the six moderate-sized -volumes, that Addison is neither Pope's Addison nor anybody else's Addison, -but a separate, independent individual still capable of casting a clear-cut -shape of himself upon the consciousness, turbulent and distracted as it -is, of nineteen hundred and nineteen. It is true that the fate of the -lesser shades is always a little precarious. They are so easily obscured -or distorted. It seems so often scarcely worth while to go through the -cherishing and humanising process which is necessary to get into touch -with a writer of the second class who may, after all, have little to -give us. The earth is crusted over them; their features are obliterated, -and perhaps it is not a head of the best period that we rub clean in the -end, but only the chip of an old pot. The chief difficulty with the -lesser writers, however, is not only the effort. It is that our -standards have changed. The things that they like are not the things -that we like; and as the charm of their writing depends much more upon -taste than upon conviction, a change of manners is often quite enough to -put us out of touch altogether. That is one of the most troublesome -barriers between ourselves and Addison. He attached great importance to -certain qualities. He had a very precise notion of what we are used to -call "niceness" in man or woman. He was extremely fond of saying that -men ought not to be atheists, and that women ought not to wear large -petticoats. This directly inspires in us not so much a sense of distaste -as a sense of difference. Dutifully, if at all, we strain our -imaginations to conceive the kind of audience to whom these precepts were -addressed. The <i>Tatler</i> was published in 1709; the <i>Spectator</i> a -year or two later. What was the state of England at that particular -moment? Why was Addison so anxious to insist upon the necessity of a -decent and cheerful religious belief? Why did he so constantly, and in -the main kindly, lay stress upon the foibles of women and their reform? -Why was he so deeply impressed with the evils of party government? Any -historian will explain; but it is always a misfortune to have to call in -the services of any historian. A writer should give us direct certainty; -explanations are so much water poured into the wine. As it is, we can -only feel that these counsels are addressed to ladies in hoops and -gentlemen in wigs—a vanished audience which has learnt its lesson and -gone its way and the preacher with it. We can only smile and marvel and -perhaps admire the clothes.</p> - -<p>And that is not the way to read. To be thinking that dead people -deserved these censures and admired this morality, judged the eloquence, -which we find so frigid, sublime, the philosophy to us so superficial, -profound, to take a collector's joy in such signs of antiquity, is to -treat literature as if it were a broken jar of undeniable age but -doubtful beauty, to be stood in a cabinet behind glass doors. The charm -which still makes <i>Cato</i> very readable is much of this nature. When -Syphax exclaims,</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">So, where our wide Numidian wastes extend,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Sudden, th' impetuous hurricanes descend,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Wheel through the air, in circling eddies play,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Tear up the sands, and sweep whole plains away,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">The helpless traveller, with wild surprise,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">Sees the dry desert all around him rise,</span><br /> -<span class="i2">And smother'd in the dusty whirlwind dies,</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>we cannot help imagining the thrill in the crowded theatre, the feathers -nodding emphatically on the ladies' heads, the gentlemen leaning forward -to tap their canes, and every one exclaiming to his neighbour how vastly -fine it is and crying "Bravo!" But how can we be excited? And so with -Bishop Hurd and his notes—his "finely observed", his "wonderfully -exact, both in the sentiment and expression", his serene confidence that -when "the present humour of idolising Shakespeare is over", the time will -come when <i>Cato</i> is "supremely admired by all candid and judicious -critics". This is all very amusing and productive of pleasant fancies, -both as to the faded frippery of our ancestors' minds and the bold -opulence of our own. But it is not the intercourse of equals, let alone -that other kind of intercourse, which as it makes us contemporary with -the author, persuades us that his object is our own. Occasionally in -<i>Cato</i> one may pick up a few lines that are not obsolete; but for the -most part the tragedy which Dr. Johnson thought "unquestionably the -noblest production of Addison's genius" has become collector's -literature.</p> - -<p>Perhaps most readers approach the essays also with some suspicion as to -the need of condescension in their minds. The question to be asked is -whether Addison, attached as he was to certain standards of gentility, -morality, and taste, has not become one of those people of exemplary -character and charming urbanity who must never be talked to about -anything more exciting than the weather. We have some slight suspicion that -the <i>Spectator</i> and the <i>Tatler</i> are nothing but talk, couched in -perfect English, about the number of fine days this year compared with -the number of wet the year before. The difficulty of getting on to equal -terms with him is shown by the little fable which he introduces into one -of the early numbers of the <i>Tatler</i>, of "a young gentleman, of -moderate understanding, but great vivacity, who . . . had got a little -smattering of knowledge, just enough to make an atheist or a freethinker, -but not a philosopher, or a man of sense". This young gentleman visits his -father in the country, and proceeds "to enlarge the narrowness of the -country notions; in which he succeeded so well, that he had seduced the -butler by his table-talk, and staggered his eldest sister. . . . 'Till one -day, talking of his setting dog . . . said 'he did not question but Tray -was as immortal as any one of the family'; and in the heat of the argument -told his father, that for his own part, 'he expected to die like a dog'. -Upon which, the old man, starting up in a very great passion, cried out, -'Then, sirrah, you shall live like one'; and taking his cane in his -hand, cudgelled him out of his system. This had so good an effect upon -him, that he took up from that day, fell to reading good books, and is -now a bencher in the Middle-Temple." There is a good deal of Addison in -that story: his dislike of "dark and uncomfortable prospects"; his -respect for "principles which are the support, happiness, and glory of -all public societies, as well as private persons"; his solicitude for -the butler; and his conviction that to read good books and become a -bencher in the Middle Temple is the proper end for a very vivacious -young gentleman. This Mr. Addison married a countess, "gave his little -senate laws", and, sending for young Lord Warwick, made that famous -remark about seeing how a Christian can die which has fallen upon such -evil days that our sympathies are with the foolish, and perhaps fuddled, -young peer rather than with the frigid gentleman, not too far gone for a -last spasm of self-complacency, upon the bed.</p> - -<p>Let us rub off such incrustations, so far as they are due to the -corrosion of Pope's wit or the deposit of mid-Victorian lachrymosity, -and see what, for us in our time, remains. In the first place, there -remains the not despicable virtue, after two centuries of existence, of -being readable. Addison can fairly lay claim to that; and then, slipped -in on the tide of the smooth, well-turned prose, are little eddies, -diminutive waterfalls, agreeably diversifying the polished surface. We -begin to take note of whims, fancies, peculiarities on the part of the -essayist which light up the prim, impeccable countenance of the moralist -and convince us that, however tightly he may have pursed his lips, his -eyes are very bright and not so shallow after all. He is alert to his -finger tips. Little muffs, silver garters, fringed gloves draw his -attention; he observes with a keen, quick glance, not unkindly, and full -rather of amusement than of censure. To be sure, the age was rich in -follies. Here were coffee-houses packed with politicians talking of -Kings and Emperors and letting their own small affairs go to ruin. -Crowds applauded the Italian opera every night without understanding a -word of it. Critics discoursed of the unities. Men gave a thousand -pounds for a handful of tulip roots. As for women—or "the fair sex", -as Addison liked to call them—their follies were past counting. He -did his best to count them, with a loving particularity which roused the -ill humour of Swift. But he did it very charmingly, with a natural relish -for the task, as the following passage shows:</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>I consider woman as a beautiful romantic animal, that may be adorned -with furs and feathers, pearls and diamonds, ores and silks. The lynx -shall cast its skin at her feet to make her a tippet; the peacock, -parrot, and swan, shall pay contributions to her muff; the sea shall be -searched for shells, and the rocks for gems; and every part of nature -furnish out its share towards the embellishment of a creature that is -the most consummate work of it. All this I shall indulge them in; but as -for the petticoat I have been speaking of, I neither can nor will allow -it.</p></blockquote> - - -<p>In all these matters Addison was on the side of sense and taste and -civilisation. Of that little fraternity, often so obscure and yet so -indispensable, who in every age keep themselves alive to the importance -of art and letters and music, watching, discriminating, denouncing and -delighting, Addison was one—distinguished and strangely contemporary -with ourselves. It would have been, so one imagines, a great pleasure to -take him a manuscript; a great enlightenment, as well as a great honour, -to have his opinion. In spite of Pope, one fancies that his would have -been criticism of the best order, open-minded and generous to novelty, -and yet, in the final resort, unfaltering in its standards. The boldness -which is a proof of vigour is shown by his defence of "Chevy Chase". He -had so clear a notion of what he meant by the "very spirit and soul of -fine writing" as to track it down in an old barbarous ballad or -rediscover it in "that divine work" "Paradise Lost". Moreover, far from -being a connoisseur only of the still, settled beauties of the dead, he -was aware of the present; a severe critic of its "Gothic taste", -vigilant in protecting the rights and honours of the language, and all -in favour of simplicity and quiet. Here we have the Addison of Will's -and Button's, who, sitting late into the night and drinking more than -was good for him, gradually overcame his taciturnity and began to talk. -Then he "chained the attention of every one to him". "Addison's -conversation", said Pope, "had something in it more charming than I have -found in any other man." One can well believe it, for his essays at -their best preserve the very cadence of easy yet exquisitely modulated -conversation—the smile checked before it has broadened into laughter, -the thought lightly turned from frivolity or abstraction, the ideas -springing, bright, new, various, with the utmost spontaneity. He seems -to speak what comes into his head, and is never at the trouble of -raising his voice. But he has described himself in the character of the -lute better than any one can do it for him.</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>The lute is a character directly opposite to the drum, that sounds very -finely by itself, or in a very small concert. Its notes are exquisitely -sweet, and very low, easily drowned in a multitude of instruments, and -even lost among a few, unless you give a particular attention to it. A -lute is seldom heard in a company of more than five, whereas a drum will -show itself to advantage in an assembly of 500. The lutanists, -therefore, are men of a fine genius, uncommon reflection, great -affability, and esteemed chiefly by persons of a good taste, who are the -only proper judges of so delightful and soft a melody.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>Addison was a lutanist. No praise, indeed, could be less appropriate -than Lord Macaulay's. To call Addison on the strength of his essays a -great poet, or to prophesy that if he had written a novel on an -extensive plan it would have been "superior to any that we possess", is -to confuse him with the drums and trumpets; it is not merely to -overpraise his merits, but to overlook them. Dr. Johnson superbly, and, -as his manner is, once and for all has summed up the quality of -Addison's poetic genius:</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>His poetry is first to be considered; of which it must be confessed that -it has not often those felicities of diction which give lustre to -sentiments, or that vigour of sentiment that animates diction; there is -little of ardour, vehemence, or transport; there is very rarely the -awfulness of grandeur, and not very often the splendour of elegance. He -thinks justly; but he thinks faintly.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>The Sir Roger de Coverley papers are those which have the most -resemblance, on the surface, to a novel. But their merit consists in the -fact that they do not adumbrate, or initiate, or anticipate anything; -they exist, perfect, complete, entire in themselves. To read them as if -they were a first hesitating experiment containing the seed of greatness -to come is to miss the peculiar point of them. They are studies done -from the outside by a quiet spectator. When read together they compose a -portrait of the Squire and his circle all in characteristic -positions—one with his rod, another with his hounds—but each -can be detached from the rest without damage to the design or harm to -himself. In a novel, where each chapter gains from the one before it or -adds to the one that follows it, such separations would be intolerable. The -speed, the intricacy, the design, would be mutilated. These particular -qualities are perhaps lacking, but nevertheless Addison's method has -great advantages. Each of these essays is very highly finished. The -characters are defined by a succession of extremely neat, clean strokes. -Inevitably, where the sphere is so narrow—an essay is only three or -four pages in length—there is not room for great depth or intricate -subtlety. Here, from the <i>Spectator</i>, is a good example of the witty -and decisive manner in which Addison strikes out a portrait to fill the -little frame:</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>Sombrius is one of these sons of sorrow. He thinks himself obliged in -duty to be sad and disconsolate. He looks on a sudden fit of laughter as -a breach of his baptismal vow. An innocent jest startles him like -blasphemy. Tell him of one who is advanced to a title of honour, he -lifts up his hands and eyes; describe a public ceremony, he shakes his -head; shew him a gay equipage, he blesses himself. All the little -ornaments of life are pomps and vanities. Mirth is wanton, and wit -profane. He is scandalized at youth for being lively, and at childhood -for being playful. He sits at a christening, or at a marriage-feast, as -at a funeral; sighs at the conclusion of a merry story, and grows devout -when the rest of the company grow pleasant. After all Sombrius is a -religious man, and would have behaved himself very properly, had he -lived when Christianity was under a general persecution.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>The novel is not a development from that model, for the good reason that -no development along these lines is possible. Of its kind such a -portrait is perfect; and when we find, scattered up and down the -<i>Spectator</i> and the <i>Tatler</i>, numbers of such little masterpieces -with fancies and anecdotes in the same style, some doubt as to the -narrowness of such a sphere becomes inevitable. The form of the essay -admits of its own particular perfection; and if anything is perfect the -exact dimensions of its perfection become immaterial. One can scarcely -settle whether, on the whole, one prefers a raindrop to the River Thames. -When we have said all that we can say against them—that many are -dull, others superficial, the allegories faded, the piety conventional, the -morality trite—there still remains the fact that the essays of -Addison are perfect essays. Always at the highest point of any art there -comes a moment when everything seems in a conspiracy to help the artist, -and his achievement becomes a natural felicity on his part of which he -seems, to a later age, half-unconscious. So Addison, writing day after -day, essay after essay, knew instinctively and exactly how to do it. -Whether it was a high thing, or whether it was a low thing, whether an epic -is more profound or a lyric more passionate, undoubtedly it is due to -Addison that prose is now prosaic—the medium which makes it possible -for people of ordinary intelligence to communicate their ideas to the -world. Addison is the respectable ancestor of an innumerable progeny. Pick -up the first weekly journal and the article upon the "Delights of Summer" -or the "Approach of Age" will show his influence. But it will also show, -unless the name of Mr. Max Beerbohm, our solitary essayist, is attached -to it, that we have lost the art of writing essays. What with our views -and our virtues, our passions and profundities, the shapely silver drop, -that held the sky in it and so many bright little visions of human life, -is now nothing but a hold—all knobbed with luggage packed in a hurry. -Even so, the essayist will make an effort, perhaps without knowing it, -to write like Addison.</p> - -<p>In his temperate and reasonable way Addison more than once amused -himself with speculations as to the fate of his writings. He had a just -idea of their nature and value. "I have new-pointed all the batteries of -ridicule", he wrote. Yet, because so many of his darts had been directed -against ephemeral follies, "absurd fashions, ridiculous customs, and -affected forms of speech", the time would come, in a hundred years, -perhaps, when his essays, he thought, would be "like so many pieces of -old plate, where the weight will be regarded, but the fashion lost". Two -hundred years have passed; the plate is worn smooth; the pattern almost -rubbed out; but the metal is pure silver.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_7_1" id="Footnote_7_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_7_1"><span class="label">[7]</span></a>Written in 1919.</p></div> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="The_Lives_of_the_Obscure"><i>The Lives of the Obscure</i></a></h4> - - -<p>Five shillings, perhaps, will secure a life subscription to this faded, -out-of-date, obsolete library, which with a little help from the rates, -is chiefly subsidised from the shelves of clergymen's widows, and -country gentlemen inheriting more books than their wives like to dust. -In the middle of the wide airy room, with windows that look to the sea -and let in the shouts of men crying pilchards for sale on the cobbled -street below, a row of vases stands, in which specimens of the local -flowers droop, each with its name inscribed beneath. The elderly, the -marooned, the bored, drift from newspaper to newspaper, or sit holding -their heads over back numbers of <i>The Illustrated London News</i> and the -<i>Wesleyan Chronicle</i>. No one has spoken aloud here since the room was -opened in 1854. The obscure sleep on the walls, slouching against each -other as if they were too drowsy to stand upright. Their backs are -flaking off; their titles often vanished. Why disturb their sleep? Why -re-open those peaceful graves, the librarian seems to ask, peering over -his spectacles, and resenting the duty, which indeed has become -laborious, of retrieving from among those nameless tombstones Nos. 1763, -1080, and 606.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>I</h4> - -<h4><a id="The_Taylors">THE TAYLORS AND THE EDGEWORTHS</a></h4> - - -<p>For one likes romantically to feel oneself a deliverer advancing -with lights across the waste of years to the rescue of some -stranded ghost—a Mrs. Pilkington, a Rev. Henry Elman, a Mrs. Ann -Gilbert—waiting, appealing, forgotten, in the growing gloom. -Possibly they hear one coming. They shuffle, they preen, they bridle. -Old secrets well up to their lips. The divine relief of communication -will soon again be theirs. The dust shifts and Mrs. Gilbert—but -the contact with life is instantly salutary. Whatever Mrs. Gilbert may -be doing, she is not thinking about us. Far from it. Colchester, about -the year 1800, was for the young Taylors, as Kensington had been for -their mother, "a very Elysium". There were the Strutts, the Hills, the -Stapletons; there was poetry, philosophy, engraving. For the young -Taylors were brought up to work hard, and if, after a long day's toil -upon their father's pictures, they slipped round to dine with the -Strutts they had a right to their pleasure. Already they had won prizes -in Darton and Harvey's pocketbook. One of the Strutts knew James -Montgomery, and there was talk, at those gay parties, with the Moorish -decorations and all the cats—for old Ben Strutt was a bit of a -character: did not communicate; would not let his daughters eat meat, so -no wonder they died of consumption—there was talk of printing a -joint volume to be called <i>The Associate Minstrels</i>, to which -James, if not Robert himself, might contribute. The Stapletons were -poetical, too. Moira and Bithia would wander over the old town wall at -Balkerne Hill reading poetry by moonlight. Perhaps there was a little -too much poetry in Colchester in 1800. Looking back in the middle of a -prosperous and vigorous life, Ann had to lament many broken careers, -much unfulfilled promise. The Stapletons died young, perverted, -miserable; Jacob, with his "dark, scorn-speaking countenance", who had -vowed that he would spend the night looking for Ann's lost bracelet in -the street, disappeared, "and I last heard of him vegetating among the -ruins of Rome—himself too much a ruin"; as for the Hills, their -fate was worst of all. To submit to public baptism was flighty, but to -marry Captain M.! Anybody could have warned pretty Fanny Hill against -Captain M. Yet off she drove with him in his fine phaeton. For years -nothing more was heard of her. Then one night, when the Taylors had -moved to Ongar and old Mr. and Mrs. Taylor were sitting over the fire, -thinking how, as it was nine o'clock, and the moon was full, they ought, -according to their promise, to look at it and think of their absent -children, there came a knock at the door. Mrs. Taylor went down to open -it. But who was this sad, shabby-looking woman outside? "Oh, don't you -remember the Strutts and the Stapletons, and how you warned me against -Captain M.?" cried Fanny Hill, for it was Fanny Hill—poor Fanny -Hill, all worn and sunk; poor Fanny Hill, that used to be so sprightly. -She was living in a lone house not far from the Taylors, forced to -drudge for her husband's mistress, for Captain M. had wasted all her -fortune, ruined all her life.</p> - -<p>Ann married Mr. G., of course—of course. The words toll -persistently through these obscure volumes. For in the vast world to -which the memoir writers admit us there is a solemn sense of something -unescapable, of a wave gathering beneath the frail flotilla and carrying -it on. One thinks of Colchester in 1800. Scribbling verses, reading -Montgomery—so they begin; the Hills, the Stapletons, the Strutts -disperse and disappear as one knew they would; but here, after long -years, is Ann still scribbling, and at last here is the poet Montgomery -himself in her very house, and she begging him to consecrate her child -to poetry by just holding him in his arms, and he refusing (for he is a -bachelor), but taking her for a walk, and they hear the thunder, and she -thinks it the artillery, and he says in a voice which she will never, -never forget: "Yes! The artillery of Heaven!" It is one of the -attractions of the unknown, their multitude, their vastness; for, -instead of keeping their identity separate, as remarkable people do, -they seem to merge into one another, their very boards and title-pages -and frontispieces dissolving, and their innumerable pages melting into -continuous years so that we can lie back and look up into the fine -mist-like substance of countless lives, and pass unhindered from century -to century, from life to life. Scenes detach themselves. We watch -groups. Here is young Mr. Elman talking to Miss Biffen at Brighton. She -has neither arms nor legs; a footman carries her in and out. She teaches -miniature painting to his sister. Then he is in the stage coach on the -road to Oxford with Newman. Newman says nothing. Elman nevertheless -reflects that he has known all the great men of his time. And so back -and so forwards, he paces eternally the fields of Sussex until, grown to -an extreme old age, there he sits in his Rectory thinking of -Newman, thinking of Miss Biffen, and making—it is his great -consolation—string bags for missionaries. And then? Go on looking. -Nothing much happens. But the dim light is exquisitely refreshing to the -eyes. Let us watch little Miss Frend trotting along the Strand with her -father. They meet a man with very bright eyes. "Mr. Blake," says Mr. -Frend. It is Mrs. Dyer who pours out tea for them in Clifford's Inn. Mr. -Charles Lamb has just left the room. Mrs. Dyer says she married George -because his washerwoman cheated him so. What do you think George paid -for his shirts, she asks? Gently, beautifully, like the clouds of a -balmy evening, obscurity once more traverses the sky, an obscurity which -is not empty but thick with the star dust of innumerable lives. And -suddenly there is a rift in it, and we see a wretched little packet-boat -pitching off the Irish coast in the middle of the nineteenth-century. -There is an unmistakable air of 1840 about the tarpaulins and the hairy -monsters in sou'westers lurching and spitting over the sloping decks, -yet treating the solitary young woman who stands in shawl and poke -bonnet gazing, gazing, not without kindness. No, no, no! She will not -leave the deck. She will stand there till it is quite dark, thank you! -"Her great love of the sea . . . drew this exemplary wife and mother -every now and then irresistibly away from home. No one but her husband -knew where she had gone, and her children learnt only later in life that -on these occasions, when suddenly she disappeared for a few days, she -was taking short sea voyages . . ." a crime which she expiated by months -of work among the Midland poor. Then the craving would come upon her, -would be confessed in private to her husband, and off she stole -again—the mother of Sir George Newnes.</p> - -<p>One would conclude that human beings were happy, endowed with such -blindness to fate, so indefatigable an interest in their own activities, -were it not for those sudden and astonishing apparitions staring in at -us, all taut and pale in their determination never to be forgotten, men -who have just missed fame, men who have passionately desired -redress—men like Haydon, and Mark Pattison, and the Rev. Blanco -White. And in the whole world there is probably but one person who looks up -for a moment and tries to interpret the menacing face, the furious -beckoning fist, before, in the multitude of human affairs, fragments of -faces, echoes of voices, flying coat-tails, and bonnet strings disappearing -down the shrubbery walks, one's attention is distracted for ever. What -is that enormous wheel, for example, careering downhill in Berkshire in -the eighteenth-century? It runs faster and faster; suddenly a youth -jumps out from within; next moment it leaps over the edge of a chalk pit -and is dashed to smithereens. This is Edgeworth's doing—Richard -Lovell Edgeworth, we mean, the portentous bore.</p> - -<p>For that is the way he has come down to us in his two volumes of -memoirs—Byron's bore, Day's friend, Maria's father, the man who -almost invented the telegraph, and did, in fact, invent machines for -cutting turnips, climbing walls, contracting on narrow bridges and lifting -their wheels over obstacles—a man meritorious, industrious, advanced, -but still, as we investigate his memoirs, mainly a bore. Nature endowed him -with irrepressible energy. The blood coursed through his veins at least -twenty times faster than the normal rate. His face was red, round, -vivacious. His brain raced. His tongue never stopped talking. He had -married four wives and had nineteen children, including the novelist -Maria. Moreover, he had known every one and done everything. His energy -burst open the most secret doors and penetrated to the most private -apartments. His wife's grandmother, for instance, disappeared -mysteriously every day. Edgeworth blundered in upon her and found her, -with her white locks flowing and her eyes streaming, in prayer before a -crucifix. She was a Roman Catholic then, but why a penitent? He found -out somehow that her husband had been killed in a duel, and she had -married the man who killed him. "The consolations of religion are fully -equal to its terrors," Dick Edgeworth reflected as he stumbled out -again. Then there was the beautiful young woman in the castle among the -forests of Dauphiny. Half paralysed, unable to speak above a whisper, -there she lay when Edgeworth broke in and found her reading. Tapestries -flapped on the castle walls; fifty thousand bats—"odious animals -whose stench is uncommonly noisome"—hung in clusters in the caves -beneath. None of the inhabitants understood a word she said. But to the -Englishman she talked for hour after hour about books and politics and -religion. He listened; no doubt he talked. He sat dumbfounded. But what -could one do for her? Alas, one must leave her lying among the tusks, -and the old men, and the cross-bows, reading, reading, reading. For -Edgeworth was employed in turning the Rhone from its course. He must get -back to his job. One reflection he would make. "I determined on steadily -persevering in the cultivation of my understanding."</p> - -<p>He was impervious to the romance of the situations in which he found -himself. Every experience served only to fortify his character. He -reflected, he observed, he improved himself daily. You can improve, Mr. -Edgeworth used to tell his children, every day of your life. "He used to -say that with this power of improving they might in time be anything, -and without it in time they would be nothing." Imperturbable, -indefatigable, daily increasing in sturdy self-assurance, he has the -gift of the egoist. He brings out, as he bustles and bangs on his way, -the diffident, shrinking figures who would otherwise be drowned in -darkness. The aged lady, whose private penance he disturbed, is only one -of a series of figures who start up on either side of his progress, -mute, astonished, showing us in a way that is even now unmistakable, -their amazement at this well-meaning man who bursts in upon them at -their studies and interrupts their prayers. We see him through their -eyes; we see him as he does not dream of being seen. What a tyrant he -was to his first wife! How intolerably she suffered! But she never -utters a word. It is Dick Edgeworth who tells her story in complete -ignorance that he is doing anything of the kind. "It was a singular -trait of character in my wife," he observes, "who had never shown any -uneasiness at my intimacy with Sir Francis Delaval, that she should take -a strong dislike to Mr. Day. A more dangerous and seductive companion -than the one, or a more moral and improving companion than the other, -could not be found in England." It was, indeed, very singular.</p> - -<p>For the first Mrs. Edgeworth was a penniless girl, the daughter of a -ruined country gentleman, who sat over his fire picking cinders from the -hearth and throwing them into the grate, while from time to time he -ejaculated "Hein! Heing!" as yet another scheme for making his fortune -came into his head. She had had no education. An itinerant -writing-master had taught her to form a few words. When Dick Edgeworth -was an undergraduate and rode over from Oxford she fell in love with him -and married him in order to escape the poverty and the mystery and the -dirt, and to have a husband and children like other women. But with what -result? Gigantic wheels ran downhill with the bricklayer's son inside -them. Sailing carriages took flight and almost wrecked four stage -coaches. Machines did cut turnips, but not very efficiently. Her little -boy was allowed to roam the country like a poor man's son, bare-legged, -untaught. And Mr. Day, coming to breakfast and staying to dinner, argued -incessantly about scientific principles and the laws of nature.</p> - -<p>But here we encounter one of the pitfalls of this nocturnal rambling -among forgotten worthies. It is so difficult to keep, as we must with -highly authenticated people, strictly to the facts. It is so difficult -to refrain from making scenes which, if the past could be recalled, -might perhaps be found lacking in accuracy. With a character like Thomas -Day, in particular, whose history surpasses the bounds of the credible, -we find ourselves oozing amazement, like a sponge which has absorbed so -much that it can retain no more but fairly drips. Certain scenes have -the fascination which belongs rather to the abundance of fiction than to -the sobriety of fact. For instance, we conjure up all the drama of poor -Mrs. Edgeworth's daily life; her bewilderment, her loneliness, her -despair, how she must have wondered whether any one really wanted -machines to climb walls, and assured the gentlemen that turnips were -better cut simply with a knife, and so blundered and floundered and been -snubbed that she dreaded the almost daily arrival of the tall young man -with his pompous, melancholy face, marked by the smallpox, his profusion -of uncombed black hair, and his finical cleanliness of hands and person. -He talked fast, fluently, incessantly, for hours at a time about -philosophy and nature, and M. Rousseau. Yet it was her house; she had to -see to his meals, and, though he ate as though he were half asleep, his -appetite was enormous. But it was no use complaining to her husband. -Edgeworth said, "She lamented about trifles." He went on to say: "The -lamenting of a female with whom we live does not render home -delightful." And then, with his obtuse open-mindedness, he asked her -what she had to complain of? Did he ever leave her alone? In the five or -six years of their married life he had slept from home not more than -five or six times. Mr. Day could corroborate that. Mr. Day corroborated -everything that Mr. Edgeworth said. He egged him on with his -experiments. He told him to leave his son without education. He did not -care a rap what the people of Henley said. In short, he was at the -bottom of all the absurdities and extravagances which made Mrs. -Edgeworth's life a burden to her.</p> - -<p>Yet let us choose another scene—one of the last that poor Mrs. -Edgeworth was to behold. She was returning from Lyons, and Mr. Day was -her escort. A more singular figure, as he stood on the deck of the -packet which took them to Dover, very tall, very upright, one finger in -the breast of his coat, letting the wind blow his hair out, dressed -absurdly, though in the height of fashion, wild, romantic, yet at the -same time authoritative and pompous, could scarcely be imagined; and -this strange creature, who loathed women, was in charge of a lady who -was about to become a mother, had adopted two orphan girls, and had set -himself to win the hand of Miss Elizabeth Sneyd by standing between -boards for six hours daily in order to learn to dance. Now and again he -pointed his toe with rigid precision; then, waking from the congenial -dream into which the dark clouds, the flying waters, and the shadow of -England upon the horizon had thrown him, he rapped out an order in the -smart, affected tones of a man of the world. The sailors stared, but -they obeyed. There was something sincere about him, something proudly -indifferent to what you thought; yes, something comforting and humane, -too, so that Mrs. Edgeworth for her part was determined never to laugh -at him again. But men were strange; life was difficult, and with a sigh -of bewilderment, perhaps of relief, poor Mrs. Edgeworth landed at Dover, -was brought to bed of a daughter, and died.</p> - -<p>Day meanwhile proceeded to Lichfield. Elizabeth Sneyd, of course, -refused him—gave a great cry, people said; exclaimed that she had -loved Day the blackguard, but hated Day the gentleman, and rushed from the -room. And then, they said, a terrible thing happened. Mr. Day, in his -rage, bethought him of the orphan, Sabrina Sydney, whom he had bred to -be his wife; visited her at Sutton Coldfield; flew into a passion at the -sight of her; fired a pistol at her skirts, poured melted sealing wax -over her arms, and boxed her ears. "No; I could never have done that," -Mr. Edgeworth used to say, when people described the scene. And whenever -to the end of his life he thought of Thomas Day he fell silent. So great, -so passionate, so inconsistent—his life had been a tragedy, and -in thinking of his friend, the best friend he had ever had, Richard -Edgeworth fell silent.</p> - -<p>It is almost the only occasion upon which silence is recorded of him. To -muse, to repent, to contemplate were foreign to his nature. His wife and -friends and children are silhouetted with extreme vividness upon a broad -disc of interminable chatter. Upon no other background could we realise -so clearly the sharp fragment of his first wife, or the shades and -depths which make up the character, at once humane and brutal, advanced -and hidebound of the inconsistent philosopher, Thomas Day. But his power -is not limited to people; landscapes, groups, societies seem, even as he -describes them, to split off from him, to be projected away, so that we -are able to run just ahead of him and anticipate his coming. They are -brought out all the more vividly by the extreme incongruity which so -often marks his comment and stamps his presence; they live with a -peculiar beauty, fantastic, solemn, mysterious, in contrast with -Edgeworth, who is none of these things. In particular, he brings before -us a garden in Cheshire, the garden of a parsonage, an ancient but -commodious parsonage.</p> - -<p>One pushed through a white gate and found oneself in a grass court, -small but well kept, with roses growing in the hedges and grapes hanging -from the walls. But what, in the name of wonder, were those objects in -the middle of the grass plot? Through the dusk of an autumn evening -there shone out an enormous white globe. Round it at various distances -were others of different sizes—the planets and their satellites, it -seemed. But who could have placed them there, and why? The house was -silent; the windows shut; nobody was stirring. Then, furtively peeping -from behind a curtain, appeared for a second the face of an elderly man, -handsome, dishevelled, distraught. It vanished.</p> - -<p>In some mysterious way, human beings inflict their own vagaries upon -nature. Moths and birds must have flitted more silently through the -little garden; over everything must have brooded the same fantastic -peace. Then, red-faced, garrulous, inquisitive, in burst Richard Lovell -Edgeworth. He looked at the globes; he satisfied himself that they were -of "accurate design and workmanlike construction". He knocked at the -door. He knocked and knocked. No one came. At length, as his impatience -was overcoming him, slowly the latch was undone, gradually the door was -opened; a clergyman, neglected, unkempt, but still a gentleman, stood -before him. Edgeworth named himself, and they retired to a parlour -littered with books and papers and valuable furniture now fallen to -decay. At last, unable to control his curiosity any longer, Edgeworth -asked what were the globes in the garden? Instantly the clergyman -displayed extreme agitation. It was his son who had made them, he -exclaimed; a boy of genius, a boy of the greatest industry, and of -virtue and acquirements far beyond his age. But he had died. His wife -had died. Edgeworth tried to turn the conversation, but in vain. The -poor man rushed on passionately, incoherently about his son, his genius, -his death. "It struck me that his grief had injured his understanding," -said Edgeworth, and he was becoming more and more uncomfortable when the -door opened and a girl of fourteen or fifteen, entering with a tea-tray -in her hand, suddenly changed the course of his host's conversation. -Indeed, she was beautiful; dressed in white; her nose a shade too -prominent, perhaps—but no, her proportions were exquisitely right. -"She is a scholar and an artist!" the clergyman exclaimed as she left the -room. But why did she leave the room? If she was his daughter why did -she not preside at the tea-table? Was she his mistress? Who was she? And -why was the house in this state of litter and decay? Why was the front -door locked? Why was the clergyman apparently a prisoner, and what was -his secret story? Questions began to crowd into Edgeworth's head as he -sat drinking his tea; but he could only shake his head and make one last -reflection, "I feared that something was not right," as he shut the -white wicket gate behind him, and left alone for ever in the untidy -house among the planets and their satellites, the mad clergyman and the -lovely girl.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>II</h4> - -<h4><a id="Laetitia_Pilkington">LAETITIA PILKINGTON</a></h4> - - -<p>Let us bother the librarian once again. Let us ask him to reach down, -dust, and hand over to us that little brown book over there, the Memoirs -of Mrs. Pilkington, three volumes bound in one, printed by Peter Hoey in -Dublin, MDCCLXXVI. The deepest obscurity shades her retreat; the dust -lies heavy on her tomb—one board is loose, that is to say, and nobody -has read her since early in the last century when a reader, presumably a -lady, whether disgusted by her obscenity or stricken by the hand of -death, left off in the middle and marked her place with a faded list of -goods and groceries. If ever a woman wanted a champion, it is obviously -Laetitia Pilkington. Who then was she?</p> - -<p>Can you imagine a very extraordinary cross between Moll Flanders and -Lady Ritchie, between a rolling and rollicking woman of the town and a -lady of breeding and refinement? Laetitia Pilkington (1712-1759) was -something of the sort—shady, shifty, adventurous, and yet, like -Thackeray's daughter, like Miss Mitford, like Madame de Sévigné and -Jane Austen and Maria Edgeworth, so imbued with the old traditions of -her sex that she wrote, as ladies talk, to give pleasure. Throughout her -<i>Memoirs</i>, we can never forget that it is her wish to entertain, -her unhappy fate to sob. Dabbing her eyes and controlling her anguish, -she begs us to forgive an odious breach of manners which only -the suffering of a lifetime, the intolerable persecutions of -Mr. P——n, the malignant, she must say the h——-h, -spite of Lady C——t can excuse. For who should know better -than the Earl of Killmallock's great-granddaughter that it is the part -of a lady to hide her sufferings? Thus Laetitia is in the great -tradition of English women of letters. It is her duty to entertain; it -is her instinct to conceal. Still, though her room near the Royal -Exchange is threadbare, and the table is spread with old play-bills -instead of a cloth, and the butter is served in a shoe, and Mr. Worsdale -has used the teapot to fetch small beer that very morning, still she -presides, still she entertains. Her language is a trifle coarse, -perhaps. But who taught her English? The great Doctor Swift.</p> - -<p>In all her wanderings, which were many and in her failings, which were -great, she looked back to those early Irish days when Swift had pinched -her into propriety of speech. He had beaten her for fumbling at a -drawer: he had daubed her cheeks with burnt cork to try her temper; he -had bade her pull off her shoes and stockings and stand against the -wainscot and let him measure her. At first she had refused; then she had -yielded. "Why," said the Dean, "I suspected you had either broken -Stockings or foul toes, and in either case should have delighted to -expose you." Three feet two inches was all she measured, he declared, -though, as Laetitia complained, the weight of Swift's hand on her head -had made her shrink to half her size. But she was foolish to complain. -Probably she owed her intimacy to that very fact—she was only three -feet two. Swift had lived, a lifetime among the giants; now there was a -charm in dwarfs. He took the little creature into his library. "'Well,' -said he, 'I have brought you here to show you all the Money I got when I -was in the Ministry, but don't steal any of it.' 'I won't, indeed. Sir,' -said I; so he opened a Cabinet, and showed me a whole parcel of empty -drawers. 'Bless me,' says he, 'the Money is flown.'" There was a charm -in her surprise; there was a charm in her humility. He could beat her -and bully her, make her shout when he was deaf, force her husband to -drink the lees of the wine, pay their cab fares, stuff guineas into a -piece of gingerbread, and relent surprisingly, as if there were -something grimly pleasing to him in the thought of so foolish a midget -setting up to have a life and a mind of her own. For with Swift she was -herself; it was the effect of his genius. She had to pull off her -stockings if he told her to. So, though his satire terrified her, and -she found it highly unpleasant to dine at the Deanery and see him -watching, in the great glass which hung before him for that purpose, the -butler stealing beer at the sideboard, she knew that it was a privilege -to walk with him in his garden; to hear him talk of Mr. Pope and quote -Hudibras; and then be hustled back in the rain to save coach hire, and -then to sit chatting in the parlour with Mrs. Brent, the housekeeper, -about the Dean's oddity and charity, and how the sixpence he saved on -the coach he gave to the lame old man who sold gingerbread at the -corner, while the Dean dashed up the front stairs and down the back so -violently that she was afraid he would fall and hurt himself.</p> - -<p>But memories of great men are no infallible specific. They fall upon the -race of life like beams from a lighthouse. They flash, they shock, they -reveal, they vanish. To remember Swift was of little avail to Laetitia -when the troubles of life came thick about her. Mr. Pilkington left her -for Widow W—rr—n. Her father—her dear father—died. -The sheriff's officers insulted her. She was deserted in an empty house -with two children to provide for. The tea chest was secured, the garden -gate locked, and the bills left unpaid. And still she was young and -attractive and gay, with an inordinate passion for scribbling verses and -an incredible hunger for reading books. It was this that was her -undoing. The book was fascinating and the hour late. The gentleman would -not lend it, but would stay till she had finished. They sat in her -bedroom. It was highly indiscreet, she owned. Suddenly twelve watchmen -broke through the kitchen window, and Mr. Pilkington appeared with a -cambric handkerchief tied about his neck. Swords were drawn and heads -broken. As for her excuse, how could one expect Mr. Pilkington and the -twelve watchmen to believe that? Only reading! Only sitting up late to -finish a new book! Mr. Pilkington and the watchmen interpreted the -situation as such men would. But lovers of learning, she is persuaded, -will understand her passion and deplore its consequences.</p> - -<p>And now what was she to do? Reading had played her false, but still she -could write. Ever since she could form her letters, indeed, she had -written, with incredible speed and considerable grace, odes, addresses, -apostrophes to Miss Hoadley, to the Recorder of Dublin, to Dr. -Delville's place in the country. "Hail, happy Delville, blissful seat!" -"Is there a man whose fixed and steady gaze——"—the verses -flowed without the slightest difficulty on the slightest occasion. Now, -therefore, crossing to England, she set up, as her advertisement had it, -to write letters upon any subject, except the law, for twelve pence -ready money, and no trust given. She lodged opposite White's Chocolate -House, and there, in the evening, as she watered her flowers on the -leads, the noble gentlemen in the window across the road drank her -health, sent her over a bottle of burgundy; and later she heard old -Colonel——crying, "Poke after me, my lord, poke after me," as -he shepherded the D——of M—lb—gh up her dark stairs. -That lovely gentleman, who honoured his title by wearing it, kissed her, -complimented her, opened his pocketbook, and left her with a banknote -for fifty pounds upon Sir Francis Child. Such tributes stimulated her -pen to astonishing outbursts of impromptu gratitude. If, on the other -hand, a gentleman refused to buy or a lady hinted impropriety, this same -flowery pen writhed and twisted in agonies of hate and vituperation. -"Had I said that your F——r died Blaspheming the Almighty", one -of her accusations begins, but the end is unprintable. Great ladies were -accused of every depravity, and the clergy, unless their taste in poetry -was above reproach, suffered an incessant castigation. Mr. Pilkington, -she never forgot, was a clergyman.</p> - -<p>Slowly but surely the Earl of Killmallock's great-granddaughter -descended in the social scale. From St. James's Street and its noble -benefactors she migrated to Green Street to lodge with Lord Stair's -<i>valet de chambre</i> and his wife, who washed for persons of -distinction. She, who had dallied with dukes, was glad for company's sake -to take a hand at quadrille with footmen and laundresses and Grub Street -writers, who, as they drank porter, sipped green tea, and smoked tobacco, -told stories of the utmost scurrility about their masters and mistresses. -The spiciness of their conversation made amends for the vulgarity of their -manners. From them Laetitia picked up those anecdotes of the great which -sprinkled her pages with dashes and served her purpose when subscribers -failed and landladies grew insolent. Indeed, it was a hard life—to -trudge to Chelsea in the snow wearing nothing but a chintz gown and be -put off with a beggarly half-crown by Sir Hans Sloane; next to tramp to -Ormond Street and extract two guineas from the odious Dr. Meade, which, -in her glee, she tossed in the air and lost in a crack of the floor; to -be insulted by footmen; to sit down to a dish of boiling water because -her landlady must not guess that a pinch of tea was beyond her means. -Twice on moonlight nights, with the lime trees in flower, she wandered -in St. James's Park and contemplated suicide in Rosamond's Pond. Once, -musing among the tombs in Westminster Abbey, the door was locked on her, -and she had to spend the night in the pulpit wrapped in a carpet from -the Communion Table to protect herself from the assaults of rats. "I -long to listen to the young-ey'd cherubims!" she exclaimed. But a very -different fate was in store for her. In spite of Mr. Colley Cibber, and -Mr. Richardson, who supplied her first with gilt-edged notepaper and -then with baby linen, those harpies, her landladies, after drinking her -ale, devouring her lobsters, and failing often for years at a time to -comb their hair, succeeded in driving Swift's friend, and the Earl's -great-granddaughter, to be imprisoned with common debtors in the -Marshalsea.</p> - -<p>Bitterly she cursed her husband who had made her a lady of adventure -instead of what nature intended, "a harmless household dove". More and -more wildly she ransacked her brains for anecdotes, memories, scandals, -views about the bottomless nature of the sea, the inflammable character -of the earth—anything that would fill a page and earn her a guinea. -She remembered that she had eaten plovers' eggs with Swift. "Here, Hussey," -said he, "is a Plover's egg. King William used to give crowns apiece for -them. . . ." Swift never laughed, she remembered. He used to suck in his -cheeks instead of laughing. And what else could she remember? A great -many gentlemen, a great many landladies; how the window was thrown up -when her father died, and her sister came downstairs with the -sugar-basin, laughing. All had been bitterness and struggle, except that -she had loved Shakespeare, known Swift, and kept through all the shifts -and shades of an adventurous career a gay spirit, something of a lady's -breeding, and the gallantry which, at the end of her short life, led her -to crack her joke and enjoy her duck with death at her heart and duns at -her pillow.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>III</h4> - -<h4><a id="Miss_Ormerod">MISS ORMEROD</a><a name="FNanchor_8_1" id="FNanchor_8_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_8_1" class="fnanchor">[8]</a></h4> - - -<p>The trees stood massively in all their summer foliage spotted and -grouped upon a meadow which sloped gently down from the big white house. -There were unmistakable signs of the year 1835 both in the trees and in -the sky, for modern trees are not nearly so voluminous as these ones, -and the sky of those days had a kind of pale diffusion in its texture -which was different from the more concentrated tone of the skies we -know.</p> - -<p>Mr. George Ormerod stepped from the drawing-room window of Sedbury -House, Gloucestershire, wearing a tall furry hat and white trousers -strapped under his instep; he was closely, though deferentially, -followed by a lady wearing a yellow-spotted dress over a crinoline, and -behind her, singly and arm in arm, came nine children in nankeen jackets -and long white drawers. They were going to see the water let out of a -pond.</p> - -<p>The youngest child, Eleanor, a little girl with a pale face, rather -elongated features, and black hair, was left by herself in the -drawing-room, a large sallow apartment with pillars, two chandeliers, -for some reason enclosed in holland bags, and several octagonal tables -some of inlaid wood and others of greenish malachite. At one of these -little Eleanor Ormerod was seated in a high chair.</p> - -<p>"Now, Eleanor," said her mother, as the party assembled for the -expedition to the pond, "here are some pretty beetles. Don't touch the -glass. Don't get down from your chair, and when we come back little -George will tell you all about it."</p> - -<p>So saying, Mrs. Ormerod placed a tumbler of water containing about half -a dozen great water grubs in the middle of the malachite table, at a -safe distance from the child, and followed her husband down the slope of -old-fashioned turf towards a cluster of extremely old-fashioned sheep; -opening, directly she stepped on to the terrace, a tiny parasol of -bottle green silk with a bottle green fringe, though the sky was like -nothing so much as a flock bed covered with a counterpane of white -dimity.</p> - -<p>The plump pale grubs gyrated slowly round and round in the tumbler. So -simple an entertainment must surely soon have ceased to satisfy. Surely -Eleanor would shake the tumbler, upset the grubs, and scramble down from -her chair. Why, even a grown person can hardly watch those grubs -crawling down the glass wall, then floating to the surface, without a -sense of boredom not untinged with disgust. But the child sat perfectly -still. Was it her custom, then, to be entertained by the gyrations of -grubs? Her eyes were reflective, even critical. But they shone with -increasing excitement. She beat one hand upon the edge of the table. -What was the reason? One of the grubs had ceased to float: he lay at the -bottom; the rest, descending, proceeded to tear him to pieces.</p> - -<p>"And how has little Eleanor enjoyed herself?" asked Mr. Ormerod, in -rather a deep voice, stepping into the room and with a slight air of -heat and of fatigue upon his face.</p> - -<p>"Papa," said Eleanor, almost interrupting her father in her eagerness to -impart her observation, "I saw one of the grubs fall down and the rest -came and ate him!"</p> - -<p>"Nonsense, Eleanor," said Mr. Ormerod. "You are not telling the truth." -He looked severely at the tumbler in which the beetles were still -gyrating as before.</p> - -<p>"Papa, it was true!"</p> - -<p>"Eleanor, little girls are not allowed to contradict their fathers," -said Mrs. Ormerod, coming in through the window, and closing her green -parasol with a snap.</p> - -<p>"Let this be a lesson," Mr. Ormerod began, signing to the other children -to approach, when the door opened, and the servant announced,</p> - -<p>"Captain Fenton."</p> - -<p>Captain Fenton "was at times thought to be tedious in his recurrence to -the charge of the Scots Greys in which he had served at the battle of -Waterloo."</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>But what is this crowd gathered round the door of the George Hotel in -Chepstow? A faint cheer rises from the bottom of the hill. Up comes the -mail coach, horses steaming, panels mud-splashed. "Make way! Make way!" -cries the ostler and the vehicle dashes into the courtyard, pulls up -sharp before the door. Down jumps the coachman, the horses are led off, -and a fine team of spanking greys is harnessed with incredible -speed in their stead. Upon all this—coachman, horses, coach, and -passengers—the crowd looked with gaping admiration every Wednesday -evening all through the year. But to-day, the twelfth of March, 1852, as -the coachman settled his rug, and stretched his hands for the reins, he -observed that instead of being fixed upon him, the eyes of the people of -Chepstow darted this way and that. Heads were jerked. Arms flung out. Here -a hat swooped in a semi-circle. Off drove the coach almost unnoticed. As it -turned the corner all the outside passengers craned their necks, and one -gentleman rose to his feet and shouted, "There! there! there!" before he -was bowled into eternity. It was an insect—a red-winged insect. Out -the people of Chepstow poured into the high road; down the hill they ran; -always the insect flew in front of them; at length by Chepstow Bridge a -young man, throwing his bandanna over the blade of an oar, captured it -alive and presented it to a highly respectable elderly gentleman who now -came puffing upon the scene—Samuel Budge, doctor, of Chepstow. By -Samuel Budge it was presented to Miss Ormerod; by her sent to a -professor at Oxford. And he, declaring it "a fine specimen of the rose -underwinged locust" added the gratifying information that it "was the -first of the kind to be captured so far west."</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>And so, at the age of twenty-four Miss Eleanor Ormerod was thought the -proper person to receive the gift of a locust.</p> - -<p>When Eleanor Ormerod appeared at archery meetings and croquet -tournaments young men pulled their whiskers and young ladies looked -grave. It was so difficult to make friends with a girl who could talk of -nothing but black beetles and earwigs—"Yes, that's what she likes, -isn't it queer?—Why, the other day Ellen, Mama's maid, heard from -Jane, who's under-kitchenmaid at Sedbury House, that Eleanor tried to -boil a beetle in the kitchen saucepan and he wouldn't die, and swam -round and round, and she got into a terrible state and sent the groom -all the way to Gloucester to fetch chloroform—all for an insect, -my dear!—and she gives the cottagers shillings to collect beetles -for her—and she spends hours in her bedroom cutting them -up—and she climbs trees like a boy to find wasps' nests—oh, -you can't think what they don't say about her in the village—for -she does look so odd, dressed anyhow, with that great big nose and those -bright little eyes, so like a caterpillar herself, I always -think—but of course she's wonderfully clever and very good, too, -both of them. Georgiana has a lending library for the cottagers, and -Eleanor never misses a service—but there she is—that short -pale girl in the large bonnet. Do go and talk to her, for I'm sure I'm -too stupid, but you'd find plenty to say—" But neither Fred nor -Arthur, Henry nor William found anything to say—</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>". . . probably the lecturer would have been equally well pleased -had none of her own sex put in an appearance."</p> - -<p>This comment upon a lecture delivered in the year 1889 throws some -light, perhaps, upon archery meetings in the 'fifties.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>It being nine o'clock on a February night some time about 1862 all the -Ormerods were in the library; Mr. Ormerod making architectural designs -at a table; Mrs. Ormerod lying on a sofa making pencil drawings upon -grey paper; Eleanor making a model of a snake to serve as a paper -weight; Georgiana making a copy of the font in Tidenham Church; some of -the others examining books with beautiful illustrations; while at -intervals someone rose, unlocked the wire book case, took down a volume -for instruction or entertainment, and perused it beneath the -chandelier.</p> - -<p>Mr. Ormerod required complete silence for his studies. His word was law, -even to the dogs, who, in the absence of their master, instinctively -obeyed the eldest male person in the room. Some whispered colloquy there -might be between Mrs. Ormerod and her daughters—</p> - -<p>"The draught under the pew was really worse than ever this morning, -Mama—"</p> - -<p>"And we could only unfasten the latch in the chancel because Eleanor -happened to have her ruler with her—"</p> - -<p>"—hm—m—m. Dr. Armstrong—Hm—m—m—"</p> - -<p>"—Anyhow things aren't as bad with us as they are at Kinghampton. -They say Mrs. Briscoe's Newfoundland dog follows her right up to the -chancel rails when she takes the sacrament—"</p> - -<p>"And the turkey is still sitting on its eggs in the pulpit."</p> - -<p>—"The period of incubation for a turkey is between three and four -weeks"—said Eleanor, thoughtfully looking up from her cast of the -snake and forgetting, in the interest of her subject, to speak in a -whisper.</p> - -<p>"Am I to be allowed no peace in my own house?" Mr. Ormerod exclaimed -angrily, rapping with his ruler on the table, upon which Mrs. Ormerod -half shut one eye and squeezed a little blob of Chinese white on to her -high light, and they remained silent until the servants came in, when -everyone, with the exception of Mrs. Ormerod, fell on their knees. For -she, poor lady, suffered from a chronic complaint and left the family -party forever a year or two later, when the green sofa was moved into -the corner, and the drawings given to her nieces in memory of her. But -Mr. Ormerod went on making architectural drawings at nine p.m. every -night (save on Sundays when he read a sermon) until he too lay upon the -green sofa, which had not been used since Mrs. Ormerod lay there, but -still looked much the same. "We deeply felt the happiness of ministering -to his welfare," Miss Ormerod wrote, "for he would not hear of our -leaving him for even twenty-four hours and he objected to visits -from my brothers excepting occasionally for a short time. They, not -being used to the gentle ways necessary for an aged invalid, worried -him . . . the Thursday following, the 9th October, 1873, he -passed gently away at the mature age of eighty-seven years." Oh, -graves in country churchyards—respectable burials—mature old -gentlemen—D.C.L., LL.D., F.R.S., F.S.A.—lots of letters come -after your names, but lots of women are buried with you!</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>There remained the Hessian Fly and the Bot—mysterious insects! -Not, one would have thought, among God's most triumphant creations, -and yet—if you see them trader a microscope!—the Bot, obese, -globular, obscene; the Hessian, booted, spurred, whiskered, cadaverous. -Next slip under the glass an innocent grain; behold it pock-marked and -livid; or take this strip of hide, and note those odious pullulating -lumps—well, what does the landscape look like then?</p> - -<p>The only palatable object for the eye to rest on in acres of England is -a lump of Paris Green. But English people won't use microscopes; you -can't make them use Paris Green either—or if they do, they let it -drip. Dr. Ritzema Bos is a great stand-by. For they won't take a woman's -word. And indeed, though for the sake of the Ox Warble one must stretch -a point, there are matters, questions of stock infestation, things one -has to go into—things a lady doesn't even like to see, much less -discuss, in print—"these, I say, I intend to leave entirely to the -Veterinary surgeons. My brother—oh, he's dead now—a very good -man—for whom I collected wasps' nests—lived at Brighton and -wrote about wasps—he, I say, wouldn't let me learn anatomy, never -liked me to do more than take sections of teeth."</p> - -<p>Ah, but Eleanor, the Bot and the Hessian have more power over you than -Mr. Edward Ormerod himself. Under the microscope you clearly perceive -that these insects have organs, orifices, excrement; they do, most -emphatically, copulate. Escorted on the one side by the Bos or Warble, -on the other by the Hessian Fly, Miss Ormerod advanced statelily, if -slowly, into the open. Never did her features show more sublime than -when lit up by the candour of her avowal. "This is excrement; these, -though Ritzema Bos is positive to the contrary, are the generative -organs of the male. I've proved it." Upon her head the hood of Edinburgh -most fitly descended; pioneer of purity even more than of Paris Green.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>"If you're sure I'm not in your way," said Miss Lipscomb unstrapping her -paint box and planting her tripod firmly in the path, "—I'll try to -get a picture of those lovely hydrangeas against the sky—What flowers -you have in Penzance!"</p> - -<p>The market gardener crossed his hands on his hoe, slowly twined a piece -of bass round his finger, looked at the sky, said something about the -sun, also about the prevalence of lady artists, and then, with a nod of -his head, observed sententiously that it was to a lady that he owed -everything he had.</p> - -<p>"Ah?" said Miss Lipscomb, flattered, but already much occupied with her -composition.</p> - -<p>"A lady with a queer-sounding name," said Mr. Pascoe, "but that's the -lady I've called my little girl after—I don't think there's such -another in Christendom."</p> - -<p>Of course it was Miss Ormerod, equally of course Miss Lipscomb was the -sister of Miss Ormerod's family doctor; and so she did no sketching that -morning, but left with a handsome bunch of grapes instead—for every -flower had drooped, ruin had stared him in the face—he had written, -not believing one bit what they told him—to the lady with the queer -name, back there came a book "In-ju-ri-ous In-sects," with the page turned -down, perhaps by her very hand, also a letter which he kept at home -under the clock, but he knew every word by heart, since it was due to -what she said there that he wasn't a ruined man—and the tears ran -down his face and Miss Lipscomb, clearing a space on the lodging-house -table, wrote the whole story to her brother.</p> - -<p>"The prejudice against Paris Green certainly seems to be dying down," -said Miss Ormerod when she read it.—"But now," she sighed rather -heavily, being no longer young and much afflicted with the gout, "now -it's the sparrows."</p> - -<p>One might have thought that <i>they</i> would have left her -alone—innocent dirt-grey birds, taking more than their share of -the breakfast crumbs, otherwise inoffensive. But once you look through a -microscope—once you see the Hessian and the Bot as they really -are—there's no peace for an elderly lady pacing her terrace on a -fine May morning. For example, why, when there are crumbs enough for -all, do only the sparrows get them? Why not swallows or martins? -Why—oh, here come the servants for prayers—</p> - -<p>"Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive them that trespass against us. -. . . For thine is the Kingdom and the power and the glory, for ever and -ever. Amen—"</p> - -<p>"The Times, ma'am—"</p> - -<p>"Thank you, Dixon. . . . The Queen's birthday! We must -drink her Majesty's health in the old white port, Dixon. Home -Rule—tut—tut—tut. All that madman Gladstone. My father -would have thought the world was coming to an end, and I'm not at all -sure that it isn't. I must talk to Dr. Lipscomb—"</p> - -<p>Yet all the time in the tail of her eye she saw myriads of sparrows, and -retiring to the study proclaimed in a pamphlet of which 36,000 copies -were gratuitously distributed that the sparrow is a pest.</p> - -<p>"When he eats an insect," she said to her sister Georgians, "which -isn't often, it's one of the few insects that one wants to keep—one of -the very few," she added with a touch of acidity natural to one whose -investigations have all tended to the discredit of the insect race.</p> - -<p>"But there'll be some very unpleasant consequences to face," she -concluded—"Very unpleasant indeed."</p> - -<p>Happily the port was now brought in, the servants assembled; and Miss -Ormerod, rising to her feet, gave the toast "Her Blessed Majesty." She -was extremely loyal, and moreover she liked nothing better than a glass -of her father's old white port. She kept his pigtail, too, in a box.</p> - -<p>Such being her disposition it went hard with her to analyse the -sparrow's crop, for the sparrow she felt, symbolises something of the -homely virtue of English domestic life, and to proclaim it stuffed with -deceit was disloyal to much that she, and her fathers before her, held -dear. Sure enough the clergy—the Rev. J. E. Walker—denounced -her for her brutality; "God Save the Sparrow!" exclaimed the Animal's -Friend; and Miss Carrington, of the Humanitarian League, replied in a -leaflet described by Miss Ormerod as "spirity, discourteous, and -inaccurate."</p> - -<p>"Well," said Miss Ormerod to her sister, "it did me no harm before to be -threatened to be shot at, also hanged in effigy, and other little -attentions."</p> - -<p>"Still it was very disagreeable, Eleanor—more disagreeable I -believe, to me than to you," said Georgiana. Soon Georgiana died. She had -however finished the beautiful series of insect diagrams at which she -worked every morning in the dining-room and they were presented to -Edinburgh University. But Eleanor was never the same woman after that.</p> - -<p>Dear forest fly—flour moths—weevils—grouse -and cheese flies—beetles—foreign correspondents—eel -worms—ladybirds—wheat midges—resignation -from the Royal Agricultural Society—gall mites—boot -beetles—Announcement of honorary degree to be -conferred—feelings of appreciation and anxiety—paper -on wasps—last annual report warnings of serious -illness—proposed pension—gradual loss of -strength—Finally Death.</p> - -<p>That is life, so they say.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>"It does no good to keep people waiting for an answer," sighed Miss -Ormerod, "though I don't feel as able as I did since that unlucky -accident at Waterloo. And no one realises what the strain of the work -is—often I'm the only lady in the room, and the gentlemen so learned, -though I've always found them most helpful, most generous in every way. -But I'm growing old. Miss Hartwell, that's what it is. That's what led -me to be thinking of this difficult matter of flour infestation in the -middle of the road so that I didn't see the horse until he had poked his -nose into my ear. . . . Then there's this nonsense about a pension. What -could possess Mr. Barron to think of such a thing? I should feel -inexpressibly lowered if I accepted a pension. Why, I don't altogether -like writing LL.D. after my name, though Georgie would have liked it. -All I ask is to be let go on in my own quiet way. Now where is Messrs. -Langridge's sample? We must take that first. 'Gentlemen, I have examined -your sample and find . . .'"</p> - -<p>"If any one deserves a thorough good rest it's you. Miss Ormerod," said -Dr. Lipscomb, who had grown a little white over the ears. "I should say -the farmers of England ought to set up a statue to you, bring offerings -of corn and wine—make you a kind of Goddess, eh—what was her -name?"</p> - -<p>"Not a very shapely figure for a Goddess," said Miss Ormerod with a -little laugh. "I should enjoy the wine though. You're not going to cut -me off my one glass of port surely?"</p> - -<p>"You must remember," said Dr. Lipscomb, shaking his head, "how much your -life means to others."</p> - -<p>"Well, I don't know about that," said Miss Ormerod, pondering a little. -"To be sure, I've chosen my epitaph. 'She introduced Paris Green into -England,' and there might be a word or two about the Hessian -fly—that, I do believe, was a good piece of work."</p> - -<p>"No need to think about epitaphs yet," said Dr. Lipscomb.</p> - -<p>"Our lives are in the hands of the Lord," said Miss Ormerod simply.</p> - -<p>Dr. Lipscomb bent his head and looked out of the window. Miss Ormerod -remained silent.</p> - -<p>"English entomologists care little or nothing for objects of practical -importance," she exclaimed suddenly. "Take this question of flour -infestation—I can't say how many grey hairs that hasn't grown -me."</p> - -<p>"Figuratively speaking. Miss Ormerod," said Dr. Lipscomb, for her hair -was still raven black.</p> - -<p>"Well, I do believe all good work is done in concert," Miss Ormerod -continued. "It is often a great comfort to me to think that."</p> - -<p>"It's beginning to rain," said Dr. Lipscomb. "How will your enemies like -that, Miss Ormerod?"</p> - -<p>"Hot or cold, wet or dry, insects always flourish!" cried Miss Ormerod, -energetically sitting up in bed.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<p>"Old Miss Ormerod is dead," said Mr. Drummond, opening The Times on -Saturday, July 20th, 1901.</p> - -<p>"Old Miss Ormerod?" asked Mrs. Drummond.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_8_1" id="Footnote_8_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_8_1"><span class="label">[8]</span></a>Founded upon the Life of Eleanor Ormerod, by Robert -Wallace Murray. 1904.</p></div> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="Jane_Austen"><i>Jane Austen</i></a></h4> - - -<p>It is probable that if Miss Cassandra Austen had had her way, we should -have had nothing of Jane Austen's except her novels. To her elder sister -alone did she write freely; to her alone she confided her hopes and, if -rumour is true, the one great disappointment of her life; but when Miss -Cassandra Austen grew old, and the growth of her sister's fame made her -suspect that a time might come when strangers would pry and scholars -speculate, she burnt, at great cost to herself, every letter that could -gratify their curiosity, and spared only what she judged too trivial to -be of interest.</p> - -<p>Hence our knowledge of Jane Austen is derived from a little gossip, a -few letters, and her books. As for the gossip, gossip which has survived -its day is never despicable; with a little rearrangement it suits our -purpose admirably. For example, Jane "is not at all pretty and very -prim, unlike a girl of twelve . . . Jane is whimsical and affected," -says little Philadelphia Austen of her cousin. Then we have Mrs. -Mitford, who knew the Austens as girls and thought Jane "the prettiest, -silliest, most affected, husband-hunting butterfly she ever remembers". -Next, there is Miss Mitford's anonymous friend "who visits her now [and] -says that she has stiffened into the most perpendicular, precise, -taciturn piece of 'single blessedness' that ever existed, and that, -until <i>Pride and Prejudice</i> showed what a precious gem was hidden in -that unbending case, she was no more regarded in society than a poker or -firescreen. . . . The case is very different now," the good lady goes on; -"she is still a poker—but a poker of whom everybody is afraid. . . . -A wit, a delineator of character, who does not talk is terrific -indeed!" On the other side, of course, there are the Austens, a race -little given to panegyric of themselves, but nevertheless, they say, her -brothers "were very fond and very proud of her. They were attached to -her by her talents, her virtues, and her engaging manners, and each -loved afterwards to fancy a resemblance in some niece or daughter of his -own to the dear sister Jane, whose perfect equal they yet never expected -to see." Charming but perpendicular, loved at home but feared by -strangers, biting of tongue but tender of heart—these contrasts are -by no means incompatible, and when we turn to the novels we shall find -ourselves stumbling there too over the same complexities in the writer.</p> - -<p>To begin with, that prim little girl whom Philadelphia found so unlike a -child of twelve, whimsical and affected, was soon to be the authoress of -an astonishing and unchildish story, <i>Love and Friendship</i>,<a name="FNanchor_9_1" id="FNanchor_9_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_9_1" class="fnanchor">[9]</a> which, -incredible though it appears, was written at the age of fifteen. It was -written, apparently, to amuse the schoolroom; one of the stories in the -same book is dedicated with mock solemnity to her brother; another is -neatly illustrated with water-colour heads by her sister. There are -jokes which, one feels, were family property; thrusts of satire, which -went home because all little Austens made mock in common of fine ladies -who "sighed and fainted on the sofa".</p> - -<p>Brothers and sisters must have laughed when Jane read out loud her last -hit at the vices which they all abhorred. "I die a martyr to my grief -for the loss of Augustius. One fatal swoon has cost me my life. Beware -of Swoons, Dear Laura. . . . Run mad as often as you chuse, but do not -faint. . . ." And on she rushed, as fast as she could write and quicker -than she could spell, to tell the incredible adventures of Laura and -Sophia, of Philander and Gustavus, of the gentleman who drove a coach -between Edinburgh and Stirling every other day, of the theft of the -fortune that was kept in the table drawer, of the starving mothers and -the sons who acted Macbeth. Undoubtedly, the story must have roused the -schoolroom to uproarious laughter. And yet, nothing is more obvious than -that this girl of fifteen, sitting in her private corner of the common -parlour, was writing not to draw a laugh from brother and sisters, and -not for home consumption. She was writing for everybody, for nobody, for -our age, for her own; in other words, even at that early age Jane Austen -was writing. One hears it in the rhythm and shapeliness and severity of -the sentences. "She was nothing more than a mere good tempered, civil, -and obliging young woman; as such we could scarcely dislike her—she -was only an object of contempt." Such a sentence is meant to outlast the -Christmas holidays. Spirited, easy, full of fun, verging with freedom -upon sheer nonsense,—<i>Love and Friendship</i> is all that, but what -is this note which never merges in the rest, which sounds distinctly and -penetratingly all through the volume? It is the sound of laughter. The -girl of fifteen is laughing, in her corner, at the world.</p> - -<p>Girls of fifteen are always laughing. They laugh when Mr. Binney helps -himself to salt instead of sugar. They almost die of laughing when old -Mrs. Tomkins sits down upon the cat. But they are crying the moment -after. They have no fixed abode from which they see that there is -something eternally laughable in human nature, some quality in men and -women that for ever excites our satire. They do not know that Lady -Greville who snubs, and poor Maria who is snubbed, are permanent -features of every ball-room. But Jane Austen knew it from her birth -upwards. One of those fairies who perch upon cradles must have taken her -a flight through the world directly she was born. When she was laid in -the cradle again she knew not only what the world looked like, but had -already chosen her kingdom. She had agreed that if she might rule over -that territory, she would covet no other. Thus at fifteen she had few -illusions about other people and none about herself. Whatever she writes -is finished and turned and set in its relation, not to the parsonage, -but to the universe. She is impersonal; she is inscrutable. When the -writer, Jane Austen, wrote down in the most remarkable sketch in the -book a little of Lady Greville's conversation, there is no trace of -anger at the snub which the clergyman's daughter, Jane Austen, once -received. Her gaze passes straight to the mark, and we know precisely -where, upon the map of human nature, that mark is. We know because Jane -Austen kept to her compact; she never trespassed beyond her boundaries. -Never, even at the emotional age of fifteen, did she round upon herself -in shame, obliterate a sarcasm in a spasm of compassion, or blur an -outline in a mist of rhapsody. Spasms and rhapsodies, she seems to have -said, pointing with her stick, end <i>there</i>; and the boundary line is -perfectly distinct. But she does not deny that moons and mountains and -castles exist—on the other side. She has even one romance of her own. -It is for the Queen of Scots. She really admired her very much. "One of -the first characters in the world," she called her, "a bewitching -Princess whose only friend was then the Duke of Norfolk, and whose only -ones now Mr. Whitaker, Mrs. Lefroy, Mrs. Knight and myself." With these -words her passion is neatly circumscribed, and rounded with a laugh. It -is amusing to remember in what terms the young Brontës wrote, not very -much later, in their northern parsonage, about the Duke of Wellington.</p> - -<p>The prim little girl grew up. She became "the prettiest, silliest, most -affected husband-hunting butterfly" Mrs. Mitford ever remembered, and, -incidentally, the authoress of a novel called <i>Pride and Prejudice</i>, -which, written stealthily under cover of a creaking door, lay for many -years unpublished. A little later, it is thought, she began another -story, <i>The Watsons</i>, and being for some reason dissatisfied with it, -left it unfinished. Unfinished and unsuccessful, it may throw more light -upon its writer's genius than the polished masterpiece blazing in -universal fame. Her difficulties are more apparent in it, and the method -she took to overcome them less artfully concealed. To begin with, the -stiffness and the bareness of the first chapters prove that she was one -of those writers who lay their facts out rather baldly in the first -version and then go back and back and back and cover them with flesh and -atmosphere. How it would have been done we cannot say—by what -suppressions and insertions and artful devices. But the miracle would -have been accomplished; the dull history of fourteen years of family -life would have been converted into another of those exquisite and -apparently effortless introductions; and we should never have guessed -what pages of preliminary drudgery Jane Austen forced her pen to go -through. Here we perceive that she was no conjuror after all. Like other -writers, she had to create the atmosphere in which her own peculiar -genius could bear fruit. Here she fumbles; here she keeps us waiting. -Suddenly, she has done it; now things can happen as she likes things to -happen. The Edwards' are going to the ball. The Tomlinsons' carriage is -passing; she can tell us that Charles is "being provided with his gloves -and told to keep them on"; Tom Musgrove retreats to a remote corner with -a barrel of oysters and is famously snug. Her genius is freed and -active. At once our senses quicken; we are possessed with the peculiar -intensity which she alone can impart. But of what is it all composed? Of -a ball in a country town; a few couples meeting and taking hands in an -assembly room; a little eating and drinking; and for catastrophe, a boy -being snubbed by one young lady and kindly treated by another. There is -no tragedy and no heroism. Yet for some reason the little scene is -moving out of all proportion to its surface solemnity. We have been made -to see that if Emma acted so in the ball-room, how considerate, how -tender, inspired by what sincerity of feeling she would have shown -herself in those graver crises of life which, as we watch her, come -inevitably before our eyes. Jane Austen is thus a mistress of much -deeper emotion than appears upon the surface. She stimulates us to -supply what is not there. What she offers is, apparently, a trifle, yet -is composed of something that expands in the reader's mind and endows -with the most enduring form of life scenes which are outwardly trivial. -Always the stress is laid upon character. How, we are made to wonder, -will Emma behave when Lord Osborne and Tom Musgrove make their call at -five minutes before three, just as Mary is bringing in the tray and the -knife-case? It is an extremely awkward situation. The young men are -accustomed to much greater refinement. Emma may prove herself ill-bred, -vulgar, a nonentity. The turns and twists of the dialogue keep us on the -tenterhooks of suspense. Our attention is half upon the present moment, -half upon the future. And when, in the end, Emma behaves in such a way -as to vindicate our highest hopes of her, we are moved as if we had been -made witnesses of a matter of the highest importance. Here, indeed, in -this unfinished and in the main inferior story are all the elements of -Jane Austen's greatness. It has the permanent quality of literature. -Think away the surface animation, the likeness to life, and there -remains to provide a deeper pleasure, an exquisite discrimination of -human values. Dismiss this too from the mind and one can dwell with -extreme satisfaction upon the more abstract art which, in the ball-room -scene, so varies the emotions and proportions the parts that it is -possible to enjoy it, as one enjoys poetry, for itself, and not as a -link which carries the story this way and that.</p> - -<p>But the gossip says of Jane Austen that she was perpendicular, precise, -and taciturn—"a poker of whom everybody is afraid". Of this too there -are traces; she could be merciless enough; she is one of the most -consistent satirists in the whole of literature. Those first angular -chapters of <i>The Watsons</i> prove that hers was not a prolific genius; -she had not, like Emily Brontë, merely to open the door to make herself -felt. Humbly and gaily she collected the twigs and straws out of which -the nest was to be made and placed them neatly together. The twigs and -straws were a little dry and a little dusty in themselves. There was the -big house and the little house; a tea party, a dinner party, and an -occasional picnic; life was hedged in by valuable connections and -adequate incomes; by muddy roads, wet feet, and a tendency on the part -of the ladies to get tired; a little money supported it, a little -consequence, and the education commonly enjoyed by upper middle-class -families living in the country. Vice, adventure, passion were left -outside. But of all this prosiness, of all this littleness, she evades -nothing, and nothing is slurred over. Patiently and precisely she tells -us how they "made no stop anywhere till they reached Newbury, where a -comfortable meal, uniting dinner and supper, wound up the enjoyments and -fatigues of the day". Nor does she pay to conventions merely the tribute -of lip homage; she believes in them besides accepting them. When she is -describing a clergyman, like Edmund Bertram, or a sailor, in particular, -she appears debarred by the sanctity of his office from the free use of -her chief tool, the comic genius, and is apt therefore to lapse into -decorous panegyric or matter-of-fact description. But these are -exceptions; for the most part her attitude recalls the anonymous ladies' -ejaculation—"A wit, a delineator of character, who does not talk is -terrific indeed!" She wishes neither to reform nor to annihilate; she is -silent; and that is terrific indeed. One after another she creates her -fools, her prigs, her worldlings, her Mr. Collins', her Sir Walter -Elliotts, her Mrs. Bennetts. She encircles them with the lash of a -whip-like phrase which, as it runs round them, cuts out their -silhouettes for ever. But there they remain; no excuse is found for them -and no mercy shown them. Nothing remains of Julia and Maria Bertram when -she has done with them; Lady Bertram is left "sitting and calling to Pug -and trying to keep him from the flower beds" eternally. A divine justice -is meted out; Dr. Grant, who begins by liking his goose tender, ends by -bringing on "apoplexy and death, by three great institutionary dinners -in one week". Sometimes it seems as if her creatures were born merely to -give Jane Austen the supreme delight of slicing their heads off. She is -satisfied; she is content; she would not alter a hair on anybody's head, -or move one brick or one blade of grass in a world which provides her -with such exquisite delight.</p> - -<p>Nor, indeed, would we. For even if the pangs of outraged vanity, or the -heat of moral wrath, urged us to improve away a world so full of spite, -pettiness, and folly, the task is beyond our powers. People are like -that—the girl of fifteen knew it; the mature woman proves it. At this -very moment some Lady Bertram finds it almost too trying to keep Pug -from the flower beds; she sends Chapman to help Miss Fanny, a little -late. The discrimination is so perfect, the satire so just that, -consistent though it is, it almost escapes our notice. No touch of -pettiness, no hint of spite, rouses us from our contemplation. Delight -strangely mingles with our amusement. Beauty illumines these fools.</p> - -<p>That elusive quality is indeed often made up of very different parts, -which it needs a peculiar genius to bring together. The wit of Jane -Austen has for partner the perfection of her taste. Her fool is a fool, -her snob is a snob, because he departs from the model of sanity and -sense which she has in mind, and conveys to us unmistakably even while -she makes us laugh. Never did any novelist make more use of an -impeccable sense of human values. It is against the disc of an unerring -heart, an unfailing good taste, an almost stern morality, that she shows -up those deviations from kindness, truth, and sincerity which are among -the most delightful things in English literature. She depicts a Mary -Crawford in her mixture of good and bad entirely by this means. She lets -her rattle on against the clergy, or in favour of a baronetage and ten -thousand a year with all the ease and spirit possible; but now and again -she strikes one note of her own, very quietly, but in perfect tune, and -at once all Mary Crawford's chatter, though it continues to amuse, rings -flat. Hence the depth, the beauty, the complexity of her scenes. From -such contrasts there comes a beauty, a solemnity even which are not only -as remarkable as her wit, but an inseparable part of it. In <i>The -Watsons</i> she gives us a foretaste of this power; she makes us wonder why -an ordinary act of kindness, as she describes it, becomes so full of -meaning. In her masterpieces, the same gift is brought to perfection. -Here is nothing out of the way; it is midday in Northamptonshire; a dull -young man is talking to rather a weakly young woman on the stairs as -they go up to dress for dinner, with housemaids passing. But, from -triviality, from commonplace, their words become suddenly full of -meaning, and the moment for both one of the most memorable in their -lives. It fills itself; it shines; it glows; it hangs before us, deep, -trembling, serene for a second; next, the housemaid passes, and this -drop in which all the happiness of life has collected gently subsides -again to become part of the ebb and flow of ordinary existence.</p> - -<p>What more natural then, with this insight into their profundity, than -that Jane Austen should have chosen to write of the trivialities of day -to day existence, of parties, picnics, and country dances? No -"suggestions to alter her style of writing" from the Prince Regent or -Mr. Clarke could tempt her; no romance, no adventure, no politics or -intrigue could hold a candle to life on a country house staircase as she -saw it. Indeed, the Prince Regent and his librarian had run their heads -against a very formidable obstacle; they were trying to tamper with an -incorruptible conscience, to disturb an infallible discretion. The child -who formed her sentences so finely when she was fifteen never ceased to -form them, and never wrote for the Prince Regent or his Librarian, but -for the world at large. She knew exactly what her powers were, and what -material they were fitted to deal with as material should be dealt with -by a writer, whose standard of finality was high. There were impressions -that lay outside her province; emotions that by no stretch or artifice -could be properly coated and covered by her own resources. For example, -she could not make a girl talk enthusiastically of banners and chapels. -She could not throw herself wholeheartedly into a romantic moment. She -had all sorts of devices for evading scenes of passion. Nature and its -beauties she approached in a sidelong way of her own. She describes a -beautiful night without once mentioning the moon. Nevertheless, as we -read the few formal phrases about "the brilliancy of an unclouded night -and the contrast of the deep shade of the woods" the night is at once as -"solemn, and soothing, and lovely" as she tells us, quite simply, that -it was.</p> - -<p>The balance of her gifts was singularly perfect. Among her finished -novels there are no failures, and among her many chapters few that sink -markedly below the level of the others. But, after all, she died at the -age of forty-two. She died at the height of her powers. She was still -subject to those changes which often make the final period of a writer's -career the most interesting of all. Vivacious, irrepressible, gifted -with an invention of great vitality, there can be no doubt that she -would have written more, had she lived, and it is tempting to consider -whether she would not have written differently. The boundaries were -marked; moons, mountains, and castles lay on the other side. But was she -not sometimes tempted to trespass for a minute? Was she not beginning, -in her own gay and brilliant manner, to contemplate a little voyage of -discovery?</p> - -<p>Let us take <i>Persuasion</i>, the last completed novel, and look by its -light at the books she might have written had she lived. There is a -peculiar beauty and a peculiar dullness in <i>Persuasion</i>. The dullness -is that which so often marks the transition stage between two different -periods. The writer is a little bored. She has grown too familiar with -the ways of her world; she no longer notes them freshly. There is an -asperity in her comedy which suggests that she has almost ceased to be -amused by the vanities of a Sir Walter or the snobbery of a Miss -Elliott. The satire is harsh, and the comedy crude. She is no longer so -freshly aware of the amusements of daily life. Her mind is not -altogether on her object. But, while we feel that Jane Austen has done -this before, and done it better, we also feel that she is trying to do -something which she has never yet attempted. There is a new element in -<i>Persuasion</i>, the quality, perhaps, that made Dr. Whewell fire up and -insist that it was "the most beautiful of her works". She is beginning -to discover that the world is larger, more mysterious, and more romantic -than she had supposed. We feel it to be true of herself when she says of -Anne: "She had been forced into prudence in her youth, she learned -romance as she grew older—the natural sequel of an unnatural -beginning". She dwells frequently upon the beauty and the melancholy of -nature, upon the autumn where she had been wont to dwell upon the -spring. She talks of the "influence so sweet and so sad of autumnal -months in the country". She marks "the tawny leaves and withered -hedges". "One does not love a place the less because one has suffered in -it", she observes. But it is not only in a new sensibility to nature -that we detect the change. Her attitude to life itself is altered. She -is seeing it, for the greater part of the book, through the eyes of a -woman who, unhappy herself, has a special sympathy for the happiness and -unhappiness of others, which, until the very end, she is forced to -comment upon in silence. Therefore the observation is less of facts and -more of feelings than is usual. There is an expressed emotion in the -scene at the concert and in the famous talk about woman's constancy -which proves not merely the biographical fact that Jane Austen had -loved, but the æsthetic fact that she was no longer afraid to say so. -Experience, when it was of a serious kind, had to sink very deep, and to -be thoroughly disinfected by the passage of time, before she allowed -herself to deal with it in fiction. But now, in 1817, she was ready. -Outwardly, too, in her circumstances, a change was imminent. Her fame -had grown very slowly. "I doubt", wrote Mr. Austen Leigh, "whether it -would be possible to mention any other author of note whose personal -obscurity was so complete." Had she lived a few more years only, all -that would have been altered. She would have stayed in London, dined -out, lunched out, met famous people, made new friends, read, travelled, -and carried back to the quiet country cottage a hoard of observations to -feast upon at leisure.</p> - -<p>And what effect would all this have had upon the six novels that Jane -Austen did not write? She would not have written of crime, of passion, -or of adventure. She would not have been rushed by the importunity of -publishers or the flattery of friends into slovenliness or insincerity. -But she would have known more. Her sense of security would have been -shaken. Her comedy would have suffered. She would have trusted less -(this is already perceptible in <i>Persuasion</i>) to dialogue and more to -reflection to give us a knowledge of her characters. Those marvellous -little speeches which sum up, in a few minutes' chatter, all that we -need in order to know an Admiral Croft or a Mrs. Musgrove for ever, that -shorthand, hit-or-miss method which contains chapters of analysis and -psychology, would have become too crude to hold all that she now -perceived of the complexity of human nature. She would have devised a -method, clear and composed as ever, but deeper and more suggestive, for -conveying not only what people say, but what they leave unsaid; not only -what they are, but what life is. She would have stood farther away from -her characters, and seen them more as a group, less as individuals. Her -satire, while it played less incessantly, would have been more stringent -and severe. She would have been the forerunner of Henry James and of -Proust—but enough. Vain are these speculations: the most perfect -artist among women, the writer whose books are immortal, died "just as she -was beginning to feel confidence in her own success".</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_9_1" id="Footnote_9_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_9_1"><span class="label">[9]</span></a><i>Love and Friendship</i>, Chatto and Windus.</p></div> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="Modern_Fiction"><i>Modern Fiction</i></a></h4> - - -<p>In making any survey, even the freest and loosest, of modern fiction it -is difficult not to take it for granted that the modern practice of the -art is somehow an improvement upon the old. With their simple tools and -primitive materials, it might be said. Fielding did well and Jane Austen -even better, but compare their opportunities with ours! Their -masterpieces certainly have a strange air of simplicity. And yet the -analogy between literature and the process, to choose an example, of -making motor cars scarcely holds good beyond the first glance. It is -doubtful whether in the course of the centuries, though we have learnt -much about making machines, we have learnt anything about making -literature. We do not come to write better; all that we can be said to -do is to keep moving, now a little in this direction, now in that, but -with a circular tendency should the whole course of the track be viewed -from a sufficiently lofty pinnacle. It need scarcely be said that we -make no claim to stand, even momentarily, upon that vantage ground. On -the flat, in the crowd, half blind with dust, we look back with envy to -those happier warriors, whose battle is won and whose achievements wear -so serene an air of accomplishment that we can scarcely refrain from -whispering that the fight was not so fierce for them as for us. It is -for the historian of literature to decide; for him to say if we are now -beginning or ending or standing in the middle of a great period of prose -fiction, for down in the plain little is visible. We only know that -certain gratitudes and hostilities inspire us; that certain paths seem -to lead to fertile land, others to the dust and the desert; and of this -perhaps it may be worth while to attempt some account.</p> - -<p>Our quarrel, then, is not with the classics, and if we speak of -quarrelling with Mr. Wells, Mr. Bennett, and Mr. Galsworthy it is partly -that by the mere fact of their existence in the flesh their work has a -living, breathing, every day imperfection which bids us take what -liberties with it we choose. But it is also true that, while we thank -them for a thousand gifts, we reserve our unconditional gratitude for -Mr. Hardy, for Mr. Conrad, and in a much lesser degree for the Mr. -Hudson, of <i>The Purple Land, Green Mansions</i>, and <i>Far Away and Long -Ago</i>. Mr. Wells, Mr. Bennett, and Mr. Galsworthy have excited so many -hopes and disappointed them so persistently that our gratitude largely -takes the form of thanking them for having shown us what they might have -done but have not done; what we certainly could not do, but as -certainly, perhaps, do not wish to do. No single phrase will sum up the -charge or grievance which we have to bring against a mass of work so -large in its volume and embodying so many qualities, both admirable and -the reverse. If we tried to formulate our meaning in one word we should -say that these three writers are materialists. It is because they are -concerned not with the spirit but with the body that they have -disappointed us, and left us with the feeling that the sooner English -fiction turns its back upon them, as politely as may be, and marches, if -only into the desert, the better for its soul. Naturally, no single word -reaches the centre of three separate targets. In the case of Mr. Wells -it falls notably wide of the mark. And yet even with him it indicates to -our thinking the fatal alloy in his genius, the great clod of clay that -has got itself mixed up with the purity of his inspiration. But Mr. -Bennett is perhaps the worst culprit of the three, inasmuch as he is by -far the best workman. He can make a book so well constructed and solid -in its craftsmanship that it is difficult for the most exacting of -critics to see through what chink or crevice decay can creep in. There -is not so much as a draught between the frames of the windows, or a crack -in the boards. And yet—if life should refuse to live there? That -is a risk which the creator of <i>The Old Wives' Tale</i>, George Cannon, -Edwin Clayhanger, and hosts of other figures, may well claim to have -surmounted. His characters live abundantly, even unexpectedly, but it -remains to ask how do they live, and what do they live for? More and -more they seem to us, deserting even the well-built villa in the Five -Towns, to spend their time in some softly padded first-class railway -carriage, pressing bells and buttons innumerable; and the destiny to -which they travel so luxuriously becomes more and more unquestionably an -eternity of bliss spent in the very best hotel in Brighton. It can -scarcely be said of Mr. Wells that he is a materialist in the sense that -he takes too much delight in the solidity of his fabric. His mind is too -generous in its sympathies to allow him to spend much time in making -things shipshape and substantial. He is a materialist from sheer -goodness of heart, taking upon his shoulders the work that ought to have -been discharged by Government officials, and in the plethora of his -ideas and facts scarcely having leisure to realise, or forgetting to -think important, the crudity and coarseness of his human beings. Yet -what more damaging criticism can there be both of his earth and of his -Heaven than that they are to be inhabited here and hereafter by his -Joans and his Peters? Does not the inferiority of their natures tarnish -whatever institutions and ideals may be provided for them by the -generosity of their creator? Nor, profoundly though we respect the -integrity and humanity of Mr. Galsworthy, shall we find what we seek in -his pages.</p> - -<p>If we fasten, then, one label on all these books, on which is one word -materialists, we mean by it that they write of unimportant things; that -they spend immense skill and immense industry making the trivial and the -transitory appear the true and the enduring.</p> - -<p>We have to admit that we are exacting, and, further, that we find it -difficult to justify our discontent by explaining what it is that we -exact. We frame our question differently at different times. But it -reappears most persistently as we drop the finished novel on the crest -of a sigh—Is it worth while? What is the point of it all? Can it be -that owing to one of those little deviations which the human spirit -seems to make from time to time Mr. Bennett has come down with his -magnificent apparatus for catching life just an inch or two on the wrong -side? Life escapes; and perhaps without life nothing else is worth -while. It is a confession of vagueness to have to make use of such a -figure as this, but we scarcely better the matter by speaking, as -critics are prone to do, of reality. Admitting the vagueness which -afflicts all criticism of novels, let us hazard the opinion that for us -at this moment the form of fiction most in vogue more often misses than -secures the thing we seek. Whether we call it life or spirit, truth or -reality, this, the essential thing, has moved off, or on, and refuses to -be contained any longer in such ill-fitting vestments as we provide. -Nevertheless, we go on perseveringly, conscientiously, constructing our -two and thirty chapters after a design which more and more ceases to -resemble the vision in our minds. So much of the enormous labour of -proving the solidity, the likeness to life, of the story is not merely -labour thrown away but labour misplaced to the extent of obscuring and -blotting out the light of the conception. The writer seems constrained, -not by his own free will but by some powerful and unscrupulous tyrant -who has him in thrall to provide a plot, to provide comedy, tragedy, -love, interest, and an air of probability embalming the whole so -impeccable that if all his figures were to come to life they would find -themselves dressed down to the last button of their coats in the fashion -of the hour. The tyrant is obeyed; the novel is done to a turn. But -sometimes, more and more often as time goes by, we suspect a momentary -doubt, a spasm of rebellion, as the pages fill themselves in the -customary way. Is life like this? Must novels be like this?</p> - -<p>Look within and life, it seems, is very far from being "like this". -Examine for a moment an ordinary mind on an ordinary day. The mind -receives a myriad impressions—trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or -engraved with the sharpness of steel. From all sides they come, an -incessant shower of innumerable atoms; and as they fall, as they shape -themselves into the life of Monday or Tuesday, the accent falls -differently from of old; the moment of importance came not here but -there; so that if a writer were a free man and not a slave, if he could -write what he chose, not what he must, if he could base his work upon -his own feeling and not upon convention, there would be no plot, no -comedy, no tragedy, no love interest or catastrophe in the accepted -style, and perhaps not a single button sewn on as the Bond Street -tailors would have it. Life is not a series of gig lamps symmetrically -arranged; but a luminous halo, a semi-transparent envelope surrounding -us from the beginning of consciousness to the end. Is it not the task of -the novelist to convey this varying, this unknown and uncircumscribed -spirit, whatever aberration or complexity it may display, with as little -mixture of the alien and external as possible? We are not pleading -merely for courage and sincerity; we are suggesting that the proper -stuff of fiction is a little other than custom would have us believe -it.</p> - -<p>It is, at any rate, in some such fashion as this that we seek to -define the quality which distinguishes the work of several young -writers, among whom Mr. James Joyce is the most notable, from that of -their predecessors. They attempt to come closer to life, and to preserve -more sincerely and exactly what interests and moves them, even if to do -so they must discard most of the conventions which are commonly observed -by the novelist. Let us record the atoms as they fall upon the mind in -the order in which they fall, let us trace the pattern, however -disconnected and incoherent in appearance, which each sight or incident -scores upon the consciousness. Let us not take it for granted that life -exists more fully in what is commonly thought big than in what is -commonly thought small. Any one who has read <i>The Portrait of the -Artist as a Young Man</i> or, what promises to be a far more interesting -work, <i>Ulysses</i>,<a name="FNanchor_10_1" id="FNanchor_10_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_10_1" class="fnanchor">[10]</a> now appearing in the -<i>Little Review</i>, will have hazarded some theory of this nature as -to Mr. Joyce's intention. On our part, with such a fragment before us, -it is hazarded rather than affirmed; but whatever the intention of the -whole there can be no question but that it is of the utmost sincerity -and that the result, difficult or unpleasant as we may judge it, is -undeniably important. In contrast with those whom we have called -materialists Mr. Joyce is spiritual; he is concerned at all costs to -reveal the flickerings of that innermost flame which flashes its -messages through the brain, and in order to preserve it he disregards -with complete courage whatever seems to him adventitious, whether it be -probability, or coherence or any other of these signposts which for -generations have served to support the imagination of a reader when -called upon to imagine what he can neither touch nor see. The scene in -the cemetery, for instance, with its brilliancy, its sordidity, its -incoherence, its sudden lightning flashes of significance, does -undoubtedly come so close to the quick of the mind that, on a first -reading at any rate, it is difficult not to acclaim a masterpiece. If we -want life itself here, surely we have it. Indeed, we find ourselves -fumbling rather awkwardly if we try to say what else we wish, and for -what reason a work of such originality yet fails to compare, -for we must take high examples, with <i>Youth</i> or <i>The Mayor of -Casterbridge</i>. It fails because of the comparative poverty of the -writer's mind, we might say simply and have done with it. But it is -possible to press a little further and wonder whether we may not refer -our sense of being in a bright yet narrow room, confined and shut in, -rather than enlarged and set free, to some limitation imposed by the -method as well as by the mind. Is it the method that inhibits the -creative power? Is it due to the method that we feel neither jovial nor -magnanimous, but centred in a self which, in spite of its tremor of -susceptibility, never embraces or creates what is outside itself and -beyond? Does the emphasis laid, perhaps didactically, upon indecency, -contribute to the effect of something angular and isolated? Or is it -merely that in any effort of such originality it is much easier, for -contemporaries especially, to feel what it lacks than to name what it -gives? In any case it is a mistake to stand outside examining "methods". -Any method is right, every method is right, that expresses what we wish -to express, if we are writers; that brings us closer to the novelist's -intention if we are readers. This method has the merit of bringing us -closer to what we were prepared to call life itself; did not the reading -of <i>Ulysses</i> suggest how much of life is excluded or ignored, and -did it not come with a shock to open <i>Tristram Shandy</i> or even -<i>Pendennis</i> and be by them convinced that there are not only other -aspects of life, but more important ones into the bargain.</p> - -<p>However this may be, the problem before the novelist at present, as we -suppose it to have been in the past, is to contrive means of being free -to set down what he chooses. He has to have the courage to say that what -interests him is no longer "this" but "that": out of "that" alone must -he construct his work. For the moderns "that", the point of interest, -lies very likely in the dark places of psychology. At once, therefore, -the accent falls a little differently; the emphasis is upon something -hitherto ignored; at once a different outline of form becomes necessary, -difficult for us to grasp, incomprehensible to our predecessors. No one -but a modern, perhaps no one but a Russian, would have felt the interest -of the situation which Tchekov has made into the short story which he -calls "Gusev". Some Russian soldiers lie ill on board a ship which is -taking them back to Russia. We are given a few scraps of their talk and -some of their thoughts; then one of them dies and is carried away; the -talk goes on among the others for a time, until Gusev himself dies, and -looking "like a carrot or a radish" is thrown overboard. The emphasis is -laid upon such unexpected places that at first it seems as if there were -no emphasis at all; and then, as the eyes accustom themselves to -twilight and discern the shapes of things in a room we see how complete -the story is, how profound, and how truly in obedience to his vision -Tchekov has chosen this, that, and the other, and placed them together -to compose something new. But it is impossible to say "this is comic", -or "that is tragic", nor are we certain, since short stories, we have -been taught, should be brief and conclusive, whether this, which is -vague and inconclusive, should be called a short story at all.</p> - -<p>The most elementary remarks upon modern English fiction can hardly avoid -some mention of the Russian influence, and if the Russians are mentioned -one runs the risk of feeling that to write of any fiction save theirs is -waste of time. If we want understanding of the soul and heart where else -shall we find it of comparable profundity? If we are sick of our own -materialism the least considerable of their novelists has by right of -birth a natural reverence for the human spirit. "Learn to make yourself -akin to people. . . . But let this sympathy be not with the mind—for -it is easy with the mind—but with the heart, with love towards them." -In every great Russian writer we seem to discern the features of a saint, -if sympathy for the sufferings of others, love towards them, endeavour -to reach some goal worthy of the most exacting demands of the spirit -constitute saintliness. It is the saint in them which confounds us with -a feeling of our own irreligious triviality, and turns so many of our -famous novels to tinsel and trickery. The conclusions of the Russian -mind, thus comprehensive and compassionate, are inevitably, perhaps, of -the utmost sadness. More accurately indeed we might speak of the -inconclusiveness of the Russian mind. It is the sense that there is no -answer, that if honestly examined life presents question after question -which must be left to sound on and on after the story is over in -hopeless interrogation that fills us with a deep, and finally it may be -with a resentful, despair. They are right perhaps; unquestionably they -see further than we do and without our gross impediments of vision. But -perhaps we see something that escapes them, or why should this voice of -protest mix itself with our gloom? The voice of protest is the voice of -another and an ancient civilisation which seems to have bred in us the -instinct to enjoy and fight rather than to suffer and understand. -English fiction from Sterne to Meredith bears witness to our natural -delight in humour and comedy, in the beauty of earth, in the activities -of the intellect, and in the splendour of the body. But any deductions -that we may draw from the comparison of two fictions so immeasurably far -apart are futile save indeed as they flood us with a view of the -infinite possibilities of the art and remind us that there is no limit -to the horizon, and that nothing—no "method", no experiment, even of -the wildest—is forbidden, but only falsity and pretence. "The proper -stuff of fiction" does not exist; everything is the proper stuff of -fiction, every feeling, every thought; every quality of brain and spirit -is drawn upon; no perception comes amiss. And if we can imagine the art -of fiction come alive and standing in our midst, she would undoubtedly -bid us break her and bully her, as well as honour and love her, for so -her youth is renewed and her sovereignty assured.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_10_1" id="Footnote_10_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_10_1"><span class="label">[10]</span></a>Written April 1919.</p></div> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="Jane_Eyre"><i>Jane Eyre and<br /> -Wuthering Heights</i></a><a name="FNanchor_11_1" id="FNanchor_11_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_11_1" class="fnanchor">[11]</a></h4> - - -<p>Of the hundred years that have passed since Charlotte Brontë was born, -she, the centre now of so much legend, devotion, and literature, lived -but thirty-nine. It is strange to reflect how different those legends -might have been had her life reached the ordinary human span. She might -have become, like some of her famous contemporaries, a figure familiarly -met with in London and elsewhere, the subject of pictures and anecdotes -innumerable, the writer of many novels, of memoirs possibly, removed -from us well within the memory of the middle-aged in all the splendour -of established fame. She might have been wealthy, she might have been -prosperous. But it is not so. When we think of her we have to imagine -some one who had no lot in our modern world; we have to cast our minds -back to the 'fifties of the last century, to a remote parsonage upon the -wild Yorkshire moors. In that parsonage, and on those moors, unhappy and -lonely, in her poverty and her exaltation, she remains for ever.</p> - -<p>These circumstances, as they affected her character, may have left their -traces on her work. A novelist, we reflect, is bound to build up his -structure with much very perishable material which begins by lending it -reality and ends by cumbering it with rubbish. As we open <i>Jane Eyre</i> -once more we cannot stifle the suspicion that we shall find her world of -imagination as antiquated, mid-Victorian, and out of date as the -parsonage on the moor, a place only to be visited by the curious, only -preserved by the pious. So we open <i>Jane Eyre</i>; and in two pages every -doubt is swept clean from our minds.</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>Folds of scarlet drapery shut in my view to the right hand; to the left -were the clear panes of glass, protecting, but not separating me from -the drear November day. At intervals, while turning over the leaves of -my book, I studied the aspect of that winter afternoon. Afar, it offered -a pale blank of mist and cloud; near, a scene of wet lawn and storm-beat -shrub, with ceaseless rain sweeping away wildly before a long and -lamentable blast.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>There is nothing there more perishable than the moor itself, or more -subject to the sway of fashion than the "long and lamentable blast". Nor -is this exhilaration short-lived. It rushes us through the entire -volume, without giving us time to think, without letting us lift our -eyes from the page. So intense is our absorption that if some one moves -in the room the movement seems to take place not there but up in -Yorkshire. The writer has us by the hand, forces us along her road, -makes us see what she sees, never leaves us for a moment or allows us to -forget her.<a name="FNanchor_12_1" id="FNanchor_12_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_12_1" class="fnanchor">[12]</a> At the end we are steeped through and through with the -genius, the vehemence, the indignation of Charlotte Brontë. Remarkable -faces, figures of strong outline and gnarled feature have flashed upon -us in passing; but it is through her eyes that we have seen them. Once -she is gone, we seek for them in vain. Think of Rochester and we have to -think of Jane Eyre. Think of the moor, and again, there is Jane Eyre. -Think of the drawing-room, even, those "white carpets on which seemed -laid brilliant garlands of flowers", that "pale Parian mantelpiece" with -its Bohemia glass of "ruby red" and the "general blending of snow and -fire"—what is all that except Jane Eyre?</p> - -<p>The drawbacks of being Jane Eyre are not far to seek. Always to be a -governess and always to be in love is a serious limitation in a world -which is full, after all, of people who are neither one nor the other. -The characters of a Jane Austen or of a Tolstoi have a million facets -compared with these. They live and are complex by means of their effect -upon many different people who serve to mirror them in the round. They -move hither and thither whether their creators watch them or not, and -the world in which they live seems to us an independent world which we -can visit, now that they have created it, by ourselves. Thomas Hardy is -more akin to Charlotte Brontë in the power of his personality and the -narrowness of his vision. But the differences are vast. As we read <i>Jude -the Obscure</i> we are not rushed to a finish; we brood and ponder and -drift away from the text in plethoric trains of thought which build up -round the characters an atmosphere of question and suggestion of which -they are themselves, as often as not, unconscious. Simple peasants as -they are, we are forced to confront them with destinies and questionings -of the hugest import, so that often it seems as if the most important -characters in a Hardy novel are those which have no names. Of this -power, of this speculative curiosity, Charlotte Brontë has no trace. -She does not attempt to solve the problems of human life; she is even -unaware that such problems exist; all her force, and it is the more -tremendous for being constricted, goes into the assertion, "I love", "I -hate", "I suffer".</p> - -<p>For the self-centred and self-limited writers have a power denied the -more catholic and broad-minded. Their impressions are close packed and -strongly stamped between their narrow walls. Nothing issues from their -minds which has not been marked with their own impress. They learn -little from other writers, and what they adopt they cannot assimilate. -Both Hardy and Charlotte Brontë appear to have founded their styles -upon a stiff and decorous journalism. The staple of their prose is -awkward and unyielding. But both with labour and the most obstinate -integrity by thinking every thought until it has subdued words to -itself, have forged for themselves a prose which takes the mould of -their minds entire; which has, into the bargain, a beauty, a power, a -swiftness of its own. Charlotte Brontë, at least, owed nothing to the -reading of many books. She never learnt the smoothness of the -professional writer, or acquired his ability to stuff and sway his -language as he chooses. "I could never rest in communication with -strong, discreet, and refined minds, whether male or female," she -writes, as any leader-writer in a provincial journal might have written; -but gathering fire and speed goes on in her own authentic voice "till I -had passed the outworks of conventional reserve and crossed the -threshold of confidence, and won a place by their hearts' very -hearthstone". It is there that she takes her seat; it is the red and -fitful glow of the heart's fire which illumines her page. In other -words, we read Charlotte Brontë not for exquisite observation of -character—her characters are vigorous and elementary; not for -comedy—hers is grim and crude; not for a philosophic view of -life—hers is that of a country parson's daughter; but for her poetry. -Probably that is so with all writers who have, as she has, an overpowering -personality, who, as we should say in real life, have only to open the -door to make themselves felt. There is in them some untamed ferocity -perpetually at war with the accepted order of things which makes them -desire to create instantly rather than to observe patiently. This very -ardour, rejecting half shades and other minor impediments, wings its way -past the daily conduct of ordinary people and allies itself with their -more inarticulate passions. It makes them poets, or, if they choose to -write in prose, intolerant of its restrictions. Hence it is that both -Emily and Charlotte are always invoking the help of nature. They both -feel the need of some more powerful symbol of the vast and slumbering -passions in human nature than words or actions can convey. It is with a -description of a storm that Charlotte ends her finest novel -<i>Villette</i>. "The skies hang full and dark—a wrack sails from the -west; the clouds cast themselves into strange forms." So she calls in -nature to describe a state of mind which could not otherwise be expressed. -But neither of the sisters observed nature accurately as Dorothy Wordsworth -observed it, or painted it minutely as Tennyson painted it. They seized -those aspects of the earth which were most akin to what they themselves -felt or imputed to their characters, and so their storms, their moors, -their lovely spaces of summer weather are not ornaments applied to decorate -a dull page or display the writer's powers of observation—they carry -on the emotion and light up the meaning of the book.</p> - -<p>The meaning of a book, which lies so often apart from what happens and -what is said and consists rather in some connection which things in -themselves different have had for the writer, is necessarily hard to -grasp. Especially this is so when, like the Brontës, the writer is -poetic, and his meaning inseparable from his language, and itself rather -a mood than a particular observation. <i>Wuthering Heights</i> is a more -difficult book to understand than <i>Jane Eyre</i>, because Emily was a -greater poet than Charlotte. When Charlotte wrote she said with -eloquence and splendour and passion "I love", "I hate", "I suffer". Her -experience, though more intense, is on a level with our own. But there -is no "I" in <i>Wuthering Heights</i>. There are no governesses. There are -no employers. There is love, but it is not the love of men and women. Emily -was inspired by some more general conception. The impulse which urged -her to create was not her own suffering or her own injuries. She looked -out upon a world cleft into gigantic disorder and felt within her the -power to unite it in a book. That gigantic ambition is to be felt -throughout the novel—a struggle, half thwarted but of superb -conviction, to say something through the mouths of her characters which -is not merely "I love" or "I hate", but "we, the whole human race" and -"you, the eternal powers . . ." the sentence remains unfinished. It is -not strange that it should be so; rather it is astonishing that she can -make us feel what she had it in her to say at all. It surges up in the -half-articulate words of Catherine Earnshaw, "If all else perished and -<i>he</i> remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained -and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger; I -should not seem part of it". It breaks out again in the presence of the -dead. "I see a repose that neither earth nor hell can break, and I feel -an assurance of the endless and shadowless hereafter—the eternity -they have entered—where life is boundless in its duration, and love -in its sympathy and joy in its fulness." It is this suggestion of power -underlying the apparitions of human nature, and lifting them up into the -presence of greatness that gives the book its huge stature among other -novels. But it was not enough for Emily Brontë to write a few lyrics, -to utter a cry, to express a creed. In her poems she did this once and -for all, and her poems will perhaps outlast her novel. But she was -novelist as well as poet. She must take upon herself a more laborious -and a more ungrateful task. She must face the fact of other existences, -grapple with the mechanism of external things, build up, in recognisable -shape, farms and houses and report the speeches of men and women who -existed independently of herself. And so we reach these summits of -emotion not by rant or rhapsody but by hearing a girl sing old songs to -herself as she rocks in the branches of a tree; by watching the moor -sheep crop the turf; by listening to the soft wind breathing through the -grass. The life at the farm with all its absurdities and its -improbability is laid open to us. We are given every opportunity of -comparing <i>Wuthering Heights</i> with a real farm and Heathcliff with a -real man. How, we are allowed to ask, can there be truth or insight or -the finer shades of emotion in men and women who so little resemble what -we have seen ourselves? But even as we ask it we see in Heathcliff the -brother that a sister of genius might have seen; he is impossible we -say, but nevertheless no boy in literature has so vivid an existence as -his. So it is with the two Catherines; never could women feel as they do -or act in their manner, we say. All the same, they are the most lovable -women in English fiction. It is as if she could tear up all that we know -human beings by, and fill these unrecognisable transparences with such a -gust of life that they transcend reality. Hers, then, is the rarest of -all powers. She could free life from its dependence on facts; with a few -touches indicate the spirit of a face so that it needs no body; by -speaking of the moor make the wind blow and the thunder roar.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_11_1" id="Footnote_11_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_11_1"><span class="label">[11]</span></a>Written in 1916.</p></div> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_12_1" id="Footnote_12_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_12_1"><span class="label">[12]</span></a>Charlotte and Emily Brontë had much the same sense of -colour. ". . . we saw—ah! it was beautiful—a splendid place -carpeted with crimson, and crimson-covered chairs and tables, and a pure -white ceiling bordered by gold, a shower of glass drops hanging in silver -chains from the centre, and shimmering with little soft tapers" -(<i>Wuthering Heights</i>). Yet it was merely a very pretty drawing-room, -and within it a boudoir, both spread with white carpets, on which seemed -laid brilliant garlands of flowers; both ceiled with snowy mouldings of -white grapes and vine leaves, beneath which glowed in rich contrast -crimson couches and ottomans; while the ornaments on the pale Parian -mantelpiece were of sparkling Bohemia glass, ruby red; and between the -windows large mirrors repeated the general blending of snow and -fire.</p></div> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="George_Eliot"><i>George Eliot</i></a></h4> - - -<p>To read George Eliot attentively is to become aware how little one knows -about her. It is also to become aware of the credulity, not very -creditable to one's insight, with which, half consciously and partly -maliciously, one had accepted the late Victorian version of a deluded -woman who held phantom sway over subjects even more deluded than -herself. At what moment, and by what means her spell was broken it is -difficult to ascertain. Some people attribute it to the publication of -her <i>Life</i>. Perhaps George Meredith, with his phrase about the -"mercurial little showman" and the "errant woman" on the daïs, gave -point and poison to the arrows of thousands incapable of aiming them so -accurately, but delighted to let fly. She became one of the butts for -youth to laugh at, the convenient symbol of a group of serious people -who were all guilty of the same idolatry and could be dismissed with the -same scorn. Lord Acton had said that she was greater than Dante; Herbert -Spencer exempted her novels, as if they were not novels, when he banned -all fiction from the London Library. She was the pride and paragon of -her sex. Moreover, her private record was not more alluring than her -public. Asked to describe an afternoon at the Priory, the story-teller -always intimated that the memory of those serious Sunday afternoons had -come to tickle his sense of humour. He had been so much alarmed by the -grave lady in her low chair; he had been so anxious to say the -intelligent thing. Certainly, the talk had been very serious, as a note -in the fine clear hand of the great novelist bore witness. It was dated -on the Monday morning, and she accused herself of having spoken without -due forethought of Marivaux when she meant another; but no doubt, she -said, her listener had already supplied the correction. Still, the -memory of talking about Marivaux to George Eliot on a Sunday afternoon -was not a romantic memory. It had faded with the passage of the years. -It had not become picturesque.</p> - -<p>Indeed, one cannot escape the conviction that the long, heavy face with -its expression of serious and sullen and almost equine power has stamped -itself depressingly upon the minds of people who remember George Eliot, -so that it looks out upon them from her pages. Mr. Gosse has lately -described her as he saw her driving through London in a victoria—</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>a large, thick-set sybil, dreamy and immobile, whose massive features, -somewhat grim when seen in profile, were incongruously bordered by a -hat, always in the height of Paris fashion, which in those days commonly -included an immense ostrich feather.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>Lady Ritchie, with equal skill, has left a more intimate indoor -portrait:</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>She sat by the fire in a beautiful black satin gown, with a green shaded -lamp on the table beside her, where I saw German books lying and -pamphlets and ivory paper-cutters. She was very quiet and noble, with -two steady little eyes and a sweet voice. As I looked I felt her to be a -friend, not exactly a personal friend, but a good and benevolent -impulse.</p></blockquote> - - -<p>A scrap of her talk is preserved. "We ought to respect our influence," -she said. "We know by our own experience how very much others affect our -lives, and we must remember that we in turn must have the same effect -upon others." Jealously treasured, committed to memory, one can imagine -recalling the scene, repeating the words, thirty years later and -suddenly, for the first time, bursting into laughter.</p> - -<p>In all these records one feels that the recorder, even when he was in -the actual presence, kept his distance and kept his head, and never read -the novels in later years with the light of a vivid, or puzzling, or -beautiful personality dazzling in his eyes. In fiction, where so much of -personality is revealed, the absence of charm is a great lack; and her -critics, who have been, of course, mostly of the opposite sex, have -resented, half consciously perhaps, her deficiency in a quality which is -held to be supremely desirable in women. George Eliot was not charming; -she was not strongly feminine; she had none of those eccentricities and -inequalities of temper which give to so many artists the endearing -simplicity of children. One feels that to most people, as to Lady -Ritchie, she was "not exactly a personal friend, but a good and -benevolent impulse". But if we consider these portraits more closely we -shall find that they are all the portraits of an elderly celebrated -woman, dressed in black satin, driving in her victoria, a woman who has -been through her struggle and issued from it with a profound desire to -be of use to others, but with no wish for intimacy, save with the little -circle who had known her in the days of her youth. We know very little -about the days of her youth; but we do know that the culture, the -philosophy, the fame, and the influence were all built upon a very -humble foundation—she was the grand-daughter of a carpenter.</p> - -<p>The first volume of her life is a singularly depressing record. In it we -see her raising herself with groans and struggles from the intolerable -boredom of petty provincial society (her father had risen in the world -and become more middle class, but less picturesque) to be the assistant -editor of a highly intellectual London review, and the esteemed -companion of Herbert Spencer. The stages are painful as she reveals them -in the sad soliloquy in which Mr. Cross condemned her to tell the story -of her life. Marked in early youth as one "sure to get something up very -soon in the way of a clothing club", she proceeded to raise funds for -restoring a church by making a chart of ecclesiastical history; and that -was followed by a loss of faith which so disturbed her father that he -refused to live with her. Next came the struggle with the translation of -Strauss, which, dismal and "soul-stupefying" in itself, can scarcely -have been made less so by the usual feminine tasks of ordering a -household and nursing a dying father, and the distressing conviction, to -one so dependent upon affection, that by becoming a blue-stocking she -was forfeiting her brother's respect. "I used to go about like an owl," -she said, "to the great disgust of my brother." "Poor thing," wrote a -friend who saw her toiling through Strauss with a statue of the risen -Christ in front of her, "I do pity her sometimes, with her pale sickly -face and dreadful headaches, and anxiety, too, about her father." Yet, -though we cannot read the story without a strong desire that the stages -of her pilgrimage might have been made, if not more easy, at least more -beautiful, there is a dogged determination in her advance upon the -citadel of culture which raises it above our pity. Her development was -very slow and very awkward, but it had the irresistible impetus behind -it of a deep-seated and noble ambition. Every obstacle at length was -thrust from her path. She knew every one. She read everything. Her -astonishing intellectual vitality had triumphed. Youth was over, but -youth had been full of suffering. Then, at the age of thirty-five, at -the height of her powers, and in the fullness of her freedom, she made -the decision which was of such profound moment to her and still matters -even to us, and went to Weimar, alone with George Henry Lewes.</p> - -<p>The books which followed so soon after her union testify in the fullest -manner to the great liberation which had come to her with personal -happiness. In themselves they provide us with a plentiful feast. Yet at -the threshold of her literary career one may find in some of the -circumstances of her life influences that turned her mind to the past, -to the country village, to the quiet and beauty and simplicity of -childish memories and away from herself and the present. We understand -how it was that her first book was <i>Scenes of Clerical Life</i>, and not -<i>Middlemarch</i>. Her union with Lewes had surrounded her with affection, -but in view of the circumstances and of the conventions it had also -isolated her. "I wish it to be understood," she wrote in 1857, "that I -should never invite any one to come and see me who did not ask for the -invitation." She had been "cut off from what is called the world", she -said later, but she did not regret it. By becoming thus marked, first by -circumstances and later, inevitably, by her fame, she lost the power to -move on equal terms unnoted among her kind; and the loss for a novelist -was serious. Still, basking in the light and sunshine of <i>Scenes of -Clerical Life</i>, feeling the large mature mind spreading itself with a -luxurious sense of freedom in the world of her "remotest past", to speak -of loss seems inappropriate. Everything to such a mind was gain. All -experience filtered down through layer after layer of perception and -reflection, enriching and nourishing. The utmost we can say, in -qualifying her attitude towards fiction by what little we know of her -life, is that she had taken to heart certain lessons not usually learnt -early, if learnt at all, among which, perhaps, the most branded upon her -was the melancholy virtue of tolerance; her sympathies are with the -everyday lot, and play most happily in dwelling upon the homespun of -ordinary joys and sorrows. She has none of that romantic intensity which -is connected with a sense of one's own individuality, unsated and -unsubdued, cutting its shape sharply upon the background of the world. -What were the loves and sorrows of a snuffy old clergyman, dreaming over -his whisky, to the fiery egotism of Jane Eyre? The beauty of those first -books. <i>Scenes of Clerical Life, Adam Bede, The Mill on the Floss</i>, is -very great. It is impossible to estimate the merit of the Poysers, the -Dodsons, the Gilfils, the Bartons, and the rest with all their -surroundings and dependencies, because they have put on flesh and blood -and we move among them, now bored, now sympathetic, but always with that -unquestioning acceptance of all that they say and do, which we accord to -the great originals only. The flood of memory and humour which she pours -so spontaneously into one figure, one scene after another, until the -whole fabric of ancient rural England is revived, has so much in common -with a natural process that it leaves us with little consciousness that -there is anything to criticise. We accept; we feel the delicious warmth -and release of spirit which the great creative writers alone procure for -us. As one comes back to the books after years of absence they pour out, -even against our expectation, the same store of energy and heat, so that -we want more than anything to idle in the warmth as in the sun beating -down from the red orchard wall. If there is an element of unthinking -abandonment in thus submitting to the humours of Midland farmers and -their wives, that, too, is right in the circumstances. We scarcely wish -to analyse what we feel to be so large and deeply human. And when we -consider how distant in time the world of Shepperton and Hayslope is, -and how remote the minds of farmer and agricultural labourers from those -of most of George Eliot's readers, we can only attribute the ease and -pleasure with which we ramble from house to smithy, from cottage parlour -to rectory garden, to the fact that George Eliot makes us share their -lives, not in a spirit of condescension or of curiosity, but in a spirit -of sympathy. She is no satirist. The movement of her mind was too slow -and cumbersome to lend itself to comedy. But she gathers in her large -grasp a great bunch of the main elements of human nature and groups them -loosely together with a tolerant and wholesome understanding which, as -one finds upon re-reading, has not only kept her figures fresh and free, -but has given them an unexpected hold upon our laughter and tears. There -is the famous Mrs. Poyser. It would have been easy to work her -idiosyncrasies to death, and, as it is, perhaps, George Eliot gets her -laugh in the same place a little too often. But memory, after the book -is shut, brings out, as sometimes in real life, the details and -subtleties which some more salient characteristic has prevented us from -noticing at the time. We recollect that her health was not good. There -were occasions upon which she said nothing at all. She was patience -itself with a sick child. She doted upon Totty. Thus one can muse and -speculate about the greater number of George Eliot's characters and -find, even in the least important, a roominess and margin where those -qualities lurk which she has no call to bring from their obscurity.</p> - -<p>But in the midst of all this tolerance and sympathy there are, even in -the early books, moments of greater stress. Her humour has shown itself -broad enough to cover a wide range of fools and failures, mothers and -children, dogs and flourishing midland fields, farmers, sagacious or -fuddled over their ale, horse-dealers, inn-keepers, curates, and -carpenters. Over them all broods a certain romance, the only romance -that George Eliot allowed herself—the romance of the past. The books -are astonishingly readable and have no trace of pomposity or pretence. -But to the reader who holds a large stretch of her early work in view it -will become obvious that the mist of recollection gradually withdraws. -It is not that her power diminishes, for, to our thinking, it is at its -highest in the mature <i>Middlemarch</i>, the magnificent book which with -all its imperfections is one of the few English novels written for grown-up -people. But the world of fields and farms no longer contents her. In -real life she had sought her fortunes elsewhere; and though to look back -into the past was calming and consoling, there are, even in the early -works, traces of that troubled spirit, that exacting and questioning and -baffled presence who was George Eliot herself. In <i>Adam Bede</i> there is -a hint of her in Dinah. She shows herself far more openly and completely -in Maggie in <i>The Mill on the Floss</i>. She is Janet in <i>Janet's -Repentance</i>, and Romola, and Dorothea seeking wisdom and finding one -scarcely knows what in marriage with Ladislaw. Those who fall foul of -George Eliot do so, we incline to think, on account of her heroines; and -with good reason; for there is no doubt that they bring out the worst of -her, lead her into difficult places, make her self-conscious, didactic, -and occasionally vulgar. Yet if you could delete the whole sisterhood -you would leave a much smaller and a much inferior world, albeit a world -of greater artistic perfection and far superior jollity and comfort. In -accounting for her failure, in so far as it was a failure, one -recollects that she never wrote a story until she was thirty-seven, and -that by the time she was thirty-seven she had come to think of herself -with a mixture of pain and something like resentment. For long she -preferred not to think of herself at all. Then, when the first flush of -creative energy was exhausted and self-confidence had come to her, she -wrote more and more from the personal standpoint, but she did so without -the unhesitating abandonment of the young. Her self-consciousness is -always marked when her heroines say what she herself would have said. -She disguised them in every possible way. She granted them beauty and -wealth into the bargain; she invented, more improbably, a taste for -brandy. But the disconcerting and stimulating fact remained that she was -compelled by the very power of her genius to step forth in person upon -the quiet bucolic scene.</p> - -<p>The noble and beautiful girl who insisted upon being born into the Mill -on the Floss is the most obvious example of the ruin which a heroine can -strew about her. Humour controls her and keeps her lovable so long as -she is small and can be satisfied by eloping with the gipsies or -hammering nails into her doll; but she develops; and before George Eliot -knows what has happened she has a full-grown woman on her hands -demanding what neither gipsies nor dolls, nor St. Ogg's itself is -capable of giving her. First Philip Wakem is produced, and later Stephen -Guest. The weakness of the one and the coarseness of the other have -often been pointed out; but both, in their weakness and coarseness, -illustrate not so much George Eliot's inability to draw the portrait of -a man, as the uncertainty, the infirmity, and the fumbling which shook -her hand when she had to conceive a fit mate for a heroine. She is in -the first place driven beyond the home world she knew and loved, and -forced to set foot in middle-class drawing-rooms where young men sing -all the summer morning and young women sit embroidering smoking-caps for -bazaars. She feels herself out of her element, as her clumsy satire of -what she calls "good society" proves.</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>Good society has its claret and its velvet carpets, its dinner -engagements six weeks deep, its opera, and its faery ball rooms . . . -gets its science done by Faraday and its religion by the superior clergy -who are to be met in the best houses; how should it have need of belief -and emphasis?</p></blockquote> - - -<p>There is no trace of humour or insight there, but only the -vindictiveness of a grudge which we feel to be personal in its origin. -But terrible as the complexity of our social system is in its demands -upon the sympathy and discernment of a novelist straying across the -boundaries, Maggie Tulliver did worse than drag George Eliot from her -natural surroundings. She insisted upon the introduction of the great -emotional scene. She must love; she must despair; she must be drowned -clasping her brother in her arms. The more one examines the great -emotional scenes the more nervously one anticipates the brewing and -gathering and thickening of the cloud which will burst upon our heads at -the moment of crisis in a shower of disillusionment and verbosity. It is -partly that her hold upon dialogue, when it is not dialect, is slack; -and partly that she seems to shrink with an elderly dread of fatigue -from the effort of emotional concentration. She allows her heroines to -talk too much. She has little verbal felicity. She lacks the unerring -taste which chooses one sentence and compresses the heart of the scene -within that. "Whom are you going to dance with?" asked Mr. Knightley, at -the Westons' ball. "With you, if you will ask me," said Emma; and she -has said enough. Mrs. Casaubon would have talked for an hour and we -should have looked out of the window.</p> - -<p>Yet, dismiss the heroines without sympathy, confine George Eliot to -the agricultural world of her "remotest past", and you not only diminish -her greatness but lose her true flavour. That greatness is here we can -have no doubt. The width of the prospect, the large strong outlines of -the principal features, the ruddy light of the early books, the -searching power and reflective richness of the later tempt us to linger -and expatiate beyond our limits. But it is upon the heroines that we -would cast a final glance. "I have always been finding out my religion -since I was a little girl," says Dorothea Casaubon. "I used to pray so -much—now I hardly ever pray. I try not to have desires merely for -myself. . . ." She is speaking for them all. That is their problem. They -cannot live without religion, and they start out on the search for one -when they are little girls. Each has the deep feminine passion for -goodness, which makes the place where she stands in aspiration and agony -the heart of the book—still and cloistered like a place of -worship, but that she no longer knows to whom to pray. In learning they -seek their goal; in the ordinary tasks of womanhood; in the wider -service of their kind. They do not find what they seek, and we cannot -wonder. The ancient consciousness of woman, charged with suffering and -sensibility, and for so many ages dumb, seems in them to have brimmed -and overflowed and uttered a demand for something—they scarcely -know what—for something that is perhaps incompatible with the -facts of human existence. George Eliot had far too strong an -intelligence to tamper with those facts, and too broad a humour to -mitigate the truth because it was a stern one. Save for the supreme -courage of their endeavour, the struggle ends, for her heroines, in -tragedy, or in a compromise that is even more melancholy. But their -story is the incomplete version of the story of George Eliot herself. -For her, too, the burden and the complexity of womanhood were not -enough; she must reach beyond the sanctuary and pluck for herself -the strange bright fruits of art and knowledge. Clasping them -as few women have ever clasped them, she would not renounce her -own inheritance—the difference of view, the difference of -standard—nor accept an inappropriate reward. Thus we behold her, a -memorable figure, inordinately praised and shrinking from her fame, -despondent, reserved, shuddering back into the arms of love as if there -alone were satisfaction and, it might be, justification, at the same -time reaching out with "a fastidious yet hungry ambition" for all that -life could offer the free and inquiring mind and confronting her -feminine aspirations with the real world of men. Triumphant was the -issue for her, whatever it may have been for her creations, and as we -recollect all that she dared and achieved, how with every obstacle -against her—sex and health and convention—she sought more -knowledge and more freedom till the body, weighted with its double -burden, sank worn out, we must lay upon her grave whatever we have it in -our power to bestow of laurel and rose.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="The_Russian"><i>The Russian Point of View</i></a></h4> - - -<p>Doubtful as we frequently are whether either the French or the -Americans, who have so much in common with us, can yet understand -English literature, we must admit graver doubts whether, for all their -enthusiasm, the English can understand Russian literature. Debate might -protract itself indefinitely as to what we mean by "understand". -Instances will occur to everybody of American writers in particular who -have written with the highest discrimination of our literature and of -ourselves; who have lived a lifetime among us, and finally have taken -legal steps to become subjects of King George. For all that, have they -understood us, have they not remained to the end of their days -foreigners? Could any one believe that the novels of Henry James were -written by a man who had grown-up in the society which he describes, or -that his criticism of English writers was written by a man who had read -Shakespeare without any sense of the Atlantic Ocean and two or three -hundred years on the far side of it separating his civilisation -from ours? A special acuteness and detachment, a sharp angle of -vision the foreigner will often achieve; but not that absence of -self-consciousness, that ease and fellowship and sense of common values -which make for intimacy, and sanity, and the quick give and take of -familiar intercourse.</p> - -<p>Not only have we all this to separate us from Russian literature, but a -much more serious barrier—the difference of language. Of all those -who feasted upon Tolstoi, Dostoevsky, and Tchekov during the past twenty -years, not more than one or two perhaps have been able to read them in -Russian. Our estimate of their qualities has been formed by critics who -have never read a word of Russian, or seen Russia, or even heard the -language spoken by natives; who have had to depend, blindly and -implicitly, upon the work of translators.</p> - -<p>What we are saying amounts to this, then, that we have judged a whole -literature stripped of its style. When you have changed every word in a -sentence from Russian to English, have thereby altered the sense a -little, the sound, weight, and accent of the words in relation to each -other completely, nothing remains except a crude and coarsened version -of the sense. Thus treated, the great Russian writers are like men -deprived by an earthquake or a railway accident not only of all their -clothes, but also of something subtler and more important—their -manners, the idiosyncrasies of their characters. What remains is, as the -English have proved by the fanaticism of their admiration, something -very powerful and very impressive, but it is difficult to feel sure, in -view of these mutilations, how far we can trust ourselves not to impute, -to distort, to read into them an emphasis which is false.</p> - -<p>They have lost their clothes, we say, in some terrible catastrophe, for -some such figure as that describes the simplicity, the humanity, -startled out of all effort to hide and disguise its instincts, which -Russian literature, whether it is due to translation, or to some more -profound cause, makes upon us. We find these qualities steeping it -through, as obvious in the lesser writers as in the greater. "Learn to -make yourselves akin to people. I would even like to add: make yourself -indispensable to them. But let this sympathy be not with the mind—for -it is easy with the mind—but with the heart, with love towards them." -"From the Russian," one would say instantly, wherever one chanced on -that quotation. The simplicity, the absence of effort, the assumption -that in a world bursting with misery the chief call upon us is to -understand our fellow-sufferers, "and not with the mind—for it is -easy with the mind—but with the heart"—this is the cloud which -broods above the whole of Russian literature, which lures us from our own -parched brilliancy and scorched thoroughfares to expand in its -shade—and of course with disastrous results. We become awkward and -self-conscious; denying our own qualities, we write with an affectation of -goodness and simplicity which is nauseating in the extreme. We cannot say -"Brother" with simple conviction. There is a story by Mr. Galsworthy in -which one of the characters so addresses another (they are both in the -depths of misfortune). Immediately everything becomes strained and -affected. The English equivalent for "Brother" is "Mate"—a very -different word, with something sardonic in it, an indefinable suggestion of -humour. Met though they are in the depths of misfortune the two Englishmen -who thus accost each other will, we are sure, find a job, make their -fortunes, spend the last years of their lives in luxury, and leave a sum of -money to prevent poor devils from calling each other "Brother" on the -Embankment. But it is common suffering, rather than common happiness, -effort, or desire that produces the sense of brotherhood. It is the -"deep sadness" which Dr. Hagberg Wright finds typical of the Russian -people that creates their literature.</p> - -<p>A generalisation of this kind will, of course, even if it has some -degree of truth when applied to the body of literature, be changed -profoundly when a writer of genius sets to work on it. At once other -questions arise. It is seen that an "attitude" is not simple; it is -highly complex. Men reft of their coats and their manners, stunned by a -railway accident, say hard things, harsh things, unpleasant things, -difficult things, even if they say them with the abandonment and -simplicity which catastrophe has bred in them. Our first impressions of -Tchekov are not of simplicity but of bewilderment. What is the point of -it, and why does he make a story out of this? we ask as we read story -after story. A man falls in love with a married woman, and they part and -meet, and in the end are left talking about their position and by what -means they can be free from "this intolerable bondage".</p> - -<p>"'How? How?' he asked, clutching his head. . . . And it seemed as though -in a little while the solution would be found and then a new and -splendid life would begin." That is the end. A postman drives a student -to the station and all the way the student tries to make the postman -talk, but he remains silent. Suddenly the postman says unexpectedly, -"It's against the regulations to take any one with the post." And he -walks up and down the platform with a look of anger on his face. "With -whom was he angry? Was it with people, with poverty, with the autumn -nights?" Again, that story ends.</p> - -<p>But is it the end, we ask? We have rather the feeling that we have -overrun our signals; or it is as if a tune had stopped short without the -expected chords to close it. These stories are inconclusive, we say, and -proceed to frame a criticism based upon the assumption that stories -ought to conclude in a way that we recognise. In so doing we raise the -question of our own fitness as readers. Where the tune is familiar and -the end emphatic—lovers united, villains discomfited, intrigues -exposed—as it is in most Victorian fiction, we can scarcely go wrong, -but where the tune is unfamiliar and the end a note of interrogation or -merely the information that they went on talking, as it is in Tchekov, -we need a very daring and alert sense of literature to make us hear the -tune, and in particular those last notes which complete the harmony. -Probably we have to read a great many stories before we feel, and the -feeling is essential to our satisfaction, that we hold the parts -together, and that Tchekov was not merely rambling disconnectedly, but -struck now this note, now that with intention, in order to complete his -meaning.</p> - -<p>We have to cast about in order to discover where the emphasis in these -strange stories rightly comes. Tchekov's own words give us a lead in the -right direction. ". . . such a conversation as this between us", he -says, "would have been unthinkable for our parents. At night they did -not talk, but slept sound; we, our generation, sleep badly, are -restless, but talk a great deal, and are always trying to settle whether -we are right or not." Our literature of social satire and psychological -finesse both sprang from that restless sleep, that incessant talking; -but after all, there is an enormous difference between Tchekov and Henry -James, between Tchekov and Bernard Shaw. Obviously—but where does it -arise? Tchekov, too, is aware of the evils and injustices of the social -state; the condition of the peasants appals him, but the reformer's zeal -is not his—that is not the signal for us to stop. The mind interests -him enormously; he is a most subtle and delicate analyst of human -relations. But again, no; the end is not there. Is it that he is -primarily interested not in the soul's relation with other souls, but -with the soul's relation to health—with the soul's relation to -goodness? These stories are always showing us some affectation, pose, -insincerity. Some woman has got into a false relation; some man has been -perverted by the inhumanity of his circumstances. The soul is ill; the -soul is cured; the soul is not cured. Those are the emphatic points in -his stories.</p> - -<p>Once the eye is used to these shades, half the "conclusions" of fiction -fade into thin air; they show like transparences with a light behind -them—gaudy, glaring, superficial. The general tidying up of the last -chapter, the marriage, the death, the statement of values so sonorously -trumpeted forth, so heavily underlined, become of the most rudimentary -kind. Nothing is solved, we feel; nothing is rightly held together. On -the other hand, the method which at first seemed so casual, -inconclusive, and occupied with trifles, now appears the result of an -exquisitely original and fastidious taste, choosing boldly, arranging -infallibly, and controlled by an honesty for which we can find no match -save among the Russians themselves. There may be no answer to these -questions, but at the same time let us never manipulate the evidence so -as to produce something fitting, decorous, agreeable to our vanity. This -may not be the way to catch the ear of the public; after all, they are -used to louder music, fiercer measures; but as the tune sounded, so he -has written it. In consequence, as we read these little stories about -nothing at all, the horizon widens; the soul gains an astonishing sense -of freedom.</p> - -<p>In reading Tchekov we find ourselves repeating the word "soul" again and -again. It sprinkles his pages. Old drunkards use it freely; ". . . you -are high up in the service, beyond all reach, but haven't real soul, my -dear boy . . . there's no strength in it." Indeed, it is the soul that -is the chief character in Russian fiction. Delicate and subtle in -Tchekov, subject to an infinite number of humours and distempers, it is -of greater depth and volume in Dostoevsky, liable to violent diseases -and raging fevers, but still the predominant concern. Perhaps that is -why it needs so great an effort on the part of an English reader to read -<i>The Brothers Karamazov</i> or <i>The Possessed</i> a second time. The -"soul" is alien to him. It is even antipathetic. It has little sense of -humour and no sense of comedy. It is formless. It has slight connection -with the intellect. It is confused, diffuse, tumultuous, incapable, it -seems, of submitting to the control of logic or the discipline of poetry. -The novels of Dostoevsky are seething whirlpools, gyrating sandstorms, -waterspouts which hiss and boil and suck us in. They are composed purely -and wholly of the stuff of the soul. Against our wills we are drawn in, -whirled round, blinded, suffocated, and at the same time filled with a -giddy rapture. Out of Shakespeare there is no more exciting reading. We -open the door and find ourselves in a room full of Russian generals, the -tutors of Russian generals, their step-daughters and cousins and crowds -of miscellaneous people who are all talking at the tops of their voices -about their most private affairs. But where are we? Surely it is the -part of a novelist to inform us whether we are in an hotel, a flat, or -hired lodging. Nobody thinks of explaining. We are souls, tortured, -unhappy souls, whose only business it is to talk, to reveal, to confess, -to draw up at whatever rending of flesh and nerve those crabbed sins -which crawl on the sand at the bottom of us. But, as we listen, our -confusion slowly settles. A rope is flung to us; we catch hold of a -soliloquy; holding on by the skin of our teeth, we are rushed through -the water; feverishly, wildly, we rush on and on, now submerged, now in -a moment of vision understanding more than we have ever understood -before, and receiving such revelations as we are wont to get only from the -press of life at its fullest. As we fly we pick it all up—the names -of the people, their relationships, that they are staying in an hotel at -Roulettenburg, that Polina is involved in an intrigue with the Marquis -de Grieux—but what unimportant matters these are compared with the -soul! It is the soul that matters, its passion, its tumult, its -astonishing medley of beauty and vileness. And if our voices suddenly -rise into shrieks of laughter, or if we are shaken by the most violent -sobbing, what more natural?—it hardly calls for remark. The pace at -which we are living is so tremendous that sparks must rush off our -wheels as we fly. Moreover, when the speed is thus increased and the -elements of the soul are seen, not separately in scenes of humour or -scenes of passion as our slower English minds conceive them, but -streaked, involved, inextricably confused, a new panorama of the human -mind is revealed. The old divisions melt into each other. Men are at the -same time villains and saints; their acts are at once beautiful and -despicable. We love and we hate at the same time. There is none: of that -precise division between good and bad to which we are used. Often those -for whom we feel most affection are the greatest criminals, and the most -abject sinners move us to the strongest admiration as well as love.</p> - -<p>Dashed to the crest of the waves, bumped and battered on the stones at -the bottom, it is difficult for an English reader to feel at ease. The -process to which he is accustomed in his own literature is reversed. If -we wished to tell the story of a General's love affair (and we should -find it very difficult in the first place not to laugh at a General), we -should begin with his house; we should solidify his surroundings. Only -when all was ready should we attempt to deal with the General himself. -Moreover, it is not the samovar but the teapot that rules in England; -time is limited; space crowded; the influence of other points of view, -of other books, even of other ages, makes itself felt. Society is sorted -out into lower, middle, and upper classes, each with its own traditions, -its own manners, and, to some extent, its own language. Whether he -wishes it or not, there is a constant pressure upon an English novelist -to recognise these barriers, and, in consequence, order is imposed on -him and some kind of form; he is inclined to satire rather than to -compassion, to scrutiny of society rather than understanding of -individuals themselves.</p> - -<p>No such restraints were laid on Dostoevsky. It is all the same to him -whether you are noble or simple, a tramp or a great lady. Whoever you -are, you are the vessel of this perplexed liquid, this cloudy, yeasty, -precious stuff, the soul. The soul is not restrained by barriers. It -overflows, it floods, it mingles with the souls of others. The simple -story of a bank clerk who could not pay for a bottle of wine spreads, -before we know what is happening, into the lives of his father-in-law -and the five mistresses whom his father-in-law treated abominably, and -the postman's life, and the charwoman's, and the Princesses' who lodged -in the same block of flats; for nothing is outside Dostoevsky's -province; and when he is tired, he does not stop, he goes on. He cannot -restrain himself. Out it tumbles upon us, hot, scalding, mixed, -marvellous, terrible, oppressive—the human soul.</p> - -<p>There remains the greatest of all novelists—for what else can we -call the author of <i>War and Peace</i>? Shall we find Tolstoi, too, alien, -difficult, a foreigner? Is there some oddity in his angle of vision -which, at any rate until we have become disciples and so lost our -bearings, keeps us at arm's length in suspicion and bewilderment? From -his first words we can be sure of one thing at any rate—here is a man -who sees what we see, who proceeds, too, as we are accustomed to -proceed, not from the inside outwards, but from the outside inwards. -Here is a world in which the postman's knock is heard at eight o'clock, -and people go to bed between ten and eleven. Here is a man, too, who is -no savage, no child of nature; he is educated; he has had every sort of -experience. He is one of those born aristocrats who have used their -privileges to the full. He is metropolitan, not suburban. His senses, -his intellect, are acute, powerful, and well nourished. There is -something proud and superb in the attack of such a mind and such a body -upon life. Nothing seems to escape him. Nothing glances off him -unrecorded. Nobody, therefore, can so convey the excitement of sport, -the beauty of horses, and all the fierce desirability of the world to -the senses of a strong young man. Every twig, every feather sticks to -his magnet. He notices the blue or red of a child's frock; the way a -horse shifts its tail; the sound of a cough; the action of a man trying -to put his hands into pockets that have been sewn up. And what his -infallible eye reports of a cough or a trick of the hands his infallible -brain refers to something hidden in the character so that we know his -people, not only by the way they love and their views on politics and -the immortality of the soul, but also by the way they sneeze and choke. -Even in a translation we feel that we have been set on a mountain-top -and had a telescope put into our hands. Everything is astonishingly -clear and absolutely sharp. Then, suddenly, just as we are exulting, -breathing deep, feeling at once braced and purified, some -detail—perhaps the head of a man—comes at us out of the picture -in an alarming way, as if extruded by the very intensity of its life. -"Suddenly a strange thing happened to me: first I ceased to see what was -around me; then his face seemed to vanish till only the eyes were left, -shining over against mine; next the eyes seemed to be in my own head, -and then all became confused—I could see nothing and was forced to -shut my eyes, in order to break loose from the feeling of pleasure and fear -which his gaze was producing in me. . . ." Again and again we share -Masha's feelings in <i>Family Happiness</i>. One shuts one's eyes to escape -the feeling of pleasure and fear. Often it is pleasure that is -uppermost. In this very story there are two descriptions, one of a girl -walking in a garden at night with her lover, one of a newly married -couple prancing down their drawing-room, which so convey the feeling of -intense happiness that we shut the book to feel it better. But always -there is an element of fear which makes us, like Masha, wish to escape -from the gaze which Tolstoi fixes on us. Does it arise from the sense, -which in real life might harass us, that such happiness as he describes -is too intense to last, that we are on the edge of disaster? Or is it -not that the very intensity of our pleasure is somehow questionable and -forces us to ask, with Pozdnyshev in the Kreutzer Sonata, "But why -live?" Life dominates Tolstoi as the soul dominates Dostoevsky. There is -always at the centre of all the brilliant and flashing petals of the -flower this scorpion, "Why live?" There is always at the centre of the -book some Olenin, or Pierre, or Levin who gathers into himself all -experience, turns the world round between his fingers, and never ceases -to ask even as he enjoys it, what is the meaning of it, and what should -be our aims. It is not the priest who shatters our desires most -effectively; it is the man who has known them, and loved them himself. -When he derides them, the world indeed turns to dust and ashes beneath -our feet. Thus fear mingles with our pleasure, and of the three great -Russian writers, it is Tolstoi who most enthralls us and most repels.</p> - -<p>But the mind takes its bias from the place of its birth, and no doubt, -when it strikes upon a literature so alien as the Russian, flies off at -a tangent far from the truth.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="Outlines"><i>Outlines</i></a></h4> - - -<h4>I</h4> - -<h4><a id="Miss_Mitford">MISS MITFORD</a></h4> - - -<p>Speaking truthfully, <i>Mary Russell Mitford and Her Surroundings</i> is -not a good book. It neither enlarges the mind nor purifies the heart. There -is nothing in it about Prime Ministers and not very much about Miss -Mitford. Yet, as one is setting out to speak the truth, one must own -that there are certain books which can be read without the mind and -without the heart, but still with considerable enjoyment. To come to the -point, the great merit of these scrapbooks, for they can scarcely be -called biographies, is that they license mendacity. One cannot believe -what Miss Hill says about Miss Mitford, and thus one is free to invent -Miss Mitford for oneself. Not for a second do we accuse Miss Hill of -telling lies. That infirmity is entirely ours. For example: "Alresford -was the birthplace of one who loved nature as few have loved her, and -whose writings 'breathe the air of the hayfields and the scent of the -hawthorn boughs', and seem to waft to us 'the sweet breezes that blow -over ripened cornfields and daisied meadows'." It is perfectly true that -Miss Mitford was born at Alresford, and yet, when it is put like that, -we doubt whether she was ever born at all. Indeed she was, says Miss -Hill; she was born "on the 16th December, 1787. 'A pleasant house in -truth it was,' Miss Mitford writes. 'The breakfast-room . . . was a -lofty and spacious apartment.'" So Miss Mitford was born in the -breakfast-room about eight-thirty on a snowy morning between the -Doctor's second and third cups of tea. "Pardon me," said Mrs. Mitford, -turning a little pale, but not omitting to add the right quantity of -cream to her husband's tea, "I feel . . ." That is the way in which -Mendacity begins. There is something plausible and even ingenious in her -approaches. The touch about the cream, for instance, might be called -historical, for it is well known that when Mary won £20,000 in the -Irish lottery, the Doctor spent it all upon Wedgwood china, the winning -number being stamped upon the soup plates in the middle of an Irish -harp, the whole being surmounted by the Mitford arms, and encircled by -the motto of Sir John Bertram, one of William the Conqueror's knights, -from whom the Mitfords claimed descent. "Observe," says Mendacity, "with -what an air the Doctor drinks his tea, and how she, poor lady, contrives -to curtsey as she leaves the room." Tea? I inquire, for the Doctor, -though a fine figure of a man, is already purple and profuse, and foams -like a crimson cock over the frill of his fine laced shirt. "Since the -ladies have left the room," Mendacity begins, and goes on to make up a -pack of lies with the sole object of proving that Dr. Mitford kept a -mistress in the purlieus of Reading and paid her money on the pretence -that he was investing it in a new method of lighting and heating houses -invented by the Marquis de Chavannes. It came to the same thing in the -end—to the King's Bench Prison, that is to say; but instead of -allowing us to recall the literary and historical associations of the -place, Mendacity wanders off to the window and distracts us again by the -platitudinous remark that it is still snowing. There is something very -charming in an ancient snowstorm. The weather has varied almost as much -in the course of generations as mankind. The snow of those days was more -formally shaped and a good deal softer than the snow of ours, just as an -eighteenth-century cow was no more like our cows than she was like the -florid and fiery cows of Elizabethan pastures. Sufficient attention has -scarcely been paid to this aspect of literature, which, it cannot be -denied, has its importance.</p> - -<p>Our brilliant young men might do worse, when in search of a subject, -than devote a year or two to cows in literature, snow in literature, the -daisy in Chaucer and in Coventry Patmore. At any rate, the snow falls -heavily. The Portsmouth mail-coach has already lost its way; several -ships have foundered, and Margate pier has been totally destroyed. At -Hatfield Peveral twenty sheep have been buried, and though one supports -itself by gnawing wurzels which it has found near it, there is grave -reason to fear that the French king's coach has been blocked on the road -to Colchester. It is now the 16th of February, 1808.</p> - -<p>Poor Mrs. Mitford! Twenty-one years ago she left the breakfast-room, and -no news has yet been received of her child. Even Mendacity is a little -ashamed of itself, and, picking up <i>Mary Russell Mitford and Her -Surroundings</i>, assures us that everything will come right if we possess -ourselves in patience. The French king's coach was on its way to -Bocking; at Bocking lived Lord and Lady Charles Murray-Aynsley; and Lord -Charles was shy. Lord Charles had always been shy. Once when Mary -Mitford was five years old—sixteen years, that is, before the sheep -were lost and the French king went to Bocking—Mary "threw him into an -agony of blushing by running up to his chair in mistake for that of my -papa". He had indeed to leave the room. Miss Hill, who, somewhat -strangely, finds the society of Lord and Lady Charles pleasant, does not -wish to quit it without "introducing an incident in connection with them -which took place in the month of February, 1808". But is Miss Mitford -concerned in it? we ask, for there must be an end of trifling. To some -extent, that is to say, Lady Charles was a cousin of the Mitfords, and -Lord Charles was shy. Mendacity is quite ready to deal with "the -incident" even on these terms; but, we repeat, we have had enough of -trifling. Miss Mitford may not be a great woman; for all we know she was -not even a good one; but we have certain responsibilities as a reviewer -which we are not going to evade.</p> - -<p>There is, to begin with, English literature. A sense of the beauty of -nature has never been altogether absent, however much the cow may change -from age to age, from English poetry. Nevertheless, the difference -between Pope and Wordsworth in this respect is very considerable. -<i>Lyrical Ballads</i> was published in 1798; <i>Our Village</i> in 1824. -One being in verse and the other in prose, it is not necessary to labour a -comparison which contains, however, not only the elements of justice, -but the seeds of many volumes. Like her great predecessor, Miss Mitford -much preferred the country to the town; and thus, perhaps, it may not be -inopportune to dwell for a moment upon the King of Saxony, Mary Anning, -and the ichthyosaurus. Let alone the fact that Mary Anning and Mary -Mitford had a Christian name in common, they are further connected by -what can scarcely be called a fact, but may, without hazard, be called a -probability. Miss Mitford was looking for fossils at Lyme Regis only -fifteen years before Mary Anning found one. The King of Saxony visited -Lyme in 1844, and seeing the head of an ichthyosaurus in Mary Anning's -window, asked her to drive to Pinny and explore the rocks. While they -were looking for fossils, an old woman seated herself in the King's -coach—was she Mary Mitford? Truth compels us to say that she was not; -but there is no doubt, and we are not trifling when we say it, that Mary -Mitford often expressed a wish that she had known Mary Anning, and it is -singularly unfortunate to have to state that she never did. For we have -reached the year 1844; Mary Mitford is fifty-seven years of age, and so -far, thanks to Mendacity and its trifling ways, all we know of her is -that she did not know Mary Anning, had not found an ichthyosaurus, had -not been out in a snowstorm, and had not seen the King of France.</p> - -<p>It is time to wring the creature's neck, and begin again at the very -beginning.</p> - -<p>What considerations, then, had weight with Miss Hill when she decided to -write <i>Mary Russell Mitford and Her Surroundings</i>? Three emerge from -the rest, and may be held of paramount importance. In the first place. Miss -Mitford was a lady; in the second, she was born in the year 1787; and in -the third, the stock of female characters who lend themselves to -biographic treatment by their own sex is, for one reason or another, -running short. For instance, little is known of Sappho, and that little -is not wholly to her credit. Lady Jane Grey has merit, but is undeniably -obscure. Of George Sand, the more we know the less we approve. George -Eliot was led into evil ways which not all her philosophy can excuse. -The Brontës, however highly we rate their genius, lacked that -indefinable something which marks the lady; Harriet Martineau was an -atheist; Mrs. Browning was a married woman; Jane Austen, Fanny Burney, -and Maria Edgeworth have been done already; so that, what with one thing -and another, Mary Russell Mitford is the only woman left.</p> - -<p>There is no need to labour the extreme importance of the date when we -see the word "surroundings" on the back, of a book. Surroundings, as -they are called, are invariably eighteenth-century surroundings. When we -come, as of course we do, to that phrase which relates how "as we looked -upon the steps leading down from the upper room, we fancied we saw the -tiny figure jumping from step to step", it would be the grossest outrage -upon our sensibilities to be told that those steps were Athenian, -Elizabethan, or Parisian. They were, of course, eighteenth-century -steps, leading down from the old panelled room into the shady garden, -where, tradition has it, William Pitt played marbles, or, if we like to -be bold, where on still summer days we can almost fancy that we hear the -drums of Bonaparte on the coast of France. Bonaparte is the limit of the -imagination on one side, as Monmouth is on the other; it would be fatal -if the imagination took to toying with Prince Albert or sporting with -King John. But fancy knows her place, and there is no need to labour the -point that her place is the eighteenth-century. The other point is more -obscure. One must be a lady. Yet what that means, and whether we like -what it means, may both be doubtful. If we say that Jane Austen was a -lady and that Charlotte Brontë was not one, we do as much as need be -done in the way of definition, and commit ourselves to neither side.</p> - -<p>It is undoubtedly because of their reticence that Miss Hill is on the -side of the ladies. They sigh things off and they smile things off, but -they never seize the silver table by the legs or dash the teacups on the -floor. It is in many ways a great convenience to have a subject who can -be trusted to live a long life without once raising her voice. Sixteen -years is a considerable stretch of time, but of a lady it is enough to -say, "Here Mary Mitford passed sixteen years of her life and here she -got to know and love not only their own beautiful grounds but also every -turn of the surrounding shady lanes." Her loves were vegetable, and her -lanes were shady. Then, of course, she was educated at the school where -Jane Austen and Mrs. Sherwood had been educated. She visited Lyme Regis, -and there is mention of the Cobb. She saw London from the top of St. -Paul's, and London was much smaller then than it is now. She changed -from one charming house to another, and several distinguished literary -gentlemen paid her compliments and came to tea. When the dining-room -ceiling fell down it did not fall on her head, and when she took a -ticket in a lottery she did win the prize. If in the foregoing sentences -there are any words of more than two syllables, it is our fault and not -Miss Hill's; and to do that writer justice, there are not many whole -sentences in the book which are neither quoted from Miss Mitford nor -supported by the authority of Mr. Crissy.</p> - -<p>But how dangerous a thing is life! Can one be sure that anything not -wholly made of mahogany will to the very end stand empty in the sun? -Even cupboards have their secret springs, and when, inadvertently we are -sure, Miss Hill touches this one, out, terrible to relate, topples a -stout old gentleman. In plain English, Miss Mitford had a father. There -is nothing actually improper in that. Many women have had fathers. But -Miss Mitford's father was kept in a cupboard; that is to say, he was not -a nice father. Miss Hill even goes so far as to conjecture that when "an -imposing procession of neighbours and friends" followed him to the -grave, "we cannot help thinking that this was more to show sympathy and -respect for Miss Mitford than from special respect for him". Severe as -the judgement is, the gluttonous, bibulous, amorous old man did -something to deserve it. The less said about him the better. Only, if -from your earliest childhood your father has gambled and speculated, -first with your mother's fortune, then with your own, spent your -earnings, driven you to earn more, and spent that too; if in old age he -has lain upon a sofa and insisted that fresh air is bad for daughters, -if, dying at length, he has left debts that can only be paid by selling -everything you have or sponging upon the charity of friends—then even -a lady sometimes raises her voice. Miss Mitford herself spoke out once. -"It was grief to go; there I had toiled and striven and tasted as deeply -of bitter anxiety, of fear, and of hope as often falls to the lot of -woman." What language for a lady to use! for a lady, too, who owns a -teapot. There is a drawing of the teapot at the bottom of the page. But -it is now of no avail; Miss Mitford has smashed it to smithereens. That -is the worst of writing about ladies; they have fathers as well as -teapots. On the other hand, some pieces of Dr. Mitford's Wedgwood dinner -service are still in existence, and a copy of Adam's Geography, which -Mary won as a prize at school, is "in our temporary possession". If -there is nothing improper in the suggestion, might not the next book be -devoted entirely to them?</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>II</h4> - -<h4><a id="Dr_Bentley">DR. BENTLEY</a></h4> - - -<p>As we saunter through those famous courts where Dr. Bentley once reigned -supreme we sometimes catch sight of a figure hurrying on its way to -Chapel or Hall which, as it disappears, draws our thoughts -enthusiastically after it. For that man, we are told, has the whole of -Sophocles at his finger-ends; knows Homer by heart; reads Pindar as we -read the <i>Times</i>; and spends his life, save for these short excursions -to eat and pray, wholly in the company of the Greeks. It is true that -the infirmities of our education prevent us from appreciating his -emendations as they deserve; his life's work is a sealed book to us; -none the less, we treasure up the last flicker of his black gown, and -feel as if a bird of Paradise had flashed by us, so bright is his -spirit's raiment, and in the murk of a November evening we had been -privileged to see it winging its way to roost in fields of amaranth and -beds of moly. Of all men, great scholars are the most mysterious, the -most august. Since it is unlikely that we shall ever be admitted to -their intimacy, or see much more of them than a black gown crossing a -court at dusk, the best we can do is to read their lives—for example, -the <i>Life of Dr. Bentley</i> by Bishop Monk.</p> - -<p>There we shall find much that is odd and little that is reassuring. The -greatest of our scholars, the man who read Greek as the most expert of -us read English not merely with an accurate sense of meaning and grammar -but with a sensibility so subtle and widespread that he perceived -relations and suggestions of language which enabled him to fetch up from -oblivion lost lines and inspire new life into the little fragments that -remained, the man who should have been steeped in beauty (if what they -say of the Classics is true) as a honey-pot is ingrained with sweetness -was, on the contrary, the most quarrelsome of mankind.</p> - -<p>"I presume that there are not many examples of an individual who has -been a party in six distinct suits before the Court of King's Bench -within the space of three years", his biographer remarks; and adds that -Bentley won them all. It is difficult to deny his conclusion that though -Dr. Bentley might have been a first-rate lawyer or a great soldier "such -a display suited any character rather than that of a learned and -dignified clergyman". Not all these disputes, however, sprung from his -love of literature. The charges against which he had to defend himself -were directed against him as Master of Trinity College, Cambridge. He -was habitually absent from chapel; his expenditure upon building and -upon his household was excessive; he used the college seal at meetings -which did not consist of the statutable number of sixteen, and so on. In -short, the career of the Master of Trinity was one continuous series of -acts of aggression and defiance, in which Dr. Bentley treated the -Society of Trinity College as a grown man might treat an importunate -rabble of street boys. Did they dare to hint that the staircase at the -Lodge which admitted four persons abreast was quite wide enough?—did -they refuse to sanction his expenditure upon a new one? Meeting them in -the Great Court one evening after chapel he proceeded urbanely to -question them. They refused to budge. Whereupon, with a sudden -alteration of colour and voice, Bentley demanded whether "they had -forgotten his rusty sword?" Mr. Michael Hutchinson and some others, upon -whose backs the weight of that weapon would have first descended, -brought pressure upon their seniors. The bill for £350 was paid and -their preferment secured. But Bentley did not wait for this act of -submission to finish his staircase.</p> - -<p>So it went on, year after year. Nor was the arrogance of his behaviour -always justified by the splendour or utility of the objects he had in -view—the creation of the Backs, the erection of an observatory, the -foundation of a laboratory. More trivial desires were gratified with the -same tyranny. Sometimes he wanted coal; sometimes bread and ale; and -then Madame Bentley, sending her servant with a snuff-box in token of -authority, got from the butteries at the expense of the college a great -deal more of these commodities than the college thought that Dr. Bentley -ought to require. Again, when he had four pupils to lodge with him who -paid him handsomely for their board, it was drawn from the College, at -the command of the snuff-box, for nothing. The principles of "delicacy -and good feeling" which the Master might have been expected to observe -(great scholar as he was, steeped in the wine of the classics) went for -nothing. His argument that the "few College loaves" upon which the four -young patricians were nourished were amply repaid by the three sash -windows which he had put into their rooms at his own expense failed to -convince the Fellows. And when, on Trinity Sunday 1719, the Fellows -found the famous College ale not to their liking, they were scarcely -satisfied when the butler told them that it had been brewed by the -Master's orders, from the Master's malt, which was stored in the -Master's granary, and though damaged by "an insect called the weevil" -had been paid for at the very high rates which the Master demanded.</p> - -<p>Still these battles over bread and beer are trifles and domestic trifles -at that. His conduct in his profession will throw more light upon our -inquiry. For, released from brick and building, bread and beer, -patricians and their windows, it may be found that he expanded in the -atmosphere of Homer, Horace, and Manilius, and proved in his study the -benign nature of those influences which have been wafted down to us -through the ages. But there the evidence is even less to the credit of -the dead languages. He acquitted himself magnificently, all agree, in -the great controversy about the letters of Phalaris. His temper was -excellent and his learning prodigious. But that triumph was succeeded by -a series of disputes which force upon us the extraordinary spectacle of -men of learning and genius, of authority and divinity, brawling about -Greek and Latin texts, and calling each other names for all the world -like bookies on a racecourse or washerwomen in a back street. For this -vehemence of temper and virulence of language were not confined to -Bentley alone; they appear unhappily characteristic of the profession as -a whole. Early in life, in the year 1691, a quarrel was fastened upon -him by his brother chaplain Hody for writing Malelas, not as Hody -preferred, Malela. A controversy in which Bentley displayed learning and -wit, and Hody accumulated endless pages of bitter argument against the -letter <i>s</i> ensued. Hody was worsted, and "there is too much reason to -believe, that the offence given by this trivial cause was never -afterwards healed". Indeed, to mend a line was to break a friendship. -James Gronovius of Leyden—"homunculus eruditione mediocri, ingenio -nullo", as Bentley called him—attacked Bentley for ten years because -Bentley had succeeded in correcting a fragment of Callimachus where he -had failed.</p> - -<p>But Gronovius was by no means the only scholar who resented the success -of a rival with a rancour that grey hairs and forty years spent in -editing the classics failed to subdue. In all the chief towns of Europe -lived men like the notorious de Pauw of Utrecht, "a person who has -justly been considered the pest and disgrace of letters", who, when a -new theory or new edition appeared, banded themselves together to deride -and humiliate the scholar. . . all his writings". Bishop Monk remarks of -de Pauw, "prove him to be devoid of candour, good faith, good manners, -and every gentlemanly feeling: and while he unites all the defects and -bad qualities that were ever found in a critic or commentator, he adds -one peculiar to himself, an incessant propensity to indecent allusions." -With such tempers and such habits it is not strange that the scholars of -those days sometimes ended lives made intolerable by bitterness, -poverty, and neglect by their own hands, like Johnson, who after a -lifetime spent in the detection of minute errors of construction, went -mad and drowned himself in the meadows near Nottingham. On May 20, 1712, -Trinity College was shocked to find that the professor of Hebrew, Dr. -Sike, had hanged himself "some time this evening, before candlelight, in -his sash". When Kuster died, it was reported that he, too, had killed -himself. And so, in a sense, he had. For when his body was opened "there -was found a cake of sand along the lower region of his belly. This, I -take it, was occasioned by his sitting nearly double, and writing on a -very low table, surrounded with three or four circles of books placed on -the ground, which was the situation we usually found him in." The minds -of poor schoolmasters, like John Ker of the dissenting Academy, who had -had the high gratification of dining with Dr. Bentley at the Lodge, when -the talk fell upon the use of the word <i>equidem</i>, were so distorted by -a lifetime of neglect and study that they went home, collected all uses of -the word <i>equidem</i> which contradicted the Doctor's opinion, returned -to the Lodge, anticipating in their simplicity a warm welcome, met the -Doctor issuing to dine with the Archbishop of Canterbury, followed him -down the street in spite of his indifference and annoyance, and, being -refused even a word of farewell, went home to brood over their injuries -and wait the day of revenge.</p> - -<p>But the bickerings and animosities of the smaller fry were magnified, -not obliterated, by the Doctor himself in the conduct of his own -affairs. The courtesy and good temper which he had shown in his early -controversies had worn away. ". . . a course of violent animosities and -the indulgence of unrestrained indignation for many years had impaired -both his taste and judgement in controversy", and he condescended, -though the subject in dispute was the Greek Testament, to call his -antagonist "maggot", "vermin", "gnawing rat", and "cabbage head", to -refer to the darkness of his complexion, and to insinuate that his wits -were crazed, which charge he supported by dwelling on the fact that his -brother, a clergyman, wore a beard to his girdle.</p> - -<p>Violent, pugnacious, and unscrupulous. Dr. Bentley survived these storms -and agitations, and remained, though suspended from his degrees and -deprived of his mastership, seated at the Lodge imperturbably. Wearing a -broad-brimmed hat indoors to protect his eyes, smoking his pipe, -enjoying his port, and expounding to his friends his doctrine of the -digamma, Bentley lived those eighty years which, he said, were long -enough "to read everything which was worth reading", "Et tunc", he -added, in his peculiar manner.</p> - - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i2">Et tunc magna mei sub terris ibit imago.</span> -</div></div> - - -<p>A small square stone marked his grave in Trinity College, but the -Fellows refused to record upon it the fact that he had been their -Master.</p> - -<p>But the strangest sentence in this strange story has yet to be written, -and Bishop Monk writes it as if it were a commonplace requiring no -comment. "For a person who was neither a poet, nor possessed of poetical -taste to venture upon such a task was no common presumption." The task -was to detect every slip of language in <i>Paradise Lost</i>, and all -instances of bad taste and incorrect imagery. The result was notoriously -lamentable. Yet in what, we may ask, did it differ from those in which -Bentley was held to have acquitted himself magnificently? And if Bentley -was incapable of appreciating the poetry of Milton, how can we accept -his verdict upon Horace and Homer? And if we cannot trust implicitly to -scholars, and if the study of Greek is supposed to refine the manners -and purify the soul—but enough. Our scholar has returned from Hall; -his lamp is lit; his studies are resumed; and it is time that our profane -speculations should have an end. Besides, all this happened many, many -years ago.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>III</h4> - -<h4><a id="Lady_Dorothy_Nevill">LADY DOROTHY NEVILL</a></h4> - - -<p>She had stayed, in a humble capacity, for a week in the ducal household. -She had seen the troops of highly decorated human beings descending in -couples to eat, and ascending in couples to bed. She had, -surreptitiously, from a gallery, observed the Duke himself dusting the -miniatures in the glass cases, while the Duchess let her crochet fall -from her hands as if in utter disbelief that the world had need of -crochet. From an upper window she had seen, as far as eye could reach, -gravel paths swerving round isles of greenery and losing themselves in -little woods designed to shed the shade without the severity of forests; -she had watched the ducal carriage bowling in and out of the prospect, -and returning a different way from the way it went. And what was her -verdict? "A lunatic asylum."</p> - -<p>It is true that she was a lady's-maid, and that Lady Dorothy Nevill, had -she encountered her on the stairs, would have made an opportunity to -point out that that is a very different thing from being a lady.</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>My mother never failed to point out the folly of work-women, shop-girls, -and the like calling each other "Ladies". All this sort of thing seemed -to her to be mere vulgar humbug, and she did not fail to say so.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>What can we point out to Lady Dorothy Nevill? that with all her -advantages she had never learned to spell? that she could not write a -grammatical sentence? that she lived for eighty-seven years and did -nothing but put food into her mouth and slip gold through her fingers? -But delightful though it is to indulge in righteous indignation, it is -misplaced if we agree with the lady's-maid that high birth is a form of -congenital insanity, that the sufferer merely inherits the diseases of -his ancestors, and endures them, for the most part very stoically, in -one of those comfortably padded lunatic asylums which are known, -euphemistically, as the stately homes of England.</p> - -<p>Moreover, the Walpoles are not ducal. Horace Walpole's mother was a Miss -Shorter; there is no mention of Lady Dorothy's mother in the present -volume, but her great-grandmother was Mrs. Oldfield the actress, and, to -her credit. Lady Dorothy was "exceedingly proud" of the fact. Thus she -was not an extreme case of aristocracy; she was confined rather to a -bird-cage than to an asylum; through the bars she saw people walking at -large, and once or twice she made a surprising little flight into the -open air. A gayer, brighter, more vivacious specimen of the caged tribe -can seldom have existed; so that one is forced at times to ask whether -what we call living in a cage is not the fate that wise people, -condemned to a single sojourn upon earth, would choose. To be at large -is, after all, to be shut out; to waste most of life in accumulating the -money to buy and the time to enjoy what the Lady Dorothys find -clustering and glowing about their cradles when their eyes first -open—as hers opened in the year 1826 at number eleven Berkeley -Square. Horace Walpole had lived there. Her father, Lord Orford, gambled it -away in one night's play the year after she was born. But Wolterton Hall, -in Norfolk, was full of carving and mantelpieces, and there were rare trees -in the garden, and a large and famous lawn. No novelist could wish a -more charming and even romantic environment in which to set the story of -two little girls, growing up, wild yet secluded, reading Bossuet with -their governess, and riding out on their ponies at the head of the -tenantry on polling day. Nor can one deny that to have had the author of -the following letter among one's ancestors would have been a source of -inordinate pride. It is addressed to the Norwich Bible Society, which -had invited Lord Orford to become its president:</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>I have long been addicted to the Gaming Table. I have lately taken to -the Turf. I fear I frequently blaspheme. But I have never distributed -religious tracts. All this was known to you and your Society. -Notwithstanding which you think me a fit person to be your president. -God forgive your hypocrisy.</p></blockquote> - - -<p>It was not Lord Orford who was in the cage on that occasion. But, alas! -Lord Orford owned another country house, Ilsington Hall, in Dorsetshire, -and there Lady Dorothy came in contact first with the mulberry tree, and -later with Mr. Thomas Hardy; and we get our first glimpse of the bars. -We do not pretend to the ghost of an enthusiasm for Sailors' Homes in -general; no doubt mulberry trees are much nicer to look at; but when it -comes to calling people "vandals" who cut them down to build houses, and -to having footstools made from the wood, and to carving upon those -footstools inscriptions which testify that "often and often has King -George III. taken his tea" under this very footstool, then we want to -protest—"Surely you must mean Shakespeare?" But as her subsequent -remarks upon Mr. Hardy tend to prove, Lady Dorothy does not mean -Shakespeare. She "warmly appreciated" the works of Mr. Hardy, and used -to complain "that the county families were too stupid to appreciate his -genius at its proper worth". George the Third drinking his tea; the -county families failing to appreciate Mr. Hardy: Lady Dorothy is -undoubtedly behind the bars.</p> - -<p>Yet no story more aptly illustrates the barrier which we perceive -hereafter between Lady Dorothy and the outer world than the story of -Charles Darwin and the blankets. Among her recreations Lady Dorothy made -a hobby of growing orchids, and thus got into touch with "the great -naturalist". Mrs. Darwin, inviting her to stay with them, remarked with -apparent simplicity that she had heard that people who moved much in -London society were fond of being tossed in blankets. "I am afraid," her -letter ended, "we should hardly be able to offer you anything of that -sort." Whether in fact the necessity of tossing Lady Dorothy in a -blanket had been seriously debated at Down, or whether Mrs. Darwin -obscurely hinted her sense of some incongruity between her husband and -the lady of the orchids, we do not know. But we have a sense of two -worlds in collision; and it is not the Darwin world that emerges in -fragments. More and more do we see Lady Dorothy hopping from perch to -perch, picking at groundsel here, and at hempseed there, indulging in -exquisite trills and roulades, and sharpening her beak against a lump of -sugar in a large, airy, magnificently equipped bird-cage. The cage was -full of charming diversions. Now she illuminated leaves which had been -macerated to skeletons; now she interested herself in improving the -breed of donkeys; next she took up the cause of silkworms, almost -threatened Australia with a plague of them, and "actually succeeded in -obtaining enough silk to make a dress"; again she was the first to -discover that wood, gone green with decay, can be made, at some expense, -into little boxes; she went into the question of funguses and -established the virtues of the neglected English truffle; she imported -rare fish; spent a great deal of energy in vainly trying to induce -storks and Cornish choughs to breed in Sussex; painted on china; -emblazoned heraldic arms, and, attaching whistles to the tails of -pigeons, produced wonderful effects "as of an aerial orchestra" when -they flew through the air. To the Duchess of Somerset belongs the credit -of investigating the proper way of cooking guinea-pigs; but Lady Dorothy -was one of the first to serve up a dish of these little creatures at -luncheon in Charles Street.</p> - -<p>But all the time the door of the cage was ajar. Raids were made into -what Mr. Nevill calls "Upper Bohemia"; from which Lady Dorothy returned -with "authors, journalists, actors, actresses, or other agreeable and -amusing people". Lady Dorothy's judgement is proved by the fact that -they seldom misbehaved, and some indeed became quite domesticated, and -wrote her "very gracefully turned letters". But once or twice she made a -flight beyond the cage herself. "These horrors", she said, alluding to -the middle class, "are so clever and we are so stupid; but then look how -well they are educated, while our children learn nothing but how to -spend their parents' money!" She brooded over the fact. Something was -going wrong. She was too shrewd and too honest not to lay the blame -partly at least upon her own class. "I suppose she can just about read?" -she said of one lady calling herself cultured; and of another, "She is -indeed curious and well adapted to open bazaars." But to our thinking -her most remarkable flight took place a year or two before her death, in -the Victoria and Albert Museum:</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>I do so agree with you, she wrote—though I ought not -to say so—that the upper class are very—I don't know what to -say—but they seem to take no interest in anything—but -golfing, etc. One day I was at the Victoria and Albert Museum, just a -few sprinkles of legs, for I am sure they looked too frivolous to have -bodies and souls attached to them—but what softened the sight to -my eyes were 2 little Japs poring over each article with a handbook . . -. our bodies, of course, giggling and looking at nothing. Still worse, -not one soul of the higher class visible: in fact I never heard of any -one of them knowing of the place, and for this we are spending -millions—it is all too painful.</p> - -</blockquote> - - -<p>It was all too painful, and the guillotine, she felt, loomed ahead. That -catastrophe she was spared, for who could wish to cut off the head of a -pigeon with a whistle attached to its tail? But if the whole bird-cage -had been overturned and the aerial orchestra sent screaming and -fluttering through the air, we can be sure, as Mr. Joseph Chamberlain -told her, that her conduct would have been "a credit to the British -aristocracy".</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4>IV</h4> - -<h4><a id="Archbishop_Thomson">ARCHBISHOP THOMSON</a></h4> - - -<p>The origin of Archbishop Thomson was obscure. His great-uncle "may -reasonably be supposed" to have been "an ornament to the middle -classes". His aunt married a gentleman who was present at the murder of -Gustavus III. of Sweden; and his father met his death at the age of -eighty-seven by treading on a cat in the early hours of the morning. The -physical vigour which this anecdote implies was combined in the -Archbishop with powers of intellect which promised success in whatever -profession he adopted. At Oxford it seemed likely that he would devote -himself to philosophy or science. While reading for his degree he found -time to write the <i>Outlines of the Laws of Thought</i>, which -"immediately became a recognised text-book for Oxford classes". But -though poetry, philosophy, medicine, and the law held out their -temptations he put such thoughts aside, or never entertained them, -having made up his mind from the first to dedicate himself to Divine -service. The measure of his success in the more exalted sphere is -attested by the following facts: Ordained deacon in 1842 at the age of -twenty-three, he became Dean and Bursar of Queen's College, Oxford, in -1845; Provost in 1855, Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol in 1861, and -Archbishop of York in 1862. Thus at the early age of forty-three he -stood next in rank to the Archbishop of Canterbury himself; and it was -commonly though erroneously expected that he would in the end attain to -that dignity also.</p> - -<p>It is a matter of temperament and belief whether you read this list with -respect or with boredom; whether you look upon an archbishop's hat as a -crown or as an extinguisher. If, like the present reviewer, you are -ready to hold the simple faith that the outer order corresponds to the -inner—that a vicar is a good man, a canon a better man, and an -archbishop the best man of all—you will find the study of the -Archbishop's life one of extreme fascination. He has turned aside from -poetry and philosophy and law, and specialised in virtue. He has -dedicated himself to the service of the Divine. His spiritual -proficiency has been such that he has developed from deacon to dean, -from dean to bishop, and from bishop to archbishop in the short space of -twenty years. As there are only two archbishops in the whole of England -the inference seems to be that he is the second best man in England; his -hat is the proof of it. Even in a material sense his hat was one of the -largest; it was larger than Mr. Gladstone's; larger than Thackeray's; -larger than Dickens'; it was in fact, so his hatter told him and we are -inclined to agree, an "eight full". Yet he began much as other men -begin. He struck an undergraduate in a fit of temper and was rusticated; -he wrote a text-book of logic and rowed a very good oar. But after he -was ordained his diary shows that the specialising process had begun. He -thought a great deal about the state of his soul; about "the monstrous -tumour of Simony"; about Church reform; and about the meaning of -Christianity. "Self-renunciation," he came to the conclusion, "is the -foundation of Christian Religion and Christian Morals. . . . The highest -wisdom is that which can enforce and cultivate this self-renunciation. -Hence (against Cousin) I hold that religion is higher far than -philosophy." There is one mention of chemists and capillarity, but -science and philosophy were, even at this early stage, in danger of -being crowded out. Soon the diary takes a different tone. "He seems," -says his biographer, "to have had no time for committing his thoughts to -paper"; he records his engagements only, and he dines out almost every -night. Sir Henry Taylor, whom he met at one of these parties, described -him as "simple, solid, good, capable, and pleasing". Perhaps it was his -solidity combined with his "eminently scientific" turn of mind, his -blandness as well as his bulk, that impressed some of these great people -with the confidence that in him the Church had found a very necessary -champion. His "brawny logic" and massive frame seemed to fit him to grapple -with a task that taxed the strongest—how, that is, to reconcile -the scientific discoveries of the age with religion, and even prove them -"some of its strongest witnesses for the truth". If any one could do -this Thomson could; his practical ability, unhampered by any mystical or -dreaming tendency, had already proved itself in the conduct of the -business affairs of his College. From Bishop he became almost instantly -Archbishop; and in becoming Archbishop he became Primate of England, -Governor of the Charterhouse and King's College, London, patron of one -hundred and twenty livings, with the Archdeaconries of York, Cleveland, -and the East Riding in his gift, and the Canonries and Prebends in York -Minster. Bishopthorpe itself was an enormous palace; he was -immediately faced by the "knotty question" of whether to buy all the -furniture—"much of it only poor stuff"—or to furnish the house -anew, which would cost a fortune. Moreover there were seven cows in the -park; but these, perhaps, were counterbalanced by nine children in the -nursery. Then the Prince and Princess of Wales came to stay, and the -Archbishop took upon himself the task of furnishing the Princess's -apartments. He went up to London and bought eight Moderator lamps, two -Spanish figures holding candles, and reminded himself of the necessity -of buying "soap for Princess". But meanwhile far more serious matters -claimed every ounce of his strength. Already he had been exhorted to -"wield the sure lance of your brawny logic against the sophistries" of the -authors of <i>Essays and Reviews</i>, and had responded in a work called -<i>Aids to Faith</i>. Near at hand the town of Sheffield, with its large -population of imperfectly educated working men, was a breeding ground of -scepticism and discontent. The Archbishop made it his special charge. He -was fond of watching the rolling of armour plate, and constantly -addressed meetings of working men. "Now what are these Nihilisms, and -Socialisms, and Communisms, and Fenianisms, and Secret Societies—what -do they all mean?" he asked. "Selfishness," he replied, and "assertion -of one class against the rest is at the bottom of them all." There was a -law of nature, he said, by which wages went up and wages went down. "You -must accept the declivity as well as the ascent. . . . If we could only -get people to learn that, then things would go on a great deal better -and smoother." And the working men of Sheffield responded by giving him -five hundred pieces of cutlery mounted in sterling silver. But -presumably there were a certain number of knives among the spoons and -the forks.</p> - -<p>Bishop Colenso, however, was far more troublesome than the working men -of Sheffield; and the Ritualists vexed him so persistently that even his -vast strength felt the strain. The questions which were referred to him -for decision were peculiarly fitted to tease and annoy even a man of his -bulk and his blandness. Shall a drunkard found dead in a ditch, or a -burglar who has fallen through a skylight, be given the benefit of the -Burial Service? he was asked. The question of lighted candles was "most -difficult"; the wearing of coloured stoles and the administration of the -mixed chalice taxed him considerably; and finally there was the Rev. -John Purchas, who, dressed in cope, alb, biretta and stole "cross-wise", -lit candles and extinguished them "for no special reason"; filled a -vessel with black powder and rubbed it into the foreheads of his -congregation; and hung over the Holy Table "a figure, image, or stuffed -skin of a dove, in a flying attitude". The Archbishop's temper, usually -so positive and imperturbable, was gravely ruffled. "Will there ever -come a time when it will be thought a crime to have striven to keep the -Church of England as representing the common sense of the Nation?" he -asked. "I suppose it may, but I shall not see it. I have gone through a -good deal, but I do not repent of having done my best." If, for a -moment, the Archbishop himself could ask such a question, we must -confess to a state of complete bewilderment. What has become of our -superlatively good man? He is harassed and cumbered; spends his time -settling questions about stuffed pigeons and coloured petticoats; writes -over eighty letters before breakfast sometimes; scarcely has time to run -over to Paris and buy his daughter a bonnet; and in the end has to ask -himself whether one of these days his conduct will not be considered a -crime.</p> - -<p>Was it a crime? And if so, was it his fault? Did he not start out in the -belief that Christianity had something to do with renunciation and was -not entirely a matter of common sense? If honours and obligations, pomps -and possessions, accumulated and encrusted him, how, being an -Archbishop, could he refuse to accept them? Princesses must have their -soap; palaces must have their furniture; children must have their cows. -And, pathetic though it seems, he never completely lost his interest in -science. He wore a pedometer; he was one of the first to use a camera; -he believed in the future of the typewriter; and in his last years he -tried to mend a broken clock. He was a delightful father too; he wrote -witty, terse, sensible letters; his good stories were much to the point; -and he died in harness. Certainly he was a very able man, but if we -insist upon goodness—is it easy, is it possible, for a good man to be -an Archbishop?</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="The_Patron"><i>The Patron and the Crocus</i></a></h4> - - -<p>Young men and women beginning to write are generally given the plausible -but utterly impracticable advice to write what they have to write as -shortly as possible, as clearly as possible, and without other thought -in their minds except to say exactly what is in them. Nobody ever adds -on these occasions the one thing needful: "And be sure you choose your -patron wisely", though that is the gist of the whole matter. For a book -is always written for somebody to read, and, since the patron is not -merely the paymaster, but also in a very subtle and insidious way the -instigator and inspirer of what is written, it is of the utmost -importance that he should be a desirable man.</p> - -<p>But who, then, is the desirable man—the patron who will cajole the -best out of the writer's brain and bring to birth the most varied and -vigorous progeny of which he is capable? Different ages have answered -the question differently. The Elizabethans, to speak roughly, -chose the aristocracy to write for and the playhouse public. The -eighteenth-century patron was a combination of coffee-house wit and Grub -Street bookseller. In the nineteenth-century the great writers wrote for -the half-crown magazines and the leisured classes. And looking back and -applauding the splendid results of these different alliances, it all -seems enviably simple, and plain as a pikestaff compared with our own -predicament—for whom should we write? For the present supply of -patrons is of unexampled and bewildering variety. There is the daily Press, -the weekly Press, the monthly Press; the English public and the American -public; the best-seller public and the worst-seller public; the -high-brow public and the red-blood public; all now organised -self-conscious entities capable through their various mouthpieces of -making their needs known and their approval or displeasure felt. Thus -the writer who has been moved by the sight of the first crocus in -Kensington Gardens has, before he sets pen to paper, to choose from a -crowd of competitors the particular patron who suits him best. It is -futile to say, "Dismiss them all; think only of your crocus", because -writing is a method of communication; and the crocus is an imperfect -crocus until it has been shared. The first man or the last may write for -himself alone, but he is an exception and an unenviable one at that, and -the gulls are welcome to his works if the gulls can read them.</p> - -<p>Granted, then, that every writer has some public or other at the end of -his pen, the high-minded will say that it should be a submissive public, -accepting obediently whatever he likes to give it. Plausible as the -theory sounds, great risks are attached to it. For in that case the -writer remains conscious of his public, yet is superior to it—an -uncomfortable and unfortunate combination, as the works of Samuel -Butler, George Meredith, and Henry James may be taken to prove. Each -despised the public; each desired a public; each failed to attain a -public; and each wreaked his failure upon the public by a succession, -gradually increasing in intensity, of angularities, obscurities, and -affectations which no writer whose patron was his equal and friend would -have thought it necessary to inflict. Their crocuses in consequence are -tortured plants, beautiful and bright, but with something wry-necked -about them, malformed, shrivelled on the one side, overblown on the -other. A touch of the sun would have done them a world of good. Shall we -then rush to the opposite extreme and accept (if in fancy alone) the -flattering proposals which the editors of the <i>Times</i> and the <i>Daily -News</i> may be supposed to make us—"Twenty pounds down for your -crocus in precisely fifteen hundred words, which shall blossom upon every -breakfast table from John o' Groats to the Land's End before nine -o'clock to-morrow morning with the writer's name attached"?</p> - -<p>But will one crocus be enough, and must it not be a very brilliant -yellow to shine so far, to cost so much, and to have one's name attached -to it? The Press is undoubtedly a great multiplier of crocuses. But if -we look at some of these plants, we shall find that they are only very -distantly related to the original little yellow or purple flower which -pokes up through the grass in Kensington Gardens about this time of -year. The newspaper crocus is amazing but still a very different plant. -It fills precisely the space allotted to it. It radiates a golden glow. -It is genial, affable, warm-hearted. It is beautifully finished, too, -for let nobody think that the art of "our dramatic critic" of the -<i>Times</i> or of Mr. Lynd of the <i>Daily News</i> is an easy one. It is -no despicable feat to start a million brains running at nine o'clock in the -morning, to give two million eyes something bright and brisk and amusing -to look at. But the night comes and these flowers fade. So little bits -of glass lose their lustre if you take them out of the sea; great prima -donnas howl like hyenas if you shut them up in telephone boxes; and the -most brilliant of articles when removed from its element is dust and -sand and the husks of straw. Journalism embalmed in a book is -unreadable.</p> - -<p>The patron we want, then, is one who will help us to preserve our -flowers from decay. But as his qualities change from age to age, and it -needs considerable integrity and conviction not to be dazzled by the -pretensions or bamboozled by the persuasions of the competing crowd, -this business of patron-finding is one of the tests and trials of -authorship. To know whom to write for is to know how to write. Some of -the modern patron's qualities are, however, fairly plain. The writer -will require at this moment, it is obvious, a patron with the -book-reading habit rather than the play-going habit. Nowadays, too, he -must be instructed in the literature of other times and races. But there -are other qualities which our special weaknesses and tendencies demand -in him. There is the question of indecency, for instance, which plagues -us and puzzles us much more than it did the Elizabethans. The -twentieth-century patron must be immune from shock. He must distinguish -infallibly between the little clod of manure which sticks to the crocus -of necessity, and that which is plastered to it out of bravado. He must -be a judge, too, of those social influences which inevitably play so -large a part in modern literature, and able to say which matures and -fortifies, which inhibits and makes sterile. Further, there is emotion -for him to pronounce on, and in no department can he do more useful work -than in bracing a writer against sentimentality on the one hand and a -craven fear of expressing his feeling on the other. It is worse, he will -say, and perhaps more common, to be afraid of feeling than to feel too -much. He will add, perhaps, something about language, and point out how -many words Shakespeare used and how much grammar Shakespeare violated, -while we, though we keep our fingers so demurely to the black notes on -the piano, have not appreciably improved upon <i>Antony and Cleopatra</i>. -And if you can forget your sex altogether, he will say, so much the -better; a writer has none. But all this is by the way—elementary and -disputable. The patron's prime quality is something different, only to -be expressed perhaps by the use of that convenient word which cloaks so -much—atmosphere. It is necessary that the patron should shed and -envelop the crocus in an atmosphere which makes it appear a plant of the -very highest importance, so that to misrepresent it is the one outrage -not to be forgiven this side of the grave. He must make us feel that a -single crocus, if it be a real crocus, is enough for him; that he does -not want to be lectured, elevated, instructed, or improved; that he is -sorry that he bullied Carlyle into vociferation, Tennyson into idyllics, -and Ruskin into insanity; that he is now ready to efface himself or -assert himself as his writers require; that he is bound to them by a -more than maternal tie; that they are twins indeed, one dying if the -other dies, one flourishing if the other flourishes; that the fate of -literature depends upon their happy alliance—all of which proves, as -we began by saying, that the choice of a patron is of the highest -importance. But how to choose rightly? How to write well? Those are the -questions.</p> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="The_Modern_Essay"><i>The Modern Essay</i></a></h4> - - -<p>As Mr. Rhys truly says, it is unnecessary to go profoundly into the -history and origin of the essay—whether it derives from Socrates or -Siranney the Persian—since, like all living things, its present is -more important than its past. Moreover, the family is widely spread; and -while some of its representatives have risen in the world and wear their -coronets with the best, others pick up a precarious living in the gutter -near Fleet Street. The form, too, admits variety. The essay can be short -or long, serious or trifling, about God and Spinoza, or about turtles -and Cheapside. But as we turn over the pages of these five little -volumes,<a name="FNanchor_13_1" id="FNanchor_13_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_13_1" class="fnanchor">[13]</a> containing essays written between 1870 and 1920, certain -principles appear to control the chaos, and we detect in the short -period under review something like the progress of history.</p> - -<p>Of all forms of literature, however, the essay is the one which least -calls for the use of long words. The principle which controls it is -simply that it should give pleasure; the desire which impels us when we -take it from the shelf is simply to receive pleasure. Everything in an -essay must be subdued to that end. It should lay us under a spell with -its first word, and we should only wake, refreshed, with its last. In -the interval we may pass through the most various experiences of -amusement, surprise, interest, indignation; we may soar to the heights -of fantasy with Lamb or plunge to the depths of wisdom with Bacon, but -we must never be roused. The essay must lap us about and draw its -curtain across the world.</p> - -<p>So great a feat is seldom accomplished, though the fault may well be as -much on the reader's side as on the writer's. Habit and lethargy have -dulled his palate. A novel has a story, a poem rhyme; but what art can -the essayist use in these short lengths of prose to sting us wide awake -and fix us in a trance which is not sleep but rather an intensification of -life—a basking, with every faculty alert, in the sun of pleasure? -He must know—that is the first essential—how to write. His -learning may be as profound as Mark Pattison's, but in an essay it must be -so fused by the magic of writing that not a fact juts out, not a dogma -tears the surface of the texture. Macaulay in one way, Froude in another, -did this superbly over and over again. They have blown more knowledge into -us in the course of one essay than the innumerable chapters of a hundred -text-books. But when Mark Pattison has to tell us, in the space of -thirty-five little pages, about Montaigne, we feel that he had not -previously assimilated M. Grün. M. Grün was a gentleman who once wrote -a bad book. M. Grün and his book should have been embalmed for our -perpetual delight in amber. But the process is fatiguing; it requires -more time and perhaps more temper than Pattison had at his command. He -served M. Grün up raw, and he remains a crude berry among the cook -meats, upon which our teeth must grate for ever. Something of the sort -applies to Matthew Arnold and a certain translator of Spinoza. Literal -truth-telling and finding fault with a culprit for his good are out of -place in an essay, where everything should be for our good and rather for -eternity than for the March number of the <i>Fortnightly Review</i>. But -if the voice of the scold should never be heard in this narrow plot, -there is another voice which is as a plague of locusts—the voice of a -man stumbling drowsily among loose words, clutching aimlessly at vague -ideas, the voice, for example, of Mr. Hutton in the following passage:</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>Add to this that his married life was very brief, only seven years and a -half, being unexpectedly cut short, and that his passionate reverence for -his wife's memory and genius—in his own words, "a religion"—was -one which, as he must have been perfectly sensible, he could not make to -appear otherwise than extravagant, not to say an hallucination, in the -eyes of the rest of mankind, and yet that he was possessed by an -irresistible yearning to attempt to embody it in all the tender and -enthusiastic hyperbole of which it is so pathetic to find a man who -gained his fame by his "dry-light" a master, and it is impossible not to -feel that the human incidents in Mr. Mill's career are very sad.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>A book could take that blow, but it sinks an essay. A biography in two -volumes is indeed the proper depositary; for there, where the licence is -so much wider, and hints and glimpses of outside things make part of the -feast (we refer to the old type of Victorian volume), these yawns and -stretches hardly matter, and have indeed some positive value of their -own. But that value, which is contributed by the reader, perhaps -illicitly, in his desire to get as much into the book from all possible -sources as he can, must be ruled out here.</p> - -<p>There is no room for the impurities of literature in an essay. Somehow -or other, by dint of labour or bounty of nature, or both combined, the -essay must be pure—pure like water or pure like wine, but pure from -dullness, deadness, and deposits of extraneous matter. Of all writers in -the first volume, Walter Pater best achieves this arduous task, because -before setting out to write his essay ("Notes on Leonardo da Vinci") he -has somehow contrived to get his material fused. He is a learned man, -but it is not knowledge of Leonardo that remains with us, but a vision, -such as we get in a good novel where everything contributes to bring the -writer's conception as a whole before us. Only here, in the essay, where -the bounds are so strict and facts have to be used in their nakedness, -the true writer like Walter Pater makes these limitations yield their -own quality. Truth will give it authority; from its narrow limits he -will get shape and intensity; and then there is no more fitting place -for some of those ornaments which the old writers loved and we, by -calling them ornaments, presumably despise. Nowadays nobody would have -the courage to embark on the once famous description of Leonardo's lady -who has</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>learned the secrets of the grave; and has been a diver in deep seas and -keeps their fallen day about her; and trafficked for strange webs with -Eastern merchants; and, as Leda, was the mother of Helen of Troy, and, -as Saint Anne, the mother of Mary . . .</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>The passage is too thumb-marked to slip naturally into the context. But -when we come unexpectedly upon "the smiling of women and the motion of -great waters", or upon "full of the refinement of the dead, in sad, -earth-coloured raiment, set with pale stones", we suddenly remember that -we have ears and we have eyes, and that the English language fills a -long array of stout volumes with innumerable words, many of which are of -more than one syllable. The only living Englishman who ever looks into -these volumes is, of course, a gentleman of Polish extraction. But -doubtless our abstention saves us much gush, much rhetoric, much -high-stepping and cloud-prancing, and for the sake of the prevailing -sobriety and hard-headedness we should be willing to barter the -splendour of Sir Thomas Browne and the vigour of Swift.</p> - -<p>Yet, if the essay admits more properly than biography or fiction of -sudden boldness and metaphor, and can be polished till every atom of its -surface shines, there are dangers in that too. We are soon in sight of -ornament. Soon the current, which is the life-blood of literature, runs -slow; and instead of sparkling and flashing or moving with a quieter -impulse which has a deeper excitement, words coagulate together in -frozen sprays which, like the grapes on a Christmas-tree, glitter for a -single night, but are dusty and garish the day after. The temptation to -decorate is great where the theme may be of the slightest. What is there -to interest another in the fact that one has enjoyed a walking tour, or -has amused oneself by rambling down Cheapside and looking at the turtles -in Mr. Sweeting's shop window? Stevenson and Samuel Butler chose very -different methods of exciting our interest in these domestic themes. -Stevenson, of course, trimmed and polished and set out his matter in the -traditional eighteenth-century form. It is admirably done, but we cannot -help feeling anxious, as the essay proceeds, lest the material may give -out under the craftsman's fingers. The ingot is so small, the -manipulation so incessant. And perhaps that is why the peroration—</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>To sit still and contemplate—to remember the faces of women -without desire, to be pleased by the great deeds of men without envy, to be -everything and everywhere in sympathy and yet content to remain where -and what you are—</p></blockquote> - - -<p>has the sort of insubstantiality which suggests that by the time he got -to the end he had left himself nothing solid to work with. Butler -adopted the very opposite method. Think your own thoughts, he seems to -say, and speak them as plainly as you can. These turtles in the shop -window which appear to leak out of their shells through heads and feet -suggest a fatal faithfulness to a fixed idea. And so, striding -unconcernedly from one idea to the next, we traverse a large stretch of -ground; observe that a wound in the solicitor is a very serious thing; -that Mary Queen of Scots wears surgical boots and is subject to fits -near the Horse Shoe in Tottenham Court Road; take it for granted that no -one really cares about Æschylus; and so, with many amusing anecdotes -and some profound reflections, reach the peroration, which is that, as -he had been told not to see more in Cheapside than he could get into -twelve pages of the <i>Universal Review</i>, he had better stop. And yet -obviously Butler is at least as careful of our pleasure as Stevenson; -and to write like oneself and call it not writing is a much harder -exercise in style than to write like Addison and call it writing well.</p> - -<p>But, however much they differ individually, the Victorian essayists yet -had something in common. They wrote at greater length than is now usual, -and they wrote for a public which had not only time to sit down to its -magazine seriously, but a high, if peculiarly Victorian, standard of -culture by which to judge it. It was worth while to speak out upon -serious matters in an essay; and there was nothing absurd in writing as -well as one possibly could when, in a month or two, the same public -which had welcomed the essay in a magazine would carefully read it once -more in a book. But a change came from a small audience of cultivated -people to a larger audience of people who were not quite so cultivated. -The change was not altogether for the worse. In volume III. we find Mr. -Birrell and Mr. Beerbohm. It might even be said that there was a -reversion to the classic type, and that the essay by losing its size and -something of its sonority was approaching more nearly the essay of -Addison and Lamb. At any rate, there is a great gulf between Mr. Birrell -on Carlyle and the essay which one may suppose that Carlyle would have -written upon Mr. Birrell. There is little similarity between <i>A Cloud of -Pinafores</i>, by Max Beerbohm, and <i>A Cynic's Apology</i>, by Leslie -Stephen. But the essay is alive; there is no reason to despair. As the -conditions change so the essayist, most sensitive of all plants to public -opinion, adapts himself, and if he is good makes the best of the change, -and if he is bad the worst. Mr. Birrell is certainly good; and so we find -that, though he has dropped a considerable amount of weight, his attack is -much more direct and his movement more supple. But what did Mr. Beerbohm -give to the essay and what did he take from it? That is a much more -complicated question, for here we have an essayist who has concentrated -on the work and is without doubt the prince of his profession.</p> - -<p>What Mr. Beerbohm gave was, of course, himself. This presence, which has -haunted the essay fitfully from the time of Montaigne, had been in exile -since the death of Charles Lamb. Matthew Arnold was never to his readers -Matt, nor Walter Pater affectionately abbreviated in a thousand homes to -Wat. They gave us much, but that they did not give. Thus, some time in -the nineties, it must have surprised readers accustomed to exhortation, -information, and denunciation to find themselves familiarly addressed by -a voice which seemed to belong to a man no larger than themselves. He -was affected by private joys and sorrows, and had no gospel to preach -and no learning to impart. He was himself, simply and directly, and -himself he has remained. Once again we have an essayist capable of using -the essayist's most proper but most dangerous and delicate tool. He has -brought personality into literature, not unconsciously and impurely, but -so consciously and purely that we do not know whether there is any -relation between Max the essayist and Mr. Beerbohm the man. We only know -that the spirit of personality permeates every word that he writes. The -triumph is the triumph of style. For it is only by knowing how to write -that you can make use in literature of your self; that self which, while -it is essential to literature, is also its most dangerous antagonist. -Never to be yourself and yet always—that is the problem. Some of the -essayists in Mr. Rhys' collection, to be frank, have not altogether -succeeded in solving it. We are nauseated by the sight of trivial -personalities decomposing in the eternity of print. As talk, no doubt, -it was charming, and certainly the writer is a good fellow to meet over -a bottle of beer. But literature is stern; it is no use being charming, -virtuous, or even learned and brilliant into the bargain, unless, she -seems to reiterate, you fulfil her first condition—to know how to -write.</p> - -<p>This art is possessed to perfection by Mr. Beerbohm. But he has not -searched the dictionary for polysyllables. He has not moulded firm -periods or seduced our ears with intricate cadences and strange melodies. -Some of his companions—Henley and Stevenson, for example—are -momentarily more impressive. But <i>A Cloud of Pinafores</i> had in it that -indescribable inequality, stir, and final expressiveness which belong to -life and to life alone. You have not finished with it because you have -read it, any more than friendship is ended because it is time to part. -Life wells up and alters and adds. Even things in a book-case change if -they are alive; we find ourselves wanting to meet them again; we find -them altered. So we look back upon essay after essay by Mr. Beerbohm, -knowing that, come September or May, we shall sit down with them and -talk. Yet it is true that the essayist is the most sensitive of all -writers to public opinion. The drawing-room is the place where a great -deal of reading is done nowadays, and the essays of Mr. Beerbohm lie, -with an exquisite appreciation of all that the position exacts, upon the -drawing-room table. There is no gin about; no strong tobacco; no puns, -drunkenness, or insanity. Ladies and gentlemen talk together, and some -things, of course, are not said.</p> - -<p>But if it would be foolish to attempt to confine Mr. Beerbohm to one -room, it would be still more foolish, unhappily, to make him, the -artist, the man who gives us only his best, the representative of our -age. There are no essays by Mr. Beerbohm in the fourth or fifth volumes -of the present collection. His age seems already a little distant, and -the drawing-room table, as it recedes, begins to look rather like an -altar where, once upon a time, people deposited offerings—fruit from -their own orchards, gifts carved with their own hands. Now once more the -conditions have changed. The public needs essays as much as ever, and -perhaps even more. The demand for the light middle not exceeding fifteen -hundred words, or in special cases seventeen hundred and fifty, much -exceeds the supply. Where Lamb wrote one essay and Max perhaps writes -two, Mr. Belloc at a rough computation produces three hundred and -sixty-five. They are very short, it is true. Yet with what dexterity the -practised essayist will utilise his space—beginning as close to the -top of the sheet as possible, judging precisely how far to go, when to -turn, and how, without sacrificing a hair's-breadth of paper, to wheel -about and alight accurately upon the last word his editor allows! As a feat -of skill it is well worth watching. But the personality upon which Mr. -Belloc, like Mr. Beerbohm, depends suffers in the process. It comes to -us not with the natural richness of the speaking voice, but strained and -thin and full of mannerisms and affectations, like the voice of a man -shouting through a megaphone to a crowd on a windy day. "Little friends, -my readers," he says in the essay called "An Unknown Country", and he -goes on to tell us how—</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>There was a shepherd the other day at Findon Fair who had come from the -east by Lewes with sheep, and who had in his eyes that reminiscence of -horizons which makes the eyes of shepherds and of mountaineers different -from the eyes of other men. . . . I went with him to hear what he had to -say, for shepherds talk quite differently from other men.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>Happily this shepherd had little to say, even under the stimulus of the -inevitable mug of beer, about the Unknown Country, for the only remark -that he did make proves him either a minor poet, unfit for the care of -sheep, or Mr. Belloc himself masquerading with a fountain pen. That is -the penalty which the habitual essayist must now be prepared to face. He -must masquerade. He cannot afford the time either to be himself or to be -other people. He must skim the surface of thought and dilute the -strength of personality. He must give us a worn weekly halfpenny instead -of a solid sovereign once a year.</p> - -<p>But it is not Mr. Belloc only who has suffered from the prevailing -conditions. The essays which bring the collection to the year 1920 may -not be the best of their authors' work, but, if we except writers like -Mr. Conrad and Mr. Hudson, who have strayed into essay writing -accidentally, and concentrate upon those who write essays habitually, we -shall find them a good deal affected by the change in their -circumstances. To write weekly, to write daily, to write shortly, to -write for busy people catching trains in the morning or for tired people -coming home in the evening, is a heart-breaking task for men who know -good writing from bad. They do it, but instinctively draw out of harm's -way anything precious that might be damaged by contact with the public, -or anything sharp that might irritate its skin. And so, if one reads Mr. -Lucas, Mr. Lynd, or Mr. Squire in the bulk, one feels that a common -greyness silvers everything. They are as far removed from the -extravagant beauty of Walter Pater as they are from the intemperate -candour of Leslie Stephen. Beauty and courage are dangerous spirits to -battle in a column and a half; and thought, like a brown paper parcel in -a waistcoat pocket, has a way of spoiling the symmetry of an article. It -is a kind, tired, apathetic world for which they write, and the marvel -is that they never cease to attempt, at least, to write well.</p> - -<p>But there is no need to pity Mr. Clutton Brock for this change in the -essayist's conditions. He has clearly made the best of his circumstances -and not the worst. One hesitates even to say that he has had to make any -conscious effort in the matter, so naturally has he effected the -transition from the private essayist to the public, from the -drawing-room to the Albert Hall. Paradoxically enough, the shrinkage in -size has brought about a corresponding expansion of individuality. We -have no longer the "I" of Max and of Lamb, but the "we" of public bodies -and other sublime personages. It is "we" who go to hear the <i>Magic -Flute</i>; "we" who ought to profit by it; "we", in some mysterious way, -who, in our corporate capacity, once upon a time actually wrote it. For -music and literature and art must submit to the same generalisation or -they will not carry to the farthest recesses of the Albert Hall. That -the voice of Mr. Clutton Brock, so sincere and so disinterested, carries -such a distance and reaches so many without pandering to the weakness of -the mass or its passions must be a matter of legitimate satisfaction to -us all. But while "we" are gratified, "I", that unruly partner in the -human fellowship, is reduced to despair. "I" must always think things -for himself, and feel things for himself. To share them in a diluted -form with the majority of well-educated and well-intentioned men and -women is for him sheer agony; and while the rest of us listen intently -and profit profoundly, "I" slips off to the woods and the fields and -rejoices in a single blade of grass or a solitary potato.</p> - -<p>In the fifth volume of modern essays, it seems, we have got some way -from pleasure and the art of writing. But in justice to the essayists of -1920 we must be sure that we are not praising the famous because they -have been praised already and the dead because we shall never meet them -wearing spats in Piccadilly. We must know what we mean when we say that -they can write and give us pleasure. We must compare them; we must bring -out the quality. We must point to this and say it is good because it is -exact, truthful, and imaginative:</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>Nay, retire men cannot when they would; neither will they, when it were -Reason; but are impatient of Privateness, even in age and sickness, -which require the shadow: like old Townsmen: that will still be sitting -at their street door, though thereby they offer Age to Scorn . . .</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>and to this, and say it is bad because it is loose, plausible, and -commonplace:</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>With courteous and precise cynicism on his lips, he thought of quiet -virginal chambers, of waters singing under the moon, of terraces where -taintless music sobbed into the open night, of pure maternal mistresses -with protecting arms and vigilant eyes, of fields slumbering in the -sunlight, of leagues of ocean heaving under warm tremulous heavens, of -hot ports, gorgeous and perfumed. . . .</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>It goes on, but already we are bemused with sound and neither feel nor -hear. The comparison makes us suspect that the art of writing has for -backbone some fierce attachment to an idea. It is on the back of an -idea, something believed in with conviction or seen with precision and -thus compelling words to its shape, that the diverse company which -included Lamb and Bacon, and Mr. Beerbohm and Hudson, and Vernon Lee and -Mr. Conrad, and Leslie Stephen and Butler and Walter Pater reaches the -farther shore. Very various talents have helped or hindered the passage -of the idea into words. Some scrape through painfully; others fly with -every wind favouring. But Mr. Belloc and Mr. Lucas and Mr. Lynd and Mr. -Squire are not fiercely attached to anything in itself. They share the -contemporary dilemma—that lack of an obstinate conviction which lifts -ephemeral sounds through the misty sphere of anybody's language to the -land where there is a perpetual marriage, a perpetual union. Vague as -all definitions are, a good essay must have this permanent quality about -it; it must draw its curtain round us, but it must be a curtain that -shuts us in, not out.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_13_1" id="Footnote_13_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_13_1"><span class="label">[13]</span></a><i>Modern English Essays</i>, edited by Ernest Rhys, -5 vols. (Dent).</p></div> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="Joseph_Conrad"><i>Joseph Conrad</i></a><a name="FNanchor_14_1" id="FNanchor_14_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_14_1" class="fnanchor">[14]</a></h4> - - -<p>Suddenly, without giving us time to arrange our thoughts or prepare our -phrases, our guest has left us; and his withdrawal without farewell or -ceremony is in keeping with his mysterious arrival, long years ago, to -take up his lodging in this country. For there was always an air of -mystery about him. It was partly his Polish birth, partly his memorable -appearance, partly his preference for living in the depths of the -country, out of ear-shot of gossips, beyond reach of hostesses, so that -for news of him one had to depend upon the evidence of simple visitors -with a habit of ringing door-bells who reported of their unknown host -that he had the most perfect manners, the brightest eyes, and spoke -English with a strong foreign accent.</p> - -<p>Still, though it is the habit of death to quicken and focus our -memories, there clings to the genius of Conrad something essentially, -and not accidentally, difficult of approach. His reputation of later -years was, with one obvious exception, undoubtedly the highest in -England; yet he was not popular. He was read with passionate delight by -some; others he left cold and lustreless. Among his readers were people -of the most opposite ages and sympathies. Schoolboys of fourteen, -driving their way through Marryat, Scott, Henty, and Dickens, swallowed -him down with the rest; while the seasoned and the fastidious, who in -process of time have eaten their way to the heart of literature and -there turn over and over a few precious crumbs, set Conrad scrupulously -upon their banqueting table. One source of difficulty and disagreement -is, of course, to be found, where men have at all times found it, in his -beauty. One opens his pages and feels as Helen must have felt when she -looked in her glass and realised that, do what she would, she could -never in any circumstances pass for a plain woman. So Conrad had been -gifted, so he had schooled himself, and such was his obligation to a -strange language wooed characteristically for its Latin qualities rather -than its Saxon that it seemed impossible for him to make an ugly or -insignificant movement of the pen. His mistress, his style, is a little -somnolent sometimes in repose. But let somebody speak to her, and then -how magnificently she bears down upon us, with what colour, triumph, and -majesty! Yet it is arguable that Conrad would have gained both in credit -and in popularity if he had written what he had to write without this -incessant care for appearances. They block and impede and distract, his -critics say, pointing to those famous passages which it is becoming the -habit to lift from their context and exhibit among other cut flowers of -English prose. He was self-conscious and stiff and ornate, they -complain, and the sound of his own voice was dearer to him than the -voice of humanity in its anguish. The criticism is familiar, and as -difficult to refute as the remarks of deaf people when <i>Figaro</i> is -played. They see the orchestra; far off they hear a dismal scrape of -sound; their own remarks are interrupted, and, very naturally, they -conclude that the ends of life would be better served if instead of -scraping Mozart those fifty fiddlers broke stones upon the road. That -beauty teaches, that beauty is a disciplinarian, how are we to convince -them, since her teaching is inseparable from the sound of her voice and -to that they are deaf? But read Conrad, not in birthday books but in the -bulk, and he must be lost indeed to the meaning of words who does not -hear in that rather stiff and sombre music, with its reserve, its pride, -its vast and implacable integrity, how it is better to be good than bad, -how loyalty is good and honesty and courage, though ostensibly Conrad is -concerned merely to show us the beauty of a night at sea. But it is ill -work dragging such intimations from their element. Dried in our little -saucers, without the magic and mystery of language, they lose their -power to excite and goad; they lose the drastic power which is a -constant quality of Conrad's prose.</p> - -<p>For it was by virtue of something drastic in him, the qualities of a -leader and captain, that Conrad kept his hold over boys and young -people. Until <i>Nostromo</i> was written his characters, as the young were -quick to perceive, were fundamentally simple and heroic, however subtle -the mind and indirect the method of their creator. They were seafarers, -used to solitude and silence. They were in conflict with Nature, but at -peace with man. Nature was their antagonist; she it was who drew forth -honour, magnanimity, loyalty, the qualities proper to man; she who in -sheltered bays reared to womanhood beautiful girls unfathomable and -austere. Above all, it was Nature who turned out such gnarled and tested -characters as Captain Whalley and old Singleton, obscure but glorious in -their obscurity, who were to Conrad the pick of our race, the men whose -praises he was never tired of celebrating:</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>They had been strong as those are strong who know neither doubts nor -hopes. They had been impatient and enduring, turbulent and devoted, -unruly and faithful. Well-meaning people had tried to represent these -men as whining over every mouthful of their food, as going about their -work in fear of their lives. But in truth they had been men who knew -toil, privation, violence, debauchery—but knew not fear, and had no -desire of spite in their hearts. Men hard to manage, but easy to -inspire; voiceless men—but men enough to scorn in their hearts the -sentimental voices that bewailed the hardness of their fate. It was a -fate unique and their own; the capacity to bear it appeared to them the -privilege of the chosen! Their generation lived inarticulate and -indispensable, without knowing the sweetness of affections or the refuge -of a home—and died free from the dark menace of a narrow grave. They -were the everlasting children of the mysterious sea.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>Such were the characters of the early books—<i>Lord Jim, Typhoon, -The Nigger of the "Narcissus", Youth</i>; and these books, in spite of the -changes and fashions, are surely secure of their place among our -classics. But they reach this height by means of qualities which the -simple story of adventure, as Marryat told it, or Fenimore Cooper, has -no claim to possess. For it is clear that to admire and celebrate such -men and such deeds, romantically, wholeheartedly and with the fervour -of a lover, one must be possessed of the double vision; one must be at -once inside and out. To praise their silence one must possess a voice. -To appreciate their endurance one must be sensitive to fatigue. One must -be able to live on equal terms with the Whalleys and the Singletons and -yet hide from their suspicious eyes the very qualities which enable one -to understand them. Conrad alone was able to live that double life, for -Conrad was compound of two men; together with the sea captain dwelt that -subtle, refined, and fastidious analyst whom he called Marlow. "A most -discreet, understanding man", he said of Marlow.</p> - -<p>Marlow was one of those born observers who are happiest in retirement. -Marlow liked nothing better than to sit on deck, in some obscure creek -of the Thames, smoking and recollecting; smoking and speculating; -sending after his smoke beautiful rings of words until all the summer's -night became a little clouded with tobacco smoke. Marlow, too, had a -profound respect for the men with whom he had sailed; but he saw the -humour of them. He nosed out and described in masterly fashion those -livid creatures who prey successfully upon the clumsy veterans. He had a -flair for human deformity; his humour was sardonic. Nor did Marlow live -entirely wreathed in the smoke of his own cigars. He had a habit of -opening his eyes suddenly and looking—at a rubbish heap, at a port, -at a shop counter—and then complete in its burning ring of light that -thing is flashed bright upon the mysterious background. Introspective -and analytical, Marlow was aware of this peculiarity. He said the power -came to him suddenly. He might, for instance, overhear a French officer -murmur "Mon Dieu, how the time passes!"</p> - -<blockquote> -<p>Nothing [he comments] could have been more commonplace than this remark; -but its utterance coincided for me with a moment of vision. It's -extraordinary how we go through life with eyes half shut, with dull -ears, with dormant thoughts. . . . Nevertheless, there can be but few of -us who had never known one of these rare moments of awakening, when we -see, hear, understand, ever so much—everything—in a flash, -before we fall back again into our agreeable somnolence. I raised my eyes -when he spoke, and I saw him as though I had never seen him before.</p> -</blockquote> - - -<p>Picture after picture he painted thus upon that dark background; ships -first and foremost, ships at anchor, ships flying before the storm, -ships in harbour; he painted sunsets and dawns; he painted the night; he -painted the sea in every aspect; he painted the gaudy brilliancy of -Eastern ports, and men and women, their houses and their attitudes. He -was an accurate and unflinching observer, schooled to that "absolute -loyalty towards his feelings and sensations", which, Conrad wrote, "an -author should keep hold of in his most exalted moments of creation". And -very quietly and compassionately Marlow sometimes lets fall a few words -of epitaph which remind us, with all that beauty and brilliancy before -our eyes, of the darkness of the background.</p> - -<p>Thus a rough-and-ready distinction would make us say that it is Marlow -who comments, Conrad who creates. It would lead us, aware that we are on -dangerous ground, to account for that change which, Conrad tells us, -took place when he had finished the last story in the <i>Typhoon</i> -volume—"a subtle change in the nature of the inspiration"—by -some alteration in the relationship of the two old friends. ". . . it -seemed somehow that there was nothing more in the world to write about." It -was Conrad, let us suppose, Conrad the creator, who said that, looking back -with sorrowful satisfaction upon the stories he had told; feeling as he -well might that he could never better the storm in <i>The Nigger of the -"Narcissus</i>", or render more faithful tribute to the qualities of -British seamen than he had done already in <i>Youth</i> and <i>Lord -Jim</i>. It was then that Marlow, the commentator, reminded him how, in the -course of nature, one must grow old, sit smoking on deck, and give up -sea-faring. But, he reminded him, those strenuous years had deposited -their memories; and he even went so far perhaps as to hint that, though -the last word might have been said about Captain Whalley and his -relation to the universe, there remained on shore a number of men and -women whose relationships, though of a more personal kind, might be -worth looking into. If we further suppose that there was a volume of -Henry James on board and that Marlow gave his friend the book to take to -bed with him, we may seek support in the fact that it was in 1905 that -Conrad wrote a very fine essay upon that master.</p> - -<p>For some years, then, it was Marlow who was the dominant partner. -<i>Nostromo, Chance, The Arrow of Gold</i> represent that stage of the -alliance which some will continue to find the richest of all. The human -heart is more intricate than the forest, they will say; it has its -storms; it has its creatures of the night; and if as novelist you wish -to test man in all his relationships, the proper antagonist is man; his -ordeal is in society, not solitude. For them there will always be a -peculiar fascination in the books where the light of those brilliant -eyes falls not only upon the waste of waters but upon the heart in its -perplexity. But it must be admitted that, if Marlow thus advised Conrad -to shift his angle of vision, the advice was bold. For the vision of a -novelist is both complex and specialised; complex, because behind his -characters and apart from them must stand something stable to which he -relates them; specialised because since he is a single person with one -sensibility the aspects of life in which he can believe with conviction -are strictly limited. So delicate a balance is easily disturbed. After -the middle period Conrad never again was able to bring his figures into -perfect relation with their background. He never believed in his later -and more highly sophisticated characters as he had believed in his early -seamen. When he had to indicate their relation to that other unseen -world of novelists, the world of values and convictions, he was far less -sure what those values were. Then, over and over again, a single phrase, -"He steered with care", coming at the end of a storm, carried in it a -whole morality. But in this more crowded and complicated world such -terse phrases became less and less appropriate. Complex men and women of -many interests and relations would not submit to so summary a judgement; -or, if they did, much that was important in them escaped the verdict. -And yet it was very necessary to Conrad's genius, with its luxuriant and -romantic power, to have some law by which its creations could be tried. -Essentially—such remained his creed—this world of civilised and -self-conscious people is based upon "a few very simple ideas"; but -where, in the world of thoughts and personal relations, are we to find -them? There are no masts in drawing-rooms; the typhoon does not test the -worth of politicians and business men. Seeking and not finding such -supports, the world of Conrad's later period has about it an involuntary -obscurity, an inconclusiveness, almost a disillusionment which baffles -and fatigues. We lay hold in the dusk only of the old nobilities and -sonorities: fidelity, compassion, honour, service—beautiful always, -but now a little wearily reiterated, as if times had changed. Perhaps it -was Marlow who was at fault. His habit of mind was a trifle sedentary. He -had sat upon deck too long; splendid in soliloquy, he was less apt in -the give and take of conversation; and those "moments of vision" -flashing and fading, do not serve as well as steady lamplight to -illumine the ripple of life and its long, gradual years. Above all, -perhaps, he did not take into account how, if Conrad was to create, it -was essential first that he should believe.</p> - -<p>Therefore, though we shall make expeditions into the later books and -bring back wonderful trophies, large tracts of them will remain by most -of us untrodden. It is the earlier books—<i>Youth, Lord Jim, Typhoon, -The Nigger of the "Narcissus"</i>—that we shall read in their -entirety. For when the question is asked, what of Conrad will survive and -where in the ranks of novelists we are to place him, these books, with -their air of telling us something very old and perfectly true, which had -lain hidden but is now revealed, will come to mind and make such questions -and comparisons seem a little futile. Complete and still, very chaste and -very beautiful, they rise in the memory as, on these hot summer nights, -in their slow and stately way first one star comes out and then another.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_14_1" id="Footnote_14_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_14_1"><span class="label">[14]</span></a>August, 1924.</p></div> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<h4><a id="How_It"><i>How It Strikes a<br /> -Contemporary</i></a></h4> - - -<p>In the first place a contemporary can scarcely fail to be struck by the -fact that two critics at the same table at the same moment will -pronounce completely different opinions about the same book. Here, on -the right, it is declared a masterpiece of English prose; on the left, -simultaneously, a mere mass of waste-paper which, if the fire could -survive it, should be thrown upon the flames. Yet both critics are in -agreement about Milton and about Keats. They display an exquisite -sensibility and have undoubtedly a genuine enthusiasm. It is only when -they discuss the work of contemporary writers that they inevitably come -to blows. The book in question, which is at once a lasting contribution -to English literature and a mere farrago of pretentious mediocrity, was -published about two months ago. That is the explanation; that is why -they differ.</p> - -<p>The explanation is a strange one. It is equally disconcerting to the -reader who wishes to take his bearings in the chaos of contemporary -literature and to the writer who has a natural desire to know whether -his own work, produced with infinite pains and in almost utter darkness, -is likely to burn for ever among the fixed luminaries of English letters -or, on the contrary, to put out the fire. But if we identify ourselves -with the reader and explore his dilemma first, our bewilderment is -short-lived enough. The same thing has happened so often before. We have -heard the doctors disagreeing about the new and agreeing about the old -twice a year on the average, in spring and autumn, ever since Robert -Elsmere, or was it Stephen Phillips, somehow pervaded the atmosphere, -and there was the same disagreement among grown-up people about them. It -would be much more marvellous, and indeed much more upsetting, if, for a -wonder, both gentlemen agreed, pronounced Blank's book an undoubted -masterpiece, and thus faced us with the necessity of deciding whether we -should back their judgement to the extent of ten and sixpence. Both are -critics of reputation; the opinions tumbled out so spontaneously here -will be starched and stiffened into columns of sober prose which will -uphold the dignity of letters in England and America.</p> - -<p>It must be some innate cynicism, then, some ungenerous distrust of -contemporary genius, which determines us automatically as the talk goes on -that, were they to agree—which they show no signs of doing—half -a guinea is altogether too large a sum to squander upon contemporary -enthusiasms, and the case will be met quite adequately by a card to the -library. Still the question remains, and let us put it boldly to the -critics themselves. Is there no guidance nowadays for a reader who -yields to none in reverence for the dead, but is tormented by the -suspicion that reverence for the dead is vitally connected with -understanding of the living? After a rapid survey both critics are -agreed that there is unfortunately no such person. For what is their own -judgement worth where new books are concerned? Certainly not ten and -sixpence. And from the stores of their experience they proceed to bring -forth terrible examples of past blunders; crimes of criticism which, if -they had been committed against the dead and not against the living, -would have lost them their jobs and imperilled their reputations. The -only advice they can offer is to respect one's own instincts, to follow -them fearlessly and, rather than submit them to the control of any -critic or reviewer alive, to check them by reading and reading again the -masterpieces of the past.</p> - -<p>Thanking them humbly, we cannot help reflecting that it was not always -so. Once upon a time, we must believe, there was a rule, a discipline, -which controlled the great republic of readers in a way which is now -unknown. That is not to say that the great critic—the Dryden, the -Johnson, the Coleridge, the Arnold—was an impeccable judge of -contemporary work, whose verdicts stamped the book indelibly and saved -the reader the trouble of reckoning the value for himself. The mistakes -of these great men about their own contemporaries are too notorious to -be worth recording. But the mere fact of their existence had a -centralising influence. That alone, it is not fantastic to suppose, -would have controlled the disagreements of the dinner-table and given to -random chatter about some book just out an authority now entirely to -seek. The diverse schools would have debated as hotly as ever, but at -the back of every reader's mind would have been the consciousness that -there was at least one man who kept the main principles of literature -closely in view; who, if you had taken to him some eccentricity of the -moment, would have brought it into touch with permanence and tethered it -by his own authority in the contrary blasts of praise and blame.<a name="FNanchor_15_1" id="FNanchor_15_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_15_1" class="fnanchor">[15]</a> But -when it comes to the making of a critic, nature must be generous and -society ripe. The scattered dinner-tables of the modern world, the chase -and eddy of the various currents which compose the society of our time, -could only be dominated by a giant of fabulous dimensions. And where is -even the very tall man whom we have the right to expect? Reviewers we -have but no critic; a million competent and incorruptible policemen but -no judge. Men of taste and learning and ability are for ever lecturing -the young and celebrating the dead. But the too frequent result of their -able and industrious pens is a desiccation of the living tissues of -literature into a network of little bones. Nowhere shall we find the -downright vigour of a Dryden, or Keats with his fine and natural -bearing, his profound insight and sanity, or Flaubert and the tremendous -power of his fanaticism, or Coleridge, above all, brewing in his head -the whole of poetry and letting issue now and then one of those profound -general statements which are caught up by the mind when hot with the -friction of reading as if they were of the soul of the book itself.</p> - -<p>And to all this, too, the critics generously agree. A great critic, they -say, is the rarest of beings. But should one miraculously appear, how -should we maintain him, on what should we feed him? Great critics, if -they are not themselves great poets, are bred from the profusion of the -age. There is some great man to be vindicated, some school to be founded -or destroyed. But our age is meagre to the verge of destitution. There -is no name which dominates the rest. There is no master in whose -workshop the young are proud to serve apprenticeship. Mr. Hardy has long -since withdrawn from the arena, and there is something exotic about the -genius of Mr. Conrad which makes him not so much an influence as an -idol, honoured and admired, but aloof and apart. As for the rest, though -they are many and vigorous and in the full flood of creative activity, -there is none whose influence can seriously affect his contemporaries, -or penetrate beyond our day to that not very distant future which it -pleases us to call immortality. If we make a century our test, and ask -how much of the work produced in these days in England will be in -existence then, we shall have to answer not merely that we cannot agree -upon the same book, but that we are more than doubtful whether such a -book there is. It is an age of fragments. A few stanzas, a few pages, a -chapter here and there, the beginning of this novel, the end of that, -are equal to the best of any age or author. But can we go to posterity -with a sheaf of loose pages, or ask the readers of those days, with the -whole of literature before them, to sift our enormous rubbish heaps for -our tiny pearls? Such are the questions which the critics might lawfully -put to their companions at table, the novelists and poets.</p> - -<p>At first the weight of pessimism seems sufficient to bear down all -opposition. Yes, it is a lean age, we repeat, with much to justify its -poverty; but, frankly, if we pit one century against another the -comparison seems overwhelmingly against us. <i>Waverley, The Excursion, -Kubla Khan, Don Juan, Hazlitt's Essays, Pride and Prejudice, Hyperion</i>, -and <i>Prometheus Unbound</i> were all published between 1800 and 1821. Our -century has not lacked industry; but if we ask for masterpieces it -appears on the face of it that the pessimists are right. It seems as if -an age of genius must be succeeded by an age of endeavour; riot and -extravagance by cleanliness and hard work. All honour, of course, to -those who have sacrificed their immortality to set the house in order. -But if we ask for masterpieces, where are we to look? A little poetry, -we may feel sure, will survive; a few poems by Mr. Yeats, by Mr. Davies, -by Mr. De la Mare. Mr. Lawrence, of course, has moments of greatness, -but hours of something very different. Mr. Beerbohm, in his way, is -perfect, but it is not a big way. Passages in <i>Far Away and Long Ago</i> -will undoubtedly go to posterity entire. <i>Ulysses</i> was a memorable -catastrophe—immense in daring, terrific in disaster. And so, picking -and choosing, we select now this, now that, hold it up for display, hear -it defended or derided, and finally have to meet the objection that even -so we are only agreeing with the critics that it is an age incapable of -sustained effort, littered with fragments, and not seriously to be -compared with the age that went before.</p> - -<p>But it is just when opinions universally prevail and we have added lip -service to their authority that we become sometimes most keenly -conscious that we do not believe a word that we are saying. It is a -barren and exhausted age, we repeat; we must look back with envy to the -past. Meanwhile it is one of the first fine days of spring. Life is not -altogether lacking in colour. The telephone, which interrupts the most -serious conversations and cuts short the most weighty observations, has -a romance of its own. And the random talk of people who have no chance -of immortality and thus can speak their minds out has a setting, often, -of lights, streets, houses, human beings, beautiful or grotesque, which -will weave itself into the moment for ever. But this is life; the talk -is about literature. We must try to disentangle the two, and justify the -rash revolt of optimism against the superior plausibility, the finer -distinction, of pessimism.</p> - -<p>Our optimism, then, is largely instinctive. It springs from the fine day -and the wine and the talk; it springs from the fact that when life -throws up such treasures daily, daily suggests more than the most -voluble can express, much though we admire the dead, we prefer life as -it is. There is something about the present which we would not exchange, -though we were offered a choice of all past ages to live in. And modern -literature, with all its imperfections, has the same hold on us and the -same fascination. It is like a relation whom we snub and scarify daily, -but, after all, cannot do without. It has the same endearing quality of -being that which we are, that which we have made, that in which we live, -instead of being something, however august, alien to ourselves and -beheld from the outside. Nor has any generation more need than ours to -cherish its contemporaries. We are sharply cut off from our -predecessors. A shift in the scale—the war, the sudden slip of masses -held in position for ages—has shaken the fabric from top to bottom, -alienated us from the past and made us perhaps too vividly conscious of -the present. Every day we find ourselves doing, saying, or thinking -things that would have been impossible to our fathers. And we feel the -differences which have not been noted far more keenly than the -resemblances which have been very perfectly expressed. New books lure us -to read them partly in the hope that they will reflect this -rearrangement of our attitude—these scenes, thoughts, and apparently -fortuitous groupings of incongruous things which impinge upon us with so -keen a sense of novelty—and, as literature does, give it back into -our keeping, whole and comprehended. Here indeed there is every reason for -optimism. No age can have been more rich than ours in writers determined -to give expression to the differences which separate them from the past -and not to the resemblances which connect them with it. It would be -invidious to mention names, but the most casual reader dipping into -poetry, into fiction, into biography can hardly fail to be impressed by -the courage, the sincerity, in a word, by the widespread originality of -our time. But our exhilaration is strangely curtailed. Book after book -leaves us with the same sense of promise unachieved, of intellectual -poverty, of brilliance which has been snatched from life but not -transmuted into literature. Much of what is best in contemporary work -has the appearance of being noted under pressure, taken down in a bleak -shorthand which preserves with astonishing brilliance the movements and -expressions of the figures as they pass across the screen. But the flash -is soon over, and there remains with us a profound dissatisfaction. The -irritation is as acute as the pleasure was intense.</p> - -<p>After all, then, we are back at the beginning, vacillating from extreme -to extreme, at one moment enthusiastic, at the next pessimistic, unable -to come to any conclusion about our contemporaries. We have asked the -critics to help us, but they have deprecated the task. Now, then, is the -time to accept their advice and correct these extremes by consulting the -masterpieces of the past. We feel ourselves indeed driven to them, -impelled not by calm judgement but by some imperious need to anchor our -instability upon their security. But, honestly, the shock of the -comparison between past and present is at first disconcerting. -Undoubtedly there is a dullness in great books. There is an unabashed -tranquillity in page after page of Wordsworth and Scott and Miss Austen -which is sedative to the verge of somnolence. Opportunities occur and -they neglect them. Shades and subtleties accumulate and they ignore -them. They seem deliberately to refuse to gratify those senses which are -stimulated so briskly by the moderns; the senses of sight, of sound, of -touch—above all, the sense of the human being, his depth and the -variety of his perceptions, his complexity, his confusion, his self, in -short. There is little of all this in the works of Wordsworth and Scott -and Jane Austen. From what, then, arises that sense of security which -gradually, delightfully, and completely overcomes us? It is the power of -their belief—their conviction, that imposes itself upon us. In -Wordsworth, the philosophic poet, this is obvious enough. But it is -equally true of the careless Scott, who scribbled masterpieces to build -castles before breakfast, and of the modest maiden lady who wrote -furtively and quietly simply to give pleasure. In both there is the same -natural conviction that life is of a certain quality. They have their -judgement of conduct. They know the relations of human beings towards -each other and towards the universe. Neither of them probably has a word -to say about the matter outright, but everything depends on it. Only -believe, we find ourselves saying, and all the rest will come of itself. -Only believe, to take a very simple instance which the recent -publication of <i>The Watsons</i> brings to mind, that a nice girl will -instinctively try to soothe the feelings of a boy who has been snubbed -at a dance, and then, if you believe it implicitly and unquestioningly, -you will not only make people a hundred years later feel the same thing, -but you will make them feel it as literature. For certainty of that kind -is the condition which makes it possible to write. To believe that your -impressions hold good for others is to be released from the cramp and -confinement of personality. It is to be free, as Scott was free, to -explore with a vigour which still holds us spell-bound the whole world -of adventure and romance. It is also the first step in that mysterious -process in which Jane Austen was so great an adept. The little grain of -experience once selected, believed in, and set outside herself, could be -put precisely in its place, and she was then free to make of it, by a -process which never yields its secrets to the analyst, into that -complete statement which is literature.</p> - -<p>So then our contemporaries afflict us because they have ceased to -believe. The most sincere of them will only tell us what it is that -happens to himself. They cannot make a world, because they are not free -of other human beings. They cannot tell stories because they do not -believe the stories are true. They cannot generalise. They depend on -their senses and emotions, whose testimony is trustworthy, rather than -on their intellects whose message is obscure. And they have perforce to -deny themselves the use of some of the most powerful and some of the -most exquisite of the weapons of their craft. With the whole wealth of -the English language at the back of them, they timidly pass about from -hand to hand and book to book only the meanest copper coins. Set down at -a fresh angle of the eternal prospect they can only whip out their -notebooks and record with agonised intensity the flying gleams, which -light on what? and the transitory splendours, which may, perhaps, -compose nothing whatever. But here the critics interpose, and with some -show of justice.</p> - -<p>If this description holds good, they say, and is not, as it may well be, -entirely dependent upon our position at the table and certain purely -personal relationships to mustard pots and flower vases, then the risks -of judging contemporary work are greater than ever before. There is -every excuse for them if they are wide of the mark; and no doubt it -would be better to retreat, as Matthew Arnold advised, from the burning -ground of the present to the safe tranquillity of the past. "We enter on -burning ground," wrote Matthew Arnold, "as we approach the poetry of -times so near to us, poetry like that of Byron, Shelley, and Wordsworth, -of which the estimates are so often not only personal, but personal with -passion," and this, they remind us, was written in the year 1880. -Beware, they say, of putting under the microscope one inch of a ribbon -which runs many miles; things sort themselves out if you wait; -moderation and a study of the classics are to be recommended. Moreover, -life is short; the Byron centenary is at hand; and the burning question -of the moment is, did he, or did he not, marry his sister? To sum up, -then—if indeed any conclusion is possible when everybody is talking -at once and it is time to be going—it seems that it would be wise for -the writers of the present to renounce for themselves the hope of creating -masterpieces. Their poems, plays, biographies, novels are not books but -notebooks, and Time, like a good schoolmaster, will take them in his -hands, point to their blots and erasions, and tear them across; but he -will not throw them into the waste-paper basket. He will keep them -because other students will find them very useful. It is from notebooks -of the present that the masterpieces of the future are made. Literature, -as the critics were saying just now, has lasted long, has undergone many -changes, and it is only a short sight and a parochial mind that will -exaggerate the importance of these squalls, however they may agitate the -little boats now tossing out at sea. The storm and the drenching are on -the surface; and continuity and calm are in the depths.</p> - -<p>As for the critics whose task it is to pass judgement upon the books of -the moment, whose work, let us admit, is difficult, dangerous, and often -distasteful, let us ask them to be generous of encouragement, but -sparing of those wreaths and coronets which are so apt to get awry, and -fade, and make the wearers, in six months time, look a little -ridiculous. Let them take a wider, a less personal view of modern -literature, and look indeed upon the writers as if they were engaged -upon some vast building, which being built by common effort, the -separate workmen may well remain anonymous. Let them slam the door upon -the cosy company where sugar is cheap and butter plentiful, give over, -for a time at least, the discussion of that fascinating topic—whether -Byron married his sister—and, withdrawing, perhaps, a handsbreadth -from the table where we sit chattering, say something interesting about -literature. Let us buttonhole them as they leave, and recall to their -memory that gaunt aristocrat. Lady Hester Stanhope, who kept a -milk-white horse in her stable in readiness for the Messiah and was for -ever scanning the mountain tops, impatiently but with confidence, for -signs of his approach, and ask them to follow her example; scan the -horizon; see the past in relation to the future; and so prepare the way -for masterpieces to come.</p> - -<p><br /></p> - -<div class="footnote"> - -<p><a name="Footnote_15_1" id="Footnote_15_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_15_1"><span class="label">[15]</span></a>How violent these are two quotations will show. "It [Told -by <i>an Idiot</i>] should be read as the <i>Tempest</i> should be read, -and as <i>Gulliver's Travels</i> should be read, for if Miss Macaulay's -poetic gift happens to be less sublime than those of the author of the -<i>Tempest</i>, and if her irony happens to be less tremendous than that of -the author of <i>Gulliver's Travels</i>, her justice and wisdom are no less -noble than theirs."—<i>The Daily News.</i></p> - -<p>The next day we read: "For the rest one can only say that if Mr. Eliot -had been pleased to write in demotic English <i>The Waste Land</i> might -not have been, as it just is to all but anthropologists, and literati, so -much waste-paper."—<i>The Manchester Guardian.</i></p></div> - -<p><br /></p> - -<div class="figcenter" style="width: 150px;"> -<img src="images/figure.jpg" width="150" alt="" /> -</div> - -<p><br /><br /><br /></p> - -<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COMMON READER ***</div> -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will -be renamed. -</div> - -<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> -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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