Initial commit of ebook 78901 filesHEAD main

author: www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org> 2026-06-20 20:08:03 -0700
committer: www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org> 2026-06-20 20:08:03 -0700
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+      Books in General | Project Gutenberg
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+
+<body>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78901 ***</div>
+
+<main>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_3">[3]</span></p>
+
+<h1>Books in<br>
+General</h1>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_4">[4]</span></p>
+
+<div class="chapter box">
+
+<div class="box2">
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="BOOKS_OF_ESSAYS"><i>BOOKS OF ESSAYS</i></h2>
+
+<ul>
+<li>THE MERRY-GO-ROUND<br><i>by Carl Van Vechten</i></li>
+<li>MUSIC AND BAD MANNERS<br><i>by Carl Van Vechten</i></li>
+<li>A BOOK OF CALUMNY<br><i>by H. L. Mencken</i></li>
+<li>A BOOK OF PREFACES<br><i>by H. L. Mencken</i></li>
+<li>PREJUDICES: <span class="smcap">First Series</span><br><i>by H. L. Mencken</i></li>
+<li>PAVANNES AND DIVISIONS<br><i>by Ezra Pound</i></li>
+</ul>
+
+<p class="center">ALFRED A. KNOPF, <i>Publisher</i></p>
+
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_5">[5]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p class="center larger">Books in General</p>
+
+</div>
+
+<p class="center larger">By Solomon Eagle</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter titlepage illowp100" id="doggo" style="max-width: 12.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/doggo.jpg" alt="">
+</figure>
+
+<p class="titlepage">Alfred A Knopf<br>
+<span class="smaller">New York <span class="spacer">Mcmxix</span></span></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_6">[6]</span></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage smaller"><span class="smcap">COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY<br>
+ALFRED A. KNOPF, Inc.</span></p>
+
+<p class="titlepage smaller">PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_7">[7]</span></p>
+
+<p class="center larger"><i>ARTURO WAUGH</i></p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_8">[8]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_9">[9]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Preface">Preface</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>These papers are selections from a series
+contributed weekly, without intermission,
+to the <i>New Statesman</i> since April 1913. I
+do not feel that the responsibility for reprinting
+them rests on my shoulders; I trust that where it
+does rest it will rest lightly. I shall have done all
+I hope to do if I have produced the sort of book
+that one reads in, without tedium, for ten minutes
+before one goes to sleep.</p>
+
+<p>The pseudonym “Solomon Eagle,” I may explain,
+is not intended to posit any claim to unusual
+wisdom or abnormally keen sight. The original
+bearer of the name was a poor maniac who, during
+the Great Plague of London, used to run naked
+through the street, with a pan of coals of fire on his
+head, crying “Repent, repent.”</p>
+
+<p class="right">S. E.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_10">[10]</span></p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_11">[11]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Contents">Contents</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<nav>
+
+<table>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Who’s Who,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Whos_Who">13</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Political Songs,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Political_Songs">19</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>An Oriental on Albert the Good,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#An_Oriental_on_Albert_the_Good">25</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Epigrams,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Epigrams">31</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>An Eminent Baconian,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#An_Eminent_Baconian">37</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>The Beauties of Badness,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#The_Beauties_of_Badness">42</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>More Badness,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#More_Badness">54</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>A Mystery Solved,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#A_Mystery_Solved">58</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Carrying the Alliance too far,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Carrying_the_Alliance_too_far">60</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>May 1914,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#May_1914">63</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>May 1914: The Leipzig Exhibition,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#May_The_Leipzig_Exhibition">69</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>The Mantle of Sir Edwin,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#The_Mantle_of_Sir_Edwin">75</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>“The Cattle of the Boyne,”</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#The_Cattle_of_the_Boyne">81</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>August 1914,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#August_1914">83</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Mrs. Barclay sees it through,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Mrs_Barclay_sees_it_through">88</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>A Topic of Standing Interest,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#A_Topic_of_Standing_Interest">94</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Was Cromwell an Alligator?,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Was_Cromwell_an_Alligator">99</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>The Depressed Philanthropist,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#The_Depressed_Philanthropist">105</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>A Polyphloisboisterous Critic,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#A_Polyphloisboisterous_Critic">111</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>“Another Century, and then ...,”</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Another_Century_and_then_">115</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Herrick,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Herrick">121</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>The Muse in Liquor,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#The_Muse_in_Liquor">127</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>£5 Misspent,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#5_Misspent">133</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Shakespeare’s Women and Mr. George Moore,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Shakespeares_Women_and_Mr_George_Moore">137</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Moving a Library,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Moving_a_Library">143</a><span class="pagenum" id="Page_12">[12]</span></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Table-Talk and Jest Books,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Table-Talk_and_Jest_Books">146</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Stephen Phillips,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Stephen_Phillips">150</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Gray and Horace Walpole,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Gray_and_Horace_Walpole">155</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>A Horrible Bookseller,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#A_Horrible_Bookseller">161</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>The Troubles of a Catholic,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#The_Troubles_of_a_Catholic">166</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>The Bible as Raw Material,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#The_Bible_as_Raw_Material">168</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>How to avoid Bad English,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#How_to_avoid_Bad_English">172</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Woodland Creatures,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Woodland_Creatures">177</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Other People’s Books,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Other_Peoples_Books">183</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Peacock,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Peacock">187</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Wordsworth’s Personal Dullness,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Wordsworths_Personal_Dullness">189</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Henry James’s Obscurity,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Henry_Jamess_Obscurity">195</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>The “Ring” in the Bookselling Trade,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#The_Ring_in_the_Bookselling_Trade">201</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Music-Hall Songs,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Music-Hall_Songs">207</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>More Music-Hall Songs,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#More_Music-Hall_Songs">213</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Utopias,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Utopias">218</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Charles II in English Verse,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Charles_II_in_English_Verse">224</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>The Most Durable Books,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#The_Most_Durable_Books">229</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>The Worst Style in the World,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#The_Worst_Style_in_the_World">234</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>The Reconstruction of Orthography,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#The_Reconstruction_of_Orthography">240</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Mr. James Joyce,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Mr_James_Joyce">245</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Tennessee,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Tennessee">251</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Sir William Watson and Mr. Lloyd George,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Sir_William_Watson_and_Mr_Lloyd_George">254</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Stranded,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Stranded">259</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Mr. Ralph Hodgson,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Mr_Ralph_Hodgson">264</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>Double Misprints,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#Double_Misprints">268</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>The History of Earl Pumbles,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#The_History_of_Earl_Pumbles">270</a></td>
+  </tr>
+  <tr>
+    <td>On Destroying Books,</td>
+    <td class="tdpg"><a href="#On_Destroying_Books">276</a></td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+</nav>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_13">[13]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Whos_Who">Who’s Who</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Works of reference are extremely useful;
+but they resemble Virgil’s Hell in that
+they are easy things to get into and very
+difficult to escape from. Take the Encyclopædia.
+I imagine that my experience with it is universal.
+I have only to dip my toe into this tempting morass
+and down I am sucked, limbs, trunk and all, to remain
+embedded until sleep or a visitor comes to haul
+me out. A man will read things in the Encyclopædia
+that he would never dream of looking at elsewhere—things
+in which normally he does not take
+the faintest interest. One may take up a volume
+after lunch in order to discover the parentage of
+Thomas Nashe; but one does not put it down when
+one has satisfied one’s curiosity. One turns over a
+few pages and becomes absorbed in the career of
+Napoleon. Thence one drifts to the article on
+Napier, which sends one to that on Logarithms in
+another volume; and when night closes in and (as
+we used to construe it) sleep brings rest to weary
+mortals, one still sits in one’s chair, bending heavy-eyed
+over the book, with a dozen pressing duties left
+undone and the last post missed. By that time one
+has reached, perhaps, the abnormally complex diagrams
+which illustrate the article on
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_14">[14]</span>Metaphysico-theologico-cosmolo-nigology—of which science, the
+reader will remember, Voltaire was the father and
+Herr Doktor Pangloss the first professor.</p>
+
+<p><i>Who’s Who</i> takes me in the same way. Ordinarily
+I have no particular thirst for it. I should
+not dream of carrying it about in my waistcoat
+pocket for perusal on the Underground Railway.
+But once I have allowed myself to open it, I am a
+slave to it for hours. This has just happened to
+me with the new volume, upon which I have wasted
+a valuable afternoon. I began by looking up a
+man’s address; I then read the compressed life-story
+of the gentleman next above him (a major-general),
+wondering, somewhat idly, whether they
+read of each other’s performances and whether
+either of them resented the possession by the other
+of a similar, and unusual, surname. Then I was in
+the thick of it. There was nothing especially exciting
+about most of the information that met my
+eye. Generally speaking, the biographies were of
+people of whom I had never previously heard, and
+whose doubtlessly reputable achievements had been
+recorded in spheres as unfamiliar to me as the dark
+side of the moon. What can it mean to me that
+Mr. J. Fitztimmins Gubb worked for five years
+under Schmitt at Magdeburg and is now demonstrator
+in Comparative Obstetrics at the Robson Institute?
+Or that the Bishop of the Cocos Islands
+has been five times married and was educated at
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_15">[15]</span>King Edward VI Grammar School, Chipping Chester,
+and Pembroke College, Oxford? Yet I read of
+some six or seven hundred such, and found it as
+difficult to refrain from “Just one more” as would
+a wealthy dipsomaniac just parting from an old
+friend in a public-house at five minutes before closing
+time. I cannot easily account for the attraction.
+Something, I suppose, may be put down to the fact
+that character comes out in a man’s account, however
+bald, of himself; and that the <i>Who’s Who</i> autobiographies,
+in spite of their compression, exhibit
+many and diverse interesting traits of character.
+But mainly, I think, it must be that we most of us
+have collector’s mania in some form or another,
+and that one cannot resist the temptation of collecting
+facts even when they are so irrelevant and of
+so little importance to one that they slip through
+one’s fingers as soon as one has gathered them.
+For I am sure that I do not know now whether I
+have got the number of the Bishop’s wives right, or
+the sites of his education, or even the name of his
+diocese.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose that no one ever tells an untruth in
+<i>Who’s Who</i>. There is not much scope for it,
+though it is conceivable that there may have been
+exaggerations of the truth. The compilers are extremely
+capable; and the contributors seem to be
+as uniform in their veracity as they are various in
+their loquacity. Only in rare circumstances could
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_16">[16]</span>any one hope to impose on <i>Who’s Who</i> without very
+rapid detection. An opportunity of that nature did
+once occur to me. There is a compilation called the
+<i>American Who’s Who</i>, published (if I remember
+correctly) in Chicago. By some curious accident,
+which I have never been able to explain, its conductors
+got hold of my name—I don’t mean
+“Eagle,” but the other. By some accident more
+curious still they got the impression that I was an
+American settled in London; and with admirable
+enterprise they sent me, for two or three years in
+succession, yellow forms on which I was requested
+to inscribe my age, antecedents, and accomplishments.
+Each year I was dazzled by the idea of a
+joke which, I felt, would immensely amuse me, and
+which could (so the Devil argued) hurt nobody.
+On each occasion I filled the form exhaustively.
+I put down my name and address correctly; but beyond
+that not a word of truth did I tell. I invented
+for myself a career, a career not imposing
+enough to arouse suspicions, but far more picturesque
+than my actual career has been. I described
+my parents as being Homer E. —— and Anna P.
+——, of St. Louis, Mo. I copied out of an American
+minor poet’s autobiographical preface a list of
+academies at which I had been educated; and then
+I launched out.</p>
+
+<p>I had, I stated, left America for Europe at the
+age of nineteen. I had written (I was cunning
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_17">[17]</span>enough to put down the names of one or two of
+my actual works) such and such books, including
+a Manual (for Schools) on Political Economy and
+a small brochure on Polycarp. I had travelled over
+four continents; my recreations were “all forms of
+sport, especially big-game hunting”; I had gone
+through the Balkan War as a volunteer with the
+Greek Army; and I possessed several decorations,
+including the Blue Boar of Rumania, the St. Miguel
+and All Angels of Portugal, and the fourth class of
+the Turkish Medjidie. Notice the fourth class; no
+common liar would have thought of so convincingly
+modest a claim as that. Each year, as I say,
+I lived laborious days in the delineation of an imaginary
+pedigree and a supposititious career. Then
+I broke down. There was no risk of punishment
+attached, and, I take it, small risk of discovery.
+But my softer self began telling me that it was a
+scandalous thing to hoax foreigners; that the trick
+was unworthy of an Englishman, or, indeed, an
+adult of any nationality, down to the most backward
+of Nicobar Islanders; and that the only fitting
+punishment for a person addicted to such practices
+would be to have pins put upon his chair by his children
+or his back chalked by infants in the street. I
+weakened and broke; sentiment overcame reason;
+my heart gained the victory over my head. And
+each year, with reluctant deliberation, I tore up the
+well-filled sheet and destroyed again my other self,
+my American self, the romantic self who had done
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_18">[18]</span>the things I had never done, who had stalked the
+bear in the snowy fastnesses of the Caucasus and won
+the gratitude of exotic potentates. The forms have
+stopped coming now; but the memory of my vision
+still burns with a melancholy yet tender brightness;
+and those mythical progenitors, Homer E. —— and
+Anna P. ——, are to me all that his Dream Children
+were to Charles Lamb.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_19">[19]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Political_Songs">Political Songs</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>If one goes up a mountain and surveys all the
+kingdoms of the world one sees a good many
+horrible things. Few of them are worse, in
+their way, than the modern political song. There
+have been bad political songs in all ages. Cæsar’s
+soldiers used to sing some which were not merely
+uninspiring but irrelevant, and <i>Lilli Burlero</i> (or
+<i>Lillibulero</i>) itself was no great shakes as a poem
+although its tune had a swing. But there have
+never been any to equal in badness the kind of songs
+that has been generated by the British party system.
+The only modern politicians who ever manage to
+generate a good song are the Socialists. Socialist
+song-books, in spite of their plenitude of hack phrases
+about chains and freedom’s dawn, always have a
+good deal of tolerable poetry in them. William
+Morris’s political songs are excellent, and some
+of the modern foreign Socialist songs are really
+worthy expressions of the movement. When their
+words are not good their tunes are: witness the
+<i>Internationale</i> and that stirring Italian labour song
+that is now, I believe, prohibited by King Victor’s
+Government. But the kind of songs that our good
+Liberals and Conservatives sing at their meetings
+are gruesome.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_20">[20]</span></p>
+
+<p>I hold in my hand—as the saying goes—the
+<i>Liberal Song Sheet</i> now being used at big party
+meetings. One or two of the more facetious ditties
+show some ingenuity, and there is a certain go about
+the first line of “Stamp, stamp, stamp upon Protection”;
+but for the rest the only song the writer
+of which would not get a birching in any properly
+constituted society is Ebenezer Elliott’s <i>God Save
+the People</i>, which is generations old. “Let who
+will make a nation’s laws as long as I make its
+songs,” said some writer. One might add: “Let
+who will make a nation’s songs as long as they are
+not done by the people who make its laws.” Caucus-provided
+laws may be all right, but caucus-provided
+songs, written by party agents and under-secretaries,
+are not successful.</p>
+
+<p>The chief characteristic of the Liberal songs, apart
+from their metrical and linguistic peculiarities, is
+their insistence upon incongruous military image.
+Imagine Mr. Asquith donning bright armour and
+taking part in the incidents depicted in these verses—to
+the tune of <i>Who will o’er the Downs?</i></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Our leaders, tried and trusted men,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Still love the ancient faith,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>To Freedom and to Conscience true</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>In danger and in death.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>And they have donned their armour bright,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Their courage all aglow,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>To<span class="pagenum" id="Page_21">[21]</span> lead the toilers of the land</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Against the Tory foe.</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>For years we’ve suffered pain and loss,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>By privilege oppressed;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Our birthright has been filched from us</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>And left us sore distress’d.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>But now our leaders—trusted, tried—</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Are keen to strike a blow,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>And wrest our stolen acres from</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>The proud, disdainful foe.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">It is not my business to discuss the justness of
+the judgments here implied, but what on earth is
+the point of suggesting that Mr. Asquith, Mr.
+George, Mr. Lulu Harcourt, Lord Haldane, and
+so on, are true “in danger and in death”? They
+may have come unscathed through the fire of Suffragette
+dog-whips, but nobody calls them to die for
+disestablishment. There is here an utter lack of
+reality, a lack that must prevent these songs from
+moving anybody to action, as good songs should do.
+They are as conventionally false as the cheapest kind
+of leading article.</p>
+
+<p>Here are some more extracts from the same
+source:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>We defend the right we won in ages past;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>We demand the measures by the Commons passed,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Let no Lords presume to wreck the work at last,</i></div>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_22">[22]</span>      <div class="verse indent10"><i>For we go marching on.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent8"><i>Freedom for our trade and nation</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent8"><i>From all insolent vexation.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent8"><i>For democracy’s salvation</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent10"><i>We all go marching on.</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Peers and Tories may to wreck the work unite,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Britain’s sons for Britain’s freedom still shall fight;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>None shall hinder us till triumph is in sight,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent10"><i>As we go marching on.</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Then up to the sky with your Hip-hip-Hooray!</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>For the unbeaten leader, who leads us to-day.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>For <span class="smcap">Asquith</span>—to-day, after long, weary years,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Our victorious Captain o’er Tories and Peers.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Then cheer with a will for the great deed is done;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Attacking the Veto, we’ve fought and we’ve won;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Henceforward these islands of ours are to be</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Not the Land of the Peers but the Land of the Free.</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent8"><i>Long, long in shameful slavery</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent10"><i>The emerald isle hath lain,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent8"><i>The victim of past knavery,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent10"><i>And Unionist disdain.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent8"><i>But Freedom’s day is coming—</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent10"><i>See how the foemen flee!</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent12"><i>Home Rule is just</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent12"><i>And come it must</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent10"><i>To set old Ireland free!</i></div>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_23">[23]</span>    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent8"><i>One blow will end the matter!</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent10"><i>Strike, strike it with a will!</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent8"><i>The enemy we’ll scatter</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent10"><i>And quickly pass our Bill.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent8"><i>Our leaders are determined,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent10"><i>True followers are we,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent12"><i>Our arms are strong</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent12"><i>To right the wrong</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent8"><i>And set old Ireland free.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">A curious thing is that almost universally in these
+songs the virtues and actions of the party leaders
+get almost as much attention as the political questions
+at issue. This is the mark of the caucus.</p>
+
+<p>It is a very difficult thing to write a good propagandist
+song at all. A first-rate tune will often
+cover up the most prosaic words, but generally speaking
+political songs split on the rock of the specific.
+It is the greatest mistake to expect to stir people
+with verses dealing with a particular Bill. The
+spirit of freedom, the spirit of revolt, the passion
+of love, or the passion of hate, may make good
+songs, but it is a hopeless task to try to make poetry
+out of the taxation of land values or an import duty
+on corn. A good Socialist song may deal with
+brotherhood or service, but it cannot deal with “the
+nationalization of the means of production, distribution,
+or exchange.” One should avoid the kind of
+concrete details that produce a sense of anticlimax,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_24">[24]</span>and the kind of personalities that sound false. The
+spirit of Liberty may appropriately be depicted in
+a helmet, but it is silly to conjure up a picture of
+Mr. Asquith with a suit of armour over his frock-coat.
+Even the fact that a thing is glaringly true
+does not necessarily make it suitable for metrical
+statement. It is true that there is an insufficient
+supply of sanatoria and that the thought profoundly
+moves many people. But a song emphasizing the
+fact must be a failure. Modern political songwriters
+fail (1) because they are usually people who
+cannot write verse at all, (2) because they try to
+make their songs like extra-rhetorical speeches or
+articles. Probably the next Liberal song will deal
+with the ravages of pheasants.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_25">[25]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="An_Oriental_on_Albert_the_Good">An Oriental on Albert the Good</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The award of the Nobel Prize to Mr. Rabindranath
+Tagore is generally approved.
+I do not entirely agree with those who think
+that Mr. Tagore’s poems are masterpieces in English;
+for I find his English poetical prose monotonous
+and without rhythmical beauty, although, in a
+sense, immaculate. But those who know the Indian
+originals say that they are really great, and that
+they have got a hold on the general population unprecedented
+for centuries past.</p>
+
+<p>I have just acquired a book by an Indian poet
+who was not so wise in his choice of subjects as is
+Mr. Tagore. The book is an English version
+(made in 1864 by the tutor of Sir J. Jeejeebhoy’s
+sons, and published by the Bombay Education Society)
+of an Epic on the Prince Consort by the
+Parsee poet “Munsookh.” The poem is enlivening
+if not inspiring.</p>
+
+<p>It opens with the usual Oriental invocation to
+Heaven, ending “With that remembrance alone will
+I fill the cup of my heart and sing new and entertaining
+stories.” It then plunges straight <i>in medias
+res</i> with a first canto, “On the birth of Prince Albert,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_26">[26]</span>his education and arrival at mature years; and
+his wish to marry Victoria.”</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“There is a country of the world called Germany,
+the eminence of which is known everywhere. In
+its interior is a large district called the Dukedom
+of Gotha, about thirty-seven miles in area, and containing
+about one hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants.
+The air of this district is pleasant, dry,
+and cool; and the water refreshing and pure. The
+land is good and very fertile, and every article of
+food and clothing is cheap there. In its neighbourhood
+is the city of Coburg, where the richest blessings
+of Providence display themselves, near which
+flows the river Itz, and where is a magnificent ducal
+castle, having the appropriate name of Rosina, with
+a garden entirely surrounding it. Here the birth
+of Albert took place.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Prince Albert grew up wise and studious, and
+at last his preceptor said to him: “My accomplished
+pupil, this is the one hope of my soul, that
+thou make a hearty effort to be united to the worthy
+heiress of the Kingdom of England, and if thou
+do this, thou wilt not be disappointed.... Put in
+action therefore the effective dagger of contrivance;
+engraft speedily the plant of love ... lose not
+thy time, for if thou do thou wilt be considered a
+fool.”</p>
+
+<p>Queen Victoria’s portrait was sent to Albert, the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_27">[27]</span>bearer telling him that he was searching the world
+for a worthy, loving, and religious prince. “Thou
+hast administered the medicine for my secret pain,”
+was the reply, and the Prince wrote a letter acknowledging
+the present. “When I would write thee a
+letter,” he said, “the water of my eyes flows from
+my pen instead of the black ink.... In my feeling
+of love for thee I am mad: I am a moth flying around
+a candle.... Though I swim always in a flood
+of tears, my body is burning to a cinder.” When
+Victoria’s mother heard about this she was glad,
+but said that “the hearts of the English people are
+intoxicated with haughtiness; they despise a stranger
+and a foreigner ... nor will they consider it honourable
+that thou should be united in love to a child
+of Germany.” Various letters passed, but Albert’s
+father was astonished at his rashness. “Foolish
+boy, heretofore engrossed in eating, drinking, and
+learning. Where didst thou get this information
+and these notions?... A nation proud and
+haughty like the English will think thee thoroughly
+mad.” But letters from England convinced the
+Duke; he admonished his son as to his future behaviour;
+and the party sailed for the port of London,
+where “Victoria immediately went upon the terrace.”
+The lovers met and sang, and the Prince returned
+home to complete his studies. “A little time
+after this occurrence the Queen again remembered
+Albert; she caused a letter, official, and according to
+rule, to be written to his father.”</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_28">[28]</span></p>
+
+<p>“Albert’s father prepared himself at once, taking
+necessary provisions, furniture, and money. Having
+sat in a boat Prince Albert went forward accompanied
+by his family. The gallant vessel floated
+down the stream, and did not leave her track on the
+way. From a distance she appeared like an alligator,
+or like the moon of the second day sailing
+through the heavens, or like a tree growing in the
+midst of deep waters, casting its shadows as it moved
+in a hundred directions; or she was like a horse leaping
+without feet, and bound only to the surface of the
+water, so swift and lofty of mien that the sun from
+afar uttered a shout of approbation. As a lover
+weeps on account of separation from his beloved, so
+the ship beating her breast, filled her skirts with
+water. She sometimes appeared from her motion
+tired and weary, and the bubbles about her seemed
+like blisters on the feet. In body she was a strong
+negress, but in speed lively; in her womb were hundreds
+of children, yet did she never bear.”</p>
+
+<p>“Albert thought the waves were like an infuriated
+elephant,” but he arrived safely, and the marriage
+was celebrated amid general rejoicings.</p>
+
+<p>“The voice of triumph arose from every side with
+guns and bells and bands of music; in every house,
+too, arose the heart-charming sounds of cornets,
+flutes, harps, pianos, and singing of various sorts;
+cannons boomed from every fort—one making a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_29">[29]</span>whirring noise, another a noise like thunder....
+So pure became the waters of the Thames that one
+could see in them the image even of the soul of his
+body. It was not a river, but as it were a flower
+garden; and the bodies of the fishes glittered like
+rose-leaves. Everywhere were clusters of variously
+decked boats; the vessels were as shaking mountains,
+which made graceful motions like peacocks coquetting
+in the garden of Paradise.”</p>
+
+<p>A great banquet followed, and when “the reign
+of wine” was finished the music began. “Trombones
+sounded so impressively that letters were imprinted
+upon the face of the air.” Then came the
+dancing. “What shall I say of the Mendozas and
+Polkas? for the philosophic and the pious lost their
+peace of mind through them.... The Polka was
+kept up with such zest and excitement that there was
+a stir among the angels of heaven.... In short,
+the ball was gracefulness itself which made the stars
+bite their own bodies with jealousy.” The dead rose
+up from the ground enamoured of the dancing, and
+the lamps put their hands over their eyes. The
+festivities over the royal pair retired and sang to
+each other.</p>
+
+<p>Next year a princess was born, and all England
+was merry. Other children followed, and for
+twenty years the royal pair lived in happiness. In
+1843 the Queen and the Prince revisited his native
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_30">[30]</span>country in a ship furious as a leopard, that broke
+through hundreds of whales. Home awoke tender
+thoughts in the Prince. “Collecting himself he
+sang” a chant comparing himself to Joseph, and his
+bride to Zuleika—which indicates a somewhat different
+view of the Potiphar’s wife episode from that
+prevalent in Occidental circles. The rest of the
+work is mainly taken up with the Great Exhibition,
+the Prince’s death, and numerous maxims for the use
+of his son, such as:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“King must keep entirely aloof from several hurtful
+things as ... chess.</p>
+
+<p>“A king’s country is like a beautiful woman, and
+the merchants of that country are, as it were, the
+precious jewels and ornaments of that woman; and
+the more these jewels and ornaments are, the more
+heart-charming and beautiful she looks.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>This last aphorism is disputable.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_31">[31]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Epigrams">Epigrams</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Any one who reads Mr. R. N. Leonard’s
+charming little anthology of English epigrams
+in the Oxford Garlands Series will
+regret that the practice of writing poetical epigrams
+has died out. Until the Victorian age almost all
+professional writers, as well as many amateurs, tried
+their hands at epigram. If you had anything especially
+offensive to say about any one—and especially
+about politicians, doctors, and ladies unduly addicted
+to cosmetics—it was the natural thing to put it
+into a couplet or a quatrain. Ministers and Privy
+Councillors used to compose epigrams about each
+other; but who can imagine Sir Henry Dalziel writing
+witty quatrains about Sir Alfred Mond, or <i>vice
+versa</i>? Why the habit has died out I don’t profess
+to say. There may be some significance in the fact
+that the great age of epigrams was the eighteenth
+century—the prose age <i>par excellence</i>. There is
+probably more in the decay of knowledge of Greek
+and Latin. When almost every educated man was
+familiar with the Greek Anthology and the works
+of Martial—whence all kinds of epigrams, elegiac,
+amatory, and satirical, descend—it was perhaps
+natural that the temptation to continue the good
+work should be generally felt. It may even be that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_32">[32]</span>a form so small is incapable of infinite variety and
+grows exhausted. Johnson wrote a ludicrous burlesque
+epigram—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>If the man who turnips cries</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Cry not when his father dies,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>’Tis a proof that he had rather</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Have a turnip than his father.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">—and there is undoubtedly sound criticism in it.
+After a certain time the making of epigrams may
+proceed almost on a formula. At all events, the
+decline of the epigram is obvious. The well-meant
+effusions which the late Sir Wilfrid Lawson used
+to waft across the benches of the House of Commons
+were scarcely equal to the old level of our political
+quips; it is very rarely that a tolerable metrical epigram
+appears in the Press; and the poets have
+almost all abandoned the habit of attempting to get
+their thoughts into so small a compass. The custom
+of composing epigrams for private albums is
+virtually extinct. Every schoolgirl writes in every
+other schoolgirl’s album that there is nothing Original
+in her excepting Original Sin; and even that
+not very splendid <i>mot</i> was constructed by Thomas
+Campbell nearly a hundred years ago. The rest
+is silence.</p>
+
+<p>The greater number of our epigrams are satirical,
+and Mr. Lennard’s selection is mainly composed
+of these verses with stings in their tails. One of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_33">[33]</span>the most taking of these is A. Evans’s on a Fat
+Man:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>When Tadlow walks the streets, the paviours cry</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>“God bless you, sir!” and lay their rammers by.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">But that, perhaps, is not really stinging; if Mr.
+Tadlow was good-tempered, he must have liked it
+himself. Good couplets like these are few, but Coleridge’s
+on the Swan-Song is one:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Swans sing before they die—’twere no bad thing</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Should certain persons die before they sing.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">The most brutal epigrams we have are Byron’s on
+Castlereagh’s suicide, after that statesman had cut
+his throat. These are not very good, but Mr. Lennard
+gives them; and, in fact, almost every famous
+epigram in the language. He classifies them under
+headings: “Political,” “Professional and Trading,”
+“Amatory,” and so on. Of the Literary epigrams
+one of the best is Bishop Stubbs’s on two of his nineteenth-century
+contemporaries:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent4"><i>Froude informs the Scottish youth</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent4"><i>That parsons do not care for truth.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent4"><i>The Reverend Canon Kingsley cries</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent4"><i>History is a pack of lies.</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>What cause for judgments so malign?</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>A brief reflection solves the mystery—</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Froude<span class="pagenum" id="Page_34">[34]</span> believes Kingsley a divine,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>And Kingsley goes to Froude for history.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Lord Erskine’s on Scott’s Waterloo Poem is good:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>On Waterloo’s ensanguined plain</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Lie tens of thousands of the slain,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>But none, by sabre or by shot,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Fell half so flat as Walter Scott.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Theodore Hook’s epigram suggesting that it would
+be impossible to find a reader who would pay for
+the binding of <i>Prometheus Unbound</i> now falls as
+flat as Scott, owing to the utter falsification of the
+prophecy.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lennard gives a fair number of epitaphs,
+including Evans’s well-known one on Vanbrugh and
+Gay’s even better-known one on himself. But I
+don’t think we have in English an epitaph so delightful
+as that written for his own tomb by the
+obscene French poet Piron:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Ci-gît Piron</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Qui ne fut rien,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Pas même</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Académicien.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Landor’s “I strove with none, for none was worth
+my strife,” however, could not be surpassed by any
+serious epitaph. From Landor Mr. Lennard has
+naturally had to draw freely for his more serious
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_35">[35]</span>sections. Landor came nearer than any English
+writers to rivalling the feats of the best Greek epigrammatists.
+Many people would say that his
+<i>Dirce</i> is the most beautiful epigram in the language.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lennard’s selection is, as I have said, a very
+good one. The only old one I miss is Richard
+Bentley’s on German scholarship:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>The Germans in Greek</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Are sadly to seek;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Not one in five score,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>But ninety-nine more.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>All, all except Hermann—</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>And Hermann’s a German.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">The omission is the stranger in that Landor’s greatly
+inferior epigram on Germans is included. About
+the longest poem admitted is Clough’s revised version
+of the Ten Commandments: it is flat in places,
+but contains one famous couplet. Only when he
+comes to the moderns might Mr. Lennard have cast
+his net wider. Browning, who wrote some neat
+versicles, is unrepresented; and so is Mr. Watson,
+who, in his earlier days, wrote epigrams, some of
+which, if not masterpieces, were as good as some
+of Mr. Lennard’s old ones. And it would have
+been worth while to collect a few of the miscellaneous
+modern ones that float about. There are
+Limericks—and some Limericks will satisfy the
+narrowest definition of an epigram—which would
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_36">[36]</span>be worth preserving; and then there are odd fragments
+like the effort alleged to have been written
+on the blackboard by a Cheltenham schoolgirl:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Miss Buss and Miss Beale</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Cupid’s darts do not feel.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>How different from us</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Miss Beale and Miss Buss.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Tolerable modern epigrams are so few that it would
+be worth while saving all there are. Unfortunately
+the pleasantest personal ones that one hears privately,
+though they would have been printed in a
+franker day, must mostly remain unprinted in an
+age when direct satire is considered ungentlemanly,
+and the law of libel is so easily invoked. I remember
+Mr. ——’s epigram on Lady —— and Mr.
+——’s on Sir —— ——. Mr. Lennard cannot be
+expected to publish these.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_37">[37]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="An_Eminent_Baconian">An Eminent Baconian</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>A very curious chapter in the history of the
+Bacon-Shakespeare controversy closes with
+the death of Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence.
+Amid all the strange multitude of retired judges,
+lawyers, astrologers, and American ladies who have
+championed the cause of Lord Verulam there has
+been no figure more singular than that of this affluent
+old ex-M.P., who, after a lifetime spent in business,
+platform speaking, and the study of modern
+mechanical improvements, suddenly plunged into the
+fight with unprecedented enthusiasm and methods of
+argument never equalled in their singularity. Setting
+out with the conviction that Shakespeare could
+not possibly have written the plays, and that Bacon
+was the only man who could have, Sir Edwin became
+so obsessed with the subject that he found proofs
+of his contention everywhere, and gradually came
+to the conclusion that Bacon wrote almost all the
+Elizabethan and Jacobean literature that is worth
+reading. We have heard of the devout mystic who
+sees “every common bush afire with God”: to Sir
+Edwin Durning-Lawrence every common bush was
+afire with Bacon. His outlook being of this character,
+it is scarcely to be wondered at that his methods
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_38">[38]</span>of reasoning and of research were most surprising.</p>
+
+<p>Most people who read his pamphlet, <i>The Shakespeare
+Myth</i>, must have been astounded by the
+<i>naïveté</i> of some of the “proofs” there contained.
+The fact that Bacon was called Bacon—a name
+so easily interchangeable with pig, hog, and rasher—was
+a great help; for where the application of
+ciphers did not obtain one word it might obtain
+another. Bacon, according to Sir Edwin, must have
+been at least as preoccupied with ensuring his identification
+by posterity as with the writing of good
+verse, for he would take great pains to work in such
+a word as “hang-hog,” or to make three consecutive
+lines begin with words—such as Pompey, In,
+and Got—out of the initials of which could be
+constructed the appellation “pig.” Everything was
+pork that came to Sir Edwin’s net, and he would by
+tortuous ratiocination get evidence from the most
+seemingly innocent contemporary English and foreign
+engravings. For there was a secret brotherhood
+at work carrying on the Baconian tradition,
+and the artist who gave the portrait of Shakespeare
+two left sleeves (the confirmation of this was, I
+think, obtained from the editor of the <i>Tailor &amp;
+Cutter</i>) had a subtle and profound intention. Sir
+Edwin collected a very large library in connexion
+with his work, and the study of it was his passion;
+but, save industry, he had none of the qualifications
+for his task.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_39">[39]</span></p>
+
+<p>I myself obtained in a strange way an amusing
+insight into his looseness of procedure. He had
+been writing letters maintaining his thesis in a contemporary
+weekly. Wondering whether he could
+be hoaxed, I sent to the paper a letter over what
+might have seemed, to a man with any real detective
+faculty, the suspicious signature “P. O. R. Ker.”
+In this letter I called Sir Edwin’s attention to a
+quotation (which I had myself invented and written
+in Elizabethanese) which I ascribed to one of the
+best-known works of Greene. My “quotation” (I
+forget its wording, but it contained phrases about
+“Shakescene” and “the semblance of a hogg”)
+made it perfectly clear that Shakespeare was merely
+Bacon’s dummy. Any man with the slightest qualifications
+for his work would have looked up Greene
+for reference—and would not have found it. Not
+so Sir Edwin. He wrote in at once (the editor,
+in order to spare his feelings, did not print the communication)
+to say that the fact that Mr. Ker’s important
+and convincing reference had been ignored
+by the Shakespeareans showed their utter incompetence.</p>
+
+<p>But the most striking thing about him was his
+detestation of Shakespeare. There are people who
+hate Napoleon; there are people who object to Torquemada;
+there are even people who feel a
+pronounced distaste for Nero. But never has any
+one loathed and despised a dead man as the really
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_40">[40]</span>mild and amiable Sir Edwin despised and loathed
+Shakespeare. No epithets were, he felt, too opprobrious
+for this rascal, who for three hundred
+years had cheated another man out of his due fame.
+He denied Shakespeare any virtue at all; he pointed
+out that there existed no proof that Shakespeare
+could even read; and he habitually referred to him
+as the “drunken, illiterate clown of Stratford,”
+“the sordid money-lender of Stratford,” and “the
+mean, drunken, ignorant, and absolutely unlettered
+rustic of Stratford.” So strong, indeed, were his
+feelings that when the <i>Times</i> says that “One cannot
+but feel that he was happy in not living to see the
+celebrations which the British Academy and other
+friends of literature are to hold in 1916, the
+third centenary of Shakespeare’s—not Bacon’s—death,”
+it is not making a weak and untimely jest,
+but stating the sober truth.</p>
+
+<p>Who will now take on Sir Edwin’s mantle as the
+most conspicuous Baconian? Mr. George Greenwood
+is <i>hors concours</i> because, though an anti-Shakespearean,
+he has doubts about Bacon; and we
+have heard nothing lately about that romantic American
+doctor who a year or two ago began digging
+for evidence in the bed of the sylvan Wye. That
+another ardent combatant will soon appear is pretty
+certain; in fact, there will probably be a continual
+succession of such for all time unless—which is
+unlikely—somebody discovers documentary proofs
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_41">[41]</span>of Shakespeare’s authorship so irrefutable that no
+one could dream of challenging them. For the examination
+of a mystery—if you can persuade yourself
+that there is a mystery—is always fascinating,
+and the search for and application of ciphers and
+hidden meanings produces such entertaining results
+that it would be almost worth while becoming a
+Baconian for the fun of it. Almost, but not quite.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_42">[42]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="The_Beauties_of_Badness">The Beauties of Badness</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The collector of amusingly bad poetry has
+never had such splendid opportunities as
+to-day. The world is all before him where
+to choose. Modern cheap production has made it
+easy for any one who can raise £20 to get a volume
+of poems printed; and of recent years the field has
+been greatly enriched by the growing body of verse-writers
+in America and the Colonies. There have
+always, of course, been poets who have given unintentional
+rather than intentional pleasure. I have
+before me a volume published (at Cambridge) in
+1825, entitled <i>Original Poems in the Moral, Heroic,
+Pathetic and other Styles, by a Traveller</i>, which
+contains poems in the following style—amongst
+others:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="center">INGRATITUDE</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>My Muse, who oft recites on Love,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Or Heavenly Beatitude,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Her strains more melancholy move</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Devoted to <span class="antiqua"><span class="smcap">Ingratitude</span></span>.</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>With thee, Dark Demon—what can charm?</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Nor manners polish’d—chaste, or rude;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Nor<span class="pagenum" id="Page_43">[43]</span> Friendship’s hand—nor Safety’s arm</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>So vile art thou—<span class="antiqua"><span class="smcap">Ingratitude</span></span>!</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Tho’ dear a Female’s face, or form;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Tho’ elegant her attitude;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>We fly, as from the winged storm—</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>If she pours forth <span class="antiqua"><span class="smcap">Ingratitude</span></span>.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">But it is seldom that the collector comes across one
+of these delightful relics from an older day. The
+greater part of any collection must be formed of
+books published within the last forty years. Our
+age may be—indeed, it is—deficient in some respects,
+but in the production of unintentionally amusing
+writers no age, not even the Renaissance or the
+great ages of Greece and Rome, can vie with it.</p>
+
+<p>It might be possible for a man with the industry
+of a Herbert Spencer exhaustively to classify the
+writers of whom I am speaking, and to tabulate the
+qualities which give to their works their peculiar
+virtues—incongruity of image, unfortunate use of
+colloquialisms, hopeless slavery to the necessity of
+rhyme, and so on. I am no Spencer; indeed, the
+only things I have in common with that philosopher
+are a taste for billiards and the recollection of a
+single visit to the Derby. To me there is a single
+broad division which connoisseurs may find useful
+in arranging their collections: in one class we may
+put those poets who are specifically cranky; in the
+other those (some silly, some quite sensible people
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_44">[44]</span>apart from their artistic proclivities) who (Macaulay’s
+Robert Montgomery is the type) try to write
+poems like other people’s, but whose total lack of
+poetic perception leads them into strange aberrations
+of expression.</p>
+
+<p>The first kind are comparatively rare, but there
+are some good examples still going strong. There
+is, for instance, a gentleman (at one time a distinguished
+scholar of Balliol) who describes himself
+as “The Modern Homer,” and has written a number
+of epics, including <i>The Human Epic</i>, <i>The Epic
+of London</i>, <i>The Epic of Charlemagne</i>, and <i>The
+Epic of God and the Devil</i>. Preoccupation with
+his matter leads him to such phrases as:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>When Murder is on the <span class="antiqua">tapis</span></i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Then the Devil is happy.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">But he, perhaps, is not so interesting as Mr. William
+Nathan Stedman, who used to live in London, and
+now, I believe, is settled in Australia. This gentleman
+is addicted to prefaces proving that Mr. Gladstone,
+“this <span class="smcap">Dirty Old Devil</span>,” “this sly old
+wizard, a protoplasm from the abyss of nowhere,”
+was the Beast of the Revelations, and he has an
+aversion from Mr. R. J. Campbell, whom he calls
+“moo-cow, kid-gloved Campbell.” It is well worth
+while buying his <i>Sonnets, Lays and Lyrics</i>. The
+poems themselves are not so amusing, though we
+sometimes came across such ambiguous phrases as:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_45">[45]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>And when upon your dainty breast I lay</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>My wearied head—more soft than eiderdown.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">But the illustrations—wood-blocks from eminent
+artists like Albert Dürer and Louis Wain—are
+charmingly irrelevant, and the prose passages are
+unique. The poet refers to the Laureateship—“an
+office I refused after Tennyson’s death, though made
+with the offer of a premier’s daughter and £30,000”—and
+he is violently down on critics who have
+failed to see the merits of a certain novelist whom he
+calls “Queen Marie,” “a woman who did you
+no wrong, nor envied ye your bones and offal,
+but gave Most Interesting Books for your betterment
+and education. Are ye not dirty dogs and
+devils? Eh?” “Bull-browed bastards” is one of
+the mildest terms he applies to the critics.</p>
+
+<p>Difficult to place in either class are the poets who
+have some technical faculty, who are not necessarily
+cranks, but who endeavour to put such extraordinarily
+prosy things into verse that the result is as
+comic as though they were. I have, for example, a
+book containing “a lyrical romance in verse,” which
+tells a story, that might have gone quite well in
+prose, of a man who falls in love with a girl and has
+long discussions with her about politics. The
+author’s choice of a metrical form leads him to pages
+and pages of this sort of thing:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>I ceased, and somewhat eagerly she asked:</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>“Then you would justify the Socialist,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Or<span class="pagenum" id="Page_46">[46]</span> Anarchist, the brute assassin, masked</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>As a reformer, him who has dismissed</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>All scruples, and himself or others tasked</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>To murder innocence? Can there exist</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent4"><i>A reason to excuse Luccheni’s action,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent4"><i>Of life’s great rights most dastardly infraction?”</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>“Excuse it, no!” I said; “nor justify it;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>But understand it yes!—I find confusion</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>In both your questions; and, your words imply it,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>They have their base in popular illusion.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>In Socialism and Anarchism, deny it</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Who will, there’s no imperative inclusion</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent4"><i>Of violence. Each, aiming at reform,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent4"><i>Would lay life’s ever-raging life and storm.”</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">The growth of the Socialist and Suffragist movements
+has led to a great increase in this kind of
+argumentative verse; but the bad poems in the
+Conservative or Militarist interests are generally
+very much worse, a type-specimen being this:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>And so with foes about us</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Just waiting for their chance</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>We must become a nation armed</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Like Germany and France.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Another example of Imperialist verse is:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_47">[47]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>I’m old John Bull of England,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>My triumphs are in song.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>I’ve fought and won great victories</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Which did not take me long.</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>I’ve fought in many a battle</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>By sea as well as land.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>I’ve fought in Russia, Belgium,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Africa and India’s golden strand,</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">which occurs in a work appealing for better treatment
+for British Honduras.</p>
+
+<p>But most of the best bad verse is not propagandist.
+Amongst the classics of the kind the Works of
+Johnston-Smith rank high. These have been published
+complete in one volume, but the best of them
+are to be found in a smaller book entitled <i>The
+Captain of the Dolphin</i>. Mr. Johnston-Smith had
+a great vocabulary and peculiar gifts of metaphor
+and of abrupt conclusion. Here are some typical
+passages:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>A balminess the darkened hours had brought from out the South,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Each breaker doffed its cap of white and shut its blatant mouth.</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Strike, strike your flag, Sidonia,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>And lessen death and pain;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>“Strike,” “Fight” are but synonyma</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>For misery to Spain.</i></div>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_48">[48]</span>    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>On speedy wing the graceful sea-fowl follow fast—</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>They seem to me the souls of seamen drowned,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Who have for sailors, ships and ocean’s briny blast</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Dumb love which they are yearning to propound.</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>O’er the sea’s edge the sun, a dazzling disc,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>In splendour hangs, preparing for his plunge;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Upon the heaven’s bright page he stamps an asterisk</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Of yellow beams which Western things expunge.</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Reluctant I leave, like a lover who goes</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>From the side of the maid of his choice,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>By whom he is held with a cord actuose</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Spun out of her beauty and voice.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">“Actuose” is very characteristic of this poet, who
+uses enormous numbers of astonishing words of
+which he does not tell us the meaning, although he
+gives us a glossary containing such definitions as:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="hanging"><i>Derelict. An abandoned ship.</i></p>
+
+<p class="hanging"><i>Outward-bound. Sailing from home.</i></p>
+
+<p class="hanging"><i>Yo-heave-ho! A phrase used by sailors when two
+or more pull in concert at the same rope.</i></p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">One of his nicest surprises is the ending of:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Where the sun circles round for the half of the year</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>And is cold—like a yellow balloon.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">The kind of thrill produced by this unexpected ending
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_49">[49]</span>is, of course, common in verse. Some readers
+will be acquainted with the epitaph:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Here beneath this stone at rest</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Lies the dear dog who loved us best.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Within his heart was nothing mean,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>He seemed just like a human being.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">But a University poet’s anticlimax on Actæon may
+not be so generally known:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>His hands were changed to feet, and he in short</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Became a stag....</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Nor this affecting stanza from a woman’s book recently
+published:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>What o’ the wind?</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>It hisses through a vessel’s spars.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>What o’ the wind?</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>It is in truth to mercy blind,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>It surely from all rest debars,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>And even frights the sturdy “tars.”</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>What o’ the wind?</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">An equal bathos is sometimes produced by inappropriate
+metaphor. The worst instance I know is
+found in the poems of quite a well-known writer who
+describes roses:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Aft before and fore behind</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Swung upon the summer wind.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_50">[50]</span></p>
+
+<p class="noindent">But the author of a recent drama of the Near East
+came pretty near it with</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>... the diamond shaft of the fierce searchlight</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>From the lens of the crystal moon.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">The chase after the unusual almost always means
+disaster. This is another recent example:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>I have found thee, dear! on the edge of time,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Just over the brink of the world of sense;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>In dream-life that’s ours, when with love intense</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>We function above, in a fairer clime.</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>I have found thee there, in a world of rest,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>In the fair sweet gardens of sunlit bliss,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Where the sibilant sound of an Angel’s kiss</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Is the sanctioned seal of a Holy quest.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">But nothing produced in this manner is so attractive
+as the merely commonplace can be when carried
+to its farthest pitch. A year or two ago a young
+American published a volume with a preface ending:
+“He was apprised of the death of his invalid
+brother, whose remaining portion of his grandfather’s
+legacy accruing to him facilitated the publication
+of this book.” The epilogue ran as follows:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Oh, the rain, rain, rain!</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>All the day it doth complain.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>On the window-pane, just near me,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>How<span class="pagenum" id="Page_51">[51]</span> it sputters, oh, how dreary!</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>One becomes so awful weary</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>With the rain, rain, rain.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">The difference between this and Verlaine’s <i>Il pleut
+sur la ville</i> would be hard to define, but there certainly
+is a marked difference.</p>
+
+<p>Most of the poets quoted above have, at any
+rate, the gift of moving with some freedom within
+their metres. But some people who publish verse
+cannot even do that, however simple the forms they
+choose. They struggle through their poems like
+flies in treacle. A good example may be taken
+from a book (excellently produced) issued only a
+year ago by one of the foremost publishers. Apart
+from its other qualities, it shows a most extraordinarily
+revolutionary conception of the way in which
+lines may be ended:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>A man’s home is a woman’s breast. There see</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Him in infancy, and later, seeks he</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Inspiration from the self-same source. ’Tis</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>His home, t’wards which, from cradle to the grave,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>He doth gravitate, accomplishing his</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Greatest works by aid of it. Man on the</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Woman’s aid depends. Oft unconsciously</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>’Tis given, oft loyally the truth’s in</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Loving breast safeguarded—less often ’tis</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>In cruelty withheld.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_52">[52]</span></p>
+
+<p class="noindent">This supplies the only case I know of in which the
+article “the” has been used as a rhyme. But for
+sheer struggle the poem does not excel parts of this
+other one, which was published in a recent anthology:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Along a marsh a hungry crane</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>With patient steps, his way did take</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Each cranny of the rivage fain</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>To ransack with his slender beak,</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>When, suddenly, his watchful eye,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>At but four paces distance, saw</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>A worm, that back, as suddenly,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>To his subterranean hole did draw.</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Nathless the crane did, straight, begin</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>His beak, and claw, alike, to ply</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>And hoping the retreat be, in</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>The end, of the insect might destroy,</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>The turf did tear up, and dispel</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>The clods, and with such vigour strive</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>That he, at last, perceives his bill</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>At of the cave the depth arrive;</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>But lo! just when of all his toil,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>The object he was nigh to get,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Beneath his very nib, a mole,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Without ado, devoured it!</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Thus often, lurchers, onward who</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Are prone by shady ways to creep</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>May<span class="pagenum" id="Page_53">[53]</span> the reward to those that’s due</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Who, openly, have acted, reap.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">This fable is called by the author <i>A Surreptitious
+Catch</i>; but it might equally fitly have been entitled
+<i>The Apotheosis of the Comma</i>.</p>
+
+<p>I have, as I say, insufficient scientific talent to
+enter upon an analytic criticism of this kind of
+poetry; and in this brief discourse I have done little
+more than string quotations together. But that
+operation is all that is needed to serve my present
+object—viz. the propagation of the cult. Any one
+who has ever read the novel of Mrs. Amanda
+M’Kittrick Ros knows how much sustenance the
+human spirit may derive from the byways of literature;
+but it is very rarely that one meets, even
+amongst the best-read of men, one who is conscious
+of the peculiar poetic treasures that lie about in the
+publishers’ offices and on the second-hand bookstalls
+simply imploring to be collected.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_54">[54]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="More_Badness">More Badness</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>My appeal for interesting specimens of bad
+verse has brought me a large mass of
+material; but most of my correspondents
+seem not to realize that merely feeble and meaningless
+verse is so common as not to be worth preserving.
+The best single line I have received—sent me
+by a notorious dramatist who has forgotten its place
+of origin—is:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>The beetle booms adown the glooms and bumps among the clumps;</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">and what promised to be the best whole poem is
+one that begins by rhyming “Atlantic” to “blanket.”
+But when I had got through it I found that
+my correspondent had got it out of a visitors’ book
+in an hotel. I really cannot count anything that
+has not been properly published; although I confess
+to being tempted by such lines as:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Farewell, farewell, bonny St. Ives,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>May I live to see you again,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Your air preserves people’s lives</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>And you have so little rain.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_55">[55]</span></p>
+
+<p>So really the best acquisition I have made is the
+following, the author of which I should like to
+discover:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>In this imperfect, gloomy scene</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Of complicated ill,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>How rarely is a day serene,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>The throbbing bosom still!</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Will not a beauteous landscape bright</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Or music’s soothing sound,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Console the heart, afford delight,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>And throw sweet peace around?</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>They may; but never comfort lend</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Like an accomplished female friend!</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>With such a friend the social hour</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>In sweetest pleasure glides;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>There is, in female charms a power</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Which lastingly abides;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>The fragrance of the blushing rose,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Its tints and splendid hue,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Will, with the seasons, decompose,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>And pass as flitting dew;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>On firmer ties his joys depend</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Who has a faithful female friend!</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>As orbs revolve, and years recede,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>And seasons onward roll,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>The fancy may on beauties feed</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>With discontented soul;</i></div>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_56">[56]</span>      <div class="verse indent0"><i>A thousand objects bright and fair</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>May for a moment shine,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Yet many a sigh and many a tear</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>But mark their swift decline;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>While lasting joys the man attend</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Who has a polished female friend!</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>My correspondent says that he received this from
+a friend (perhaps a polished female friend), who
+did not tell him whence it was extracted. I myself
+have seen two lines of it before—the last two of
+the second stanza. They occurred in a letter I received
+some time ago from a clerical acquaintance
+who was apologizing for having got engaged. He,
+on inquiry, pretended (with a mendacity very rare
+amongst clergymen) that he had written the lines
+himself; but I did not believe him. The poem bears
+the marks of the earlier decades of the nineteenth
+century. Can it be by Thomas Haynes Bayly?</p>
+
+<p>One interesting thing I should like to trace is a
+metrical version of Holy Writ containing such lines
+as these on Jonah:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Three dreadful days beneath the deep,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>In fish’s belly dark lay he.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>How terrible methinks his fate.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>May no such torment fall on me.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">The most ingenious writer who contributes the “Observator”
+column to the <i>Observer</i> offers me a couple
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_57">[57]</span>of specimens, one of which is new to me. The old
+one is the late Mr. Alfred Austin’s remark about
+Nature:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>She sins upon a larger scale</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Because she is herself more large.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">And the other, a touching narrative of a gipsy
+woman who fell ill, was a discovery of Andrew
+Lang’s:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent8"><i>There we leave her,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent8"><i>There we leave her,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Far from where her swarthy kindred roam,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent8"><i>In the Scarlet Fever,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent8"><i>Scarlet Fever,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Scarlet Fever Convalescent Home.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_58">[58]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="A_Mystery_Solved">A Mystery Solved</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Apparently the poem about “a polished
+female friend” is to be found in one of
+Mr. E. V. Lucas’s books. It was written,
+it seems, by a parson named Whur or Whurr, who
+flourished in Norfolk about a century ago. Whur
+delighted in all calamities, and described a father, on
+the birth of a child with no arms, exclaiming:
+“This armless child will ruin me.” No one has yet
+brought to my notice any whole volumes of bad
+verse worth acquiring, though various choice fragments
+have reached me. There is an epithalamium
+ending:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>And never, never she’ll forget</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>The happy, happy day,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>When in the church, before God’s priest,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>She gave herself away.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">There is an <i>in memoriam</i> poem beginning:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Dear Friends, we had a sudden Blast</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Which came to us unexpected.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">And there is a loyal song to their present Majesties
+in which occur the lines:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_59">[59]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Our King and Queen are never proud</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>They mingle with the densest crowd.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">But the most attractive new specimen is a poem on
+the late monarch’s death. It was printed and sold
+as a broadsheet in London, and runs:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>The will of God we must obey.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Dreadful—our King taken away!</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>The greatest friend of the nation,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Mighty monarch and protection!</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Heavenly Father, help in sorrow</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Queen Mother, and them to follow,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>What to do without him who has gone!</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Pray help! help! and do lead us on.</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Greatest sorrow England ever had</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>When death took away our Dear Dad;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>A king was he from head to sole,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Loved by his people one and all.</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>His mighty work for the Nation,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Making peace and strengthening union—</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Always at it since on the throne:</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Saved the country more than billion.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">There are two more verses. Personally, I find this
+considerably more interesting than any of Mr. Alfred
+Noyes’s various Coronation Odes.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_60">[60]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Carrying_the_Alliance_too_far">Carrying the Alliance too far</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Why is it that Japanese authors are allowed
+to write in English newspapers any sort
+of barbarous jargon they like? Mr.
+Yoshio Markino was the first to be licensed. To
+start with, one found his “delightfully quaint” English
+amusing in a mild way, but with repetition his
+sedulously cherished howlers became irritating.
+Still, he was only one; and primarily a painter at
+that. But now Mr. Yone Noguchi has turned up,
+and he is doing the same thing. Mr. Noguchi is
+considered in Japan—at least so his friends tell
+us—the first poet of the day. Those who remembered
+his last residence here assured us that on his
+return he would compel all men—like Helen of
+Troy or Mr. Tagore. He comes. One is prepared
+to be conquered. One turns to one’s <i>Westminster
+Gazette</i> to read his works; and one finds there
+columns of stuff, possibly inspired, but certainly written
+in such pidgin-English that one cannot bother
+to read it.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Noguchi’s pidgin-English is not of quite so
+curious a breed as Mr. Markino’s, but it is sufficiently
+bad. One does not blame him for that.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_61">[61]</span>He writes English a great deal better than I do
+Japanese. But why on earth cannot the newspapers
+who print his works translate them into normal English?
+Is it that their sub-editors shrink from the
+task? Is it that they fondly believe that we are
+all so fascinated by English of the Noguchi-Markinesque
+brand that we had much rather have it than
+any other sort; or is it that a tradition has been
+established that Anglo-Japanese articles are not to
+be altered? If this is true, it is a thousand pities
+that, for all their charm, Mr. Markino’s early productions
+were not unmercifully damned. What
+should we say if newspapers began printing in all
+their native crudity articles by Frenchmen and Germans
+imperfectly acquainted with the tongue of this
+country? Suppose some journal came out next week
+with an essay beginning:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“What sadly fall the leaves of automne! What
+of sadness tumble on the heart because that the
+winter put his snows on all the country. And sad
+also the spring, the spring who arouse the love in
+the soul, and who make to think to all the springs
+of the time past. My heart weep like a bird who
+have lose her companion.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">Or suppose a German were allowed by the <i>Westminster</i>
+to present its readers with a political article
+opening:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_62">[62]</span></p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“No Dutcher has the by Mr. Gamaliel Zoop,
+Amerikansh postaltelegrafkommunikationdepartment
+minister on politishekonomy famose lecture
+to a at Manchester people-coming-together delivered
+recently without outerorderly pleasure read.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">Obviously we should not tolerate it. Can it be
+that, even after the war with Russia, even after
+Japanese professors have written works on sociology,
+the superstition lingers here that a thing cannot
+possibly be truly Japanese unless it has the odour of
+an old curiosity shop?</p>
+
+<p>None of this, I may say, is meant to be discourteous
+to Mr. Noguchi. I merely suggest that it would
+be better for him if he vetoed every endeavour to
+print his English articles as he writes them. If
+he were the Japanese Homer—indeed, he may be
+that for all I know—I should say precisely the
+same thing. Can he be aware that even his faulty
+spelling goes uncorrected?</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_63">[63]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="May_1914">May 1914</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>I write “these lines” just after arriving in
+Berlin. Not that I have anything to say about
+that. I merely mention the fact. It may explain
+my difficulties. The journey is really very
+dull. All those hundreds of miles over the Great
+Plain of Europe with never a hill except the ridge of
+Minden, very little water, nothing but endless flat
+fields sprinkled with trees, church spires, and red
+farm-houses. There is simply nothing to look at.
+If you put your head out of the window at Osnabrück,
+you may see some coal; and at Münster you
+may, if you choose, speculate as to which of the
+people on the platform are Anabaptists. That is
+not much during a twelve-hour run from Flushing.</p>
+
+<p>A pleasant travelling companion is an alleviation
+on such occasions. The other occupant of my carriage
+had points about her. She was a young, cheerful,
+and rather obese Jewess going home with a
+plethora of scarves and wraps, several boxes, two
+lobsters (for her father), and a canary. At Goch
+she was incensed to find that she had to pay a heavy
+duty on the lobsters, so heavy that it would have paid
+her better to get the creatures in Berlin and have a
+drink on the balance. This story might make an
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_64">[64]</span>illustration for one of Mr. Lloyd George’s homely
+speeches on Free Trade. But there was no duty on
+the canary. In his little cage, covered with a green
+curtain, the canary sat, non-dutiable but very phlegmatic.
+At frequent intervals his mistress lifted the
+green curtain, looked him in the eyes with a bewitching
+smile, and piped “Peep, Peep.” The bird never
+replied, though perhaps he looked his response.
+The lady then turned to me and said, “Is ’e not a
+nice bird? Is ’e not goot?” and common politeness—leaving
+gallantry out of the question—compelled
+me to reply always, “Yes, a beautiful little
+bird.” About twice an hour she retired to the dining-car
+and came back exuding smiles and sighs
+“I half joost ’ad a bifsteck. I dawn’t like steck.”
+How true it is that in life we have to be content
+with second-bests! But I did not discuss the matter.</p>
+
+<p>In intervals of silence I finished Mrs. Russell Barrington’s
+<i>Life of Walter Bagehot</i> (Longmans, 12s.
+6d. net). It is a strange thing—and unfortunate,
+since so much material has disappeared with the passage
+of time—that Bagehot should have had to
+wait nearly forty years for a biography. But now
+it has come it is an interesting one. The author
+being Bagehot’s sister-in-law (daughter of James
+Wilson, who founded the <i>Economist</i>), the work has
+rather a family air. Bagehot’s more obvious virtues
+are a little too much insisted upon, and excessive
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_65">[65]</span>importance is attributed to irrelevant details. The
+long description of his ancestry and birthplace, for
+instance, might have been curtailed. But the <i>Life</i>
+is well written; it contains a great many interesting
+letters, and it gives a really living picture of one
+whom Lord Bryce has called “the most original
+mind of his generation.”</p>
+
+<p>One would wish, however, for a supplement giving
+a fuller analysis of Bagehot’s literary work.
+Mrs. Barrington gives little more than a list of the
+titles of his essays. It is true that to most people
+Bagehot is still primarily the political and economic
+writer. There are few intelligent Englishmen to-day
+who have not been influenced by <i>The English
+Constitution</i> and, in a lesser degree, by <i>Physics and
+Politics</i>. His <i>Economic Studies</i> make the rudiments
+of political economy as simple and even as entertaining
+as a good fairy-tale, and those who have read
+<i>Lombard Street</i> speak of it as a masterpiece. But
+the most extraordinary thing about it is that this
+man, who knew all about currency, who was in the
+confidence of Chancellors of the Exchequer, and who
+invented Treasury Bills, was also one of the most
+illuminating and sympathetic literary critics that
+England has ever produced. Personally I find his
+literary essays inferior to those of no other English
+critic who was not himself a poet, and I think that in
+some respects, though not in all, they are better
+than Arnold’s.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_66">[66]</span></p>
+
+<p>Probably Bagehot’s celebrity as an economist
+militated for some years after his death against the
+popularity of his literary work. Many literary
+people, looking through the complete list of his
+works, and seeing <i>Literary and Biographical Studies</i>
+jostling shoulders with works on money, may very
+pardonably have assumed that these Studies, however
+able, must have been of a dry, hard character.
+They are very far from that; no English criticism
+is more human than his, less coldly intellectual; his
+temperament, naturally emotional and mystical, was
+most valuably reinforced by the balance, the tolerance,
+the sanity that were developed by his more
+mundane activities, but the temporal man in him
+never overcame the eternal. Such essays as those
+on Hartley Coleridge, on Shelley, on Dickens, on
+Cowper, on the <i>Edinburgh</i> Reviewers, are bound before
+long to be recognized as among the great classics
+of English criticism. Naturally he was not impeccable;
+posterity may think, for example, that he
+attached too much importance to his friend Clough.
+But he is usually completely convincing. Take the
+following passage from the comparison of Wordsworth
+and Jeffrey:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“A clear, precise, discriminating intellect shrinks
+at once from the symbolic, the unfounded, the
+indefinite. The misfortune is that mysticism is
+true. There certainly are kinds of truths, borne in
+as it were instinctively on the human intellect, most
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_67">[67]</span>influential on the character and the heart, yet hardly
+capable of stringent statement, difficult to limit by
+an elaborate definition. Their course is shadowy;
+the mind seems rather to have seen than to see them,
+more to feel after than definitely apprehend them.
+They commonly involve an infinite element which, of
+course, cannot be stated precisely, or else a first
+principle—an original tendency of our intellectual
+constitution, which it is impossible not to feel, and
+yet which it is hard to extricate in terms and words.
+Of this latter kind is what has been called the religion
+of Nature, or more exactly, perhaps, the religion
+of the imagination. This is an interpretation of the
+world. Accordingly, to it the beauty of the universe
+has a meaning, its grandeur a soul, and its sublimity
+an expression. As we gaze on the faces of those
+whom we love; as we watch the light of life in the
+dawning of their eyes, and the play of their features,
+and the wildness of their animation; as we trace in
+changing lineaments a varying sign; as a charm and
+a thrill seem to run along the tone of a voice, to
+haunt the mind with a mere word; as a tone seems
+to roar in the ear; as a trembling fancy hears words
+that are unspoken; so in Nature the mystical sense
+finds a motion in the mountain, and a power in the
+waves, and a meaning in the long white line of the
+shore, and a thought in the blue of heaven, and a
+gushing soul in the buoyant light, an unbounded
+being in the vast void of air, and</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_68">[68]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Wakeful watching in the pointed stars</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>“There is a philosophy in this which might be
+explained, if explaining were to our purpose. It
+might be advanced that there are original sources
+of expression in the essential grandeur and sublimity
+of Nature, of an analogous though fainter kind
+to those familiar, inexplicable signs by which we
+trace in the very face and outward lineaments of man
+the existence and working of the mind within. But
+be this as it may, it is certain that Mr. Wordsworth
+preached this kind of religion and that Lord Jeffrey
+did not believe a word of it.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>The visionary and the epigrammatist are near
+allied, and both the practical and the ideal in Bagehot
+are illustrated in his own phrase: “If you would
+vanquish Earth, you must invent Heaven.” Bagehot,
+as he appeared to ordinary people every day, is
+portrayed in another sentence. “He left many,” it
+is said, “with the idea that he was a good fellow, yet
+with no idea that he was a great man.” A great
+man can have no better epitaph.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_69">[69]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="May_The_Leipzig_Exhibition">May 1914: The Leipzig Exhibition</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Any one who imagines that the English can,
+or at all events do, compete with the Germans
+in beauty of book-production had better
+go to Leipzig this summer and visit the Buchgewerbe
+und Graphik Exhibition—or “Bugra,” as it
+is universally called in Germany. The new railway
+station—the finest in the world—is also worth
+going to see; but that, presumably, will last after this
+year. In many respects the exhibition is like all
+other big exhibitions. It is much too enormous to
+be capable of thorough inspection. Leaving out of
+account the huge buildings devoted to the mechanics
+of printing and so on, there are a palace (“The
+Hall of <i>Kultur</i>,” of course), filled with engravings
+and photographs; a colossal structure containing the
+exhibits of German publishers of books and music;
+and pavilions for most of the other nations of the
+earth. Even Corea has a building—though I did
+not see it—and Siam is well to the fore. The exhibition
+grounds are very extensive; they contain
+(need I say?) a “Street of Nations,” many fountains,
+and countless cafés. There is a reproduction
+of Heidelberg Castle, full of drinking-cups and the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_70">[70]</span>weapons with which German students put a little
+interest into each other’s faces. There is a Bavarian
+Hall, where real peasant maidens bring your
+beer and the latest and cheapest musical-comedy
+tunes are played by real peasant musicians, with
+feathered hats and costume complete down to the
+bare knees that they insist on retaining in the face
+of a proclamation by the local Catholic hierarchs to
+the effect that such a display of naked charms is
+grossly indecent. There is no wiggle-woggle, but
+there is a waterchute and a shooting-gallery whose
+proprietors invite you to come in and try your skill
+at “live objects.” The man who was with me—he
+is a person who, like Mr. Galsworthy, would not
+touch a fly “save” (as the old verse has it) “in the
+way of kindness,”—refused to come in. Naïvely
+distrustful of aliens he was afraid, he said, that
+the targets might be dogs. But he need not have
+been alarmed, for we were afterwards informed that
+they were merely big game thrown on a screen by a
+cinematograph. When you hit an animal it did not
+drop, but a red light showed.</p>
+
+<p>Naturally comparisons between the exhibits should
+be made very cautiously; the exhibition is being held
+on German soil and the German display is much
+larger than any other. In many respects England
+shows up very well. The English section in the
+<i>Halle der Kultur</i> is certainly as good as any, and
+the etchings shown by Mr. Muirhead Bone, Mr.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_71">[71]</span>Charles Shannon, Sir Charles Holroyd, and other
+British artists are possibly the very best things in the
+place. The main English exhibit is housed in a
+pleasant Tudor building with some beautiful rooms.
+The Shakespeare exhibit of editions and portraits is
+most interesting for those who like that sort of thing;
+a fine collection of original Beardsley drawings has
+been lent by Mr. Lane; the Caxtons are coming;
+there are admirable specimens of the works of the
+Kelmscott, Riccardi, Florence, and other presses;
+there is a gallery of Medici prints unsurpassed by
+any colour-reproductions in the exhibition (the print
+of the Dresden Van Eyck triptych is the most completely
+satisfying colour-print I have ever seen); and
+the elaborate bindings by Riviere’s, the Oxford
+Press, and other establishments are not inferior even
+to the exquisite leather bindings by Noulhac and R.
+Kieffer shown in the French building. Everything
+our officials could have done has been done to perfection;
+and the special exhibits have been very well
+chosen. Where we fall sadly short is in the ordinary
+book of commerce.</p>
+
+<p>I cannot but think that the English publishers who
+have taken stalls—and, of course, the selection of
+exhibits here had to be left to the publishers themselves—could
+have brought together a more attractive-looking
+lot of books than they have done.
+Most of them—I mention no names—seem to
+have bundled together their books without any consideration
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_72">[72]</span>either of the contents or of the appearance
+of the volumes. Of course there are English
+publishers who have no fine books and few decent-looking
+books on their lists; but some of the specimens
+at Leipzig look almost like remnants which it
+is hoped to sell off to visitors. But even if all the
+English publishers had shown all their best books,
+and none of their worst, they would still have been
+put in the shade by the Germans. Even the French
+publishers—whose achievements in typography and
+in illustration have been great—are not now fit to
+be mentioned in the same breath as the Germans.</p>
+
+<p>The German exhibits are a revelation. The mid-Victorian
+tradition in print and design—which
+was so tenacious in Germany—has now been almost
+completely abandoned. I don’t suggest that all
+German books are more presentable than English
+ones. Scientific works, theology, and shilling fiction
+are equally ugly in both countries. But there are to-day
+in Berlin, Leipzig, and Munich at least a dozen
+firms publishing for the ordinary market books
+whose average of beauty is far higher than that
+reached by the books of any considerable English
+publishing firm. Many thousands of really beautiful
+new books are now being produced every year
+in Germany; and of what can be done, especially
+in the way of making cheap books look presentable,
+our own publishers have no idea. There is, of
+course, a much larger educated reading public in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_73">[73]</span>Germany than in England. In every bookshop you
+are confronted by volumes of Dehmel, Hofmannsthal,
+and other writers who, were they Englishmen,
+would never reach large circles of readers in their
+lifetimes. Anthologies of contemporary German
+poets sell literally by tens of thousands; and you can
+even get an infinite variety of doses of classical and
+modern authors by dropping pennies into automatic
+machines on the stations. This much may be admitted:
+that there is a larger literary public and
+more interest in contemporary art, literary and pictorial.
+But, even granting all that, the German publishers
+in meeting the market have shown a taste,
+and above all an enterprise (sometimes reaching
+audacity, no doubt), which most of our own publishers
+have never revealed in the slightest degree.</p>
+
+<p>To give a full account of the show is beyond my
+ability, desire, and space. But in looking at the
+latest products of commercial colour-printing in the
+French pavilion I was struck by the extraordinary
+divorce between craftsmanship and taste in modern
+industry. Here were some of the vilest pictures (I
+don’t mean morally) ever moulded by the mind of
+man; yet the experts were raving over them as being
+the last word in their own kind of colour-process.
+Needless to say, the exhibition, not being half over,
+is not yet completely ready. The Italian pavilion,
+when I was at the exhibition, could not be entered at
+all, and there were other lacunæ all over the place.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_74">[74]</span>This is the kind of thing that makes the whole world
+kin.</p>
+
+<p>Amongst the German authors whose portraits
+grace the walls of the exhibition is Mr. George
+Bernard Shaw. They have naturalized him, like
+Shakespeare, and the next thing will certainly be
+a statue at Weimar.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_75">[75]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="The_Mantle_of_Sir_Edwin">The Mantle of Sir Edwin</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>I have just spent three days reading Mr. E. G.
+Harman’s <i>Edmund Spenser and the Impersonations
+of Francis Bacon</i>, published by the firm
+of Constable. There are books which he who runs
+may read; there are also books from which he who
+reads will run. This to me comes into neither category.
+It is very large and crowded with most complicated
+detail; it is, though quite competently written,
+devoid of literary grace; and it supports a monstrous
+thesis with arguments many of which are of
+staggering absurdity. Yet in point of deadly fascination
+it vies with the basilisk. It is a monument of
+the “scientific method.” The author’s learning and
+industry are terrifying; his tone seems completely
+dispassionate; he proceeds from discovery to discovery
+with mild ruthlessness; and not the most uncompromising
+of Wospolus was ever more sternly resolved
+to embrace logical conclusions. His chief
+fault is that his premises are usually arbitrary or
+quite insufficient; but the objective charm of his massive
+progress, as of a steam-roller, from stage to
+stage, is not affected by this.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Harman does not in this volume discuss in
+detail Bacon’s authorship of Shakespeare’s plays.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_76">[76]</span>He assumes that. He assumes also that Bacon did
+publish literature under the rose and that he did
+employ impersonators; his reasons being that he had
+to express his feelings and that acknowledgement of
+authorship would have damaged his prospects of political
+promotion. This much granted, Mr. Harman
+looks around for writings in which he thinks he
+can detect traces of Bacon and examines the evidence
+for their reputed authorships. He does not descend
+to the puerile level of the late Sir Edwin Durning-Lawrence,
+with his “Hic, Hæc, Hog.” He says
+nothing of cryptogram. But in case after case he
+finds (1) that there are marks of Baconian thought
+and language, (2) that allegorical references to Bacon’s
+political disappointments may be found, (3)
+that documentary evidence supporting accepted authorships
+is very slight. Nothing stops him.
+Where there is a real resemblance in style things are
+easy. Where there are marked differences we are
+asked to note the fact that Bacon’s method enabled
+him to write in a variety of styles—as though serious
+writers expressing their inmost selves could put
+on styles like trousers. If somebody has borne witness
+that an Elizabethan wrote his own works, then
+that somebody was in the plot too.</p>
+
+<p>As to Spenser, with whom Mr. Harman chiefly
+deals, one is certainly struck with the paucity of the
+evidence for him. We know less about him than we
+know about Shakespeare; and his biographers have
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_77">[77]</span>had to rely almost entirely upon “internal evidence”
+drawn from his works. But personally I must say
+that I prefer their methods to Mr. Harman’s. He,
+analysing exhaustively the plot of the <i>Faerie Queene</i>,
+with its Britomarts, Arthegalls, and Blatant Beasts,
+finds a knowledge of court life that could not be possessed
+by Spenser, who lived in Ireland and was (according
+to him) an ex-Board School boy in a small
+Civil Service job—which is at any rate politer than
+“drunken, illiterate clown.” This is question-begging;
+but what shall we say of the assumption that
+if Spenser had written the poem the rivers of Ireland
+would have been described as fully as the rivers
+of England? Why should the emigrant Civil servant
+know anything about the rivers of Ireland? As
+far as that goes, there is one slip in the description
+of the rivers of England which indicates to my mind
+that the author relied on some inaccurate map for
+his information about them. The Baconian authorship
+forces Mr. Harman to the conclusion that some
+of Spenser’s sonnets were written by Bacon when
+he was eight or nine years old. But Mr. Harman
+is a strong man. After all, Mozart was a precocious
+child, so why not Bacon? He does not
+shrink from this any more than he shrinks from
+arguing that any book or letter which favourably
+mentions one of Bacon’s cryptic works must also
+have been written or instigated by him. They <i>must</i>
+have been written by him, and, this granted, internal
+corroboration must be sought for. Anything is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_78">[78]</span>good enough for this purpose. Mr. Harman even
+finds evidence in the occurrence in several “Baconian”
+works of the phrase “golden wyres” as applied
+to the Queen’s hair. If he would read the
+body of Elizabethan lyrics, or even extracts of them
+in such a contemporary anthology as <i>England’s
+Parnassus</i>, he would find that an Elizabethan poet
+could no more help comparing a lady’s Hayre to
+Golden Wyres than he could help likening her Teares
+to Pearles or her Brests to Iuorie.</p>
+
+<p>But there is no space here for detailed examination.
+It is enough to yield oneself to the pleasure
+of following the Harmanian trail. I have noted the
+works which in the course of his narrative or in footnotes
+he ascribes to Bacon. The Authorized Version
+of the Bible is not mentioned. But, apart from
+his voluminous acknowledged writings, Bacon wrote
+the works of Spenser (including the <i>Faerie Queene</i>,
+the longest poem in the world, which Bacon published
+before he was out of his twenties); the works
+of Shakespeare; practically the whole body of Elizabethan
+poetical criticism (including Webbe’s <i>Discourse
+of Poesie</i>, Puttenham’s <i>Art of Poesie</i>, Sidney’s
+<i>Apologie</i>, Daniel’s <i>A Defence of Ryme</i>, and
+Meres’s <i>Palladis Tamia</i>); many of the poems of
+Gascoigne (written by Bacon before he was twelve);
+certain works imputed to Nashe, Greene, and Gabriel
+Harvey; the poems of Sir Walter Raleigh and
+the <i>Last Fight of the “Revenge”</i>; the works of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_79">[79]</span>Essex; Sidney’s <i>Arcadia</i> and <i>Astrophel and Stella</i>
+(with this key Bacon unlocked his heart); Lyly’s
+<i>Euphues</i> (a long book); Bryskett’s <i>Discourse of
+Civil Life</i>; Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s <i>Discourses</i> and
+the account of his last voyage; <i>Leicester’s Commonwealth</i>
+and <i>Leicester’s Ghost</i>; and other minor
+scraps. If this be all correct, we shall have to revise
+our opinion of the Elizabethan time as a time
+replete with various genius. All we shall be able
+to refer to now will be “the spacious Bacon of
+great Elizabeth.”</p>
+
+<p>An enormous number of people—including supposed
+writers and their relations—must have been
+in the secret. Sometimes they must have marvelled
+at Bacon’s extraordinary behaviour, as for instance
+when he wrote for Raleigh a laudatory poem on the
+Queen:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“Bacon (who, in my opinion, is the author of
+the poem) makes use of the opportunity in taking up
+the personality of Ralegh to express his own feelings.
+He was undoubtedly most unhappy at his exclusion
+from access and the waning of all his hopes
+of advancement. This is what is reflected under the
+disguise of Ralegh’s loss of favour in the poem.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">They must have wondered how on earth Bacon
+expected his grievances to be remedied if his complaints
+were published over another man’s name,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_80">[80]</span>and why, if Raleigh could address poems to the
+Queen <i>in propria persona</i> without loss of caste,
+Bacon could not do the same. But no doubt most
+of them, for many were impecunious, did not allow
+such questions to bother them much. They were
+content to take Bacon’s bribes for the use of their
+names. What he must have spent in subsidies to
+sham authors one gasps to contemplate. No wonder
+that for years he was in such financial straits, and
+that at one point things came to such a pass with him
+that he was arrested for debt.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_81">[81]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="The_Cattle_of_the_Boyne">“The Cattle of the Boyne”</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>I have referred before to the frequency of misprints
+in the penny <i>Times</i>. It does seem a
+pity that the conductors of the paper cannot
+keep it up to its old traditions in this respect. Last
+week there was a more curious instance than usual.
+These words appeared:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“The anniversary of the Cattle of the Boyne
+was celebrated with unusual enthusiasm throughout
+Canada.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>I was so moved by the report of these zoological
+novelties that I made a little poem about
+them, full of Celtic twilight. It runs thus:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="center">THE SANDS OF BOYNE</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Och, Geoffrey, go and call the Cattle home,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>And call the Cattle home,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>And call the Cattle home,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent4"><i>Acrost the sands of Boyne.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Shure, ye’re the bhoy that’s got inured to foam,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent4"><i>So come, bring in the koine.</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Och, are they fish, flesh, fowl or good red herrings?</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Perhaps they are red herrings,</i></div>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_82">[82]</span>      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Forlorn and wildered herrings,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent4"><i>Strayed from their native broine,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>This hapless party which has lost its bearings</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent4"><i>Fornint the sands of Boyne.</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>No, no, they have no herring for their father.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>The proof-reader’s their father,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>A most prolific father</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent4"><i>By mishap or desoign.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>If this is what wan penny means, I’d rather</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent4"><i>Stump up the ancient coin</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Than daily find—Och tempora, Och <span class="antiqua">Times</span>!—</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Bad grammar in my <span class="antiqua">Times</span></i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>And misprints in my <span class="antiqua">Times</span></i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent4"><i>In ivry other loine,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Capped by this worst of typographic crimes</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent4"><i>“The <span class="antiqua">CATTLE</span> of the Boyne”!</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>But perhaps one ought not really to complain of
+misprints, even in the <i>Times</i>, when they are funny.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_83">[83]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="August_1914">August 1914</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>And it is less than three months since I was
+writing complacently about the Leipzig
+book exhibition! I wrote about the exquisite
+collections of bindings and drawings, the
+bands, the parading crowds of peaceful Germans,
+the pavilions of all nations from Holland to Siam,
+and the charming Tudor structure erected by Britain,
+with its long low halls containing cases of Shakespeare
+folios and editions from the Kelmscott Press.
+Enormous crowds from all over Europe would, it
+was hoped, visit the exhibition as the summer wore
+on. “August, of course,” said the officials to me,
+“will be <i>the</i> month.”</p>
+
+<p>The buildings in the wide Street of Nations are
+still there, no doubt. The flags, perhaps, have been
+hauled down, but those files of white wood and
+plaster palaces still stand behind their flower-beds
+along the broad avenues. The crowds are dispersed.
+The officials in charge of the various buildings
+have fled to their respective domiciles. The
+cheerful male members of the Bavarian Peasants’
+Band have taken off their green hats and put on helmets,
+left the women behind, and gone off to burn
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_84">[84]</span>villages like their own, and disembowel sunburnt
+French peasants as naturally amiable as themselves.
+Memories so recent make the pit of one’s stomach
+sink. In May last a German barber in Berlin had
+his razor at my throat, and when he scratched my
+skin he was most concerned and apologetic.
+“Nescis, mi fili, quam parva sapientia regitur mundus.”
+The remark was made by a Swedish statesman
+in the eighteenth century. Voltaire, looking
+down from heaven—if one may risk his displeasure
+by presuming his presence in so uncongenial a
+place—must feel that since the eighteenth century
+there has been no great change, and that the human
+race is as horribly ridiculous an institution as ever
+it was.</p>
+
+<p>But here we are.&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_1" href="#Footnote_1" class="fnanchor">[1]</a> Like most other inhabitants
+of the “civilized” world, I have for the last week
+read no books, but only newspapers. Fourteen a
+day is about my average, which means nearly a
+hundred a week. And nine-tenths of them contain
+nothing that one did not know before. There never
+was a war, since telegraphs were invented, about
+which news was so scarce. Almost every rumour
+that comes through is dubious, and it is invariably
+contradicted. In successive issues and even in the
+same issue of a journal one reads that troops have
+and have not entered a certain village, that somebody’s
+neutrality has and has not been violated, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_85">[85]</span>that a naval engagement has and has not taken place.
+If you go over the eight pages of “war news” in
+a daily and make a summary of the unquestionable
+facts contained therein, as distinguished from the
+doubtful reports and the office-written padding, you
+find it could all be got into a paragraph. We have
+frequently heard that the day of the war correspondent
+was over. We heard it during the Russo-Japanese
+War—of which we certainly got very little
+news—and we heard it during the Balkan campaign.
+But at the moment of writing I have scarcely
+seen a single item regarding a single encounter which
+looked indisputable or which appeared to come direct
+from an eye-witness. Almost all the information
+we have been getting has come either from rumour
+travelling across many tongues or from official
+sources. Both these founts of news are great liars,
+the former excelling in the <i>suggestio falsi</i>, and the
+latter both in that and in the <i>suppressio veri</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The desperate straits in which we have been for
+news could be gathered (if in no other way) from
+the outlandish places of origin ascribed to reports
+that get into print. Stockholm informs one that advices
+from Teheran report a conflict at Toul; and we
+hear that the <i>Mercure de Bruxelles</i> states “on excellent
+authority” that something has happened at
+Basle. Deliberate fabrication has been at work all
+over the place. Our good old friend the doctor,
+with the cholera microbes which he puts into wells,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_86">[86]</span>even turned up at the very start. This mythical
+gentleman is at least as old as the Franco-German
+War of 1870, and his last appearance was in the
+Balkans. No sooner does a war start than one of
+the combatants hastens to describe his diabolical activities
+in the hope, presumably, of making the
+world’s blood boil at the thought of an “outrage
+against humanity.”</p>
+
+<p>The papers cannot be blamed for printing rumours,
+but they might give the clearest indication,
+whenever possible, of the value of their sources.
+Rumours before they get into print presumably travel
+in much the same way as after they get into print.
+Of how rapidly “news” develops I had an experience
+in a club on Tuesday night. A late evening
+paper printed a brief report, stating that Aberdeen
+doctors had gone to attend to wounded who were
+being landed at Cromarty. Five minutes after I
+had seen this, I was told by a member that single
+British and German destroyers had had a brush off
+the Scottish coast. Five minutes after that the vessels
+had expanded into flotillas, and within the hour
+a club servant, with very gloomy face, remarked to
+me, “I don’t know if you’ve heard it, sir, but
+there’s been a great naval battle in the North Sea
+and the British Fleet has met with an awful disaster.”
+With correspondents kept out of the area
+of hostilities, it is no wonder that by the time reports
+of occurrences reach the persons who send them to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_87">[87]</span>our newspapers they bear very little relation to the
+events (if any) which have originally generated
+them. War correspondents in Europe to-day seem
+to be able to do little more than sit in friendly foreign
+capitals and send home little bits of news out
+of the local papers. And if we want a really accurate
+and full description of the big battles, especially
+the big naval battles, of the future we shall usually
+have to wait until peace allows combatants to publish
+such books as the Japanese <i>Human Bullets</i>, describing
+the attack on Port Arthur, and those vivid Russian
+books which told the story of Rozhdestvensky’s
+voyage to the China Sea with his mouldy squadron
+and the magnificent and pitiful end of it at
+Tsushima. But of no great modern war will the
+whole truth ever be properly known. Forces work
+over such vast areas that full information is impossible
+to collect.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_1" href="#FNanchor_1" class="label">[1]</a> I have left all this as I wrote it.—S. E.</p></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_88">[88]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Mrs_Barclay_sees_it_through">Mrs. Barclay sees it through</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Over the turmoil of a world in arms</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>There floats a rich indomitable coo ...</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>’Tis Barclay.... Though excursions and alarms</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Torture the firmament, though Wilhelm II</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>In shining armour waits his Waterloo,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Though on all sides the blood rains down in torrents</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Love’s interests still are in safe hands with Florence.</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>What though the rest of us are turning tail,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Assured by those who have a right to speak</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>That only Patriotism has a sale?</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i><span class="antiqua">She</span> knows Love’s drawing-power remains unique;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i><span class="antiqua">Her</span> books need never be postponed a week;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Sure of her subject, certain of her vogue,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>She has no need to adjourn, much less prorogue.</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Business as usual. Yet who knows, who knows</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Whether she has not chosen the better part,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Swelling the proud full sail of her great prose</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Still with the gentler zephyrs of the heart,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Rather than seize an Amazonian dart,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Leaping into the middle of the fray</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Like certain other poets of the day.</i></div>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_89">[89]</span>    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Has Robert Bridges’ success with fighting</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Been such as to encourage emulation?</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Or Dr. Watson’s “bit them in the Bight”-ing?</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Or the same author’s other lucubration</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>(Yet one more blow for a disthressful nation)</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>In which, dead gravelled for a rhyme for “Ireland,”</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>He struggled out with “motherland and sireland”?</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Did even the voice from Rudyard Kipling’s shelf</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Say anything it had not said before?</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>And was not Stephen Phillips just himself?</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>And was not Newbolt’s effort on the war</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Distinctly less effective than of yore?</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>And would not German shrapnel in the leg be</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Less lacerating than the verse of Begbie?</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>When the Muse seized me, in this manner, by
+the hair, it was three o’clock in the morning, and
+I had just finished the new novel by the author
+of <i>The Rosary</i>. Had it been earlier I should have
+written more. But next day the mouse of inspiration
+had fled to its hole; the spell of the book had
+been dissipated; my vision had faded into the light
+of common day; and I resumed my consideration of
+the position of Przemysl, a place of which, until
+this week, I had never heard. But what a fascination
+the book exercised while one was reading it!
+I can well understand why Mrs. Barclay commands
+a greater audience than perhaps any other living
+writer. She can beat the basilisk at its own game.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_90">[90]</span></p>
+
+<p>The reader is swept away with a rush of strong
+emotion at the very start. A tall, reticent, bronzed
+man arrives by the boat train at Charing Cross.
+Thrown over by a woman, he has been abroad for
+ten years, nursing his grief and creating a reputation
+as a novelist. No sooner does he get to the station
+than he extracts from the coy bookstall clerk a confession
+that to him the books of Rodney Steele are
+the best in the world. Lump in the throat number
+one; and a sovereign in the pocket of the clerk.
+Steele leaves the station to drive to a flat a friend has
+left him. Oh, the fragrance and glitter of dear old
+smoky London! Oh, the beauty of the Queen Victoria
+Memorial!</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“Mysterious through the gloom, he saw the nation’s
+fine memorial to a deathless memory. The
+gush of green waters, the golden figure at the summit,
+needed sunlight for their better seeing. But
+clear through the orange darkness gleamed the white
+marble majesty of England’s Great Queen.</p>
+
+<p>“Rodney Steele lifted his hand in reverent salute
+as he passed....</p>
+
+<p>“‘Lest we forget!’ quoted Rodney Steele as he
+looked at the majestic marble figure, throned outside
+the palace above the rushing waters. ‘Yet—could
+we, who really remember, ever forget?’”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>The rest of the book tells how he was wooed
+and won by his old love, now a widow. She had
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_91">[91]</span>deserted him under a misapprehension and was resolved
+to recover him. She therefore took the next
+flat to his—or rather to her brother’s, which Steele
+was occupying. She had heard that owing to a
+change of telephone numbers her brother was constantly
+being rung up by mistake for a Hospital.
+One night therefore Steele was rung up and a Kind
+Voice asked for the Matron. The voice reminded
+him of Madge. He began to feel so lonely that
+he willed, with all his will, that the unknown Kind
+Voice should ring him up again.</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“‘Speak to me again,’ he said, ‘you, you spoke to
+me last night. Speak to me again. What wait I
+for? I wait for you! Just now—in my utter
+loneliness, in my empty solitude—I wait for
+you.’...</p>
+
+<p>“The distant clock slowly chimed a quarter past
+the hour of ten; and—as that sound died away—the
+bell of the telephone rang.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>This time he made the Kind Voice promise to
+ring him up nightly in order to console him in his
+loneliness. The Kind Voice consented. Ultimately
+on the telephone they discussed (he not revealing his
+identity or knowing hers) his novels. This is the
+kind of thing they say over the telephone:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“‘The thing of first importance is to uplift your
+readers; to raise their ideals; to leave them with a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_92">[92]</span>sense of hopefulness, which shall arouse within them
+a brave optimism such as inspired Browning’s oft-quoted
+noble lines.’”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>When finally he confesses to the Kind Voice that
+his life has been ruined by a girl with whom he is
+still in love, Madge thinks the time ripe for an appointment.
+They meet. He finds that the Kind
+Voice has been Madge all the time and he steels his
+breast against the woman who has added deception
+to her previous crime. But her “gracious gracefulness”
+and other qualities win in the end, and we
+finish at Christmas with Herald Angels and wedding-bells.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Barclay certainly has skill. Nobody else
+can write a silly story half so well as she. Her
+English is fluent and vivid, although loose; her
+humour is genuine if not subtle; and she handles
+her dialogue, such as it is, very cleverly. But, above
+all, she knows how to serve out the glamour and
+the pathos with a ladle. The hero of this book is
+as generous as he is clever. He can conjure; he can
+make seagulls settle on his shoulder; and he does
+kind actions to widows. There are also an heroic
+ex-soldier who saved a man’s life at Spion Kop; a
+bishop’s window brimming over with love and reminiscences;
+and an honest, stupid Englishman with no
+thoughts of self. The only bad character dies, and
+the end is a pæan of joy. As long as she can keep
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_93">[93]</span>this up Mrs. Barclay will never lose her hold. In
+spite of the war, this book, I should think, will sell
+in millions and millions.</p>
+
+<p><i>Vorwärts</i> reports that Dr. Ludwig Frank, a member
+of the Reichstag, has been killed in battle near
+Lunéville. Dr. Frank, who sat for Mannheim, was
+one of the leaders of the Southern Revisionists. I
+had tea with him at the Reichstag last May. He
+took me into the Strangers’ Gallery of the House,
+where I heard Dr. Liebknecht makes one of his anti-armament
+speeches, the one in which he incidentally
+accused a Prussian general of negotiating sales of
+decorations. It seems very remote now. Dr.
+Frank was barrister; a big Jew with a heavy, handsome
+face—sallow skin, aquiline nose, black moustache,
+strong chin, dominating eyes. His romantic
+air—he was supposed to resemble Lassalle—made
+him very popular in the rich Jewish salons of Berlin.
+He was a strong man, and one would have said an
+ambitious one. But a middle-class man who enters
+the German Socialist Party sacrifices so much that
+he <i>ipso facto</i> clears himself of the suspicion of mere
+ambition.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_94">[94]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="A_Topic_of_Standing_Interest">A Topic of Standing Interest</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The Oxford University Press has just issued
+a beautiful little edition of Erasmus’s
+<i>Praise of Folly</i>, with a good reproduction
+of Quentin Matsys’ portrait of Erasmus as a frontispiece.
+The last edition of the <i>Encomium Moriæ</i>
+with which I am familiar is that issued in 1887 by the
+firm of Hamilton, Adams. It had a binding which
+did not please, but contained Holbein’s interesting
+illustrations. Whether any considerable sale of the
+book is likely nowadays I very much doubt. Erasmus’s
+humour was an improvement on mediæval humour,
+which, except in a few cases, cannot make a
+modern man laugh save sometimes through the
+brazenness of its indecency. Erasmus was a child
+of the Renaissance, a wit, a scholar, a questioner of
+all things, a man of the world, a revolutionary conformist.
+But there are long dull passages in his
+most famous book, and many remarks that seemed
+most daring to the men of his own time are to us
+platitudinous; whilst he often labours some obvious
+joke in the worst mediæval way.</p>
+
+<p>At the same time, any one who cares to go through
+the book will find occasional amusement. Erasmus
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_95">[95]</span>had a mild theory of the satirist’s rights. “Wits,”
+said he, “have always been allowed this privilege,
+that they might be smart upon any transactions of
+life, if so be their liberty did not extend to railing”;
+and he disclaimed a desire to imitate Juvenal by
+“raking into the sink of vices to procure a laughter.”
+With these qualifications, he let out all around him
+with some vigour. The personification of Folly is
+rather feebly sustained, though the character is pleasantly
+introduced with the sentence: “I was born
+neither in the floating Delos nor on the frothy sea,
+nor in any of the privacies where too forward mothers
+are wont to retire for undiscovered delivery.”
+But the <i>obiter dicta</i> on various classes of men who
+have often been the butts of satirists since his day
+are still entertaining and must in his own time have
+been shocking. He refers to priests as “wisely foreseeing
+that the people, like cows, which never give
+down their milk so well as when they are gently
+stroked, would part with less if they knew more,
+their bounty proceeding only from a mistake of
+charity.” He speaks of “The Carthusians, which
+order alone keeps honesty and piety among them,
+but really keeps them so close that nobody ever yet
+could see them,” and he is especially down on the
+scholastic theologians. Sterne, it will be remembered,
+described a dispute “as to whether God could
+make a nose as big as the steeple of Strasburg.”
+This is scarcely a caricature of the kind of discussion
+ridiculed by Erasmus:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_96">[96]</span></p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“Whether this proposition is possible to be true;
+that the first person of the Trinity hated the second?</p>
+
+<p>“Whether God, who took our nature upon him
+in the form of a man, could as well have become a
+woman, a devil, a beast, an herb, or a stone. And
+were it possible that the Godhead had appeared in
+the shape of an inanimate substance, how he then
+should have preached his gospel? Or how have
+been nailed to the cross? Whether if St. Peter had
+celebrated the eucharist at the same time our Saviour
+was hanging on the cross, the consecrated bread
+would have been transubstantiated into the same
+body that remained on the tree?”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Word-spinning he detested, and he refers the
+Nominalists, the Realists, the Thomists, the Albertists,
+the Scotists, etc., to the primitive disciples who
+were “well acquainted with the Virgin Mary, yet
+none of them undertook to prove that she was preserved
+immaculate from original sin.”</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“The disciples baptized all nations, and yet never
+taught what was the formal, material, efficient, and
+final cause of baptism, and certainly never dreamt of
+distinguishing between a delible and an indelible
+character in this sacrament.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>Chaucer, with his observations about relics and
+“pigges bones,” and the novelists who never hesitated
+to put friars in the most ignominious positions
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_97">[97]</span>(e. g. in chimneys and under tables) had made sport
+of the clergy, but Erasmus’s particular method of
+battering current theology had not been so devastatingly
+employed since Lucian. He showed, like Rabelais,
+that it is possible to reconcile the profession
+of Christianity with something of what a recent
+writer calls “the old Voltairean love of humanity.”</p>
+
+<p>Erasmus made the familiar sport of lawyers and
+pedantic critics. He would have agreed with
+Sterne: “Of all the cants which are canted in this
+canting world—though the cant of hypocrites may
+be the worst—the cant of criticism is the most tormenting.”
+“When any of them,” he says,</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">“has found out who was the mother of Anchises,
+or has lighted upon some old unusual word, such
+as bubsequa, bovinator, manticulator, or other like
+obsolete cramp terms, or can, after a great deal
+of poring, spell out the inscription of some battered
+monument: Lord! what joy, what triumph, what
+congratulating their success, as if they had conquered
+Africa, or taken Babylon the Great!”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">It was for such people’s benefit that he must have
+made his irritating final remark: “I hate a hearer
+that will carry anything away with him.”</p>
+
+<p>Erasmus was the mildest of the famous satirists,
+but he has his place in the great succession, though
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_98">[98]</span>his works cannot now compete for readableness with
+those of Lucian, Rabelais, Swift, Sterne, and Voltaire.
+Satirists have usually been considerable
+plagiarists, and <i>The Praise of Folly</i> has an important
+historical place in the development of this kind
+of literature. Richard Burton cribbed a good deal
+from it, in spite of his own drastic remark about
+persons who “lard their lean bookes with fat of
+others’ workes” and his question: “If that severe
+doom of Synesius be true it is a greater offence to
+steal dead men’s labours than their cloaths, what
+shall become of most writers?” But Burton has an
+account on the other side, for Sterne later on reprinted
+chunks of his work almost literally without
+any acknowledgement whatever.</p>
+
+<p>The new Oxford edition gives a modernized reprint
+of the Caroline Version by John Wilson. In
+the introduction Mrs. P. S. Allen gives some interesting
+bibliographical particulars. Over forty editions
+of the <i>Encomium Moriæ</i> were published in the author’s
+lifetime; within forty years of its first Latin
+issue French, Italian, and English translations had
+been published; and later versions have appeared
+in (amongst other languages) Swedish, Czech, Polish,
+and Modern Greek.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_99">[99]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Was_Cromwell_an_Alligator">Was Cromwell an Alligator?</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Some people—who at least avoid the error
+of ascribing the invention to Steele or Addison—say
+that Abraham Cowley was the Father
+of the English Essay. It might alternatively
+be suggested that Q. Horatius Flaccus was one of its
+parents and Montaigne the other; Bacon having, so
+to speak, a watching brief at the birth. But the
+other statement is true in a sense: for though in
+patches Bacon (and Burton) anticipated the tone
+and method of that type of writing which was
+brought to its fullest perfection by Charles Lamb,
+Cowley was the man who fixed the type. His essays
+have just been republished in a beautiful little edition
+of the Collected Prose Works, issued by the Oxford
+University Press, and edited by Mr. A. B. Gough.
+Mr. Gough is a most painstaking editor, and his
+notes are abnormally full. They are so full that one
+feels that most people who are likely to acquire such
+a book will find nine-tenths of them unnecessary; but
+one ought not to grumble at that, since they have
+the complementary advantage of always supplying
+information when one looks for it.</p>
+
+<p>The edition is especially to be welcomed as there
+are many persons capable of appreciating Cowley
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_100">[100]</span>who have never come into contact with him. “Who
+now reads Cowley?” Pope asked in 1737; if the
+question were repeated to-day you certainly would
+not get a forest of hands raised, even in an audience
+replete with pince-nez and bulging brows. It was
+Cowley’s misfortune, as it was his ambition, to be
+known in his own days as one of the greatest poets
+of his time; when men discovered that he was not
+that, they at once concluded that he was nothing else.
+Not that his poems are as negligible as some critics
+assert; his mere skill and neatness make him
+worth reading. Even if he had, as Mr. Gough
+remarks, “too little passion and spontaneity to be
+a great lyric poet,” he was at any rate a good metrist
+and a most admirable phrasemaker. But his prose
+writings are certainly superior to the others; and this
+is true not only of the Essays. His <i>Vision Concerning
+Oliver Cromwell</i>, for example, is full of witty
+and whimsical things. Occasionally he employs very
+drastic language, as when he refers to the Protector
+as an “alligator” and when he abuses him for meditating
+the calling in of the Jews. This is how Cowley
+disports himself. The italics are mine:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“From which he was rebuked by the universal
+outcry of the Divines, and even of the Citizens
+too, <i>who took it ill that a considerable number at
+least among themselves were not thought Jews
+enough by their own Herod</i>. And for this design,
+they say, he invented ... to sell St. Pauls to them
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_101">[101]</span>for a synagogue, if their purses and devotions could
+have reacht to the purchase. And this indeed if he
+had done onely to reward that Nation which had
+given the first noble example of crucifying their
+King, <i>it might have had some appearance of gratitude</i>,
+but he did it onely for love of their Mammon;
+and would have sold afterwards for as much more
+St. Peters (even at his own Westminster) to the
+Turks for a Mosquito [Mosque]. Such was his
+extraordinary Piety to God, that he desired he might
+be worshipped in all manners, excepting only that
+heathenish way of the Common Prayer Book.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">But this strong language is not the strong language
+of a man whose breast is a burning fiery furnace; it
+is the invective of a man who is amused by his opponents
+and who regards them chiefly as pegs for
+cunning sentences. His hard words would certainly
+have broken no bones; and one can even imagine
+that, in the secrecy of their chambers, the Puritans
+themselves—at all events, the less ironsided of
+them—may have shaken their sides over his character-sketch
+of the man whom they doubtless referred
+to in public as “our great leader.”</p>
+
+<p>But if such qualities are defects when a man is
+writing political tracts or attempting the higher
+flights of poetry, they are invaluable to him if he is
+writing essays. Cowley’s Essays—and his Prefaces
+are as good—are most delightful, and they
+have as personal a turn as Lamb’s. They all, virtually,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_102">[102]</span>have one text: the Sabine Farm text; the retired
+<i>Urbs in Rure</i> text. They speak of the country’s
+charms in the ex-townsman’s way; they gibe at
+the turmoil and press of cities in a manner which
+attests a still lively interest in these contemptible
+things; they praise the pleasures of horticulture, solitary
+meditation, and à Kempis’s “little book in a
+corner.” Their learning is lightly worn; their language
+natural; their arguments not so serious as to
+stand in the way of any jest that offers itself; and
+many passages in them might almost as well have
+been written in 1720 or 1820 as in 1660. These,
+for instance:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“There is no saying shocks me so much as that
+which I hear often that a man does not know how
+to pass his Time. ’Twould have been but ill spoken
+by Methusalem in the nine hundred sixty ninth year
+of his Life.</p>
+
+<p>“I have been drawn twice or thrice by company
+to go to Bedlam, and have seen others very much
+delighted with the fantastical extravagancie of so
+many various madnesses, which upon me wrought
+so contrary an effect, that I always returned, not
+only melancholy, but e’en sick with the sight. My
+compassion there was perhaps too tender, for I meet
+a thousand Madmen abroad, without any perturbation;
+though, to weigh the matter justly, the total
+loss of Reason is less deplorable than the total depravation
+of it.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_103">[103]</span></p>
+
+<p>“I thought when I went first to dwell in the
+country, that without doubt I should have met there
+with the simplicity of the old Poetical Golden Age:
+I thought to have found no inhabitants there, but
+such as the Shepherds of Sir Phil. Sydney in Arcadia,
+or of Monsieur d’Urfé upon the Banks of Lignon;
+and began to consider with myself, which way I
+might recommend no less to Posterity the Happiness
+and Innocence of the Men of Chertsea; but to confess
+the truth, I perceived quickly, by infallible demonstrations,
+that I was still in Old England.</p>
+
+<p>“The civilest, methinks, of all Nations, are those
+whom we account the most barbarous. There is
+some moderation and good Nature in the Toupinamhaltians
+who eat no men but their Enemies, whilst
+we learned and polite and Christian Europeans, like
+as many Pikes or Sharks prey upon everything
+we can swallow.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">The last sentence reads, perhaps, more like a certain
+living writer than like, say, Charles Lamb.</p>
+
+<p>The best of Cowley’s Essays are <i>Of My Self</i>
+and <i>Of Greatness</i>. I have no room to quote them
+at length. The first—in which he is writing of
+poetry and of his childhood’s memories—is more
+full of feeling than is usual with him. The other
+is one of the most picturesque pieces of light moralizing
+in the language, full of what we all call the
+Playful Irony of the Gentle Elia, as in sentences
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_104">[104]</span>like: “The Ancient Roman Emperours, who had the
+Riches of the whole world for their Revenue, had
+wherewithal to live (one would have thought) pretty
+well at ease, and to have been exempt from the pressures
+of extream Poverty”; and it describes the
+pleasures of littleness most alluringly. But somehow,
+in spite of his assertions, one never quite believes
+in the genuineness of his middle-aged preference
+for “Prettiness,” as against “Majestical
+Beauty.” One suspects the existence in him of a
+disappointed ambition, a hankering after action,
+which frequently afflict men who are constitutionally
+fitted for nothing but looking on and making charming
+comments. But he had certainly been very
+badly treated by the Stuart family, which he had
+faithfully served. The Restoration gave him
+neither employment nor money. It gave him, however,
+a very fine funeral. Evelyn says that his coffin
+was followed to the Abbey by a hundred noblemen’s
+coaches and large numbers of wits, bishops, and
+clergymen.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_105">[105]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="The_Depressed_Philanthropist">The Depressed Philanthropist</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>I do not see why any one but myself should be
+interested in the mere fact that, except in the
+way of casual reference, I have always avoided
+writing a line about Mr. John Galsworthy. But as
+one’s feelings commonly typify those of some section
+or other of one’s fellows it may be relevant to one’s
+purpose. I frequently begin writing something
+about Mr. Galsworthy and then tear it up. I constantly
+feel like abusing him, and am then checked by
+the thought that after all he is too good a man to
+go for. He is a sensitive and humane man of very
+great intelligence. He is a conscientious writer and
+an acute observer. He has a great respect for truth
+and a desire to state it at all costs. He detests pettinesses,
+hypocrisies, and shams. On almost every
+issue that might arise I am sure I should find myself
+voting on the same side as he, though perhaps we
+might differ in our views of the relative importance
+to be attached to the problem of World Peace and
+that of the hardships inflicted by mankind on ants,
+wasps, and bees. And yet as I read his books I
+feel as if I were in some cheerless seaside lodging-house
+on a wet day.</p>
+
+<p>I have just been reading his new miscellany <i>The
+Little Man</i>. The book does not show his qualities
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_106">[106]</span>at their best, but it shows his defects at their worst.
+The principal contents are <i>The Little Man</i> and
+<i>Studies in Extravagance</i>. The first is a short play
+showing how a German, an American full of altruistic
+platitudes, and two self-contained and “proper”
+English people shrink in the most selfish and cowardly
+way from a forlorn baby suspected (falsely, of
+course, for the sake of the extra irony) of typhus.
+The “studies” are examinations of various “types”
+such as “The Artist,” “The Plain Man,” “The
+Housewife,” “The Preceptor,” and “The Latest
+Thing.” And there is none of them good—no,
+not one. Mr. Max Beerbohm once did a cartoon
+of Mr. Galsworthy Looking upon Life and Finding
+it Foul, Life being represented as a fat and ferocious
+goblin with horns, a forked tail, and teeth like a
+wild boar’s. It was just a little wrong. Mr. Galsworthy’s
+vision should not have had so much of the
+positive about it. He does not find Life vigorously
+diabolical, but meanly cruel and pallidly contemptible.
+Many great men have been gloomy or pessimistic.
+Mr. Hardy is not exactly a merry grig,
+Schopenhauer was consistently disgruntled, and the
+man who would look for <i>joie de vivre</i> in Leopardi
+would look in vain. And as Mr. Galsworthy
+suggests himself—it is a commonplace—it is
+often the duty of a serious contemporary writer
+to be horrifying, unpleasant, and shocking. The
+regeneration of mankind—to continue the commonplace—is
+not possible if we hold the view
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_107">[107]</span>that things may be done that may not be discussed,
+and that the failings of man and the
+diseases of society should, as far as possible,
+be stowed away in the cupboard, where the
+skeletons are. What is wrong with Mr. Galsworthy
+is that one cannot quite believe him. One
+suspects him of cooking the evidence. One does not
+mind a man presenting a black view of life if (<i>a</i>)
+he is temperamentally inclined to it and can be melancholy
+with a certain gusto, or (<i>b</i>) if, being a professed
+realist, he appears to have taken cognizance
+of every aspect that has presented itself to him.
+But Mr. Galsworthy presents so one-sided a case
+that we at once suspect his <i>bona fides</i> and react
+against his views. It would be unfair to classify
+him with that school of novelists who give their
+books titles like <i>Dull Monotony</i> and live up to their
+titles by giving a photographic reproduction of an intolerable
+tedium peculiar to, and comprehensible by,
+the households which they themselves afflict. He
+usually escapes being thoroughly boring partly because
+of his gift for occasionally happy and incisive
+phrase and partly because here and there, behind the
+grey brow of the dejected Hanging Judge, one
+catches a gleam of something more exhilarating than
+his expressed sentiments. But he is often very
+nearly dull, all the same: for his realism is often
+bogus. He starts with an intention to paint a caricature
+in greys, and a caricature which is not amusing.
+Even in his very well-made plays the characters
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_108">[108]</span>are not, to my mind, usually interesting in
+themselves. One does not believe in them as persons.
+They are just a set of types, as stagy and
+unreal as the old stage figures of melodrama,
+though they are called charwomen, clerks, magistrates,
+and company directors instead of being called
+Irishmen, highwaymen, and wicked baronets. His
+plays argue cases, but they do not present life as
+we know it. I find the same sort of unreality about
+his prose; and, since the unreality takes the form of
+making mankind look utterly paltry and uninteresting,
+one wonders why on earth a man who has such
+an opinion of it bothers about it at all.</p>
+
+<p>So in <i>The Little Man</i> and in these studies. All
+these average people do not get a dog’s chance; we
+have all sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
+but we really are not quite so dull, feeble, and silly
+as all this. Some characteristics—as those of the
+Plain Man—are very cleverly recorded, but the
+whole of the man is not here, nor even the most important
+parts of him. As an illustration of Mr.
+Galsworthy’s pseudo-realistic method take him on
+the ground most favourable to him—that of the
+beef-and-whisky-fed sportsman:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“What led to him was anything that ministered
+to the coatings of the stomach and the thickness of
+the skin ... to be ‘hard’ was his ambition, and
+he moved through life hitting things, especially
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_109">[109]</span>balls—whether they reposed on little inverted tubs
+of sand or moved swiftly towards him, he almost always
+hit them, and told people how he did it afterwards.
+He hit things, too, at a distance, through
+a tube, with a certain noise....”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">Now, apart from the fact that a full and accurate
+description of a sportsman would put in many things
+Mr. Galsworthy leaves out (e. g. some indication
+that he was a human being, as we know the species),
+this is not good, though it is superficially plausible
+description, even so far as it goes. The plain statement
+that the gentleman played golf and cricket and
+shot a good deal would convey a better idea of him
+than this specious circumlocution. To say that a
+man is smoking a cigarette positively contains a
+greater measure of suggestion than to say that he is
+inhaling grey fumes through a cylinder of paper
+filled with dried herbs. Much of Mr. Galsworthy’s
+attack upon all kinds of men and women, self-centred
+authors, idealists who oppress their wives, worldly
+women who have never found their souls, cultured
+people who chase the new, and Philistines who run
+away from the new, has the same sort of defect.
+It is really “guying” which passes for photography
+merely because it is heavy-footed and unamusing. I
+object to Mr. Galsworthy’s ostensible view of life
+partly because I don’t believe he takes it, and partly
+because if he did I should think it an absurdly
+unjust view. At heart a humanitarian, he has got
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_110">[110]</span>into a dismal and costive kind of literary method
+which makes him look like a fretful and dyspeptic
+man who curls his discontented nostrils at life as
+though it were an unpleasing smell. As Ibsen used
+so often to remark, there is a great deal wrong with
+the drains; but after all there are other parts of the
+edifice.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_111">[111]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="A_Polyphloisboisterous_Critic">A Polyphloisboisterous Critic</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>I remember—that is to say, I wish I remembered,
+for I have forgotten most of it—a
+poem that I used to recite at my mother’s
+knee. Its subject was an antediluvian man of sesquipedalian
+height, who let out the blood of an ichthyosaurus
+with a polyphloisboisterous shout; and
+its claim to attention was a plethora of polysyllables
+very embarrassing to an infant, and indeed to any,
+tongue. It was of that poem that I was reminded
+whilst reading <i>European Dramatists</i>, by Archibald
+Henderson.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Henderson, an American professor, is not a
+stranger to the British public. It was he who produced,
+a few years ago, a biographical study of Mr.
+Bernard Shaw so vast that a single copy might well
+have served—were not Mr. Shaw still happily with
+us—as Mr. Shaw’s tombstone. The work, indeed
+(to use the phrase Mr. Henderson himself applies
+to a play of Strindberg’s), was “colossal in its incommensurability.”
+It was the kind of book one
+had thought could only be produced by a large committee
+of Chinese scholars; and although it did not
+lead one to respect the author’s powers of judging
+the relative importance of his various facts, it at
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_112">[112]</span>least compelled one to admire his colossal energy and
+his incommensurable supply of these facts. From
+<i>European Dramatists</i> one gets precisely the same
+feeling. Parts of the book have appeared in journals
+published in Boston and in Berlin, in Stuttgart
+and in Stockholm, in Helsingfors, Paris, New York,
+and Ghent. And one may be sure that Mr. Henderson
+could have talked to the editors of all these
+papers and beaten all of them hollow in knowledge
+of the modern literature of their respective countries.
+The actual subjects of his papers are familiar
+enough: Strindberg, Ibsen, Shaw, Maeterlinck, Granville
+Barker, and Wilde. But in discussing them he
+shows an amazing acquaintance with everybody who
+has recently written anything in any country. He
+can refer you to the December 1913 issue of the
+<i>Przemysl Review</i>; he can tell you what the Servian
+critic, Ivan Peckitch, thinks of the Finnish poet,
+D. D. Bilius. He knows all about everything,
+though one is not quite sure that he knows anything
+else. But what chiefly pleases one about him is not
+so much what he says as the charming way he says
+it. Like Hudibras, he cannot ope his mouth but
+out there flies a trope. Everything happens with
+him in metaphors; people are always digging into
+soils, moulding things in fires or clothing them in
+vestures. And above all he is polysyllabic and rotund
+of speech.</p>
+
+<p>He begins well with Strindberg, of whose first
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_113">[113]</span>married years he observes that they “were undoubtedly
+happy—certainly in the passional sense, if not
+in the restful consciousness of hallowed union.”
+“In 1886,” he proceeds, “Strindberg began to be
+obsessed with the monomania of animadversion
+against the female sex.” Later, “goaded by titanic
+ambition, he cast off the shackles of provinciality for
+the freedom of cosmopolitanism”—i. e. he travelled.
+Ibsen and Strindberg were “so antipodal in
+temperament, yet so cognate in the faculties of intuitive
+perception and searching introspectiveness.”
+One of Strindberg’s works blurs the vision of the
+average spectator, “with its kinetoscopic heterogeneity
+of spiritual films”: Peer Gynt (on the other
+hand, shall I say?) stood for “the disciplinary bankruptcy
+of laxity.” “Concretizes” and “inscenation”
+are the kind of words he rejoices in, but perhaps
+two or three longer extracts will better illustrate
+the quality of his style:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“To peep into the workshop of the great master’s
+brain and assist at the precise balancing of the arguments
+<i>pro</i> and <i>con</i>, to observe how an idea first finds
+lodgment in the brain, and to note the gradual symmetrical
+accretion of the fundamental nuclei for the
+final creation—this is a privilege that has perhaps
+[<i>sic</i>] never fully been realized by an observer.</p>
+
+<p>“America is young and hopeful, at least; it is not
+peopled, we are confidently assured, with soul-sick
+tragedians mouthing their futile protests against the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_114">[114]</span>iron vice of environment, the ineradicable scar of
+heredity, the fell clutch of circumstance.</p>
+
+<p>“Yet the reiterant ejaculations, the hyper-ethereal
+imaginings of the symbolist manner, are the symptoms
+of a tentative talent, not of an authoritative
+art.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p>I don’t think Professor Henderson’s remarks are
+ever quite meaningless, but I suspect that the most
+elephantine of them, if reduced to essentials, would
+be as commonplace as his more comprehensible statements
+that “Social criticism is the sign manual of
+the age,” and that “the emancipation of woman, in
+the completest sense, is on the way”—which last
+gets a whole paragraph to itself. But it is pleasant
+to read it all; to see “Ibsen, Pinero, or Phillips”
+thus bracketed; to learn that Wilde’s father was
+also “the father of modern otology,” and to be
+told that Maeterlinck’s “eternal prayer” is, “Oh,
+that this too, too solid flesh would melt”! That is
+on page 203; but the effect is somewhat marred by
+the fact that precisely the same “cry” has been,
+on page 37, attributed to Strindberg. Personally I
+plump for Maeterlinck.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_115">[115]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Another_Century_and_then_">“Another Century, and then ...”</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>There is a certain sort of dull criticism
+which Dr. Johnson admirably stigmatized
+when he said that “there is no great merit
+in telling how many plays have ghosts in them and
+how this ghost is better than that.” A great deal
+of American (not to speak of German) academic
+criticism belongs to this category; and especially
+those theses which are written by postgraduate students
+and candidates for the doctor’s degree. These
+persons, when they are not exhuming dead reputations
+from well-deserved sepulchres, show an uncanny
+ingenuity in inventing original classifications
+and instituting unnecessary comparisons. But now
+and again such students manage to produce some enlightening
+piece of “research” work, and <i>The
+French Revolution and the English Novel</i> (Putnams)
+is one of the best of its kind. It is by Allene
+Gregory; and as I cannot tell from the name whether
+she is a gentleman or a lady, I shall call him Miss.</p>
+
+<p>“This study in the <i>tendenz</i> novel was begun with
+the idea of paralleling Dr. Hancock’s book, <i>The
+French Revolution and the English Poets</i>.” That
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_116">[116]</span>is the first sentence of the preface, and it has a strictly
+academic flavour about it. The book is a “scientific”
+treatise; it would not have been written, so to
+say, either by a French Revolutionary or by an English
+novelist. If it dealt with the purely literary
+merits, which are few, of its subjects, it would be a
+useless sort of book. But its real purpose is to supply
+a chapter to the history of ideas, and especially
+Liberal political and social ideas. Many people
+talk as though they thought that the novel which
+canvasses the “problems” of sex, property, and religion
+were an invention of the last thirty years; and
+many others are under the impression that Charles
+Dickens was the first person to use fiction—though
+not, of course, the first person to employ fictions—for
+the promotion of legislation. Books about Godwin
+and Mary Wollstonecraft are occasionally written;
+and quite recently Thomas Holcroft, one of the
+chief of our Revolutionary novelists, was given considerable
+notice in Mr. Brailsford’s excellent little
+book in the Home University Library. But, as far
+as my experience goes, there seem to be very few
+who know that England produced a century ago a
+whole group of novelists whose principal aim was
+not to “tell a straightforward story” or make the
+flesh creep, but to blow up the foundations of society
+with the gunpowder in the jam.</p>
+
+<p>Miss Gregory’s book is very comprehensive.
+Her principal figures are Holcroft, Godwin, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_117">[117]</span>Robert Bage; and she gives synopses of all their
+novels, with extracts illustrating their doctrines.
+Holcroft, one of the most lovable figures in the history
+of English democracy, was the sort of man who
+is regarded as an obscure crank in his lifetime, then
+forgotten for a time, and ultimately recognized as a
+person of historical importance. He lived a long
+life, and harmed nobody in the course of it. As a
+stable-boy in a racing stable he read Addison, Bunyan,
+and Swift (whose tribute to the Houyhnhnms
+must have had a local colour for him); he was afterwards
+a strolling actor, a hack writer, translator,
+novelist, and playwright, one of his plays being
+<i>The Road to Ruin</i>. When the Society for Constitutional
+Reformation was raided Holcroft was arrested
+with Thomas Hardy and Horne Tooke, and
+it was alleged against him, as justification for a
+charge of high treason, that he had extolled moral
+as against physical force. His associates being acquitted,
+he was never brought to trial: there comes
+a point at which even a Government begins to feel
+it is making an ass of itself. Holcroft’s courage
+never weakened “when Wordsworth, Coleridge,
+Southey, and even Blake had recanted, and Godwin
+and Paine had fallen silent, and all the world seemed
+to have forgotten its vision of democracy.” He
+himself stated in terms: “Whenever I have undertaken
+to write a novel I have proposed to myself a
+specific moral purpose.” His best novels are <i>Hugh
+Trevor</i> and <i>Anna St. Ives</i>. In the latter the hero,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_118">[118]</span>Frank Henley, who shocks the orthodox by taking
+service rather than self-interest as his guiding principle,
+remarks:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“Let men look around and deny if they can that
+the present wretched system of each providing for
+himself instead of the whole for the whole does not
+inspire suspicion, fear, and hatred. Well, well!—another
+century, and then....”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">Just a century has passed.</p>
+
+<p>Of Godwin’s novels <i>Caleb Williams</i> is the only
+one that is at all read nowadays. In spite of its
+impossibilities of character and action, it is a very
+good tract, especially where it deals with the prison
+system. Miss Gregory’s extracts from <i>Caleb Williams</i>
+might have been more profuse; but she gives
+interesting accounts of <i>St. Leon</i> and <i>Fleetwood</i>. In
+the first of these a gentleman who possesses the philosopher’s
+stone breaks into long reflections on
+“gold <i>versus</i> actual wealth”; in the other there are
+eloquent passages about the horrors of child-slavery
+in factories which anticipate the factory reports of a
+generation later, and which were so much in advance
+of their time that they still hold good in reference
+to certain of the States of America. Godwin
+saw the whole thing very clearly: the pale,
+emaciated child given the free man’s right of selling
+his labour at his own price in the open market and,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_119">[119]</span>as Godwin put it, able to earn salt to his bread at
+four, but unable to earn bread to his salt at forty.
+The placid Bage’s novels were admired by Walter
+Scott. The most original is <i>Hermsprong, or Man
+as he is not</i>, the hero of which—who enters civilized
+society after being brought up among the Red Indians,
+and quails at the change—criticizes institutions
+with something of the tone of the versatile Mr. Smilash
+in <i>An Unsocial Socialist</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Shelley’s <i>Zastrozzi</i> and <i>St. Irvyne</i> are only interesting,
+if interesting at all, because they were written
+by their author. Miss Gregory ploughs through
+them, and also through the novels of Charlotte
+Smith, Mrs. Inchbald, and Mrs. Opie. She has a
+very interesting chapter on Mary Wollstonecraft and
+the early Women’s Rights authors. I find most alluring
+the bare mention made of a certain Ann
+Plumptre, a novelist of whom I had never previously
+heard, who admired Napoleon enthusiastically. In
+1810, according to Crabb Robinson,</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">“she declared she would welcome him if he invaded
+England because he would do away with aristocracy
+and give the country a better government.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">Finally Miss Gregory has given space to the anti-revolutionary
+novelists, especially George Walker
+and Charles Lucas, of <i>The Infernal Quixote</i>. Ridicule
+of visionaries and demagogues through the medium
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_120">[120]</span>of novels was a recognized sport then as now;
+and Lucas instituted an elaborate comparison between
+political and religious revivalists. A good
+bibliography rounds off a very laudable compilation
+which should interest all persons of subversive views
+and direct the reading of the curious into some very
+agreeable channels.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_121">[121]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Herrick">Herrick</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Mr. F. W. Moorman has edited for the
+Oxford Press a new edition of Herrick,
+which should supersede all its predecessors.
+There is very little editorial matter; Mr.
+Moorman has already written a <i>Life</i>, and his introduction
+and notes have a purely textual reference.
+The text, which is as satisfactory a one as we are
+likely to get, is based upon a collation of various
+divergent copies of the first edition; for Herrick appears
+to have hung about the printer’s making alterations
+whilst the sheets were going through the press.
+And a full list is given of variants which occur in
+other printed copies of some of the poems and in
+MSS., of which the editor records several which
+have not previously been dealt with.</p>
+
+<p>Any one who regards Herrick as an unsophisticated
+warbler pouring forth profuse strains of unpremeditated
+art may study these variants and correct
+himself. Mr. Moorman—I suppose he has
+sufficient reason, though he leaves one to guess what
+it is—assumes that the versions in MSS. and anthologies,
+etc., including those published after the <i>Hesperides</i>,
+are all earlier than the versions in the <i>Hesperides</i>.
+Now and then one is sorry that this should
+be so, as when the presumably earlier</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_122">[122]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>And night will come when men will swear</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Time has spilt snow upon your haire,</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">is changed into</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>And time will come when you shall weare</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Such frost and snow upon your haire.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">But almost invariably the changes are improvements;
+and they are exceedingly numerous. Sometimes
+alterations in almost every line of a poem may
+be studied; sometimes there is a whole series of attempts
+at a line; and if we had more of Herrick’s
+original MSS. available, we should no doubt find
+every poem a mass of trial trips and deletions. He
+blotted, filed, and pumice-stoned as much as any
+English poet, and he had the most delicate and deliberate
+sense of all the complex mechanism of verse.
+This rubicund Royalist rector was above all else a
+craftsman and a connoisseur.</p>
+
+<p>What distinguishes his best—they are so well
+known that I need not quote them—poems from
+his second best is usually that the former have some
+especially taking touch of tenderness. It is never
+very deep; even in an epitaph he is more concerned
+with turning it well than with the, often apocryphal,
+death of the person commemorated. His adorations
+and griefs are as light as rose-leaves, but they
+are genuine in their way, and it is rather a slight
+difference in the quality of his emotion than a relative
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_123">[123]</span>superiority of craftsmanship that distinguishes
+his most perfect lyrics. His strongest characteristic,
+one that runs through the whole body of his verse,
+was his intense sensual appreciation of the material
+world. He was a connoisseur in life as in art. His
+admired record of the “liquefaction” of Julia’s
+silks is characteristic of him. “O how that glittering
+taketh me!” he might have said of a thousand
+other things. He looked at colours and felt surfaces
+like a connoisseur; he tasted substances like an
+epicure tasting wines. He crushes all the distinctive
+hues and flavours out of flowers and spices, roses and
+primroses and violets, tulips, lilies, marigolds,
+cherryblossoms, virgins’ skins, jet, ivory, amber, and
+gums. There is nothing romantic about him, and
+nothing dim; all things are equally vivid and clear,
+no thing is mysteriously vaster than other things.
+The moon and cream are both white—he will compare
+his lady’s cheek to either indifferently or to both
+in a sentence; he relishes the loveliness of each and
+he drinks each, with exquisite pleasure, out of the
+same sized liqueur glass. Few other writers give
+one so keen a contact with the beauties of the physical
+world. But it is usually their sensuous appeal
+that is registered, sometimes their sentimental appeal,
+but never their mystic appeal. Herrick was a
+thoroughgoing pagan.</p>
+
+<p>His capacity for conveying vivid impressions of
+the physical was not invariably employed upon such
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_124">[124]</span>agreeable objects as daffodils and maidens. His
+sheer virtuosity made him compose those offensive
+epigrams which some bashful editors exclude from
+their collections. It is not to be supposed that he
+really wished to vent his spleen against Lungs, Gryll,
+Clasco, Scobble, Bunce, and his other, presumably
+pseudonymous, butts; though if his efforts in this
+direction got about in his Devonshire village and
+people took them to apply to themselves it is no
+wonder that the natives behaved towards him, as he
+complained, like surly savages. “Upon Batt” is
+one of the mildest of them:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Batt he gets children, not for love to reare ’em,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>But out of hope his wife might die to beare ’em.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">A more characteristic, but still a mild one, is
+“Upon Lungs”:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Lungs (as some say) ne’er sits him down to eate</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>But that his breath do’s Fly-blow all the meate.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>He tells—I refrain from the grossest ones—of
+another gentleman whose eyes were so sticky in
+the morning that his wife had to lick them open;
+of another whose raw eyes would supply an angler
+with a day’s bait; and of another (very parsimonious)
+who preserved his nails, warts, and corns in
+boxes to make jelly for his broth. It is not astonishing
+that when the “sprightly Spartanesse” appeared
+to him in dream she remarked:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_125">[125]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent10"><i>Hence, Remove,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Herrick thou art too coorse for love.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">But as one goes on through these things one is too
+amused to be disgusted; one wonders what on earth
+the man is going to think of next. And that was the
+idea. He had compressed all the fragrance of the
+spring into short lyrics—how much concentrated
+beastliness could he get into a couplet? He had
+rivalled Horace and Anacreon in one line; could he
+rival Martial in another? You may picture him
+making these things—sitting at a table in the sun
+outside the rectory, quaffing, as was his wont, a social
+tankard with his favourite pig, and working and
+working at these singular concoctions until there
+came the thrill of the artist who knows he has produced
+a perfect cameo.</p>
+
+<p>His outlook and methods being such, it is not surprising
+that when he gave up his “unbaptized
+Rhimes” and took to “Noble Numbers” he was
+comparatively unsuccessful. Quaintness and neatness
+do not go far in religious verse, and the congenital
+materialism of Herrick’s imagery sometimes
+produced the most grotesque effects.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>God is all forepart, for we never see</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Any part backward in the Deitie.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">An epigram which might have had some point if
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_126">[126]</span>applied to a man is merely vapid when applied to
+the Deity. And the vapid becomes comic in</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>I crawle, I creep; my Christ I come</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>To thee, for curing Balsamum,</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">and</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Lord, I confesse, that thou alone are able</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>To purifie this my Augean stable;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Be the Seas water, and the Land all Sope,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Yet if thy Bloud not wash me, there’s no hope.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Herrick was not an exalted religious poet. But
+it doesn’t much matter what he was not; what he was
+is one of the greatest small masters in the history
+of verse.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_127">[127]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="The_Muse_in_Liquor">The Muse in Liquor</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>In former times men wrote about drinking without
+the slightest self-consciousness. Our forefathers,
+from Teos to Chertsey, from Greenland’s
+icy mountains to India’s coral strand, sang the
+praises of what nobody in those days dreamt of calling
+alcohol, as they sang the praises of the other
+amenities of life. To Homer “bright wine” was
+as indispensable a commodity as bread: no home
+could be complete without it. If Anacreon and
+Horace were rather more sophisticated about it and
+tasted their liquor with a deliberate and spun-out sensuality,
+they still had no idea that there was anything
+morally questionable about drink. So onwards
+to mediæval times. When the Anglo-Saxon
+leech laid it down that if a man has fainted from
+hunger one should</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">“pull his locks from him, and wring his ears, and
+twitch his whiskers; when he is better give him some
+bread broken in wine,”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">there was no rival school of leeches to jump up and
+protest that to inject alcoholic poisons into a debilitated
+frame was about the worst thing you could do.
+Drinking in the Middle Ages was unchallengeably
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_128">[128]</span>respectable. “The introduction of wine and viticulture,”
+says Mr. A. L. Simon in his history of the
+<i>Wine Trade in England</i>,</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">“is coeval with the introduction of the Christian
+religion. As the numbers of clergy increased,
+greater supplies of wine were required, so vines were
+planted at home, and a considerable foreign wine
+trade came into being.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">The drinking-songs of the Middle Ages were largely
+composed by theological students, and it was (at
+least I am of that party which maintains that it was)
+an archdeacon of the English Church who wrote one
+of the two best lyrics of the kind that this island has
+produced—that perfect song in which he expresses
+the hope that he shall meet his latter end in a hostelry
+and that some one should hold a pottle-pot
+before his dying eyes:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Ut dicant cum venerint angelorum chori</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent6"><i>“Deus sit propitius huic potatori.”</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Our other great song has also been attributed to
+an ecclesiastic, Bishop Still.</p>
+
+<p>But if a modern bishop wrote a song about hot
+whisky, he would get into hot water. Times have
+changed. When a modern English king wants to
+do the popular thing, he takes the pledge; when
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_129">[129]</span>Henry III wanted to, he gave his old wine to the
+poor—the gift was not so noble as it sounds, for
+in his day old wine was bad, owing to the lack of
+glass bottles and well-made casks. Bishop Still,
+when he wrote (if he wrote) about the ale-swallowing
+capacity of himself and Tib, his wife, was on
+the safe side, for his sovereign lady, Queen Elizabeth,
+was addicted herself. Her Ministers had a
+job keeping her supplied with beer. When she was
+on one of her royal progresses, the Earl of Leicester
+wrote to Lord Burleigh:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“There is not one drop of good drink for her.
+We were fain to send to London and Kenilworth
+and divers other places where ale was; her own
+here was so strong as there was no man able to
+drink it.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">But since that time a question of principle has arisen,
+and the changed attitude of society towards drink
+has been accompanied by a corresponding change in
+the tone of those who write in praise of drink.
+They used to be natural and expository; they are
+now self-conscious and on the defensive.</p>
+
+<p>I note the transition in a volume (1862) called
+<i>How to Mix Drinks, or The Bon-Vivant’s Companion</i>,
+by Jerry Thomas, formerly principal bartender
+at the Metropolitan Hotel, New York, and
+the Planter’s House, St. Louis. It is an ingenious
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_130">[130]</span>book and a suitable companion to its shelf-neighbour,
+<i>The Maltworm’s Vade-mecum</i>, a guide to the public-houses
+of early Georgian London. But if Mr.
+Thomas had been a contemporary of his brother
+connoisseur, it would never have occurred to him to
+write a preface apologizing for the mere compilation
+of such a book:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“Whether it is judicious that mankind should continue
+to indulge in such things, or whether it would
+be wiser to abstain from all enjoyments of that character,
+it is not our province to decide. We leave
+that question to the moral philosopher. We simply
+contend that a relish for ‘social drinks’ is universal;
+that those drinks exist in greater variety in the
+United States than in any other country in the world,
+and that he, therefore, who proposes to impart to
+those drinks not only the most palatable but the most
+wholesome characteristics of which they may be
+made susceptible, is a genuine public benefactor.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">You see the uneasiness coming in; the devotee is
+conscious of a disapproving eye. And what was
+perceptible in 1862 is much more marked to-day,
+when a considerable percentage of the population
+looks askance at a man who has been seen coming
+out of a bar, and when most of our priests and half
+our politicians denounce fermented drinks as an invention
+of the Devil. The results of this are seen
+in the twentieth-century Bacchanal’s writings. He is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_131">[131]</span>on the defensive. He cannot write a mere song in
+praise of drink: his Muse is largely, even mainly,
+concerned with dispraise of the opponents of drink.
+Mr. Belloc and Mr. Chesterton, belauding drinks as
+against beverages, strike an attitude which Anacreon
+simply would not have understood. They cannot lie
+and lap their liquor in dreamy content. Whenever
+they take up a pot of beer they have to march out
+and drink it defiantly in the middle of the Strand.
+It is almost as if they knew they were the champions
+of a lost, though noble, cause; and felt that at any
+moment they might be called upon to Die in the Last
+Tankard.</p>
+
+<p>This tendency is strongly marked in Mr. Chesterton’s
+volume <i>Wine, Water, and Song</i>. Mr. Chesterton
+spends half his time in abusing abstemious
+American and English millionaires, tea, cocoa, mineral
+waters, and grocers—who, lacking the genial
+proclivities of publicans, have never been known</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>To crack a bottle of fish sauce</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Or stand a man a cheese.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">But the novelty of tone makes the songs all the
+better: for the old material of drinking-songs was
+getting threadbare. To my thinking, these songs—most
+of them appeared in <i>The Flying Inn</i>, and
+it was a pity that they were omitted from the volume
+of collected <i>Poems</i> recently issued—are
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_132">[132]</span>amongst the finest bibulous songs ever written,
+and some of Mr. Chesterton’s very best work. You
+can read them aloud to other people and very seldom
+come across a stilted or obscure phrase which makes
+you feel sheepish to say it. But, more than that,
+<i>Wine and Water</i>, <i>The Good Rich Man</i>, <i>The Song
+against Songs</i>, and the two poems on the English
+Road are the sort of infectiously musical things that
+one learns by heart without knowing one has done it.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Old Noah he had an ostrich farm and fowls on the largest scale,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>He ate his eggs with a ladle in an egg-cup big as a pail,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>And the soup he took was Elephant Soup, and the fish he took was whale,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>But they all were small to the cellar he took when he set out to sail,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>And Noah he often said to his wife when he sat down to dine,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>“I don’t care where the water goes if it doesn’t get into the wine.”</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Lives there a man with soul so dead that when he
+comes across this or <i>The Road to Roundabout</i>
+(which is about the best of the lot) he does not
+automatically improvise a tune to it and start, according
+to his ability, singing it?</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_133">[133]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="5_Misspent">£5 Misspent</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Any one who is interested in what nobody
+has yet asked us to call the British language
+must have felt apprehensive if he read the
+correspondence recently printed in the <i>Times</i> on the
+subject of a synonym for the word “Colonial.” It
+appears that this word is “strongly objected to” in
+the—er—Dominions, and especially in Canada.
+The Central Committee of the Overseas Club therefore
+started a Missing Word Competition. It offered
+a prize of £5 for the best synonym and “members
+have been most prolific in their ideas.” The
+examples given of their fecundity are, however, so
+malformed as to lead to the hope that in future they
+will practise an intellectual Malthusianism. The
+Chairman of the Club says that amongst the terms
+suggested are Britainer, Britonial, Imperialist, Dominion,
+Britannian, Britoner, Greater Briton, Anglian
+Pan-Briton, and such repulsive composts as Empirean,
+Transmarine (why not Ultramarine?),
+Away-Born, Out-Briton, Co-Briton, Albionian, MacBriton,
+and Britson. What those which he does
+not publish were like one can only surmise; but no
+doubt Ap-Briton, O’Briton, Britidian, Britkinson,
+Dominisher, Fraternanglian, Nonsunsetton, and
+Heptathalassian were among them. And so, possibly,
+was Oversear.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_134">[134]</span></p>
+
+<p>It needs must be that new words should come;
+and one should not cry woe against those through
+whom they come. We are constantly inventing or
+importing words to convey ideas or shades of feeling
+for which we previously had no exact means of expression.
+We also necessarily acquire new words
+for new objects, such as chemicals and machines.
+When men made the telephone they had to call it
+something; and the same thing applied to the omnibus.
+We can frequently trace new words to their
+inventors. But we may safely say that successful
+new words are seldom “made up” cold-bloodedly
+merely for the sake of the thing. An author hits
+upon a word half-accidentally, developing it usually
+from some word already familiar; or a philosopher
+or scientist constructs one out of fragments of Greek,
+or Latin, or Greek and Latin mixed, because he has
+a new object to describe. The process is going on
+continually. The rivals “airman” and “aviator”
+(somebody once asked if you could call a miner a
+“talpiator”) are at present&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_2" href="#Footnote_2" class="fnanchor">[2]</a> fighting it out in the
+Press and on men’s tongues; and if some central
+authority is in the future established over the heads
+of the sovereign Powers, it is likely that the word
+“supernational,” now being bruited about, may
+come into use to describe it. We may get in time,
+too, an inclusive word which will imply “citizen of
+the British Empire,” covering both Britons (or, if
+you prefer it, Britirish) and Colonials. But I doubt
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_135">[135]</span>whether such a word will result from a public competition.</p>
+
+<p>When it comes it will come because some one
+person starts using it and others take to it. And
+when it is a case of inventing a synonym, a new
+word as a substitute for an old one in general use,
+I think it most unlikely that a group of persons such
+as the Overseas Club could persuade the race to
+abandon a universally used word like “Colonial”
+for some £5 prize word merely because hypersensitive
+people think that the word used to have a faintly
+derogatory flavour. “Colonial” is very strongly
+entrenched. One can just understand how the
+Americans have come to use the abominable word
+“Britisher” instead of the ancient “Briton”; for
+it falls more trippingly off the tongue. But “Colonial”
+is a most liquid, easy, and euphonious word.
+If it is ever superseded, it will be so because some
+other word comes in with the larger connotation
+to which I have referred, a word which is bound to
+come into being when we cease to think of the Empire
+as composed of the United Kingdom on the one hand
+and the Colonies on the other, but think of it as a
+federation of equal and distinct units.</p>
+
+<p>It is a pity that people take so seriously the fact
+that when the words “Colonies” and “Colonial”
+were first used by us they had certain associations.
+For it is evident that to the vast majority of our
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_136">[136]</span>countrymen they are entirely divested of them.
+Whatever one’s habits, one automatically thinks
+when the word “Colonial” is mentioned, not of a
+humble emigrant who wants shepherding, but of a
+person who is the very quintessence of independence.
+Any one who has even the most superficial acquaintance
+with the language knows that words can lose
+their old associations utterly. If, for example, I
+were arrested and charged for alleging, in a public
+speech, one of our Royal Princes to be “a silly
+knave,” I should not find the magistrate very sympathetic
+if I said I was using the words in a Shakespearean
+(which in this case would be equivalent to
+a Pickwickian) sense, and that I merely meant to
+call him “a simple boy.” Similarly, where an object
+changes its form its name changes its connotation.
+If one could talk of a bottle to a mediæval
+ancestor, he would think of something made of
+leather; to-day a bottle is essentially something made
+of glass. If we always wanted a new term directly
+a new association was created, there would be no end
+to the process; we should have to have a Ministry
+of Constructive Philology always at work. After
+all, Charleston was named after an English king
+when the North American plantations were very
+subordinate indeed; and Melbourne after a member
+of the British House of Lords, an institution of
+which few modern Australians approve. So, on the
+whole, saving the Overseas Club’s reverence, we may
+as well, for the time being, stick to “Colonial.”</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_2" href="#FNanchor_2" class="label">[2]</a> Airman happily seems (July 1918) to have won.—S. E.</p></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_137">[137]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Shakespeares_Women_and_Mr_George_Moore">Shakespeare’s
+Women and Mr. George Moore</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Handling the Porcupine of Avon is always
+ticklish work. When Mr. George
+Moore, after containing himself for years,
+at last wrote to explain that it was he, and not Mr.
+Shaw or Mr. Franz Heinrichs, who discovered the
+fact that Shakespeare’s female characters were weak
+because they were written for boy-actors, it was only
+natural that another correspondent should show that
+Mr. Moore had been forestalled by an eighteenth-century
+Frenchman. Mr. Moore’s remark about
+the boy-actors was, however, merely a passing observation
+in a lecture in French (published in the
+<i>Revue Bleue</i> in 1910) which is an important document
+in the movement against what Mr. Shaw calls
+Bardolatry.</p>
+
+<p>“He is inconceivably wise; the others conceivably.”
+Thus Emerson; and a few generations of
+such sweeping remarks were bound to be followed
+by a reaction. For a hundred years we have swallowed
+Shakespeare steadily and swallowed him
+whole; a man has even written a book on <i>The Messiahship
+of Shakespeare</i>. And of all his powers,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_138">[138]</span>that of creating an infinite variety of female character
+has been perhaps more enthusiastically praised
+than any other. The professors have given us
+treatises on Shakespeare’s Feminine Types; and the
+less erudite public has been deluged with Posies
+from Shakespeare’s Garden of Girls. “O Nature!
+O Shakespeare! which of ye drew from the other?”
+That is typical. Dr. Lewes, one of the ablest German
+writers on the subject, kneels and adores, and
+asks women to do the same. “This piece,” he says
+of <i>Henry VIII</i>,</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">“this piece and its female characters should indeed
+inspire women with profound gratitude towards a
+poet who represents a queen and a heroine who is
+above all things an excellent woman, displaying in
+the midst of frightful trials all the best womanly
+qualities, thus proving that a noble, pure feminine
+heart is the home of the noblest virtue, the highest
+truth and purity. Seldom has more flattering homage
+been paid to the sex than by Shakespeare in his
+presentation of Catherine of Aragon.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">And hear Mrs. Jamieson, author of the best-known
+English book on these women. Dare any one apply
+the epithet “clever” to Portia, “this heavenly compound
+of talent, feeling, wisdom, beauty, and gentleness”?
+As for Lady Macbeth, with her “Gothic
+grandeur, rich chiaroscuro, and deep-toned colours,”
+even she is not to be insulted by comparison with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_139">[139]</span>other villainesses. Sophocles’ Clytemnestra had
+been mentioned, but</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">“would any one compare this shameless adulteress,
+cruel murderess and unnatural mother with Lady
+Macbeth? <i>Lady Macbeth herself would certainly
+shrink from the approximation.</i>”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">One <i>has</i> sometimes felt that her ladyship was probably
+president of the local branches of the G.F.S. and
+the Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Families Association.</p>
+
+<p>There was nothing of this sort about Mr. George
+Moore’s lecture. It opened with a strong protest
+against the “vast clamour” of Shakespeare’s worshippers:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“One might take them for a gathering of negro
+Methodists in a chapel, each one straining his lungs
+to out-bellow his neighbour, in order to attract the
+Almighty’s attention. Is it that the critics think
+that Shakespeare is listening to them? At any rate,
+the madness increases daily, and, if the cult of
+Jahveh should happen to decay in England, I should
+not be surprised were they to promote Shakespeare
+to the vacant throne in the heavens.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">After this engaging beginning he went on to the
+general contention that neither Shakespeare nor any
+of his contemporaries drew or painted a real woman.
+The Renaissance was interested in women only as
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_140">[140]</span>queens or odalisques, and Shakespeare at most made
+a few delicious silhouettes of women. His men
+were another matter. “Hamlet is the secret
+thought of all men”; and, though it hurts Mr.
+Moore to agree with Tolstoi, he reaffirmed Tolstoi’s
+statement that “Falstaff is the most universal and
+original thing in Shakespeare.” “Hamlet is the
+hieroglyphic and symbol of the intellect; Falstaff is
+the symbol and arabesque of the flesh.” But
+Shakespeare, like Balzac, was chiefly concerned with
+“the eternal masculine.”</p>
+
+<p>But suppose it be admitted that Shakespeare has
+no female Hamlet and no female Falstaff; is it not
+arguable that then the case for the superiority of
+Shakespeare’s males over his females is very much
+less strong? It would be absurd to attempt to dogmatize
+on the subject; but personally I doubt
+whether any one who cannot get inside the minds of
+most (though many would exempt Heine’s “ancient
+Parisienne” Cleopatra, and one or two more) of
+Shakespeare’s women will get inside the minds of
+most of his men either. When Professor Dowden
+said that he had “edited a whole play for love of
+Imogen” the remark (if he heard it) may have
+sounded strange to Mr. Moore; but would he understand,
+either, any one editing a whole play for
+love of Antonio, Bassanio, Benedict, the Duke of
+<i>Twelfth Night</i>, King Lear, Othello, Mark Antony,
+or Henry V? It is possible to hold the view that
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_141">[141]</span>Shakespeare “put himself” into a few characters
+and observed the others “from the outside,” making
+them most interesting when they are most markedly
+what are called “character parts.” Personally,
+though I should certainly know Hamlet or
+Falstaff if I met them in swallowtails, I don’t think
+there are many other of Shakespeare’s characters
+whom I should recognize if I encountered them
+clothed in other than their traditional garments.
+But I do not think it is easy to sustain the argument
+that, as a whole, his women are less carefully and
+sympathetically drawn than his men—Lady Macbeth
+than Macbeth, Juliet than Romeo, Cleopatra
+than Anthony, Beatrice than Benedict, Rosalind than
+Orlando—or, still more, that he was not interested
+in women and regarded them in a casual lazy way
+as decorations. Shakespeare’s politics were Heaven
+knows what; and he may not necessarily have drawn
+Portia as an argument for the admission of women
+to the Inns of Court. But one would have imagined
+that if ever there were a writer who treated women
+and men on a footing of complete equality, and even
+perhaps elevated women’s moral superiority to an
+indefensible pitch, it was he. If his female characters
+are not living human beings it is certainly not
+because he despised them. He gave them plenty
+of virtue, wit, courage, and will, and an ample share
+of the stage; it is, with all due respect to Mr. Moore,
+grotesque to suggest that he thought of them merely
+as properties.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_142">[142]</span></p>
+
+<p>The recent correspondence sent me back to Mr.
+Moore’s paper, and I read it with admiration for
+the fruits of what he called a month’s rather exhausting
+liaison with the French language. But
+something about it—perhaps it was the catalogue
+of heroines, each with an appropriate criticism—seemed
+familiar. I have tracked it; here also Mr.
+Moore has been anticipated. It was the late Max
+O’Rell—it is almost like being anticipated by
+Charley’s Aunt—who remarked that</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">“The heroines of Shakespeare are for the most
+part slaves or fools. Juliet is a spoilt child, Desdemona
+a sort of submissive odalisque, Beatrice a
+chatterbox, and Ophelia a goose.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">It is very difficult indeed to say anything new about
+Shakespeare.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_143">[143]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Moving_a_Library">Moving a Library</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>I do not remember that any of our meditative
+essayists has written on the subject of Moving
+One’s Books. If such an essay exists I should
+be glad to go to it for sympathy and consolation.
+For I have just moved from one room to another, in
+which I devoutly hope that I shall end my days,
+though (as Mr. Asquith would put it in his rounded
+way) “at a later, rather than at an earlier, date.”
+Night after night I have spent carting down two
+flights of stairs more books than I ever thought I
+possessed. Journey after journey, as monotonously
+regular as the progresses of a train round the Inner
+Circle: upstairs empty-handed, and downstairs creeping
+with a decrepit crouch, a tall, crazy, dangerously
+bulging column of books wedged between my two
+hands and the indomitable point of my chin. The
+job simply has to be done; once it is started there is
+no escape from it; but at times during the process
+one hates books as the slaves who built the Pyramids
+must have hated public monuments. A strong and
+bitter book-sickness floods one’s soul. How ignominious
+to be strapped to this ponderous mass of
+paper, print, and dead men’s sentiments! Would
+it not be better, finer, braver, to leave the rubbish
+where it lies and walk out into the world a free, untrammelled,
+illiterate Superman? Civilization!
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_144">[144]</span>Pah! But that mood is, I am happy to say, with
+me ephemeral. It is generated by the necessity for
+tedious physical exertion and dies with the need.
+Nevertheless the actual transport is about the briefest
+and least harassing of the operations called for.
+Dusting (or “buffeting the books,” as Dr. Johnson
+called it) is a matter of choice. One can easily say
+to oneself, “These books were banged six months
+ago” (knowing full well that it was really twelve
+months ago), and thus decide to postpone the ceremony
+until everything else has been settled. But the
+complications of getting one’s library straight are
+still appalling.</p>
+
+<p>Of course, if your shelves are moved bodily it is
+all right. You can take the books out, lay them
+on the floor in due order, and restore them to their
+old places. But otherwise, if you have any sense
+of congruity and proportion, you are in for a bad
+time. My own case could not be worse than it is.
+The room from which I have been expelled was low
+and square; the room into which I have been driven
+is high and L-shaped. None of my old wall-shelves
+will fit my new walls; and I have had to erect new
+ones, more numerous than the old and totally different
+in shape and arrangement. It is quite impossible
+to preserve the old plan; but the devisal of
+another one brings sweat to the brow. If one happened
+to be a person who never desired to refer
+to his books the obvious thing to do would be to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_145">[145]</span>put the large books into the large shelves and the
+small ones into the small shelves and then go and
+smoke a self-satisfied pipe against the nearest post.
+But to a man who prefers to know where every book
+is, and who possesses, moreover, a sense of System
+and wishes everything to be in surroundings proper
+to its own qualities, this is not possible. Even an
+unsystematic man must choose to add a classification
+by subject to the compulsory classification by
+size; and, in my case, there is an added difficulty produced
+by a strong hankering for some sort of chronological
+order. There is nothing like that for
+easy reference. If you know that Beowulf will be at
+the left-hand end of the shelf that he fits and Julia
+Ward, the Sweet Singer of Michigan, at the right-hand
+end, you save yourself a good deal of time.
+But when your new compartments do not fit your
+old sections, when the large books of Stodge are
+so numerous as to insist upon intruding into the
+shelves reserved for large books of Pure Literature,
+and the duodecimos of Foreign Verse surge in a
+tidal wave over the preserves of the small books on
+Free Trade, Ethics, and Palæontology, one is reduced
+to the verge of despair. That is where I
+am at this moment; sitting in the midst of a large
+floor covered with sawdust, white distemper, nails,
+tobacco-ash, burnt matches, and the Greatest Works
+of the World’s Greatest Masters. Fortunately, in
+Ruskin’s words, “I don’t suppose I shall do it again
+for months and months and months.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_146">[146]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Table-Talk_and_Jest_Books">Table-Talk and Jest Books</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Samuel Butler’s <i>Note-Books</i> have now
+gone into another (popular) edition, issued
+by Mr. Fifield. I don’t know how large these
+editions are: if, as I fear, they run to less than fifty
+thousand copies apiece, Samuel Butler has not yet
+got his due. There is no other volume in the whole
+of his collected works to equal this selection from his
+note-books: you have here the quintessence of his
+wisdom, his taste, and his superb impudence. The
+book really belongs to the “table-talk” or “ana”
+class of books. Butler, that is to say, recorded his
+own table-talk. His principle was, he said, that if
+you wanted to record a thought you had to shoot it
+on the wing. If, therefore, he thought of or said
+anything especially illuminating or amusing, or heard
+any one else say anything of the sort, down it went.
+And it always went down as colloquially and freshly
+as if a Boswell had been present recording conversation
+with a faithful pen. Butler Boswellized himself.
+For Boswell’s <i>Life</i>, as has been remarked
+before, is the greatest collection of “ana” in the
+language. It consisted of Johnson’s table-talk
+strung on a biographical thread.</p>
+
+<p>Personally I find it hard to draw the line between
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_147">[147]</span>general table-talk and anecdotes told of certain
+persons: most collections include both. But
+such works, of whatever kind, consisting of detached
+scraps of great men’s wit, are an agreeable form of
+reading, and an old-established one. The Greeks
+possessed volumes of excerpts from people’s conversation,
+and some Latin wrote a book, now unfortunately
+lost, under the piquant title of <i>De Jocis
+Ciceronis</i>. The great age of such collections began,
+however, with the Renaissance, when Poggio the
+Florentine collected his “facetiæ.” My own extracts
+from Poggio are included in a German collection
+of 1603, all written in Latin, which gives also
+the “facetiæ” of other wits, notably of Nicodemus
+Frischlin of Balingen. This man was a German
+scholar of exceptional brilliance who finally, on being
+incarcerated for the last of many escapades,
+broke his neck trying to escape. We have no such
+University professors of classics now. “Ana”
+so-called begin with the <i>Scaligerana</i>, which gave the
+drastic conversation of the younger Scaliger as recorded
+by two of his disciples. The success of this
+led to a rush in France. Every one who had known
+an eminent man deceased rushed out with a volume
+of table-talk; <i>Thuana</i>, <i>Perroniana</i>, etc. The <i>Sorberiana</i>
+“sive excerpta ex ore Samuelis Sorbiere”
+was famous in its day, but I find it very dull. Much
+the best collection is <i>Menagiana</i>, “Bon Mots,
+Rencontres Agréables, Pensées Judicieuses, et Observations
+Curieuses de M. Ménage,” of which the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_148">[148]</span>second edition (my copy) is dated 1694-5. This
+man was a scholar, knew everybody and had a sharp
+tongue: he is extremely good reading, though, nowadays,
+very little read. The contents of both of
+these books are arranged (as is Butler’s) under subject-headings,
+in alphabetical order. The same
+order is observed in Selden’s <i>Table-Talk</i>, the next
+best book of the kind to Boswell in our tongue. It
+was published after Selden’s death by his private
+secretary, and is full of extraordinarily sensible and
+witty things. And, unlike many wits, Selden always
+possessed a sense of responsibility. He remarked
+himself (under heading “Wit,” as he did not
+realize) that</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">“He that lets fly all he knows and thinks may by
+chance be satyrically witty. Honesty sometimes
+keeps a man from growing rich, and civility from
+being witty.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">Few of the wits whose sayings are collected are so
+scrupulous. Our other classical example in the kind
+is Coleridge’s <i>Table-Talk</i>, which is full of fine criticism,
+funny stories, and good epigrams.</p>
+
+<p>These collections shade off into the ordinary jest
+book. After all, there is no clear division between
+stories told by a dead man and stories collected and
+published by a living one, between stories about one
+man and stories about fifty different men. When
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_149">[149]</span>the new learning was still new, men had a mania for
+collecting pointed anecdotes about the eminent.
+The fattest book of the kind I know is Casper Ens’s
+<i>Epidorpidum</i>, published at Cologne in the early
+seventeenth century. It is full of the remarks of
+Alexander to Diogenes and Pope Innocent to St.
+Vitus and the repartees of King Pyrrhus of Epirus
+to a recalcitrant phalanx. Right on into the eighteenth
+century works with titles like <i>Elite de Bon-Mots</i>,
+and full of such historical personages, were
+popular on the Continent. English jest books were
+perhaps more local and contemporary in their references.
+Our eighteenth-century ancestors were addicted
+to anecdotes about Mr. Quin and Mr. Foote
+and what the Duke of Wharton said to the Bishop.
+In our own time the larger, if not the smaller, public
+still shows some demand for collections of anecdotes
+of this sort: and popular weeklies of the <i>Answers</i>
+and <i>Tit-Bits</i> type usually seem to find it desirable to
+print columns of stories about Henry Irving, Mr.
+Gladstone, and such people. But it is a long way
+from <i>Tit-Bits</i> to Samuel Butler: which shows where
+one may land oneself if one does not know where
+to draw a firm line when shading-off is apparently
+gradual. I cannot review Butler at this time of day;
+but there are very few books existing which contain
+more sense to the square inch than this. Though
+the worst of his books is good reading, the <i>Note-Books</i>
+is as certainly his finest book as Boswell’s
+<i>Johnson</i> is the finest of Johnson’s.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_150">[150]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Stephen_Phillips">Stephen Phillips</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The announcements of Stephen Phillips’s
+death must have carried many people’s
+thoughts backward. Me personally it
+took back to a time, years ago, when I was in the
+first flush of my youthful beauty and sitting out at
+a country dance. Coloured lamps burned between
+boughs, trees gently swished under a summer sky,
+the sound of violins and the glide of many feet penetrated
+softly from a distance; and a partner, whose
+face was shadowy pale in the faint light, sat clasping
+her knees, looking out into the night, and talking in
+a deep ecstatic voice of <i>Marpessa</i>, <i>Herod</i>, and <i>Paolo
+and Francesca</i>. It was not merely that she thought
+that I was that sort of person: the same thing was
+happening in every county in England. Phillips
+had the biggest boom that any English poet has had
+for a generation. The extravagance of the eulogies
+seems very strange now. There was scarcely a
+critic who did not lose his balance. I have just been
+looking up some of these panegyrics, and the pitch of
+them makes one feel a little sadly for a man who
+outlived so great and so early a fame. The history
+of literature was ransacked for comparisons.
+Chapman, Webster, Wordsworth, Shakespeare himself
+were brought in: and almost the most modest of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_151">[151]</span>the assessors was Mr. William Archer, who described
+Phillips as “the elder Dumas speaking with
+the voice of Milton.” I remember the <i>Daily Mail</i>
+devoting its magazine page to a description of the
+poet, in the course of which it explained, with characteristic
+love of figures, that here was a man who
+had discovered how to make £1000 a year out of
+poetry. But it did not last. The climax of
+Phillips’s success came with <i>Paolo and Francesca</i>;
+the subsequent plays were received with a diminuendo
+of warmth; and in the last few years he was
+comparatively ignored.</p>
+
+<p>The early adoration was absurd but not incomprehensible.
+It was due, one might say, to the fact
+that Phillips was not an original writer. Much used
+to be made of a certain trick he had of accenting
+occasional lines of blank verse in a strange manner:
+on the strength of this he was treated as a revolutionary
+innovator in English prosody. In reality,
+in spite of this one peculiarity, he was anything but
+an innovator. He had an ear for the magniloquent
+progress of Milton’s verse and the crooning music
+of Tennyson’s; he had a great facility for reproducing
+them; and to those who are susceptible only
+to artistic effects which (though they are unconscious
+of it) remind them of effects previously experienced,
+he seemed, therefore, to be a consummate artist.
+He gave them precisely what they had learnt to desire
+and expect from a poet, the familiar splendours
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_152">[152]</span>and the familiar silences, the familiar agonies and
+the familiar tendernesses, the scents, the flowers, the
+gems, the old words with their unmistakable associations,
+the brilliant single lines, with here and there
+an alliteration and here and there an onomatopœia.
+His work was not, of course, a <i>mere</i> compost. He
+added something. His emotions, though not deep,
+were genuine enough; he had a pretty fancy; and
+he had a considerable knowledge of how to produce
+effects on the stage. <i>Paolo and Francesca</i> was certainly
+in every way superior to most of the other
+attempts which have been made in our time at stage-plays
+in blank verse. It was effective in the theatre.
+One remembers the excitement about the skilful ending:
+the murder behind the scenes, the bodies
+brought in, the murderer’s revulsion:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>I did not know the dead could have such hair.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Hide them. They look like children fast asleep.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">But those who did not shrink from comparing it
+with <i>Romeo and Juliet</i> omitted to notice the same
+deficiencies as appeared in all his work. He was
+largely derivative and there was very little hard
+brainwork behind his verse.</p>
+
+<p><i>Herod</i>, <i>Ulysses</i>, and <i>Nero</i> were all less well
+made: the last two were panoramas. In all three
+the author depended on succulent or flamboyant
+“purple patches” for his effects, descriptions too
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_153">[153]</span>full of redundant metaphor and violent outbursts of
+picturesque but too flimsy rhetoric. There was little
+characterization in them, the persons were puppets
+in the hands of the contriver of stage spectacles:
+they were carried off by brilliant and exotic scenery
+and costumes, by the romantic language, and by the
+real and skilful, if conventional, melody of the verse.
+All the best qualities of Stephen Phillips, the qualities
+that gave people a thrill they were unaccustomed
+to in the theatre of his time, are quintessentialized in
+Herod’s megalomaniac speeches and in the oratorical
+Marlowesque remark that one of the suitors in
+<i>Ulysses</i> made to Penelope:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Thou hast caught splendour from the sailless sea</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>And mystery from the many stars outwatched.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">His defects were observed by few when he was a
+popular dramatist: but those readers who only know
+him by his later work will misjudge him if they
+think that he never had more power than he showed
+in that. His more recent volumes, written in ill-health,
+would never have got him a reputation.
+Here and there the old bravura appeared, and there
+is a short lyric in the volume of 1913 which is certainly
+equal to anything in the early book of poems
+with which he made his name—and in which he
+showed signs of contact with the “movement” of
+the ’nineties. But from most of these later poems
+the life had gone, leaving the imitative structure
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_154">[154]</span>naked to the eye. His last volume, <i>Panama and
+other Poems</i>, was issued just before he died by his
+original publisher, Mr. John Lane; and the way in
+which he had succumbed to his influences was very
+evident. Lines on the Canal such as</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Chagres by Dam stupendous of Gatun</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">not merely remind one of Milton but are exact
+mechanical reproductions of Milton.</p>
+
+<p>Incidentally the difficulties of literary biography
+are illustrated by his obituary notices. <i>My Daily
+News</i> gave his age as forty-nine, my <i>Times</i> gave it
+as fifty-one; and looking into the <i>Encyclopædia
+Britannica</i> to see which of these estimates it would
+confirm, I found that it alleged him to be forty-seven.
+<i>The Encyclopædia</i> says that he was at Queens’ College,
+Cambridge, when he joined Mr. Benson’s company;
+the <i>Times</i> that he was cramming at Scoones’.
+When we have this conflict of evidence about a contemporary
+who was known personally to hundreds
+of people in London, where are we with Elizabethans
+and Romans? Personally I believe that,
+in the matter of birth-dates, nothing is really reliable—not
+even a man’s own statement—except public
+registers.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_155">[155]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Gray_and_Horace_Walpole">Gray and Horace Walpole</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>If a gentleman in Calabria digs up with a spade
+a hitherto unknown fragment of the obscure
+Latin historian P. Pomponius Fatto there is
+great excitement about it, and research congratulates
+itself upon its achievements. I can quite appreciate
+the feeling. All treasure-trove is exciting. The
+smallest recovery from the long-buried past is worth
+having; it may, in itself, fill a gap somewhere and encourages
+the hope of greater finds. But why not
+make just as much of a palaver about Dr. Paget
+Toynbee’s disinterment of nearly a hundred “new”
+letters by the poet Gray? The new letters are included
+in <i>The Correspondence of Gray, Walpole,
+West, and Ashton</i> (Oxford University Press, 2
+vols.); and they were found in the collection of
+Captain Sir F. E. Waller, who was recently killed in
+action, and to whose memory the volume is dedicated.
+Gray, Horace Walpole, Richard West, and
+Thomas Ashton formed a “Quadruple Alliance” at
+Eton. West went on to Oxford, the other three
+to Cambridge. We get first of all an exchange
+between all four; then West dies, in his twenties;
+then, years afterwards, relations with Ashton are
+broken; and, finally, there is a long series that
+passed between Walpole and Gray up to the time of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_156">[156]</span>the poet’s death in 1771. In all there are 248 letters;
+of these 153 were written by Gray, eighty-nine
+of which have never been published before. Others
+have never before been printed in full, and few
+have escaped maltreatment by previous editors.
+Their errors ranged from deliberate alteration,
+truncation, and blending to bad transcription and unintelligent
+acceptance. How easily the most comic
+errors may creep into a text where each editor neglects
+to use, or has not access to, original sources
+may be shown by the history of a single word.
+Gray wrote a Latin poem about the god of Love in
+which one line began “Ludentem fuge.” This
+was printed by Miss Berry as “Sudentem fuge”;
+and this has been “corrected” by subsequent editors
+into “<i>Sudantem fuge</i>”!</p>
+
+<p>The characters of the correspondents come out
+very clearly. Even when, just after they have left
+school, they are all writing rather affectedly (and
+with a plethora of classical quotation), Ashton is
+obviously the one fundamentally insincere member
+of the group. He is hyperself-conscious, nastily artificial.
+Later on he even refers in Joseph Surface’s
+very own words to his “noble sentiments”: this was
+clearly the man to make, by his double-dealing, the
+temporary breach between Gray and Walpole, and,
+ultimately, to compel Walpole to cast him off by his
+incivility when Walpole was no longer useful to him.
+Richard West, son of an Irish Lord Chancellor, has
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_157">[157]</span>no apparent defect save excessive seriousness.
+There is a touch of the priggish mixed with the high-mindedness
+and generosity of this able young invalid;
+but one can understand Gray’s devotion to
+him. Some of the poetry of his here given (he appeared
+in Dodsley’s <i>Miscellany</i> by the way) is surprisingly
+good. He was the Arthur Hallam of the
+eighteenth century.</p>
+
+<p>The Walpole letters are, as always, unsurpassable
+of their kind. His undergraduate letter (in parody
+of Addison’s descriptions of Italy) relating a journey
+from London to Cambridge, is admirable; but
+the letters describing his continental tour with Gray
+are better, and those, still later, about the <i>beau
+monde</i> of Paris are perfect. There is a peculiar
+charm too about the correspondence with Gray as to
+the details and publication of his works, the half-solemn,
+half whimsical concentration on the tiny
+antiquarian details to which each was addicted,
+the eager little controversies and explorations,
+the odd little jokes. But though Gray, taking
+his correspondence as a whole, considering both
+volume, range, and formal excellence, cannot contest
+Walpole’s position as the greatest of English
+letter-writers, there is a flavour about his
+letters that makes them peculiarly delightful. Walpole
+writes fully dressed, though with exquisite
+manner; Gray writes naturally, and without obvious
+reserve sometimes even gambolling. There
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_158">[158]</span>may be people, familiar with Gray only through
+his elevated and sombre verse, who fancy him
+an exceedingly self-contained and formal man,
+who feel (like the person who greatly amused him
+by addressing him as “The Rev. T. Gray”) that
+he simply <i>must</i> have been a divine. There were certainly
+contemporaries of his who met him and got
+the impression that he was constitutionally grave,
+reticent, aloof. His letters show that he was anything
+but that to his friends. The author of the
+<i>Elegy</i> habitually “played the goat.” There are a
+whole string of skit letters here: in one he writes
+to Walpole as “Honner’d Nurse,” addressing the
+illiterate screed “to mie Nuss att London”; in another
+he wallows in Oriental imagery about the
+dew of the morning; in another he applies to stagnant
+Cambridge a whole long passage from Isaiah
+describing deserted Babylon, the home of dragons
+and haunt of screech-owls. He had a great habit
+of ending his letters with something openly idiotic.
+Once he bursts out with “Pray, did you ever see an
+elephant?”; another time his peroration is:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“The Assizes are just over. I was there; but
+I a’nt to be transported. Adieu!”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">and another excursion concludes with a ludicrous
+burlesque of the type of commonplaces usually to be
+found in letters:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“There is a curious woman here that spins Glass,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_159">[159]</span>and makes short Aprons and furbelow’d petticoats
+of it, a very genteel wear for summer, &amp; discover’s
+all the motions of the limbs to great advantage.
+She is a successour of Jack, the Aple dumpling Spinner’s:
+my Duck has eat a Snail &amp;c.: &amp; I am—yours
+sincerely</p>
+
+<p class="right">T. G.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">Those who think of poets as persons without humour
+who live in a permanent exaltation and are quite
+unlike reasonable beings will be shocked with Gray’s
+remarks when he had, to the publisher’s alarm, withdrawn
+a poem from his forthcoming small volume:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">“but to supply the place of it in bulk, lest my work
+should be mistaken for the works of a flea or a
+pismire, I promised to send him an equal weight of
+poetry or prose: so, since my return hither, I put
+up about two ounces of stuff: viz. The Fatal Sisters,
+The Descent of Odin ... with all this I shall
+be but a shrimp of an author.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">On a night nine years before this, General Wolfe,
+as his boat crept towards the Quebec bank of St.
+Lawrence, had recited the <i>Elegy</i> to his companions
+and told them that he had rather have written that
+poem than take Quebec.</p>
+
+<p>Gray’s judgments on other authors (though he
+was unjust to the more fermentative kind of Frenchman)
+were uniformly good. He suspected Ossian,
+but hoped he was a fraud for the sake of the jest.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_160">[160]</span>If, he said, Macpherson had done it all to hoax
+fools, “I would undertake a journey into the Highlands
+only for the pleasure of seeing him.” He
+read Boswell’s early book on Corsica and almost
+prophetically observed:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“The pamphlet proves what I have always maintained,
+that any fool may write a most valuable book
+by chance, if he will only tell us what he heard and
+saw with veracity.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">In politics he was interested only mildly, but he
+liked to gossip about them. “Do oblige me,” he
+writes to Walpole,</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">“with a change in the Ministry: I mean, something
+one may tell, that looks as if it were near at hand;
+or if there is no truth to be had, then a good likely
+falsehood for the same purpose. I am sorry to be
+so reduced.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">“A good likely falsehood”: is it not in perpetual
+demand?</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_161">[161]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="A_Horrible_Bookseller">A Horrible Bookseller</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>People often complain that booksellers know
+too little about the goods they sell. If only,
+the argument is, books were sold by men of
+taste, familiar with their contents, the public would
+buy more good literature: as things are, the blind
+bookseller leads the blind customer. There is something
+in this. An educated bookseller can actually
+educate other people. Many intelligent young persons
+reach the age of twenty-one without having met
+a single person with the habit of good reading, and
+do not “get on to” literature because it has never
+been suggested to them that they will like it. Booksellers
+may act as teachers. There are booksellers,
+though not many, who make a practice of “nursing”
+promising young customers, gradually cultivating
+their taste until they become confirmed book-lovers
+and book-buyers. One such complained to me not
+long ago that he had had scores of likely colts taken
+away from him by Lord Kitchener, and did not
+know how many of them would come back. That
+is an ideal sort of man for the trade in modern
+literature. One might say, in fact, that in a perfect
+world (from the book-buyer’s point of view) the
+dealers in new books would know everything about
+books, and the dealers in old books would know
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_162">[162]</span>nothing whatever about them. The point of this
+last subsection is obvious, but the other day I had an
+experience that greatly fortified my view. I had
+often met the second-hand bookseller whose learning
+prevented one from buying anything cheap from
+him; I have now encountered one whose interest
+in his subject prevented one from buying anything
+at all.</p>
+
+<p>He was not so much a really learned man as a
+man with what is called “an inexhaustible fund of
+information.” It is quite possible that if he had
+had a real rarity in his shop he would have known
+nothing about it. But about the promiscuity of his
+reading there was no doubt. When I entered the
+shop he was seated at a table absorbing something
+that looked as if it might be the Travels of Livingstone
+or Speke. His spectacles were on his forehead,
+his elbows on the table, his hands in his hair;
+and his beard almost touched his book. “Do you
+mind if I go through?” I said. “Sairtainly,” he
+said, betraying his origin. “And what may you be
+interested in?” “Oh ... books,” I replied
+vaguely. “That is a verra conseederable category,”
+he observed. Was it poetry I liked? he went
+on. I murmured “Yes,” and he led me to the
+place where he kept it. But before I had got my
+fingers on a book he made it evident that it was
+he and not I that was going to have the “look
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_163">[163]</span>round.” Here, for example, was a volume of Kirke
+White. Had I ever read him? How wonderful
+was that hymn (quoted at length) of his! What a
+career! He was a butcher’s son and a lawyer’s
+clerk. He had a gift for mathematics, and they
+gave him a sizarship at Cambridge. He would
+have been one of the greatest figures in English
+literature had he lived. Was I interested in Italian
+books? Well, then, perhaps I would like a good
+copy of (!!!) <i>I Promessi Sposi</i>. It was extraordinary
+the number of copies of that book which must
+have been printed. But there was no supply without
+a demand.</p>
+
+<p>I tried in vain to check the torrent with some
+sort of remark which, though polite, might, nevertheless,
+have an air of finality. It was no good.
+My fingers never got beyond touching the back of
+a book before he had taken down another, pulled
+me round, and fixed me with a glittering eye for
+which the Ancient Mariner himself would have been
+tempted to offer a large sum. Godwin, now. Did
+I like <i>Caleb Williams</i>? Yes, of course! But had
+I read his History of England? It was by way of
+being a reply to Clarendon. Clarendon was a great
+writer. But he was not impartial. And the worst
+of it was that he seemed to be impartial when he was
+most unfair. When he was sacrificing everything
+for his King he little thought how his loyalty would
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_164">[164]</span>be rewarded. He was too moral for Charles II;
+but, what was worse, he kept the purse-strings too
+tight. He would not give him money for one of
+his mistresses. Was it Barbara Palmer? No, it
+was not Barbara Palmer, and it was not Nelly Gwyn.
+At any rate, it was one of them. And when, in the
+end, the grant was made to her, she died before she
+got the money!</p>
+
+<p>This appeared to amuse the old man. When he
+had laughed himself out, it was to resume with some
+work, dated 1784, which contained a recipe for
+making a Prime Minister: the chief ingredients being
+hypocrisy, mendacity, corruption, and cant.
+This opened up a large field of speculation. Who
+was Premier in 1784? Why, of course, it was
+young Billy Pitt! (“Yes,” I said.) No, it was
+Rockingham. (“Yes,” I said.) No, it wasn’t; it
+was Bute. So it proceeded. I spent, in all, two
+hours in that shop; in the course of which time I
+had stolen glances at about six worthless books.
+For all I know it was as full of gems of purest ray
+serene as are the dark unfathomed caves of ocean.
+I left without making a single purchase, and the
+proprietor seemed quite hurt at this unfriendly response
+to his attentions. How that old man earns
+his living I don’t know. I think he must have private
+means. But in future I shall have a warmer
+feeling than ever for the sort of red-nosed second-hand
+bookseller, now, unfortunately, not very common,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_165">[165]</span>who knows only the outsides of books, and
+who sits smoking on a heap of rubbish in the corner
+of his shop with the air of a tramp resting on a
+roadside pile of stones.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_166">[166]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="The_Troubles_of_a_Catholic">The Troubles of a Catholic</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Being at the moment in bed with influenza,
+I was at once incapable of intellectual effort
+and in need of spiritual sustenance. I had
+therefore been reading a little Theology. The
+more modern works of the kind in my possession are
+at once too profound in thought and too arid in
+phraseology, so I worked rapidly backwards. One
+never knows what one is going to come across, and in
+the beginning of <i>A Just Discharge to Dr. Stillingfleet’s
+Unjust Charge of Idolatry Against the Church
+of Rome with a Discovery of the Vanity of his late
+Defense in his Pretended Answer to a Book Entitled
+Catholicks No Idolaters By way of Dialogue Between
+Eunomius, a Conformist, and Catharinus, a
+Nonconformist</i>, I struck a very pathetic thing. The
+work was written, I believe, by the Catholic controversialist
+Godden, and published in 1677. At that
+time it was difficult for Catholics to get anything out
+in England, and this work was published at Paris.
+Hence the unhappy author’s statement about
+“Errata”:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“The English Press being watch’d of late, as the
+Orchard of the Hesperides was of old, and a necessity
+arising from thence of making use of a Paris
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_167">[167]</span>Printer, who understands not a word of English, the
+Reader will have no cause to wonder, if he sometimes
+meet with <i>ant</i> for <i>and</i>, <i>bu</i> for <i>but</i>, <i>te</i> for <i>the</i>,
+<i>is</i> for <i>it</i>, <i>tit</i> for <i>tis</i>, <i>wish</i> for <i>with</i>, etc., and oftentimes
+with false Pointings, words unduly joined, and
+syllables un-artificially divided at the end of lines,
+as <i>Ro-me</i>, <i>appropria-te</i>, and the like. I can assure
+him, the Correction of the Press cost little less pains
+than the writing of the Treatise.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">In that century a great many English books were
+printed on the Continent, at Paris, Douai, and elsewhere;
+and the situation thus candidly explained
+must have been a common one. A collection of
+English books printed abroad, which would be interesting
+for other reasons, might also have an
+added interest as a repository of comic misprints.
+But my disease must have brought me very low that
+I can spend my time thinking of that.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_168">[168]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="The_Bible_as_Raw_Material">The Bible as Raw Material</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Mr. George Moore’s new novel, <i>The
+Brook Kerith</i>, is a Biblical story. Mr.
+Moore has adopted the legend which says
+that Our Lord survived the Crucifixion. He is
+taken away alive and joins a colony of the Essenes,
+complications afterwards arising with St. Paul.
+The book is named after the site of the Essene settlement;
+Mr. Moore personally toured the Holy
+Land looking for a really eligible position. The
+story opens with a description of the boyhood of
+Joseph of Arimathea: a beginning which at least
+avoids the reproach of being obvious.</p>
+
+<p>One might almost say that literature about Biblical
+personages can only hope to be good if its writers
+either deal with episodes that are not related in the
+Bible or if they tell the Bible stories from an entirely
+novel and unconventional point of view. Anatole
+France’s story about Pontius Pilate, <i>The Procurator
+of Judaea</i>, has this last quality, and owes its success
+mainly to the odd and unexpected angle from which
+the subject is approached. The unusual angle we
+may at least expect from Mr. George Moore. Attempts
+at covering the same ground as the Bible, at
+amplifying an already fine thing, are almost predestined
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_169">[169]</span>to failure. One can understand the temptation.
+A modern writer comes across a noble story
+or a fine lyric passage, and thinks, “What a scandal
+that this should be buried away out of sight in the
+Old Testament! It is just the theme for me.”
+The lure is so strong that one contemporary poet
+has attempted, and failed (through not ignominiously),
+to rewrite David’s Lament for Jonathan,
+and another has endeavoured to adapt the dramatic
+poem <i>Job</i> to the modern stage. It was a lamentable
+affair, redeemed only from complete inconspicuousness
+by a highly incongruous chorus inspired by
+Swinburne and by an arresting entry of Satan with
+the salutation:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Ho Job! How goes it?</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">No modern—but I have not thoroughly ransacked
+my memory—has really succeeded in rewriting a
+Bible story. The most striking of recent efforts was
+Mr. Sturge Moore’s <i>Judith</i>. Mr. Robert Trevelyan’s
+poem, <i>The Foolishness of Solomon</i> (a title
+that, for some vague reason, I always resent), belonged
+to the other class of works dealing with
+Biblical personages (though he brought in a Chinese
+mandarin as well), but not on the Biblical lines.
+The most recent effort at elaborate treatment of the
+New Testament story was, I suppose, Maeterlinck’s
+<i>Mary Magdalene</i>. But in spite of its unorthodoxy
+and the novelty (at least as far as the Bible is concerned,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_170">[170]</span>for some of it was borrowed from a German)
+of the incidents, that play scarcely competed,
+in point of dialogue or dramatic force, with the
+more old-fashioned narratives of Matthew, Mark,
+Luke, and John.</p>
+
+<p>Milton is the one English writer who has done
+anything with Biblical materials on a large scale.
+It will be observed, however, that in <i>Paradise Lost</i>
+he enormously elaborated the story in Genesis; that
+his Adam and Eve are somewhat colourless; and
+that the finest parts of his poem are not directly
+concerned with “man’s first disobedience and the
+fruit,” but deal with regions into which the author
+of Genesis did not penetrate. In <i>Samson Agonistes</i>
+he did take a story from the Bible and make out of
+it a work of art equal to almost anything in our
+language. Byron’s <i>Cain</i> might mostly have been
+about Nietzsche for all the connexion it has with
+the Bible: but it is not very good. Almost every
+fine subject in the Scriptures must have been attacked
+at one time or another. There have been a few
+good short Biblical poems, like Browning’s <i>Saul</i>.
+But the only other really reputable Biblical poem
+on a large scale that I can think of is Charles Wells’s
+<i>Joseph and His Brethren</i>, which has strength as a
+story and some passages of fine imagery. Wells
+belonged to the generation of Keats and lived on
+into our own time. He was an engineer, stopped
+writing when young, and was admired by Rossetti
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_171">[171]</span>and Swinburne. His poem, however, cannot really
+be considered such good reading as the Bible account
+of the same story. One of the episodes that came
+within his purview, that of Joseph and Potiphar’s
+wife, has been a subject for poets in all ages. The
+last endeavour that I can recall to make something
+out of it was a somewhat bejewelled one of Sir
+Edwin Arnold’s. The longest, I should think, is
+Joshua Sylvester’s intolerably tedious series of
+couplets entitled <i>The Maiden’s Blush</i>. Why he conferred
+that title upon such a poem I don’t know, unless
+he was thinking of what might happen to the
+less robust of his female readers. Those parts of
+Holy Writ which are of purely historical interest
+have not been freely drawn on by English writers.
+I don’t remember that much has been done with
+the Maccabees, and the chronicles of the Kings of
+Israel, which supplied Racine with a subject for his
+<i>Athalie</i>, have left English writers cold. Jehu drove
+furiously, Jeroboam the son of Nebat made Israel
+to sin, and Rehoboam afflicted his people with scorpions
+instead of whips; but their violence does not
+seem to fire the poetic imagination as does that of
+Herod, about whom we know very little more. But
+Herod, of course, was fond of the Russian ballet;
+which brings him closer to us.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_172">[172]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="How_to_avoid_Bad_English">How to avoid Bad English</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Good books on the practice of writing are
+rare. Sir A. Quiller-Couch’s <i>On the Art
+of Writing</i> is extraordinarily good. It contains
+the lectures he delivered at Cambridge just
+before the war; and even readers who do not desire
+to write at all will find Sir Arthur’s jokes very
+amusing and his criticisms, general and particular,
+sound and (what is more unusual) new. He
+touches a great variety of subjects, though always in
+some relation to the main theme. He is especially
+illuminating on the Authorized Version, and on Homer’s
+skill in dealing with the “Primary Difficulty of
+Verse”—that is to say, the difficulty of filling up
+the interstices between highly emotional passages
+without lapsing into dull prosiness. His most diverting
+chapter is that on what he calls “Jargon,”
+which he distinguishes from Journalese. The distinction
+he draws may be appreciated if I concoct
+examples of both commodities. Writing in “Jargon”
+I might say:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“In the case of Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch I am
+proud and happy to associate myself in the fullest
+sense with a work of this useful, elevating, instructive,
+and educative character.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_173">[173]</span></p>
+
+<p class="noindent">Writing in Journalese, as he defines it, I might say:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“‘Q.’s brilliant book goes to the root of the
+matter. It strikes home. He is out to slay the
+dragons of bad writing. He burns them with the
+fire of his passion. He lashes them with the scourge
+of his invective. He tears them to shreds and tatters
+with the shrapnel of his ridicule. He will not
+sheathe the sword until ...”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">Yes.... The first kind consists of woolly, indefinite
+words, of redundancies and shapeless prolixities;
+the man who writes the second is trying to produce
+what he believes to be “literature” by means
+of imagery and rhythmical movement. Sir Arthur
+says that the greatest propagators of Jargon are
+public bodies, politicians, and so on; but he recognizes
+that journalists also use it. The two things,
+in fact, are often seen in one article. I conceive that
+there might be passages which would fall into either
+of Sir Arthur’s classes. But there is a clear difference
+between bad sentences produced by an effort
+to say something and those produced by an effort to
+say something vividly. All bad writers, however,
+have common defects, and these are dealt with in
+other chapters.</p>
+
+<p>Every one who has thought about the art at all
+has discovered for himself the truths that Sir Arthur
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_174">[174]</span>tabulates. One must aim at accuracy (a word that
+covers almost everything that is needful) and at
+clarity; one must, normally, prefer the concrete to
+the abstract word, and the short word to the long;
+and one must avoid the superfluous adjective. How
+well we know these rules; how certain we are of
+their validity; how feebly we struggle to obey them!
+At all times the ready-made sentence, the makeshift
+epithet, the pot-shot image must have been ready to
+the hand. In the present age, when we live in a
+honeycomb of print and begin each day by exposing
+ourselves, before, during, or after breakfast, to
+masses of the weakest English we can find, the job
+of writing well is more difficult than ever. Our
+fluency is the measure of our accursed memory.
+We have bales of phrases ready for every experience
+we describe; our pigeon-holes are stuffed with dead
+metaphors and bogus synonyms; and we are always
+ready to say in six words what ought to be said in
+two. Every time we sit down at a desk or open our
+lips to speak, the nymphs Jargonia and Journalesia,
+besieging us as the sylphs besieged St. Anthony, hold
+out their hands full of glittering treasures which will
+save us the trouble of thinking. Usually we do not
+even see them; we find the fatal gifts in our hands
+and employ them without remembering their origin.
+And the descent to hell is rapid.</p>
+
+<p>It is good to revise: to correct, to improve, and
+to delete. Few, even of the most careful writers,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_175">[175]</span>find their proof-sheets free from trite and superfluous
+words which they would be ashamed to publish.
+It is better still to think long before writing,
+to make sure that one’s thoughts are clear-cut before
+one gives them a visible form. That habit it is
+a writer’s duty to acquire. But it does not do to be
+incessantly and acutely conscious of the qualities of
+good writing and the difficulty of securing them.
+That way madness lies. Sometimes, to a man who
+broods overmuch on these things, every phrase will
+appear a cliché, and every word a dummy. “God
+help me!” he will moan, “I have called the sun
+‘bright’ and the grass ‘green’! Millions of men
+before me have written ‘bright sun’ and ‘green
+grass.’ I know I did not think freshly and independently
+<i>at</i> these objects. I put the adjectives
+down mechanically. I have merely heard that the
+grass was green. Why haven’t I looked at it
+through my own eyes? If a real writer looked at
+it, I don’t for a moment suppose that its greenness
+would be the attribute which would impinge most
+forcibly upon him. Very likely it isn’t green at all.”
+This, I say, does not do. I don’t suggest that there
+is anything peculiar about grass which should make
+a novel statement about it impossible. In fact,
+Swinburne said that grass is hair, and Mr. Chesterton
+has very probably said that it is red. I merely
+use “green grass” as an example of the sort of
+thing that an exaggerated fastidiousness might lead
+a man to question in his own work.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_176">[176]</span></p>
+
+<p>There remains one property of good prose that
+no amount of painstaking or instruction can produce.
+That is rhythm. It is, indeed, remarkable that one
+of the most elaborate analyses of prose rhythms
+hitherto made was made by a writer whose own
+prose is anything but musical. Either Providence
+has given a man an ear or it has not; if it has not,
+he will not write great prose. But his prose will be
+better in proportion as he obeys the principles of
+good writing as “Q.” enunciates them. One suggestion
+more might be useful for him. That is,
+that he will be well advised in making his uneuphonious
+sentences short if he desires his writing to be an
+efficient instrument of persuasion.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_177">[177]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Woodland_Creatures">Woodland Creatures</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>“Parnassus in Piccadilly,” is the headline I
+see in my paper. Follows an account of a
+“séance” promoted by Miss Elizabeth Asquith
+in aid of the Star and Garter Home. Ten or
+twelve poets read works of their own to an audience
+of four hundred who had paid a guinea apiece. Outside
+the house a large concourse watched the poets
+arrive. There were Mr. Yeats, Sir O. Seaman, Mr.
+Hewlett, Sir Henry Newbolt, Mr. Binyon, Mr. de-la
+Mare, Mrs. Woods, Mr. Belloc, and Mr. W. H.
+Davies, who is described as looking like “one of his
+own woodland creatures.” I read that one of the
+reciters intoned, that another was bluff, and that a
+third ought to get somebody else to read for him;
+also that Mr. Birrell, the chairman, sat with his
+head buried in his hands until the arrival of the
+first comic turn, Mr. Belloc’s. But I wish I had
+been there: for the account does not tell me how it
+was really done.</p>
+
+<p>Did the poets sit in the audience and march up
+to the platform one by one as their turns came?
+Did they stand out of sight, each gliding in singly,
+and then retiring into the antral seclusion of the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_178">[178]</span>wings when ten minutes was up? Or did they
+rather, as I prefer to think, sit on the platform, the
+whole dozen of them in a semicircle, listening to,
+and discreetly applauding, each other’s efforts. I
+am sorry I missed it. Some of them will have been
+exalted by a sense of the holiness of their work;
+their eyes will have looked out across the audience
+with a prophetic and otherworldly fire. Others will
+have been uneasy and not knowing (unless a table
+was thoughtfully provided) what to do with their
+feet. And one or two, I think, will have been preoccupied
+with the control of their own faces, which,
+on such an occasion, must have “strained at the
+leash of dignified deportment.”</p>
+
+<p>Why is it that so many people feel awkward when
+they are present at a public recitation by a poet of
+his own verse; and why should writers shrink from
+such recitations? Amusement on such occasions is
+closely allied to sheepishness: both spring from a
+feeling of inappropriateness, a sense that “the fitness
+of things” is being violated. We are accustomed,
+of course, to the other kind of recitation, the
+reading by an interpreter who is not a creator, and
+who is not exposing his heart in public: the prize
+child and the local elocutionist who declaims Tennyson’s
+<i>Revenge</i>, daintily fluttering his fingers in the
+air when he comes to the part about the pinnace
+which is like a bird. But our poets themselves have
+not recited much. It was not always so. “’Omer
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_179">[179]</span>smote his bloomin’ lyre” in public; he had nowhere
+else to smite it, for he (presumably) could not write,
+and his audiences could not read. Every composer
+of tribal lays, from Tubal-Cain (unless his songs
+were <i>Lieder ohne Worte</i>) to the Druidic harpists,
+sang his compositions to his admiring fellows without
+embarrassment; troubadours and mediæval
+laureates had no objection at all to public recitation.
+Most foreigners, one supposes, do not feel so
+strongly as we do about it now; but the timidity of
+Englishmen in the matter is very pronounced. I am
+sure that nothing short of the needs of a War Fund
+would have induced some of the Piccadilly performers
+to face the ordeal.</p>
+
+<p>It is all a part of our national reserve, that very
+reserve which, perhaps, accounts for the greatness
+and volume of our poetry. In poetry our feelings
+find an outlet. We have the habit of concealing our
+finest sentiments and our profoundest emotions.
+We don’t mind putting them into books and then running
+round the corner out of sight. But we dislike
+unbosoming them <i>viva voce</i> in the actual physical
+presence of strangers. Our dislike of “scenes”
+covers equally the public row in a restaurant and the
+public demonstration of our yearnings after virtue
+and the stirrings of our hearts when we hear the
+nightingale or listen to the Atlantic at night. We
+sit bolt upright at concerts; look at pictures with our
+mouths set like vices; and observe “Yes, very nice”
+as, with wistfulness in our breasts, we stand on a
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_180">[180]</span>hill and look at a wooded panorama under the
+moon. The grotesque Englishman who stares at
+a sunset and then laughs and says it looks like a
+fried egg is really bolting in terror from the admission
+that it looks like the flaming ramparts of the
+world. So, if somebody gets up to recite his most
+intimate feelings, we feel it as almost an indecency.
+He is usually bashful about it himself, and unable
+therefore to recite with that abandonment which will
+do his poem justice. The audience, at least that
+part of it which is most intelligent and self-conscious,
+feels as if it were intruding. It is like eavesdropping
+or opening a stranger’s letters. And everybody
+is conscious of the national titter in the background.
+When the authors of Prize Poems at the
+Universities give the official reading of their verses,
+their friends invariably assemble to grin in the galleries.
+Undergraduates have still some naturalness.
+They titter aloud, but the adult Englishman
+titters in silence. It is reserve that brings forth the
+titter and it is still more reserve that suppresses it;
+just as it is reserve that makes our soldiers sing,
+not invocations to England, home, or glory, but
+comic songs about cowardice and death.</p>
+
+<p>The foregoing series of platitudes, slightly varied
+in accordance with each writer’s tastes and talents,
+is invariably repeated when the character of English
+people is under discussion. But it may be that, at
+any rate in our attitude towards poetry, we are
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_181">[181]</span>changing. In the last four or five years the habit
+of public readings has been growing; and some of
+our poets have grown quite addicted to them. This
+may be a time of transition: if the enthusiasts for
+recitation keep at it hard enough, people’s constraint
+may be overcome, and it may be regarded as quite
+an ordinary and natural thing for a man to stand
+on a platform and, with all the passion he can release
+and all the vocal modulation he can command,
+chant his lyrics to congregations which will yield
+themselves to him with all the spontaneity, though
+less than all the gestures and ejaculations, of a Welsh
+revivalist’s converts. It is a commonplace that
+poetry gains by being spoken; and that if verse were
+always read and never recited, poets would be in
+danger of getting out of touch with natural speech-rhythms.
+We could do with a little less amusement
+and a little more excitement; and we might as well,
+if cowardice or a sense of humour are the only things
+that hold us back, hold and attend public readings
+until we are as unselfconscious about them as we are
+about church services or political meetings. The
+worst of it is that poets do not invariably read well,
+and that few persons with the taste for standing on
+a platform and declaiming are competent to take
+an author’s place as reciter of his work. There is
+such a thing as the inspired reader of other people’s
+verse; but the understanding, the inclination, and the
+voice cannot be expected to come often together.
+When the author himself is reciting you can at least
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_182">[182]</span>be certain that the speaker—unless he is a very
+“advanced” poet indeed—understands the work
+which he is repeating. With other performers one
+always has to take one’s chance. From the professional
+reciter God save us all.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_183">[183]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Other_Peoples_Books">Other People’s Books</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Like most people, I possess a number of
+books which I have not read. I am not
+referring to volumes, such as the <i>Speculum
+Morale</i> of Vincent of Beauvais or the commentary
+of Œcolampadius on St. John’s Gospel, which I
+bought merely because they looked pleasant and
+which nobody on earth could be expected to read.
+I mean books in English and of comparatively recent
+date. There is, for example, Kant’s <i>Critique
+of Pure Reason</i>, for which, in a weak moment, I
+paid some shillings with the feeling that, as a cogitative
+being, I ought not leave so notable a stone unturned.
+The feeling passed and never came back.
+And there is Ranke’s <i>History of the Popes</i>—up to
+the present undisturbed by me; there are <i>The Last
+Days of Pompeii</i>, <i>Romola</i>, <i>Vittoria</i>, Carlyle’s essays
+on Burns and Scott, <i>What Maisie knew</i>, <i>What Katy
+did</i>, and dozens of other modern works, some of
+which, if I live, I shall certainly read, and others of
+which, I am sure, I shall never begin. But it makes
+no difference. Whether he has read them or not, a
+man’s own books get, in a manner, stale to him. If
+a book remains for years unopened on one’s shelves
+it becomes increasingly difficult to read it. Yet if
+one finds another edition of it in somebody else’s
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_184">[184]</span>house one may fly to it, and, under the same conditions,
+one may read or re-read almost anything one
+finds.</p>
+
+<p>So it is, at the moment, with me. I am in a place
+previously unknown to me. It is bestrewn with
+books; and, penned to the house by the brilliant summer
+weather, I have been doing some miscellaneous
+reading. For one thing I have gone solidly once
+more through Mr. Thomas Hardy’s verse. How
+extraordinarily good it is! And how remarkably he
+has gone on improving, especially as a metrist. But
+more than ever, after a heavy dose of these compressed
+statements of his point of view, one realizes
+his determined and unmitigated gloom. It is at its
+densest in <i>Wessex Poems</i>, and in places one laughs
+outright at it. He illustrated the book himself, his
+drawing is naïve, and the sketch of two floors of a
+church, the pews (and two lovers) above, and the
+skulls and cross-bones below, has an “I <i>will</i> be grim
+at all costs” air about it that robs it of all its horror.
+The story attached is a neat one. The man is a consumptive
+about to die; he asks the woman if she
+loves him? She falsely says “Yes” in order to
+brighten his last hours. He dies, and her life is
+ever after blighted because she cannot reconcile herself
+to a Universe in which the telling of such lies is
+a moral obligation. There is another small drama
+in which a woman, maltreated by her husband, dies,
+telling her old lover that she wishes she had married
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_185">[185]</span>him and that her child could have been his child,
+and asking him to see that the brutal husband does
+not ill-treat the child. The brutal husband remarries
+and does ill-treat the child. One day he finds
+the lover mourning on the dead wife’s grave, and
+demands by what right he is there. The lover, remembering
+the death-bed remark and suddenly seeing
+a chance of saving the child, says that he has
+every right to be there as he was really the father
+of the child. His supposed offspring is then left on
+his doorstep, to be looked after carefully, and he
+spends his time wondering whether he was justified
+in telling, etc. Probably these stories, if expanded
+into novels, might convince; as narrative poems they
+do not; and when they are squeezed into the brief
+compass of the <i>Satires of Circumstance</i> they are
+grotesquely Life as Thomas Hardy makes it and
+not Life as Thomas Hardy sees it.</p>
+
+<p>It is a little bold in these days to admit that one
+hasn’t read the whole of Mr. Conrad’s works, but
+until this week I had never laid hands on <i>Almayer’s
+Folly</i>. It was his first book. In his <i>Reminiscences</i>
+he gives an account of how it was begun, in a Pimlico
+lodging-house, when he was a sea captain and carried
+about the ocean for five years until (when he was
+thirty-five) he finished it. When, half-done and laid
+by, it was yellowing and mouldering, he showed it to
+his first reader, a Cambridge man going to Australia
+for his health, and asked him if it was worth completing.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_186">[186]</span>The passenger, with a nice economy of
+words, answered “Distinctly,” and Captain Conrad
+was thus encouraged to proceed. I had read all this
+before, and also the novelist’s statement that before
+this he had not attempted literature and had hardly
+ever written even a letter—though I suppose there
+must have been an occasional entry in a log. I have
+certainly been surprised by the craftsmanship of
+<i>Almayer’s Folly</i>. Not only is the structure good,
+but the writing, except in one or two places, is astonishingly
+finished, accurate, and restrained. It is absurdly
+unlike a first book. Its weakness, as it appears
+to me, lies in the dullness of the principal character.
+It is difficult to keep up one’s interest in a
+person whose main characteristic is his impotence.
+But it doesn’t matter so much here as it might, for
+the subsidiary story of Dain and Nina is very fascinating,
+and the real hero, after all, is none of the
+people, white or Malay, but the Bornean river (its
+topography is not always clear to me) on whose
+overgrown banks they all live and the changes of
+which, night and day, are described with marvellous
+eloquence and certainty.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_187">[187]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Peacock">Peacock</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Finally, after various minor excursions, I
+have settled down to the works of Thomas
+Love Peacock, of whom I had read nothing
+before except some poems. Why? I don’t
+know, but I think his name has vaguely repelled me.
+Anyhow, I am thankful now that I have been able
+to come fresh to Peacock’s novels. He has a few
+devotees, but it is surprising that so admirable a
+writer is not more read. <i>Nightmare Abbey</i> and
+<i>Headlong Hall</i> are not great masterpieces, but they
+are certainly small masterpieces. They belong to
+the class of intellectual comedy to which <i>Candide</i>,
+and, in some measure, <i>Rasselas</i> belong; in fact, they
+must certainly have been modelled on <i>Candide</i>.
+They are burlesques of oneself and one’s friends,
+and every other discussing, theorizing person and his
+friends. Charlatans of all kinds, literary, political,
+ecclesiastical, and scientific, and philosophers of all
+kinds from the man who believes that upward
+progress is inevitable to the man who believes that
+downward progress is undeniable, from the secret
+revolutionary conspirator to the professional sceptic;
+he gets them all in, quintessentializes their doctrines
+into exquisitely flowing prose, and knocks their heads
+together with charming ruthlessness. Any extract
+will illustrate the flow of his dialogue:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_188">[188]</span></p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“‘The anatomy of the human stomach,’ said Mr.
+Escot, ‘and the formation of the teeth, clearly place
+man in the class of fungivorous animals.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Many anatomists,’ said Mr. Foster, ‘are of
+a different opinion, and agree in discerning the characteristics
+of the carnivorous classes.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘I am no anatomist,’ said Mr. Jenkinson, ‘and
+cannot decide where doctors disagree; in the meantime,
+I conclude that man is omnivorous, and on that
+conclusion I act.’</p>
+
+<p>“‘Your conclusion is truly orthodox,’ said the
+Reverend Doctor Gaster; ‘indeed, the loaves and
+fishes are typical of a mixed diet, and the practice
+of the Church in all ages shows——’</p>
+
+<p>“‘That it never loses sight of the loaves and
+fishes,’ said Mr. Escot.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">If loud asseveration on my part sends to Peacock
+a few people who have not tried him before, I
+shall feel that the recent rain has not descended in
+vain.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_189">[189]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Wordsworths_Personal_Dullness">Wordsworth’s Personal Dullness</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The Strange Case of William Wordsworth
+is to me of perennial interest, and I have
+just emerged from several days’ burrowing
+under Professor C. G. Harper’s two enormous volumes
+entitled <i>William Wordsworth, His Life,
+Works, and Influence</i>. It is a conscientious and
+valuable piece of work, very fully documented, and
+containing much out-of-the-way information and a
+great deal of sensible, if not always illustrious, criticism.
+The information may perhaps be a little too
+ample for the weaker brethren. The map (showing
+lakes, mountain ranges (brown) and so on) of
+Wordsworth’s country with which we open gives
+the clue to Professor Harper’s exhaustive method.
+Every procurable date of Wordsworth’s continental
+programme is copied out; and we are even supplied
+with the winter and summer timetables of the
+Grammar School at Hawkshead which he attended
+and at which (as Professor Harper rather sententiously
+observes) an education different in kind, but
+perhaps not inferior in quality, to that supplied by
+Eton was bestowed upon him. New light is thrown
+on certain incidents in his career; his “circle” is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_190">[190]</span>elaborately described; and a very charming picture
+is given of his sister Dorothy. But the old problem
+of Wordsworth’s defects remains much where it did.</p>
+
+<p>It is a commonplace that Wordsworth is the most
+uneven of great poets. Every textbook writer tells
+one that when he was inspired he was a giant, that
+when he was not he wrote maundering doggerel, and
+that he himself never knew when he was and when
+he was not at his best. <i>The Idiot Boy</i> has been held
+up to the ridicule of generations—beyond its
+deserts perhaps. The point was most forcibly put
+by J. K. Stephen when he wrote a parody of Wordsworth’s
+“Two voices are there,” saying that one of
+the voices was that of the sea, etc., and the other
+that of “an old half-witted sheep.” But a thing
+less frequently faced, and never, as far as I know,
+properly explained, is his personal lack of attractiveness.
+Flippant persons may be met who dismiss
+him as “a pompous old dullard”; but, generally
+speaking, whenever one hears such a remark it
+comes from some one who openly confesses that he
+cannot stand Wordsworth’s poetry at any price, and
+that he has very seldom attempted to read it. The
+people who are in difficulties are those (and I am
+among them) who agree without qualification that
+Wordsworth is our greatest poet since Milton, but
+who cannot sincerely say that they are drawn
+towards him as a man. If they—any one who
+does not feel like this is happy and I do not speak
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_191">[191]</span>for him—pretend to be fond of him their pretence
+is glaring. If they do not stick up for him they
+feel that they are being faithless to a poet who still
+stands in need of all the propagandists he can get.
+It is not easy to face the truth about him even in the
+solitude of one’s own chamber. But, by heaven,
+he <i>is</i> a dull man!</p>
+
+<p>“There was a boy” (as Wordsworth would himself
+begin) who at one time used nightly to dine in
+hall under a large oil-painting of the poet. In this
+painting Wordsworth was represented sitting on a
+rock against a landscape background which was an
+agreeable and symbolical blend of wildness and tranquillity.
+The poet was clad in broadcloth; he held
+a book in his hand; his face was smooth and pink;
+and his mild eye surveyed the spectator as though
+the latter were a lamb about to receive a pat of the
+hand and his blessing. There he sat, meditative and
+benevolent, while the soup gave place to the fish
+and the fish to the beef; and when one had drained
+off the last dregs of one’s beer one went off still
+conscious of that meditative and benevolent eye.
+It became almost maddening. Every other great
+English poet had something fascinating about him.
+Even Milton, in spite of certain unsociable qualities,
+had a certain attractive force, a touch of the virulent,
+and the scars of suffering. But this Wordsworth!
+His genuine philanthropy was unquestionable. His
+portrait might, one thought, be that of a pioneer of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_192">[192]</span>the Anti-Slave Trade Agitation, or an inventor of
+Sunday Schools, or an endower of Bands of Hope.
+But not a poet; oh, not a poet!</p>
+
+<p>So it is with all his portraits. Professor Harper
+gives a selection of them. Always the sage is a
+bland and upright man; the <i>mens conscia recti</i> typified.
+But never a sign of eloquence or fire; of the
+magnificent oratory of his great passages, of the
+music and profound tenderness which are so profuse
+in his poetry. Not a sign of stress; not a mark of
+any but the most complacent vicarage thought; no
+passion, no enthusiasm, no challenge, and no response.
+It is not to be explained away, as Professor
+Harper attempts to explain it away, by saying that
+the myth of “Daddy Wordsworth” (as FitzGerald
+called him) is based on a disproportionate view of
+his life. Professor Harper thinks that far too little
+attention has been paid to his early revolutionary
+period, when the ideals of the French Revolution
+gripped him, and far too much to his later period
+of orthodoxy and respectability. Professor Harper
+himself attempts to redress the balance. He gives
+as full an account as he can of the earlier Wordsworth
+and of his relations with Revolutionary
+France. But, as Wordsworth’s French friends
+would have said (provided they were not ashamed
+of using such a worn-out tag) <i>plus ça change plus
+c’est la même chose</i>. The early Wordsworth may
+have been a different being; but Professor Harper
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_193">[193]</span>certainly does not prove that he was. From birth
+to death in this biography he appears as the same
+high-minded, staid, sober, solemn monument. He
+joined in the Revolution not so much a “kid-glove
+revolutionary” as a woollen-glove and warm comforter
+revolutionary. Had he stayed in France he
+might have made even the Terror respectable.</p>
+
+<p>On myself and on others Wordsworth’s portraits
+and his biographies always leave this sort of impression:
+the impression of an old bore to whom one
+would not be rude simply and solely because one
+would not willingly hurt the feelings of a person so
+worthy. And then one goes back to his poetry—and
+his prose—and hears a voice of almost unsurpassed
+grandeur speaking the deepest of one’s unexpressed
+thoughts, appealing to and drawing out
+all the divinest powers in man’s nature. Of his
+greatness surely no rational and unbiassed being
+could entertain the slightest doubt. He is not so
+popular or so frequently read as some poets, and that
+is not difficult to explain. His absence of humour,
+or an equivalent vivacity, is not in itself an explanation;
+but the accompanying general absence of any
+luxurious appeal to the senses is. He speaks direct
+to the labouring intellect and the sensitive heart;
+and the enjoyment of him, if great, is usually enjoyment
+of the austerer kind, like mountain-climbing.
+There is nothing soft or enervating or luxurious
+which can make reading him an æsthetic debauch.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_194">[194]</span>He does not often sing to a tune which gives one
+pleasure even if one does not attend to the words.
+Without being in the least obscure he demands an
+effort from the reader parallel to his own. That, at
+least as much as the tediousness of many of his writings
+(and his irritating classification of them), is the
+reason of his comparative lack of popularity.
+But ...</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_195">[195]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Henry_Jamess_Obscurity">Henry James’s Obscurity</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Henry James’s last work was his essay
+on Rupert Brooke, written as an introduction
+to <i>Letters from America</i>. Mr.
+James’s essay is a personal appreciation, and not in
+any way a biographical memoir. Such a memoir,
+by another hand, will follow. Mr. James left unfinished
+two novels, and a third volume of the series
+begun with <i>A Small Boy and Others</i> and <i>Notes of a
+Son and Brother</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Presumably the public (which might well make
+a start with the short stories of which Mr. Secker
+has already published eight half-crown volumes,
+very pleasant to the eye) will at last begin to buy
+James’s novels. They have certainly not bought
+them in the past. He was, in critical circles, almost
+universally recognized as one of the three or
+four greatest of English writers living a week ago.
+But some of his books had not even gone into a
+second edition. He was intermittently talked about
+in the Press. Fifteen years or so ago he had a
+boom of the sort; then there was a period of comparative
+newspaper obscurity; in the last three or
+four years he suddenly and silently, like a star appearing
+from behind a cloud, took his unchallenged
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_196">[196]</span>place in the firmament as one of the established
+great. But he was not widely read. <i>Daisy Miller</i>,
+ever so many years ago, had a fairly general success;
+<i>The Golden Bowl</i>, also, I should think, sold
+well. But many people who paid lip homage to
+him were very unfamiliar with his work.</p>
+
+<p>In no case would a man with his interests, his
+approach, his subtlety and avoidance of the grosser
+excitements, his restraint and delicacy, have sold by
+the hundred thousand. But his appeal was still further
+limited by the legend of his style. I remember
+reading an old novel written in the days when Robert
+Browning was an Incomprehensible studied by a
+Cult. The heroine of it gave herself away rather
+by remarking, “Oh, Mr. Browning! I’ve never
+been able to understand a single thing that he has
+written. That is why I have never tried.” One
+feels that there were persons who were in the same
+position as towards Henry James. They had
+heard that he was a hard nut to crack; they had
+seen perhaps—it was always a great temptation
+to a reviewer to extract—specimens of his more
+elaborate discursions, complicated arabesques of
+sentences, parenthesis after parenthesis wandering
+from comma to comma like barbed wire tangled
+around its supports. And they thought therefore
+that he was an obscure eclectic as difficult as Jacob
+Behmen or Swedenborg and lacking their excuse of
+religious inspiration. Certainly he was sometimes
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_197">[197]</span>difficult. But it was a unique kind of obscurity.
+There is an obscurity produced when a man, eagerly
+tumbling along an argument, writes down only a
+sort of fitful shorthand, a language which leaves
+things out and which resembles the stray pieces of
+disconnected paper in gutter or hedge which merely
+indicate the course that the runner has taken. There
+is another and commoner kind of obscurity of speech
+which derives from mistiness of mind; for a man
+cannot write clearly down what he does not clearly
+think. And there is a kind of obscurity which is
+produced by mere inaptitude for writing: the awkwardness
+of the cow handling a rifle. James’s obscurity
+was the direct product of his passion for
+clarity. He detested the slipshod sentence which,
+compact as it may look as a piece of grammar, is a
+mere pot-shot as a piece of representation. He
+wanted to make no statement which did not embody
+precisely what he wanted to say; what, that is to say,
+he saw as Truth. He would have taken, for example,
+that last sentence of mine and, endeavouring
+to give it a more exact shape, have made of it something
+like the following:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“He wanted, when, that is, he experienced anything
+so definite or, shall we put it, so positively
+energetic, as a want, to make no statement, none at
+any rate which might be taken by even the least perceptive
+of his hearers as a <i>delivered</i>, and, as it were,
+final testimony of his reaction to things as he saw
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_198">[198]</span>them, which did not precisely embody what he
+wanted (when, once more, he coherently desired
+anything, as we have it, ‘higher’ than the elementary
+physical) to say; what, that is to say, he saw,
+at the moment of speech, be it understood, for the
+eye of the watcher changes, as what, in the absence
+of a happier name, it has pleased us to ennoble with
+the majestic name of Truth.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">I don’t suggest that I myself have added anything
+to my own sentence by this addition of the pomp
+and circumstance of parenthesis and circumlocution.
+I have merely turned a short platitude into a long
+one. But it may serve to show the method by which
+Henry James arrived at his more tortuous pages.
+The method has its disadvantages. The man who
+employs it is sometimes like a man working with a
+pickaxe in a cave. The more he digs away the
+larger the unattacked expanse which invites his
+strength; or, as one might say, the bigger the hole
+he is in. But when this method is employed by a
+man with the analytical powers, the sensitiveness to
+fine shades, material and spiritual, of Henry James,
+the result is a “product” (the kind of word that
+James would always have put in actual or implied
+inverted commas) which never stales and from
+which one gets more and more enjoyment each time
+one reads. In the last resort novels live by the
+richness of their detail; and James’s detail is exquisite
+and inexhaustible.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_199">[199]</span></p>
+
+<p>Few modern writers have exercised so strong
+an influence over those who have surrendered themselves
+to him. He is, I should say, more infectious
+than any writer since (what a strange collocation!)
+Lord Macaulay. A man with a formed style can
+usually read and enjoy Carlyle, Jeremy Taylor, de
+Quincey, or George Meredith without showing the
+least tendency (unless deliberate) to imitate them.
+But when one has (I don’t speak only for myself)
+been reading James one finds for a time that one is
+tempted to write even one’s private letters in a style
+which shows plainly that one has set him as a seal
+upon one’s arm. Even now, when I am merely
+thinking about him, I feel the pressure of that stern
+artistic conscience, and can only with an effort resist
+the demand that I should guard myself here, qualify
+myself here, and elucidate myself there. He was
+irresistible, like one of those stammerers or persons
+with other attractive or unattractive vocal idiosyncrasies
+whom one cannot help imitating when one is
+with them. A person of any force gets through
+this and the permanent effect of a subjugation to
+James was always good. A too marked echo of him
+would be painful: but his example was salutary. It
+may be possible to grumble with him for this and
+that. He did write mainly about persons with incomes
+(though these also are God’s creatures); he
+did occasionally behave (as Mr. Wells very wittily
+put it) like a hippopotamus picking up a pea; and
+he did annoy some enthusiasts by refusing to place
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_200">[200]</span>his pen habitually at the service of the Great Forces
+of Our Time and other things whose capital importance
+is of custom indicated by capital letters. But
+in an age of sloppy writing he stood for accuracy
+of craftsmanship; and even men whose subjects are
+Invisible Exports of the Parthenogenesis of Plants
+might learn from him how to use to more advantage
+their intellects and their pens.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_201">[201]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="The_Ring_in_the_Bookselling_Trade">The “Ring”
+in the Bookselling Trade</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>A bibliophile writes the following complaint:
+“At the recent sale of Swinburne’s
+library, certain lots, chiefly signed presentation
+copies, fetched extravagantly high prices.
+But the outsider is generally puzzled at the extreme
+variation in the prices, a variation which passing
+fashions in taste do not explain. There is an explanation,
+as one would-be purchaser was made somewhat
+rudely aware. He wanted a book by a modern
+poet, a poet of delicate talent and little recognition;
+and he asked a bookseller to bid for the lot. He
+was willing to spend between ten and thirteen shillings
+on it. The agent who was to bid arrived late,
+and another bookseller bought the lot for five shillings.
+So the would-be purchaser asked his bookseller
+to approach the man who had bought the lot,
+and find out if he would sell it. The book was cheap
+at five and would be rather dear at ten shillings.
+When approached, the purchaser informed his colleague
+that ‘he had had to pay a good deal more
+for the lot than the price given in the rooms, and
+that he could not part with it for less than eighteen
+shillings.’ Such are the blessings of the ‘ring’ at
+Sotheby’s.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_202">[202]</span></p>
+
+<p>“The ring consists of some of the largest and
+best-known members of the bookselling trade—all
+honest men—and their plan is this: they never bid
+against each other, except for show; lots go at small
+prices, thus robbing owners and executors of their
+right profit; and subsequently these cheap lots are
+put up again and resold among the members of the
+ring. The auctioneers can, of course, do nothing to
+stop the practice—and it is as legal as it is dishonourable.
+At times an outsider with a big banking
+account gives the ring a good deal of trouble; but
+it has survived all private attacks, and is likely to—though
+a private buyer with a confident manner and
+a quick power of decision can occasionally get a great
+deal of amusement by running lots up, and so forcing
+the ring to pay exorbitant prices for things they do
+not want.”</p>
+
+<p>It is true. There exists among the second-hand
+booksellers precisely such a ring as gave rise to
+so much discussion a few years ago when the scandal
+of the art-dealers’ “knock-out” was widely discussed.
+For some time I myself have been trying
+to get information about it. But it is not easy.
+You can find out from booksellers who are not in
+the ring (few of these lone wolves are important)
+who the booksellers are who are in the ring, but
+that is about all. But the method is simple. The
+attendance at book sales is not large. Private collectors
+are lazy people; it is not now fashionable—as
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_203">[203]</span>it was in the Duke of Roxburghe’s day—for the
+Old Nobility to crowd the salerooms, bidding desperately
+amid groans of anguish and cheers of triumph.
+The result is that very often one will attend
+a sale and be the only private person there, and it is
+a matter of chance (especially when the sale is a
+comparatively small one) whether any one at all
+is there except the members of the ring. The ring,
+<i>pro forma</i>, will run a book up to about a third of
+its value and leave it at that. At the close of the
+proceedings its members will adjourn somewhere—I
+don’t know where, but let us say a back room in
+the Charing Cross Road—and hold a “knock-out”
+auction of the books they have bought. The difference
+between the sums paid here and the sums paid
+at Sotheby’s or Hodgson’s will be pooled and divided,
+so as to equalize the spoil; and the owners of
+the libraries sold will have got only, perhaps, a half
+of what they really ought to have got considering the
+prices that the ultimate purchasers are willing to
+pay.</p>
+
+<p>But I don’t see what is to be done about it.
+As my correspondent remarks, the auctioneers can’t
+stop it. They also must suffer as their work is done
+on a commission basis. It must not be assumed
+that all the booksellers like the system, but the
+minority cannot help themselves. I remember that
+one very well known bookseller, now dead, tried for
+several years to keep out of it; but in the end, by
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_204">[204]</span>co-ordinated bidding against him, he was forced in.
+There the thing is; the dealers find it profitable; it
+is not easy to keep out of it unless you are a prince
+of the trade, with rich customers and great resources,
+or a person with special knowledge who is after a
+special kind of book and will be let alone; and
+there is no short cut to reform. How can Parliament
+interfere? If one dealer who buys a book
+can sell it to another after the sale, how can six
+or a dozen dealers be prevented from exchanging
+their purchases similarly. It would be all very well
+to make the “knock-out” illegal, but how many
+does it take to make a ring and how many detectives
+could be spared? The only conceivable remedy is
+for persons who habitually buy old books to make a
+point (when the war is over and they are released
+from their present occupations) of turning up at the
+salerooms and bidding against the pros. Even at
+that the remedy would only be efficacious as long as
+it was actively applied. It might be worth a guinea
+a box, but you would have to take a box every day;
+there would be no permanent cure. Directly the
+strangers slacked off again the ring and the “knock-out”
+would revive, and my unfortunate friend (for
+I presume that the disconsolate buyer he refers to
+is himself) would have once more to pay for his
+books much more than the price recorded at the
+rooms. “There is no cure for this disease,” as
+Mr. Belloc’s poem puts it, unless auction-frequenting
+again becomes a popular form of amusement.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_205">[205]</span></p>
+
+<p>But, if I may digress, I must say that, for persons
+of a bookish turn of mind, there is nothing
+more amusing than an occasional visit to Wellington
+Street or Chancery Lane. I shouldn’t care to
+do it every day; the combined mustiness of books
+and booksellers is a bit overpowering. But it is exciting
+to bid occasionally, and the books that come
+into the London auction-rooms are of such quality
+that sometimes you might almost as well go to
+Sotheby’s as to the Exhibition Rooms (now shut up
+so as to pay for two minutes of the war) of the
+British Museum. The bindings that great collectors
+put on their books are in themselves wonderful.
+And the booksellers, rich and poor, glossy and seedy,
+as they nod to the rostrum and paw the goods, are a
+sight to which only Balzac could do justice. They
+all wear looks of settled gloom as though they were
+on the verge of bankruptcy; they all (if one speaks
+to them) swear that “it is impossible to get anything
+to-day as everything is going so dear”; and
+they all have a sovereign indifference to everything
+but the commercial value of the books they deal in.
+I say all: there are exceptions; but the crowd as a
+whole is utterly depressed and completely free from
+the remotest concern with literature. But possibly
+when they get in that back room somewhere and
+assess the margin between what executors have got
+for books and what they ought to have got for
+them, their morose countenances may brighten. For
+all I know, every “knock-out” auction may end with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_206">[206]</span>the circulation of the punch-bowl, jolly songs, and
+toasts to the damnation of all the idiots who waste
+their money on rotten old books unfit to read and
+thereby keep in affluence a set of honest men who
+read the <i>Daily Mail</i> in the morning and never a
+line for the rest of the day.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_207">[207]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Music-Hall_Songs">Music-Hall Songs</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Mr. William Archer contributes to
+the <i>Fortnightly</i> an attack on the music-hall.
+He says that it is the home of vulgarity
+and inanity; that the audiences, as a rule,
+would enjoy much better stuff than they are given;
+and that “the music-hall seems to have killed a genuine
+vein of lyric faculty in the English people.”
+With all that I don’t think that any one but a poseur
+could disagree. Mr. Archer makes an extraordinary
+slip when he puts forward <i>Sally in our Alley</i> as
+a folk-product of which neither the composer nor
+the author is known to fame: both words and music
+being by Henry Carey, who was scarcely an obscure
+person in his day and is not entirely forgotten now.
+He concludes, too, with a somewhat vague suggestion
+of a remedy which has no bearing whatever
+upon the improvement of music-hall songs, and which
+one suspects to spring from his perennial desire to
+induce the public to go and see Ibsen. But his case
+as a whole is irrefutable. The nation’s songs since
+the industrial revolution have been immeasurably
+worse than at any other time in its history. They
+are almost all commercial products manufactured by
+half-wits.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_208">[208]</span></p>
+
+<p>Mr. Archer’s case being so sound, it is all the
+more a pity that he overdoes it. It is true that
+almost all these songs are vile rubbish, and that
+the songs of the <i>Villikins and his Dinah</i> and <i>Champagne
+Charlie</i> periods were even more fatuous than
+those of the present day. But it is exaggeration
+to say that</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">“what is certain is that the whole music-hall movement
+has produced not one—literally not one—piece
+of verse that can rank as poetry of the humblest
+type, or even as a really clever bit of comic rhyming,”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">for such songs turn up fairly frequently. Possibly
+Mr. Archer’s horror of the “red-nosed comedian”
+prevents him from ever listening to his words: certainly
+one gets from Mr. Archer’s article the impression
+that the critic is only acquainted with a
+few of the most famous of music-halls songs. But
+although I heartily support his general case and
+would willingly consent to the execution of all music-hall
+managers and versifiers and most music-hall
+artists, I must protest that “really clever bits of
+comic rhyming” do turn up occasionally.</p>
+
+<p>I wish I had a better verbal memory. But I
+can at least refer Mr. Archer to a few songs of
+which, if he cares to spend a month in the Museum
+with old volumes of Francis, Day and Hunter’s
+song-books and other collections, he can find the full
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_209">[209]</span>words. For instance, there is Mr. Harry Lauder’s
+<i>It’s Nice to get up in the Morning</i>. As I remember
+them (and here and elsewhere I don’t guarantee that
+my quotations are literally accurate) the words of
+the chorus are:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Oh, it’s nice to get up in the morning when the sun begins to shine,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>At four or five or six o’clock in the good old summer time;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>But when the snow is falling, and it’s murky overhead,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>It’s nice to get up in the morning—but it’s nicer to stay in bed.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Of course the tune helped it. But it is quite well
+turned and it springs clean out of popular experience.
+It is folk-poetry even if the folk didn’t write it. It
+is not the folk-poetry of the seventeenth century, but
+it is distinctly the folk-poetry of modern commercial
+and urban England. <i>We sat upon the Baby on the
+Shore</i> I’m not sure about; it didn’t, I suspect, have
+a music-hall origin, though I do not know. But
+<i>A Little Bit off the Top</i> was quite comic in places;
+so were <i>The Four Horse Charabanc</i>, <i>Right in the
+Middle of the Road</i>, <i>Whitewash</i>, and <i>’E dunno
+where ’e are</i>. I wish I could recall the words of the
+song which had a chorus beginning:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>More work for the undertaker,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Another little job for the tombstone-maker;</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_210">[210]</span></p>
+
+<p class="noindent">but even that high-spirited couplet shows their
+quality. These mock-tragic songs are often quite
+good. The best known was <i>His Day’s Work was
+done</i>, which was undeniably a comic conception well
+carried out. Did Mr. Archer ever hear <i>If it wasn’t
+for the Houses in Between</i>? The one fragment that
+sticks in my mind both dates it and shows that it was
+a “clever bit of comic rhyming”:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>If the weather had been finer</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>You’d have seen the war in China—</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>If it wasn’t for the Houses in Between.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">And what about <i>Waiting at the Church</i>?—</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>There was I waiting at the church,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Waiting at the church.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>When I found he’d left me in the lurch,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Lor’, how it did upset me!</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Then he sent me round a little note,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Just a little note,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>This is what he wrote:</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>“Can’t get away to marry you to-day—</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>My wife won’t let me.”</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">That seems to me a well-calculated chorus, and
+the clinch of the last two lines couldn’t be beaten.
+But perhaps the austere Mr. Archer would think
+it debasing on the grounds that it led the audience
+to think lightly of bigamy.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_211">[211]</span></p>
+
+<p>Bigamy is one of the chief comic-song subjects.
+Vermin in one’s bed, drunkenness, and the food
+in boarding-houses are the others. The “booze”
+songs are not, as a rule, as good as they should be.
+The only one I remember that was at all neat ran
+<i>something</i> like:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>First she had some marmalade,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>And then she had some jam,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Then some dozen of oysters</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>And then a plate of ham,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>A lobster and a crab or two</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>And a pint of bottled beer,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>A little gin hot to settle the lot</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>—And that’s what made her queer.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p>I certainly don’t suggest that any of the songs
+I have quoted—and I’m certain that consultation
+with a few expert friends, now in Flanders, would
+bring better ones to light—are masterpieces. But
+I do think they are quite comic verse, and that if
+all music-hall songs were as well turned there would
+not be much ground for complaint. One does, that
+is, laugh <i>occasionally</i> at a music-hall, in spite of Mr.
+Archer. But, unhappily, of ninety-nine songs out
+of a hundred the words are too abysmal for anything,
+and the serious ones are almost invariably imbecile.
+I wonder, by the way, whether the music-hall
+authorities ever try to induce competent comic
+rhymers, known in other spheres, to turn out songs
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_212">[212]</span>for them? Probably not; they think the words
+don’t matter. That they are mistaken (though the
+tunes count for most) is shown by the way that a
+song with good words succeeds with the audience.
+Even one ingenious line will often bring the house
+down. I remember the old song <i>I can’t change it</i>.
+There was a stanza about a bride who appalled
+her bridegroom by taking herself to pieces, removing
+a wig, a glass eye, a wooden arm, two wooden
+legs, etc. In the chorus the narrator suddenly described
+her as “’Arf a woman and ’arf a tree,” and
+this admirable if unrefined trope was the most successful
+thing of the year. But as I say, I largely
+agree with Mr. Archer. If only they would let me
+smoke in theatres I would never go near a music-hall
+again until the programmes were improved, and
+I imagine many other people are in the same boat.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_213">[213]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="More_Music-Hall_Songs">More Music-Hall Songs</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>How little do we know the consequences of
+our acts. “I say there is not a red Indian,
+hunting by Lake Winnipic, can quarrel
+with his squaw, but the whole world must smart for
+it: will not the price of beaver rise? It is a mathematical
+fact that the casting of this pebble from my
+hand alters the centre of gravity of the Universe.”
+That was Carlyle’s way of putting it. Somebody
+wrote a book of theatrical reminiscences: the book
+set Mr. William Archer pondering on the fatuity of
+music-halls; Mr. Archer’s article made me try to
+remember comic fragments of music-hall songs; and
+my observations would appear, judging from the
+quantities of correspondence they have produced, to
+have tempted whole families to spend their evenings
+trying to recall the popular choruses of their youth.</p>
+
+<p>Numbers of them seem to have better memories
+than mine. Whole verses of <i>More Work for the
+Undertaker</i> (I think it was Mr. Dunville’s song)
+reach me. The scheme may be illustrated by one
+stanza:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Sammy Snoozer laboured on the railway;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>His work he was very clever at!</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Sammy<span class="pagenum" id="Page_214">[214]</span> one day was a-polishing the metals</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>With a lump of mouldy fat.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Up come a runaway engine,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Sammy stood upon the track;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>He held out his arms, for he firmly believed</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>He could push that locomotive back.</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">(The drum: <i>Boom!!</i>)</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0">(Chorus)</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>More work for the undertaker,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Another little job for the tombstone-maker;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>At the local cemetery they’ve</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Been very very busy with a brand-new grave,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>For Snoozer’s</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Snuffed it!</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">I am afraid that I should have to grant Mr.
+Archer the verse: the second line, especially, cannot
+be called a model of good craftsmanship. But the
+chorus is very neat. It was varied with each verse.
+Another correspondent’s specimen finishes with
+“For Frederick’s fragments.”</p>
+
+<p>I must bow to the correspondent who suggests
+that the success of the song about the bride with
+artificial limbs was at least as much due to lines
+he quotes as it was to “’Arf a woman and ’arf a
+tree.” His lines are:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>I can’t change her!</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>No matter how I try,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>But<span class="pagenum" id="Page_215">[215]</span> I’ll chop her up for firewood</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>In the sweet by-and-by.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">An equally impolite chorus is that of Herbert
+Campbell’s <i>’Blige a Lady</i> which another correspondent
+sends. The conductor, on a rainy day,
+asked the inside males to give up a seat to a lady
+and go outside, and the reply was on the lines of</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Said I, “Old chap, she may have my lap,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>But I don’t get wet for her.”</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">That is very typical music-hall; and it will be observed
+that it gets its effect by sticking close, as
+Wordsworth advised, to the natural phraseology
+and sequence of everyday speech.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Albert Chevalier, I admit, I did not mention.
+He has not been primarily a music-hall artist, and
+Mr. Archer himself made an exception of his songs.
+Some of Mr. Gus Elen’s certainly might be quoted:
+<i>e. g.</i> <i>’E dunno where ’e are</i> and <i>What’s the Use of
+looking out for Work?</i> I am afraid that I am not
+sufficiently well informed to answer questions as to
+the sources of supply of modern music-hall songs.
+The only thing I have observed is that large numbers
+of the worst ones are composed by persons
+whose names suggest that the use of the English
+language is with them rather an acquired than an
+inherited characteristic. How far the practice prevails
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_216">[216]</span>of a particular star employing a tame author to
+write the words of all his songs for him I do not
+know. I have never consciously met a writer of
+music-hall songs, though I did know one man who
+made two attempts to produce what he thought the
+right sort of commodity. He sent them to an entrepreneur,
+but all his wit was wasted. The chorus
+of one song mentioned a well-known and much-advertised
+comestible: this wouldn’t do, as all the
+vendors of similar articles would be jealous and, possibly,
+refuse to advertise any more on the programme.
+In the other song the author had had
+the misfortune to hit upon an idea which had been
+used before. His refrain was:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>And when the pie was opened</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>The birds began to sing.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">But there was an old song with the same tail to it.
+It was a song about a pigeon-pie which was no better
+than it should be. This reminds me that in tabulating
+favourite music-hall subjects one should certainly
+have mentioned bad smells. Throughout history
+any reference to unpleasant smells has moved
+the Englishman to roars of laughter. Perhaps it
+is because we so thoroughly dislike them. I don’t
+think that these odours take all nations in quite the
+same way: but travellers on the Continent are sometimes
+tempted to think that most nations do not
+notice them so much as we do.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_217">[217]</span></p>
+
+<p>The music-hall versifier, usually feeble when
+funny, is certainly at his worst when serious. Such
+of the war-songs as I have heard are dreadful.
+Perhaps those I have not heard are better. Early
+in the war I was looking into a music-shop window
+in Upper Shaftesbury Avenue and saw two typical
+titles. One was <i>Only a Bit of Khaki that Daddy
+wore at Mons</i>, and the other was <i>The Little Irish
+Red Cross Nurse</i>. I did not dare to buy them, but
+I could not help admiring the ingenuity of the author
+of the second who had managed to work the perennial
+Irish Girl theme so neatly into the new subject.
+All music-hall poets seem to be obsessed by Irish
+girls. They will even work them into translations
+of foreign songs which do not mention them. Five
+or six years ago a German music-hall song which had
+nothing whatever to do with Irish girls was imported
+and became very popular here. The ideas
+of the original were largely preserved, but an Irish
+girl had to be stuck in. But <i>quo, Musa, tendis?</i> If
+I go on like this I shall end by agreeing with Mr.
+Archer.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_218">[218]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Utopias">Utopias</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>I saw recently a very entertaining article by Mr.
+Walter Lippman in the <i>New Republic</i> on the
+subject of Utopias. Mr. Lippman raised the
+question of why it was Utopias had gone out of
+fashion. Since Mr. Wells wrote his <i>Modern
+Utopia</i> no one has had a shot.</p>
+
+<p>It is, of course, not the longest period in human
+history which has gone without a new Utopia. As
+far as I know, nothing of the sort was constructed
+between the time of Plato and that of Sir Thomas
+More. Reasons might, no doubt, be discovered for
+this long lapse. The Romans were too realistic to
+bother about such things, and in the Middle Ages
+the only people who could write were priests, and
+they probably did not dare outline any other perfect
+society than that of the New Jerusalem. In fact,
+Utopias of any merit have until recently always been
+produced at long intervals: with the exception of
+Bacon’s <i>New Atlantis</i> and Campanella’s <i>City of the
+Sun</i>, which were, I think, published in the same year.
+The nineteenth century must have produced more
+imaginary states of this kind than all its predecessors
+put together. And if we stop constructing Utopias,
+this will happen not because we have ceased to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_219">[219]</span>hanker after them, but because the complexities of
+civilization have become too unmanageable to handle.
+When the structures of society and industry were
+comparatively simple, a man could invent an ideal
+state which would not look too far removed from
+the states he knew. We can still go on dreaming
+of little paradises, such as that in Morris’s <i>News
+from Nowhere</i>; but what it is difficult to do is to
+describe fully an imaginary community which is
+world-wide, or, at any rate, in contact with the whole
+world, which has to face the problems of race, and
+which has to take over from existing civilization our
+highly developed methods of manufacture and distribution
+of labour. Mr. Wells did try to depict a
+state that might grow out of the existing order;
+but his picture is notably less complete than those
+of older writers. He could only hope to produce
+his effect by giving us a series of cinema glimpses
+of various aspects of life. Personally, I doubt
+whether any one else will even attempt the job.</p>
+
+<p>One could wish that somebody would make a
+thorough study of the principal Utopias that the
+mind of man has conceived. Such a study would
+offer many interesting paths to research. We might
+find out, for example, to how great an extent the
+Utopians of various ages and nations have been
+influenced (as Plato was conspicuously influenced)
+by the transient conditions of their own time. For
+instance, the great variety of opinion which Utopians
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_220">[220]</span>have held with regard to the precious metals would
+be worth examination. Some have held them in
+great respect; others have vindictively suggested that
+they should be put to the basest possible uses.
+Again, how far has each writer of this kind been
+influenced by his predecessor? It can scarcely be
+supposed, for instance, that Campanella did not lift
+his communistic ideas bodily from Plato, or that Mr.
+Wells’s class of Samurai owed nothing to the same
+inspiration. Sometimes one sees a quite minor and
+obviously personal idea lifted clean or adapted with
+slight alterations which make it all the more curious.
+For example, in More’s <i>Utopia</i> brides and bridegrooms
+before marriage always inspected each other
+in a state of nature. It is to be presumed that More
+had some peculiar crank on this subject; for he mentions
+the possibility of concealing deformities as
+though it were a common practice that should certainly
+be guarded against by law. When we get to
+Bacon we find this odd idea copied, with the difference
+that it is now the friends of the respective
+parties that make the examination.</p>
+
+<p>The endless queer details in Utopias would in
+themselves make such a study amusing. Plato’s passion
+to secure that no mother should know her own
+child; the preposterously exact account of the
+amount of money subscribed towards the foundation
+of the new state in Theodor Hertzka’s <i>Freeland</i>;
+the wonderful battle between the fleets of, if I remember
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_221">[221]</span>rightly, Abyssinia and Europe in the same
+book; the trains going two hundred miles an hour,
+so smoothly that people played billiards on them, in
+Mr. Wells’s New World. I remember another
+Utopia, an obscure eighteenth-century one, in which
+persons who had committed murders were given the
+choice of being executed in honour or surviving in
+disgrace. If they chose death they were led to the
+scaffold amid universal applause, their names were
+inscribed upon rolls of honour, and their relatives
+were given fat jobs. Then, again, one could have
+a quite interesting chapter on the various literary
+devices by which authors have precipitated readers
+into their supposititious communities. More’s introduction—with
+the bronzed and bearded seaman
+who went out with the companions of Columbus and
+was stranded on an unknown island—is as charming
+as any. Later dodges have been more far-fetched.
+Mr. Wells’s transferment to the twin-world
+of this one is very subtle; Edward Bellamy
+made his hero wake up after centuries in a room
+where he asked for Edith (his old fiancée) and was
+conveniently answered by another lady of the same
+name. I say nothing of the books which lie on the
+outskirts of Utopian literature, such as various grotesque
+Utopias and anti-Utopias and books like Lord
+Lytton’s <i>The Coming Race</i> and W. H. Hudson’s
+<i>The Crystal Age</i>, which last is, I believe, the only
+book on record which purports to have been written
+by a man who dies in the last chapter and describes
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_222">[222]</span>his own demise. And the practical attempts to set
+up working ideal communities—such as the Oneida
+community which developed into a prosperous
+“Mfg. Coy.”—are another pleasant by-way.</p>
+
+<p>I think that with all the peculiarities of time and
+place, all the eccentricities of personal taste, and all
+the genuine varieties of ideals allowed for, a student
+of Comparative Utopianism would probably find
+that there was a good deal in the way of method and
+a very great deal in the way of aim that all Utopians
+have in common. Mr. Yeats once suggested that
+if we put together whatever the great poets have
+affirmed in their finest moments we should come as
+near as possible to an authoritative religion. In the
+same way, one feels that if one tabulated the ideals
+of the most successful writers of Utopias we should
+be able to extract, if not a residuum of agreed
+schemes, at least a common element of aspiration
+which we might fairly say represented the permanent
+ideals of the human race respecting the ordering of
+our life on earth. Really intelligent and altruistic
+men—and nobody without some intelligence and
+some altruism would bother to conceive a Utopia—have
+a tendency to dream the same sort of dreams.
+To take it on its negative side, no deviser of an ideal
+state, as far as I am aware, has proposed immense
+inequalities in the distribution of wealth, crowded
+and insanitary houses, child labour, wars of aggression,
+or sweating. There are large numbers of industrious
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_223">[223]</span>and accurate people in this country and
+America who are hunting for subjects about which
+they can write volumes of “research.” I wish one
+of them would write the book I suggest.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_224">[224]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Charles_II_in_English_Verse">Charles II in English Verse</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>I was talking to a man the other day about
+books that ought to have been written and
+have not been, when it occurred to me that
+somebody might publish a very amusing selection of
+panegyrics written on undeserving persons: say, the
+less immaculate of the English kings. I once
+thought of writing a life of Charles II, each chapter
+of which should be headed by an extract from some
+contemporary poem about him. The contrast between
+the character and private and public actions
+of this monarch and the descriptions of him by literary
+eulogists would have been illuminating.
+Gross flattery was the habit of the time. James the
+First was given, very unfairly as I think, the title of
+the British Solomon; and the Royal Martyr, who
+after all had some virtues very highly developed,
+was written of in terms which would have been extreme
+if applied to St. Francis of Assisi. But no
+one, not even his father, received such wholehearted
+praises as Charles II.</p>
+
+<p>His career as a recipient of them began early.
+When he was a child Francis Quarles’s <i>Divine
+Fancies</i> were dedicated to him. The Dedication
+was headed: “To the Royal Bud of Majesty and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_225">[225]</span>Centre of our Hopes and Happiness, Charles,” and
+began: “Illustrious Infant, Give me leave to acknowledge
+myself thy servant, ere thou knowest thyself
+my Prince.” The hope is held out that the
+illustrious infant will become “a most incomparable
+Prince, the firm pillar of our happiness and the
+future object of the world’s wonder.” Addressing
+then the boy’s governess, Lady Dorset, Quarles becomes
+even more rhapsodical:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">“Most excellent Lady,</p>
+
+<p>“You are the Star which stands over the Place
+where the Babe lies. By whose directions’ light,
+I come from the East to present my Myrrh and
+Frankincense to the young child. Let not our Royal
+Joseph nor his princely Mary be afraid; there are
+no Herods here. We have all seen his Star in the
+East, and have rejoyced: our loyall hearts are full;
+for our eyes have seen him, in whom our Posterity
+shall be blessed.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">One could scarcely hope that Quarles’s successors
+would quite live up to that.</p>
+
+<p>Dryden’s poem on Charles’s return to England
+is pitched a little lower. It certainly contains lines
+like</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>The winds that never moderation knew,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Afraid to blow too much, too faintly blew;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Or<span class="pagenum" id="Page_226">[226]</span> out of breath with joy would not enlarge</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Their straightened lungs....</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">but that is a mere excess of avowed fancy. When
+he wrote his <i>Threnodia Augustalis</i> on Charles’s
+death, Dryden decidedly went one better. Perhaps
+it was that he had had twenty-five years of Charles’s
+reign in which to appreciate fully the King’s reverend
+qualities. He calls him</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>That all-forgiving King</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>The type of Him above,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>That unexhausted spring</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Of clemency and love.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">He apostrophizes the Muse of History:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Be true, O Clio, to thy hero’s name!</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent6"><i>But draw him strictly so</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent6"><i>That all who view the piece may know;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>He needs no trappings of fictitious fame,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>The load’s too weighty.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">The anguished poet almost blasphemes against
+heaven for taking away so peerless a sovereign;
+until he remembers that “saints and angels”
+had been done out of Charles’s company for so
+long that their turn might fairly be considered to
+have come. And there is the further consolation
+that a James has succeeded a Charles:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_227">[227]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Our Atlas fell indeed, but Hercules was near;</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">or, as the Earl of Halifax put it,</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>James is our Charles in all things else but name.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Which Charles himself at least knew to be untrue.</p>
+
+<p>The Halifax extract comes out of another funeral
+poem On the Death of His Most Sacred Majesty.
+“Farewell,” he cries,</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>great Charles, monarch of blest renown,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>The best good man that ever fill’d a throne.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">He sketches Charles’s career. He compares his
+exile to the banishment of David (an open crib
+<i>from Astræ Redux</i>) and says of England that,
+when he came back,</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent12"><i>to his arms she fled</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>And rested on his shoulders her fair bending head.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">He “Us from our foes and from ourselves did
+save.” Only the almost inevitable comparison to
+the Almighty can do him justice:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>In Charles so good a man and King we see</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>A double image of the deity.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Oh! had he more resembled it! Oh, why</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Was he not still more like, and could not die?</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_228">[228]</span></p>
+
+<p class="noindent">What did become of Charles is suggested by “the
+Lord R” in a poem which appears in <i>Miscellany
+Poems</i>:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Good kings are number’d with Immortal Gods</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>When hence translated to the best Abodes,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>For Princes (truly great) can never die,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>They only lay aside Mortality.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">After which we are told that the deceased is in
+Olympus passing the nectar round; an occupation
+that should have suited him very well.</p>
+
+<p>Perhaps the suggestion will be adopted. Let
+some publisher with a series of anthologies get
+somebody to compile The Hundred Most Fulsome
+Poems in the English Language. It would be a
+more entertaining book than most. Very few examples,
+I think, would be drawn from the last
+hundred years. As respects the monarchs, Great
+Elizabeth, the Great Jameses, the Great Charleses,
+Great William, Great Anne, and the Great Georges
+all got their full share of adulation. The break
+comes, I think, with George IV; since whose accession
+we have lost the habit. Any one who should
+address his sovereign to-day in words like those addressed
+to Charles II by his subjects (e. g. Great
+George, the planets tremble at thy nod) would be
+suspected of pulling the sovereign’s leg.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_229">[229]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="The_Most_Durable_Books">The Most Durable Books</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The question of what books one would take
+with one for a prolonged sojourn on a
+desert island is an old one. I thought it
+had lost its interest for me, as too remote. For I
+do not propose to live on a desert island; and if ever,
+by accident, I am cast upon the shore of one, clinging
+to a solitary plank, it is unlikely that I shall have
+spent the last hour on shipboard selecting mental
+food for a highly problematical future as a hermit.
+But a letter from a distressed man in the trenches
+revives my interest in the question. He complains
+that he very rapidly exhausts the books that are sent
+him; that few of them are much use as permanent
+companions; and that, as they take up room, he can
+carry only a small bundle of them about with him.
+He cannot make up his mind which ones to get and
+stick to; and he ends by putting the ancient poser to
+me: “What three” (it is always three) “books
+would you rather have with you if you had to live
+on a desert island?” He adds, with somewhat unnecessary
+bluntness, that he will not believe me if I
+say that one of them would be the Bible.</p>
+
+<p>I suppose there must be some definition of what a
+book—what <i>one</i> book—is. Otherwise one’s first
+impulse is to demand, as the companions of solitude,
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_230">[230]</span><i>the Encyclopædia Britannica</i>, the <i>Dictionary of National
+Biography</i>, and the <i>Oxford English Dictionary</i>—say
+some hundred and twenty volumes in all.
+With these one could spend a fairly long life in
+retreat without ever reading the same page twice.
+One might even read with a definite scheme which
+would give one the semblance of systematic inquiry
+united with a happy unexpectedness of route. Suppose,
+for example, one were to start each day from
+something one had seen in the morning. A boa-constrictor,
+for instance. Having twisted its neck
+and left it for dead—castaways are very powerful
+fellows—one would go home to the old hut and
+refer to <i>Boa in the Encyclopædia</i>. Having learnt
+all about its anatomy, progenitiveness, and habitats,
+one would then refer to the <i>Oxford Dictionary</i> for
+the derivation of its name. Underneath the philological
+discourse would be quotations from authors
+who had referred to the beast or to its feathery
+similitude. The swift advent of the tropic night
+would find one still immersed in the <i>D.N.B.</i> lives of
+these authors. On a large rock outside one would
+keep, with a charred stick, a list of the objects already
+dealt with; once in a way perhaps, for sentiment’s
+sake, one would start from an old word again
+and revive memories of the Boa Trail. A person
+of simple tastes, granted the island produced enough
+goats and not too many constrictors, might well
+spend in this way a life as contented as Horace’s.
+But to select those three books would be cheating.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_231">[231]</span></p>
+
+<p>One might fairly suggest, in such a connexion, that
+a book is either (1) any single coherent work by
+one author, or two in collaboration; or (2) any
+series of works which either has been, or might reasonably
+be expected to be, published in a single volume.
+The edition for island use would not, however,
+necessarily be a one-volume edition. This
+rules out these distended works of reference, whilst
+letting in every single piece of creative literature that
+exists. There may seem to be an unfair discrimination
+between author and author, the poets, especially,
+as a body, being at a great advantage over the novelists;
+but if novelists will be so verbose they must
+suffer for it. What, then, would one’s three books
+be?</p>
+
+<p>I can think of a good many books that I have
+not read and that I hope to enjoy reading. There
+is <i>The Life of John Buncle</i>, there is <i>Old Mortality</i>,
+there is <i>Hard Times</i>, there is Tom Paine’s <i>Rights
+of Man</i>, there is Hooker’s <i>Ecclesiastical Polity</i>—and
+I am imperfectly acquainted with the works of
+Ben Jonson and Beaumont and Fletcher. (I have
+also not read <i>Ordeal by Battle</i>, and I don’t intend
+to.) But the mere fact that one has not read a
+work which one knows to be interesting is not enough
+to qualify it. It would be enough if one were proposing
+to be marooned for a fortnight or three weeks
+and then taken off the island by “willing hands”;
+but the books one wants for a residence of many
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_232">[232]</span>years are books one is sufficiently familiar with to be
+certain that they will not grow stale at the fifty-fifth
+reading.</p>
+
+<p>Well, Gibbon is a large and a very long book.
+I have been through it once, and I am pretty sure
+I shall do so again. But after that I suspect that
+the passages with pencil-marks beside them will satisfy
+me. I certainly could not, just after finishing
+it, recommence it at once, as Lord Randolph
+Churchill used to do, or make a practice of dipping
+into it daily. Great as it is, it is not sufficiently
+varied or sufficiently human. For perpetual reference
+no general history, I think, would do; one must
+have something more of the flavour of everyday
+humanity in it. And every mood and every kind
+of character must be represented. Though the
+books may supplement one another, one finds one’s
+choice growing at once very narrow. Even Horace
+Walpole’s <i>Letters</i> or Saint-Simon’s <i>Memoirs</i> would
+pall—at any rate on me. Shakespeare will do; but
+I cannot personally think of anything which, for me,
+would contest the other places with Boswell and
+Rabelais, unless it were <i>Morte d’Arthur</i>.</p>
+
+<p>There are people, no doubt, who would take <i>Don
+Quixote</i> or Montaigne. One man I know thinks
+that <i>Tristram Shandy</i> would go with him. But
+Sterne is too short; one would get to know him by
+heart in a month or two. <i>Robinson Crusoe</i> would
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_233">[233]</span>have obvious advantages, especially in an illustrated
+edition—which would provide one with useful
+models when one was cutting out one’s garments.
+But I think I should take the three I have mentioned—unless,
+indeed, I approached the matter from
+quite a different angle. There is a strong case for
+taking a selection of the more morose and bewildered
+modern novels—say <i>La Curée</i>, <i>Le Paradis
+des Dames</i>, and <i>L’Assommoir</i>, or a judicious selection
+from Artzybascheff, Mr. Cannan, and Mr.
+D. H. Lawrence. For these would do a great deal
+to reconcile one to one’s lonely lot. Whenever one
+was regretting the world of men one would find an
+everflowing spring of consolation in them. “After
+all,” one would say, after each agued page, “there
+is a good deal to be said for a desert island.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_234">[234]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="The_Worst_Style_in_the_World">The Worst Style in the World</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>The word “euphuism” is commonly employed:
+it is also commonly confused with
+“euphemism.” The thing is very properly
+condemned, and the book that gave it its name
+is usually condemned with it. But it is probable that
+John Lyly’s <i>Euphues</i> has frequently been abused by
+persons who have never opened it. At any rate,
+confessions of having read it are few, and have
+usually proceeded from the small minority who have
+found merit in the book. It is very interesting,
+therefore, to see that Messrs. Croll and Clemons
+have just published, through Routledge, a new edition,
+fully annotated. A generation unfamiliar with
+it will have a chance of reassessing it.</p>
+
+<p>The work is in two parts. <i>Euphues: The
+Anatomy of Wit</i> was first published in 1578;
+<i>Euphues and his England</i> in 1580. How immediately
+popular it was is shown by the fact that (my
+authority is Mr. Arundell Esdaile’s <i>Bibliography of
+English Tales and Romances</i>) four editions of the
+first part, three of the second, and then at least
+seventeen editions of both parts together were published
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_235">[235]</span>in fifty-eight years. (His name, incidentally,
+is spelt on various title-pages Lylly, Lyly, Lylie,
+Lilie, Lyllie, and Lily: a diversity worthy of
+“Shakspear.”) For a time almost everybody with
+any pretensions talked and wrote euphuism, very
+often employing Lyly’s fantastic alliterations, antitheses,
+and superfluous imagery without the content
+of sense that Lyly always had. Some writers openly
+ridiculed it. Shakespeare and Jonson made sport
+with euphuistic characters, and Sidney (who, I think,
+did not entirely escape the influence) ridiculed this</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Talking of beasts, birds, fishes, flies,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Playing with words and idle similes.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">But the development of English prose was sensibly
+changed by it, and its effect may be traced in the
+prose of Donne, Taylor, and Browne. The book
+itself, however, like all extravagantly mannered
+books, had its slump in the end. Early in James I’s
+reign the wider public seems to have turned away
+from it, and in 1632, E. Blount, the publisher, prefacing
+an edition of Lyly’s plays, referred to him
+as a forgotten poet whose grave he was digging up.
+Blount’s own language is a terrible example of what
+Euphuism may come to. He calls his author “a
+Lilly growing in a Grove of Lawrels”:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“These Papers of his, lay like dead Lawrels in a
+Churchyard; But I have gathered the scattered
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_236">[236]</span>branches up, and by a Charme (gotten from <i>Apollo</i>)
+made them greene againe, and set up as Epitaphes
+to his Memory. A sinne it were to suffer these
+Rare Monuments of wit, to lie covered with Dust,
+and a shame, such conceipted Comedies, should be
+acted by none but wormes.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">From 1636 to 1868, when the late Professor Arber
+(a man whose memory has not been sufficiently
+honoured) published his edition in the “English
+Reprints,” <i>Euphues</i> never appeared again, save in
+two brief eighteenth-century adaptations. For almost
+a hundred years his names was never mentioned;
+Lilly the astrologer was much better known.
+Most eighteenth- and nineteenth-century critics dismissed
+him as a man who, in Sir Walter Scott’s
+words, deformed his works “by the most unnatural
+affectation that ever disgraced a printed page.”
+One of the few exceptions was Charles Kingsley,
+who in <i>Westward Ho!</i> attacks Lyly’s critics with
+tremendous enthusiasm:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“I shall only answer by asking, Have they ever
+read it? For if they have done so, I pity them
+if they have not found it, in spite of occasional
+tediousness and pedantry, as brave, righteous, and
+pious a book as man need look into; and wish for
+no better proof of the nobleness and virtue of the
+Elizabethan age than the fact that <i>Euphues</i> and the
+<i>Arcadia</i> were the two popular romances of the day.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">Turning at this stage, on a sudden impulse, to my
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_237">[237]</span>Encyclopædia, to see whether sense is talked about
+Lyly there, I find that the article on him is by Mrs.
+Humphry Ward. Life is full of surprises.</p>
+
+<p>The truth of the matter is that everybody is right,
+except those who do not trouble to read the book.
+Kingsley is perfectly correct; it would be difficult to
+find a book of the time finer in feeling or inspired
+by higher conceptions of conduct. Lyly is as full
+of common sense as of refinement; and the fact that
+he drew much of his discourses on education and
+religion from other writers does not diminish the
+impression made by his attitude to life. His narrative
+does not come to much; most of his space is
+occupied by harangues, debates, treatises, and letters;
+his Neapolitan and English love-stories move
+at a snail’s pace. But—his first discussion, by the
+way, is on heredity and environment which, with
+startling modernity, he calls Nature and Nurture—he
+usually argues about things of perennial interest,
+and always with subtlety, delicacy, and an insight
+into the human heart. Still, Sir Walter Scott really
+was not exaggerating the monstrosity—though it
+is not uniformly monstrous—of his style. It takes
+some patience to put up with the construction of his
+sentences and his recurrent bunches of similes in
+order to follow his argument. On the second page
+you fall plump into this sentence:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“The freshest colours soonest fade, the keenest
+Rasor soonest tourneth his edge, the finest cloth is
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_238">[238]</span>soonest eaten with the Moathes, and the Cambricke
+sooner stayned than the course Canvas: which appeared
+well in this Euphues, whose wit beeing like
+waxe, apt to receive any impression, and bearing
+the head in his own hande, either to use the rayne or
+the spurre, disdayning counsaile, leaving his country,
+loathing his old acquaintance, thought either by wit
+to obteyne some conquest, or by shame to abyde
+some conflict, who preferring fancy before friends,
+and this present humor, before honour to come, laid
+reason in water being too salt for his tast, and followed
+unbridaled affection, most pleasant for his
+tooth.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">The mania for balance and alliteration is shown
+here, but not the equally characteristic passion for
+piling animals and plants, mainly out of Pliny, into
+mounds of comparisons. They are most tolerable
+when the statements made are least verifiable.
+Here are two specimens:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“The filthy Sow when she is sicke, eateth the
+Sea-Crab, and is immediately recured: the Torteyse
+having tasted the Viper, sucketh Origanum and is
+quickly revived: the Beare ready to pine licketh up
+the Ants and is recovered: the Dog having surfetted
+to procure his vomitte, eateth grasse and findeth
+remedy: the Hart beein perced with the dart, runneth
+out of hand to the hearb <i>Dicbanum</i>, and is
+healed.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_239">[239]</span></p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“Then good Euphues let the falling out of
+friendes be a renewing of affection, that in this we
+may resemble the bones of the Lyon, which lying
+stil and not moved begin to rot, but being stricken
+one against another break out like fire, and wax
+greene.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">Yet sometimes he will conclude a paragraph of such
+abnormalities with a short, humorous, or pathetic
+sentence which is most effective; and even sentences
+bearing the evident marks of his style sometimes
+move one strongly in their context. I may quote
+such sentences as Lucilla’s two complaints: “But
+I would to God Euphues would repair hither that
+the sight of him might mitigate some part of my
+martyrdome,” and the extremely sibilant but musical
+“O my Euphues, lyttle dost thou knowe the sodeyn
+sorrowe that I susteine for thy sweete sake.” What
+a really judicious critic would do would be to ridicule
+the style and admire the book.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_240">[240]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="The_Reconstruction_of_Orthography">The Reconstruction
+of Orthography</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Reconstruction is a blessed word, and
+very comprehensive: but I doubt whether
+the Government, when it established the
+Reconstruction Committee, anticipated that it would
+be asked to consider the problem of Spelling Reform.
+The Simplified Spelling Society, however,
+has sent it a memorial urging that “the reform of
+English spelling is eminently one that merits the
+practical consideration of the Committee.” The
+signatories include a number of scientific and other
+professors, scores of teachers, and a tail composed
+of “men of business, men of letters, editors, etc.”
+The editors do not include any man who edits a
+London daily or a literary weekly, though the directive
+minds of the <i>Lady’s Realm</i> and the <i>Ardrossan
+and Saltcoats Herald</i> are in the movement; and the
+only “men of letters” are Messrs. William Archer,
+H. G. Wells, Eden Phillpotts, T. Seccombe (at
+whom I am surprised), and a few persons who
+combine authorship with business or with “etc.”
+One did not want this piece of negative evidence to
+convince one that authors, as a body, will fight
+Simplifyd Speling to the last mute k. The memorial
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_241">[241]</span>makes the usual points about saving children’s
+time, facilitating the acquisition of foreign languages,
+lightening the work of teaching defective children,
+and assisting aliens who are acquiring our
+tongue. We are also told that “the demand for a
+rational spelling may be compared to that for decimalizing
+our coinage and our weights and measures.”</p>
+
+<p>This comparison seems to me very misleading,
+if by decimalization is meant the introduction of the
+Continental metric system. For this latter is uniform
+in various countries, whereas the reform suggested
+by the Simplified Spelling Society would do
+nothing to approximate the sound-values of our letters
+to those of letters in foreign tongues. Cosmopolitan
+systems have been proposed, very complex
+and full of odd new letters; but this Society’s suggestions,
+whilst eliminating some difficulties for the
+foreigner, would leave English just as difficult for a
+Frenchman to pronounce as French is for an Englishman.
+Take the phrase (I find it here) “A Ferst
+Reeder in Simplifyd Speling.” A Frenchman
+would still mispronounce it. If he wished to indicate
+those sounds in the French way he would write
+(I am not a phonetician) something like “E Fœust,”
+etc. So the Society had better not pitch its promises
+too high. This, nevertheless, remains a minor point.
+The chief considerations undoubtedly are the domestic
+effects of this piece of Reconstruction.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_242">[242]</span></p>
+
+<p>It sounds all very simple and convincing when
+people say: “Our spoken language has diverged
+from our written language: let our written language
+be made the same as our spoken language.” But
+directly you go into the matter you find that the
+difficulties are enormous. That we have no one
+spoken language is a commonplace. Our speech
+varies from fashion to fashion and from locality to
+locality. “Educated” English at present has an
+increasing Cockney element in it. The common
+“cultured” pronunciation of “No,” for instance,
+embodies an “o” sound which is anything but pure.
+Many rustics, however, still pronounce it with a good
+broad vowel. Even the spelling reformers do not
+agree about words. A. J. Ellis thought the “r”
+at the end of “proper” was still there; Sweet
+thought it had disappeared. As a matter of fact,
+it is both there and not there: in some classes and
+parts it is pronounced, in some it is not. And it is
+quite possible that it will become universal again.</p>
+
+<p>This gets us on to the question of change in time.
+The Reformers can be met both ways. If it be
+argued that phonetic spelling fixes pronunciation,
+why have we abandoned the old pronunciation of
+words once phonetically spelt? Shakespeare pronounced
+the initial “k” in “know” and “knee.”
+We have dropped it out. And we have no guarantee
+that spelling these words according to our present
+slack pronunciation would not be followed by another
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_243">[243]</span>divergence. The history of the word “sea”
+is odd. In the Middle Ages it was spelt “see” and
+pronounced “say.” In Tudor times the spelling
+was altered to “sea” in order to make the spelling
+correspond to the sound (the same as that in
+“great”). We have reached a pronunciation
+which the original spelling would have correctly represented!
+If it be argued that spelling does not
+fix pronunciation, the case for the reform is seriously
+weakened. The truth of the matter is that nothing
+can fix a pronunciation, but that the written word,
+especially in an age of universal literacy, does exercise
+a pull. And that pull can as well be exercised
+by our present spellings as by new ones. I think it
+was Titus Oates who went to the scaffold, or somewhere,
+crying “Lard! Lard!” Had he been a
+spelling reformer he would have quite unnecessarily
+assimilated the spelling of “lord” with that of the
+name of the white stuff they keep in bladders: a
+distinct loss to the language. Mr. Murison, in the
+<i>Cambridge History of Literature</i>, points out that the
+word “kiln” was originally pronounced as spelt;
+then for some time the “n” was dropped; then the
+old pronunciation returned. The same thing happened
+to words containing the diphthong “oi.”
+“Join” and “oil” were, in Middle English, pronounced
+as they are now. But for centuries men
+called them “jine” and “ile,” a habit that still
+persists amongst many of the most eager supporters
+of Spelling Reform. “H’s” were dropped wholesale
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_244">[244]</span>and then picked up again. We never know,
+in fact, whether we shall not return to an old way
+of speech; and we might as well do that as diverge
+from an old way of writing.</p>
+
+<p>The great consolation of conservatives in this
+matter is the length of time during which the enthusiasts
+have continuously failed to bring about a
+change. This is the oldest of the Campaigns. It
+was already old when in 1585 a book was published
+with this title-page (differently accented):</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“AEsopz Fable’z in true Orto’graphy with Grammar-nótz.
+Heryuntoo ar al’so jooined the short
+sentencez of the wyz Cato imprinted with lyk form
+and order: both of which Autorz ar transláted out
+of Latin intoo English. By William Bullokar.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">I don’t suppose that the Reconstruction Committee
+will find time to consider this matter. But if they
+do think of handling it they should realize that they
+are going to put their hands into a nestful of the
+largest hornets.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_245">[245]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Mr_James_Joyce">Mr. James Joyce</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Mr. James Joyce is a curious phenomenon.
+He first appeared in literary
+Dublin about (I suppose) a dozen years
+ago: a strangely solitary and self-sufficient and
+obviously gifted man. He published a small book
+of verse with one or two good lyrics in it; and those
+who foresaw a future for him became certain they
+were right. He published nothing; but his reputation
+spread even amongst those who had never read
+a line he had written. He disappeared from Ireland
+and went to Austria, where he settled. The war
+came, and soon afterwards his second book—<i>Dubliners</i>—was
+issued and reviewed with a general
+deference, after wandering about for years among
+publishers who had been fighting shy of it because
+of its undoubted unpleasantness and a reference to
+Edward VII. Another interval and <i>A Portrait of
+the Artist as a Young Man</i> began to run serially in
+the <i>Egoist</i>. “The Egoist, Ltd.,” has now published
+this book, and nobody is surprised to find all
+writing London talking about it. Mr. Joyce has
+only done what was expected.</p>
+
+<p>Whether this book is supposed to be a novel or
+an autobiography I do not know or care. Presumably
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_246">[246]</span>some characters and episodes are fictitious, or
+the author would not even have bothered to employ
+fictitious names. But one is left with the impression
+that almost all the way one has been listening
+to sheer undecorated, unintensified truth. Mr.
+Joyce’s title suggests, well enough, his plan. There
+is no “plot.” The subsidiary characters appear and
+recede, and not one of them is involved throughout
+in the career of the hero. Stephen Dedalus is born;
+he goes to school; he goes to college. His struggles
+are mainly inward: there is nothing unusual in
+that. He has religious crises: heroes of fiction frequently
+do. He fights against, succumbs to, and
+again fights against sexual temptation: we have
+stories on those lines in hundreds. All the same, we
+have never had a novel in the least degree resembling
+this one; whether it is mainly success or mainly failure,
+it stands by itself.</p>
+
+<p>You recognize its individuality in the very first
+paragraph. Mr. Joyce tries to put down the vivid
+and incoherent memories of childhood in a vivid
+and incoherent way: to show one Stephen Dedalus’s
+memories precisely as one’s own memories might
+appear if one ransacked one’s mind. He opens:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“Once upon a time and a very good time it was
+there was a moocow coming down along the road
+and the moocow that was down along the road met
+a nicens little boy named baby tuckoo ...”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_247">[247]</span></p>
+
+<p>“His mother had a nicer smell than his father,”
+he proceeds. There is verisimilitude in this; but
+a critic on the look-out for Mr. Joyce’s idiosyncrasies
+would certainly fasten upon his preoccupation with
+the olfactory—which sometimes leads him to write
+things he might as well have left to be guessed at—as
+one of them. Still, it is a minor characteristic.
+His major characteristics are his intellectual integrity,
+his sharp eyes, and his ability to set down precisely
+what he wants to set down. He is a realist
+of the first order. You feel that he means to allow
+no personal prejudice or predilection to distort the
+record of what he sees. His perceptions may be
+naturally limited; but his honesty in registering their
+results is complete. It is even a little too complete.
+There are some things that we are all familiar with
+and that ordinary civilized manners (not pharisaism)
+prevent us from importing into general conversation.
+Mr. Joyce can never resist a dunghill.
+He is not, in fact, quite above the pleasure of being
+shocking. Generally speaking, however, he carries
+conviction. He is telling the truth about a type and
+about life as it presents itself to that type.</p>
+
+<p>He is a genuine realist: that is to say, he puts
+in the exaltations as well as the depressions, the
+inner life as well as the outer. He is not morosely
+determined to paint everything drab. Spiritual passions
+are as powerful to him as physical passions;
+and as far as his own bias goes it may as well be in
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_248">[248]</span>favour of Catholic asceticism as of sensual materialism.
+For his detachment as author is almost inhuman.
+If Stephen is himself, then he is a self who
+is expelled and impartially scrutinized, without pity
+or “allowances,” directly Mr. Joyce the artist gets
+to work. And of the other characters one may say
+that they are always given their due, always drawn
+so as to evoke the sympathy they deserve, yet are
+never openly granted the sympathy of the author.
+He is the outsider, the observer, the faithful selector
+of significant traits, moral and physical; his judgments,
+if he forms them, are concealed. He never
+even shows by a quiver of the pen that anything distresses
+him.</p>
+
+<p>His prose instrument is a remarkable one. Few
+contemporary writers are effective in such diverse
+ways; his method varies with the subject-matter and
+never fails him. His dialogue (as in the remarkable
+discussions at home about Parnell and Stephen’s
+education) is as close to the dialogue of life as anything
+I have ever come across; though he does not
+make the gramophonic mistake of spinning it out as
+it is usually spun out in life and in novels that aim
+at a faithful reproduction of life and only succeed
+in sending one to sleep. And his descriptive and
+narrative passages include at one pole sounding periods
+of classical prose and at the other disjointed
+and almost futuristic sentences. The finest sustained
+pages in the book contain the sermon in which
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_249">[249]</span>a dear, simple old priest expounds the unimaginable
+horrors of hell: the immeasurable solid stench as of
+a “huge and rolling human fungus,” the helplessness
+of the damned, “not even able to remove from
+the eye a worm that gnaws it,” the fierceness of the
+fire in which “the blood seethes and boils in the
+veins, the brains are boiling in the skull, the heart
+in the breast glowing and bursting, the bowels a
+red-hot mass of burning pulp, the tender eyes flaming
+like molten balls.” Stephen, after listening to
+this,</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">“came down the aisle of the chapel, his legs shaking
+and the scalp of his head trembling as though it had
+been touched by ghostly fingers. He passed up the
+staircase and into the corridor along the walls of
+which the overcoats and waterproofs hung like
+gibbeted malefactors, headless and dripping and
+shapeless.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">No wonder. For myself, I had had an idea that
+this kind of exposition had died with Drexelius; but
+after I had read it I suddenly and involuntarily
+thought, “Good Lord, suppose it is all true!”
+That is a sufficient testimony to the power of Mr.
+Joyce’s writing.</p>
+
+<p>This is not everybody’s book. The later portion,
+consisting largely of rather dull student discussions,
+is dull; nobody could be inspired by the story, and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_250">[250]</span>it had better be neglected by any one who is easily
+disgusted. Its interest is mainly technical, using the
+word in its broadest sense; and its greatest appeal,
+consequently, is made to the practising artist in literature.
+What Mr. Joyce will do with his powers
+in the future it is impossible to conjecture. I conceive
+that he does not know himself: that, indeed,
+the discovery of a form is the greatest problem in
+front of him. It is doubtful if he will make a
+novelist.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_251">[251]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Tennessee">Tennessee</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Letters from strangers can usually be accounted
+for. But why on earth I, more
+than any one else, should have received a
+letter from America asking me to contribute towards
+the re-establishment of a backwoods library I don’t
+know. This, however, has been my experience, and
+I trust that I am not endangering the new Anglo-Saxon
+Entente by relieving my feelings in the following:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="center">LINES</div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <p style="max-width: 20em;" class="hanging"><i>Written on receiving
+      from the Librarian of a College which educates “the mountain youth
+      of Tennessee” a request for “a book” to assist in the re-formation
+      of the Library, which was recently destroyed by fire.</i></p>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Mine ears have heard your distant moan,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>O mountain youth of Tennessee;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Even the bowels of a stone</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Would melt to your librarian’s plea.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Although we’re parted by the ocean,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>I’m most distressed about your fire:</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Only I haven’t any notion</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>What sort of volume you require.</i></div>
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_252">[252]</span>    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>I have a Greene, a Browne, a Gray,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>A Gilbert White, a William Black,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Trollope and Lovelace, Swift and Gay,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>And Hunt and Synge: nor do I lack</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>More sober folk for whom out there</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>There may be rather better scope,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Three worthy men of reverend air,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>A Donne, a Prior, and a Pope.</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Peacock or Lamb, discreetly taken,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Might fill the hungry mountain belly,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Or Hogg or Suckling, Crabbe or Bacon</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>(Bacon’s not Shakespeare, Crabbe <span class="antiqua">is</span> Shelley)</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>And if—for this is on the cards—</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>You do not like this mental food,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>I might remit less inward bards:</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>My well-worn Spenser or my Hood.</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Longfellows may be in your line</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>(Littles we know are second-raters),</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Or one might speed across the brine</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>A Mayflower full of Pilgrim Paters.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Or, then again, you may devote</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>Yourselves to less æsthetic lore,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Yet if I send you out a Grote&#x2060;<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a>&#x2060;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>For all I know you’ll ask for More.</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>O thus proceeds my vacillation:</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>For now the obvious thought returns</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>That<span class="pagenum" id="Page_253">[253]</span> after such a conflagration</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>A fitting sequel might be Burns.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>And now again I change my mind</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>And, almost confidently, feel</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>That since to Beg you are inclined</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>You might like Borrow, say, or Steele....</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="center">Envoi</div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Yes, Prince, this song <span class="antiqua">shall</span> have an end.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>A sudden thought has come to me—</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>The thing is settled: I shall send</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent2"><i>A Tennyson to Tennessee!</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">But, as a matter of fact, unless I get a special permit
+for the export of second-hand books, I shan’t be
+able to send them even that.</p>
+
+<div class="footnotes">
+
+<h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a id="Footnote_3" href="#FNanchor_3" class="label">[3]</a> Or, with an appearance of greater generosity, one might return
+them the Pound they sent us some years since.</p></div>
+
+</div>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_254">[254]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Sir_William_Watson_and_Mr_Lloyd_George">Sir William
+Watson and Mr. Lloyd George</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>“Representatives of literature and
+art” usually appear in the Honours Lists,
+and they are usually queer representatives.
+The knighted <i>littérateur</i>, as a rule, is either a second-rate
+man or a man long past his prime. Possibly
+more men than we know of refuse these knighthoods.
+For myself I do not see what on earth a really distinguished
+artist wants with a knighthood, unless he
+is poor, and thinks that a title would add a guinea
+or two per thousand to the price of his work. If
+Sir Samuel Johnson, Sir Charles Dickens, Sir William
+Blake, Sir Robert Browning, Sir W. Wordsworth,
+Sir S. Taylor Coleridge, Sir George Meredith
+stood beside Sir Lewis Morris and Sir W. Robertson
+Nicoll, Sir Henry Dalziel, and Sir Hedley le
+Bas (of the Caxton Publishing Company), I do not
+conceive that those eminent writers would be held in
+greater honour than they are, or that literature
+would cut a more important figure in our social life.
+The one man to whom a knighthood may <i>usefully</i>
+be given is the deserving person who has worked
+conscientiously for years without adequate recognition
+and of whose existence the public might—to
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_255">[255]</span>his and its advantage—be officially reminded. As
+the crown of a famous career a knighthood is absurd.</p>
+
+<p>Sir William Watson has presumably got his
+knighthood for being one of the most industrious
+of the war-poets—and a war-poet congenial to the
+Powers-that-now-Be. Twenty years ago he had a
+greater reputation than he now has, and wrote several
+good and many respectable poems. He is still
+skilful, and can echo effectively the accents of Wordsworth
+and Milton; but he is certainly not a man of
+whom one thinks when one is estimating the vital
+forces in contemporary poetry. A new volume,
+<i>The Man who Saw</i>, has just appeared. The title-poem
+is about the Prime Minister:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Out of that land where Snowdon night by night</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Receives the confidence of lonesome stars,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>And where Carnarvon’s ruthless battlements</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Magnificently oppress the daunted tide,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>There comes—no fabled Merlin, son of mist,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>And brother to the twilight, but a man</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Who in a time terrifically real</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Is real as the time; formed for the time;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Not much beholden to the munificent Past,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>In mind or spirit, but frankly of this hour;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>No faggot of perfections, angel or saint,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Created faultless and intolerable;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>No meeting-place of all the heavenlinesses,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>But eminently a man to stir and spur</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Men, to afflict them with benign alarm,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Harass<span class="pagenum" id="Page_256">[256]</span> their sluggish and uneager blood,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Till, like himself, they are hungry for the goal;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>A man with something of the cragginess</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Of his own mountains, something of the force</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>That goads to their loud leap the mountain streams.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Sir William proceeds to a peroration on</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent18"><i>the man of Celtic blood,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Whom Powers Unknown, in a divine caprice,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Chose and did make their instrument, wherewith</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>To save the Saxon; the man all eye and hand,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>The man who saw, and grasped, and gripped, and held.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Then shall each morrow with its yesterday</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Vie, in the honour of nobly honouring him,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Who found us lulled and blindfolded by the verge</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Of fathomless perdition and haled us back.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>And poets shall dawn in pearl and gold of speech,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Crowning his deed with not less homage, here</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>On English ground, than yonder whence he rose.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">This must certainly be the most eulogistic poem ever
+written about a British politician.</p>
+
+<p>There is nothing about Mr. W. M. Hughes,
+Lord Milner, Lord Curzon, or Lord Devonport
+in the volume; these, perhaps, will be dealt with in
+Sir William’s next book, which, I do not doubt, will
+be ready before long. But Sir Edward Carson gets
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_257">[257]</span>his meed in a sonnet <i>To the Right Hon. Sir Edward
+Carson, on leaving Antrim, June 30, 1916</i>, and another
+sonnet acclaims Lord Northcliffe—to whom,
+possibly, there is a delicate allusion in the line quoted
+above, beginning “Whom Powers.” The sonnet is
+called <i>The Three Alfreds</i>; the three being King
+Alfred, Alfred Lord Tennyson, and Alfred Lord
+Northcliffe:</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Three Alfreds let us honour. Him who drove</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>His foes before the tempest of his blade</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>At Ethandune—him first, the all-glorious Shade,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>The care-crowned King whose host with Guthrum strove.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Next—though a thousand years asunder clove</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>These twain—a lord of realms serenely swayed;</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Victoria’s golden warbler, him who made</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Verse such as Virgil for Augustus wove.</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Last—neither king nor bard, but just a man</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Who, in the very whirlwind of our woe,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>From midnight till the laggard dawn began,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Cried ceaseless, “Give us shells—more shells,” and so</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Saved England; saved her not less truly than</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Her hero of heroes saved her long ago.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">It is a pity that there could not have been added
+some reference to Lord Northcliffe’s conviction that
+nobody in his senses ever dreamed of using shrapnel
+against wire. Had the shells passage been expanded
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_258">[258]</span>it might have been less cacophonous. As it
+stands, it gives rise to the suspicious illusion that the
+sibilant cry was uttered by Mr. (or is it Sir?) Wilkie
+Bard. But no; it was “neither King nor Bard.”</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_259">[259]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Stranded">Stranded</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>“No,” I thought, “I won’t take any books
+with me. I want a rest. I shall swim.
+I shall catch fish. There is sure to be a
+billiard-room in that pub., and pretty certain to be a
+few people who play bridge. The overtaxed brain
+must be allowed relaxation. So good-bye, Plato;
+good-bye, Spinoza; good-bye, Samuel Rawson Gardiner;
+good-bye, Freud. I won’t take any of you.”</p>
+
+<p>I had been in the place twenty-four hours, and
+had plumbed the depths of my neighbours’ incapacity
+to play any games of skill or chance (except possibly—I
+did not ask this—loo and vingt-et-un),
+when, sauntering down the main, and indeed the
+only, street, I caught sight of the words, “Grocer,
+Chemist, Tobacconist, Draper, and Circulating Library.”
+It would be ungracious, I felt, to let such
+versatility go unrecognized. Besides, one might as
+well take a novel or two out with one in the boat.
+It might make the intervals between the bites seem
+a little shorter. So in I went.</p>
+
+<p>A young girl with a pigtail escorted me past the
+Quaker Oats and the Gold Flakes, under a little
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_260">[260]</span>low doorway and into a back room. “A shilling
+deposit, and twopence on each book,” she said; and
+left me to the shelves. There were books there all
+right: about two thousand of them, reaching from
+floor to ceiling on both sides. There was no sort
+of order, alphabetical or otherwise, so it was no
+good expecting to find a particular author right off.
+The only thing for it was beginning somewhere and
+going steadily along the rows.</p>
+
+<p>B. M. Croker: yes, I think I read a great many
+of hers in my youth. They were about penniless
+young ladies going to India and getting married.
+It is no good tackling this one. <i>The Gateless Barrier</i>,
+by Lucas Malet; that was about spiritualism,
+and pretty average tosh it was; I shall probably
+come to <i>Sir Richard Calmady</i> presently, but I shall
+give him a miss too. <i>The Iron Pirate</i>: I liked that
+rather, but it would be a pity not to like it so much
+now. I feel the same about <i>Saracinesca</i>, <i>The Witch
+of Prague</i>, and <i>In the Palace of the King</i>, which are
+all in a lump together where some late devotee has
+replaced them. Marion Crawford, upon whose
+every word my childhood hung, I dare not attempt
+you again; even <i>A Cigarette Maker’s Romance</i> and
+the chronicle of <i>Mr. Isaacs</i> (who enjoyed Kant and
+deluded me, for a time, into the belief that I should
+like him too) will be more dear to the memory if
+they are not restored to sight. <i>Count Hannibal</i>:
+that was the man who either massacred somebody
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_261">[261]</span>or escaped massacre on St. Bartholomew’s Day.
+He had a great square jaw and eyes that made you
+jump; and women cowered and obeyed when he
+emitted a short, sharp oath or looked like emitting
+one. William Black I never liked at any time, so
+nothing by him need detain me. <i>Flames</i>? No.
+<i>Dodo</i>? Oh dear, no. <i>Ships that pass in the
+Night</i>? No. There was edelweiss in it, and an
+old man who was otherworldly and read nothing but
+Gibbon. Queen Victoria thought highly of it, but
+I don’t want to read it again. Nor <i>Red Pottage</i>
+either. The husband and the other man (I think)
+had a duel. They drew straws, and the man with
+the shortest straw had to kill himself. What the
+lady thought about it I don’t remember. But one of
+them was a Lord, New Zealand came in somewhere,
+and at suitable places in the conversation a
+moth would flutter or a kingfisher flash by. It is by
+touches like these that one can distinguish really
+imaginative literature, but I am not tempted.</p>
+
+<p>It is not reasonable to expect a man at this date
+to return to <i>A Yellow Aster</i>, or <i>Moths</i> by Ouida.
+As for <i>The Silence of Dean Maitland</i>, the predicament
+of that respected ecclesiastic with the undisclosed
+sin on his conscience is still fresh in my mind,
+and I still remember how my elders, when it first
+came out, debated whether such a book ought to be
+written, and whether Maxwell Gray was a man or
+a woman. Of <i>The Sorrows of Satan</i> I recall little
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_262">[262]</span>of the plot, except that the Devil was a gentleman.
+I think that the first sentences were: “Do you know
+what it is to be poor? Not with that—poverty
+that—on ten thousand a year, but with that grinding
+poverty that,” etc. How many years ago is it
+since that immortal paragraph, reproduced in facsimile
+from the author’s own script, appeared in the
+<i>Strand Magazine</i>, with pictures of the great novelist
+in divers postures? It would be Ethel M. Dell now,
+I suppose; but they don’t seem to keep Miss Dell’s
+works in this Circulating Library, of which the circulation
+seems to have stopped many, many, many
+years since. They keep instead Frankfort Moore
+and G. B. Burgin.</p>
+
+<p>Anthony Hope now. Here is <i>The Intrusions of
+Peggy</i>. There was a grizzled inventor who lived
+in the Temple, and he had a daughter (?) who shone
+like a sunbeam amidst the dusty shades of the law.
+Anthony Hope, who was very nearly a first-rate
+writer, must have put it better than that; but I’m
+sure that that is what it was about. Seton Merriman
+now. This is better. But will or will not a
+reperusal of <i>The Vultures</i> and <i>Roden’s Corner</i>
+diminish the respect that still survives in me for him?
+He gave me immense pleasure at one time; can I risk
+it? I don’t know.</p>
+
+<p>With meditations like the above I roamed up
+and down before the frayed and wrinkled backs of
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_263">[263]</span>these veterans, fascinated by so systematic a recovery
+of the familiar. Then I remembered that the sun
+was shining in a blue sky, only slightly fleeced with
+cloud; that the salt wind blowing shoreward was
+driving broken sunlight over the waves; that there
+were as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it;
+and that I must really take care of my health.
+Catching sight of <i>She</i> and <i>Many Cargoes</i>, which I
+have read at least ten times apiece, but am always
+good for again, I detached them from their faded
+companions and took them into the front shop,
+meditating upon the astonishing sluggishness of this
+shop, where even Mrs. Barclay had not yet penetrated
+and Garvice was a cloudy speculation in the
+far future.</p>
+
+<p>I paid my one-and-fourpence and stepped out on
+to the cobblestones. As I passed into the sun, it
+occurred to me that it was not surprising that even
+the minor works in the library were like old friends.
+For—and things like these do strangely remain
+known, yet for a time, unrelated—I spent a summer
+in this village fifteen years ago.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_264">[264]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Mr_Ralph_Hodgson">Mr. Ralph Hodgson</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>Mr. Ralph Hodgson is a poet who has
+still not quite got his due. He has just
+collected into one volume (<i>Poems</i>), with
+a few others, the verses published in a series of
+“Flying Fame Booklets” with Mr. Lovat Fraser’s
+charming and ingenious cuts. Ten years’ work goes
+into seventy pages, so that a charge of over-production
+is scarcely possible. In the circumstances
+Mr. Hodgson might have included one or two
+poems, <i>The Last Blackbird</i>, for example, from his
+earlier book. That book as a whole, however, was
+not comparable with this, which contains <i>The Bull</i>,
+indubitably one of the finest poems of our generation,
+<i>The Song of Honour</i>, which is almost as good, and
+many charming lighter lyrics. <i>Eve</i>, particularly, is
+a feat. Mr. Hodgson makes a delicate tripping
+song out of the Fall of Man; he pictures Eve, “that
+orchard sprite,”</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Wondering, listening,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Listening, wondering,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Eve with a berry</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Half-way to her lips,</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">and the serpent, a graceful beast,</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_265">[265]</span></p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Tumbling in twenty rings</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Into the grass.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">The whole story trips like that.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>“Eva!” Each syllable</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Light as a flower fell,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>“Eva!” he whispered the</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Wondering maid,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Soft as a bubble sung</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Out of a linnet’s lung,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Soft and most silverly</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>“Eva!” he said.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">But—and this is the achievement—one is not left
+with a sense of inadequacy and triviality. For the
+feeling throughout is sincere, and the nature of the
+calamity is conveyed as clearly by Mr. Hodgson,
+who makes the small birds chatter with sorrow and
+indignation when Eve falls, as it would have been
+by another man with all the paraphernalia of darkening
+heavens, thunderous voices, and long Latin
+words.</p>
+
+<p>But this poem is not on the same plane as <i>The
+Bull</i> and <i>The Song of Honour</i>. No writer has
+ever entered more completely into the feelings of
+an animal than does Mr. Hodgson as, in a setting
+of tropical forest and swamp, he shows the defeated,
+expelled, and dying leader of the herd remembering
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_266">[266]</span>his calfhood, and his early fights, and his prowess
+and his final fall, whilst the obscene birds circle
+round overhead waiting for his death. <i>The Song
+of Honour</i>, an attempt to echo the Hymn of Praise
+sung by all things to their Maker, is, in the nature
+of things, more disjointed and impressionistic, less
+exact and well-shaped. It owes as much as any
+poem can decently owe to another to Christopher
+Smart’s <i>Song to David</i>. But the strength of feeling
+never fails, and parts of the breathless pæan are
+very beautiful.</p>
+
+<div class="poetry-container">
+  <div class="poetry">
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>The music of a lion strong</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>That shakes a hill a whole night long,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>A hill as loud as he,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>The twitter of a mouse among</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Melodious greenery,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>The ruby’s and the rainbow’s song,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>The nightingale’s—all three,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>The song of life that wells and flows</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>From every leopard, lark and rose</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>And everything that gleams or goes</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Lack-lustre in the sea.</i></div>
+    </div>
+    <div class="stanza">
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>I heard it all, I heard the whole</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Harmonious hymn of being roll</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Up through the chapel of my soul</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>And at the altar die,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>And in the awful quiet then</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Myself I heard, Amen, Amen,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Amen<span class="pagenum" id="Page_267">[267]</span> I heard me cry!</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>I heard it all and then although</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>I caught my flying senses, Oh,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>A dizzy man was I!</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>I stood and stared; the sky was lit,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>The sky was stars all over it,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>I stood, I knew not why,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>Without a wish, without a will,</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>I stood upon that silent hill</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>And stared into the sky until</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>My eyes were blind with stars and still</i></div>
+      <div class="verse indent0"><i>I stared into the sky.</i></div>
+    </div>
+  </div>
+</div>
+
+<p class="noindent">Those are two of the last stanzas, and even standing
+alone, I think, give something of the quality of the
+poem. They certainly are characteristic in the simplicity
+of their language.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_268">[268]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="Double_Misprints">Double Misprints</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>I take the following paragraph from the <i>Connersville
+(Ind.) Herald</i>:</p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p>“The Guest Day meeting of the literary club will
+be held at the home of Mrs. L. A. Frazer to-morrow
+afternoon. Mrs. De Morgan Jones, of Indianapolis,
+will lecture on ‘William Butler Meats and
+the Garlic Revival.’”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">I think the Lady of Shalott should have been
+brought in. Double misprints are rare, but I remember
+another which also was perpetrated in
+America but which has not quite so convincing an
+air of sheer accident as this one. A Colonel, who
+had fought in the Civil War, was described in his
+local paper as “a battle-scared veteran.” This
+imputation on his courage brought him to the office
+with a big stick and a demand that the paragraph
+should be reprinted with the offensive remark corrected.
+It was: but another misprint crept in and
+the word appeared as “bottle-scarred.” Every one
+who has dealings with the Press occasionally corrects,
+amid the mass of quite meaningless “literals,”
+a misprint that really makes some sort of sense.
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_269">[269]</span>I myself in the last few months have had to emend
+printers’ references to Mr. Hotairio Bottomley and
+Mr. Edmund Goose. The former one felt tempted
+to leave uncorrected, the derangement of letters being
+so extremely apt.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_270">[270]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="The_History_of_Earl_Pumbles">The History of Earl Pumbles</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>“The late Earl (Eorl?) Pumbles was of lowly
+birth. He was born in the thorp of Stoke
+Parva in 1850, the son of a penniless
+timber-wright. Outdriven from his first school, he
+became a fighting-man. He was a dreadless and
+fearnought wight, and was once left for dead on the
+field, bleeding at every sweat-hole. The saw-bones
+brought him through. Coming back to England he
+saw the haplihood of making a gold-hoard in the
+soap-trade. He set up a business with the gold of
+others; got rid of his yoke-mates by sundry under-slinkings,
+and soon became amazingly wealthy. An
+earldom followed; though it is markworthy that on
+the morning after its bestowal a great songsmith
+wrote to the <i>Daily Score</i> to say: ‘The Gusher of
+Fair-Name is befouled.’ In 1910 Lord Pumbles
+went as sendling to the King of Siam, with a bode-word
+from our King. In the back-end of the next
+year his health gave out; he became bit-wise worse;
+and he died last night of belly-ache. Lord Pumbles
+was often to be seen at Sir Henry Wood’s Out-Road
+Glee-Motes at Queen’s Hall, but he was almost a
+comeling at the House of Lords. He was cunning
+in Kin-lore, and in his fair wonestead at Pumbles
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_271">[271]</span>wrote a great book on the stem-tree of his kin. By
+ill hap he was an eat-all and rather soaksome. He
+will be buried on Wednesday in the bone-yard at
+Pumbles, in which lich-rest his wife already lies.
+The earldom goes, by out-of-the-way odd-come-short,
+to his daughter.”</p>
+
+<p>This little biography may have puzzled those
+who have got thus far. They may have thought
+it absurd. I compiled it with the help of
+“C. L. D.’s” <i>Word-Book of the English Tongue</i>,
+just published by Routledge. “C. L. D.” (the
+initials are, I observe, those of the author of <i>Alice
+in Wonderland</i>) is one of those enthusiasts who long
+“to shake off the Norman yoke” which lies so
+heavy on our speech. He follows, that is to say,
+in the footsteps of the late Rev. William Barnes
+(of Dorset), who asked his countrymen to call a
+perambulator a “child-wain” and an omnibus a
+“folk-wain.” “What many speakers and writers,”
+he remarks, “even to-day, call English, is no English
+at all but sheer French. Nevertheless, there are
+many who feel not a little ashamed of the needless
+loan-words in which their speech is clothed, and of
+the borrowed feathers in which they strut. Over
+and over again it has been said, and most truly, that
+for liveliness and strength, manliness and fulness of
+meaning, the olden English Tongue were hard to
+beat.” “In this little Word-Book, therefore,” he
+says:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_272">[272]</span></p>
+
+<blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">“after having chosen a few thousand stock loan-words,
+I have striven to set by the side of each,
+not indeed ‘synonyms,’ but other good English
+words, which may stand in their stead.”</p>
+
+</blockquote>
+
+<p class="noindent">Which is certainly (or, I think I should say, “ywis”
+or “in good sooth”) a pure English sentence.</p>
+
+<p>One primary fault “C. L. D.” avoids almost entirely.
+He does not (as he might have done had
+he cared to take all the astonishing Latin words
+from Johnson’s Word-Book) load the dice by including
+in his list of “loan-words” words which we
+hardly ever use. There are a few. Only a scientist
+would say “acephalous” when he meant “headless”;
+and the general public does not need to be
+warned to say “grind,” “bristly,” “stalkless,” and
+“barefooted,” instead of “comminute,” “aristate,”
+“acaulescent,” and “discalced.” It would never
+dream of saying acaulescent. Where our author
+errs is where he would inevitably err: in suggesting
+to us (1) Saxon words which we simply
+won’t use, and (2) Saxon words which do not take
+the place of the Latin words of which he disapproves.
+Take, for instance, as an instance of the
+latter category, this very word “disapprove.” All
+he can give us is a list of “strong” words beginning
+with “hiss” and “hoot,” none of which gets the
+exact shade of meaning required. Similarly with
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_273">[273]</span>“decry,” for which his suggestions are “boo” and
+“hoot.” In suggesting “clean,” “flat,” etc., for
+“absolute” he is merely booing and hooting the
+slang use of that word, but he has not found a
+Saxon equivalent for the real “absolute.” For
+“complimentary” he gives “smooth-spoken”; but
+how would, say, the Archbishop of Canterbury like
+to get a letter of thanks beginning: “My dear
+Archbishop,—Many thanks for your very smooth-spoken
+remarks”? For “uncomfortable” he can
+only suggest “writhing”—as though we could say
+that we had spent a fortnight in a most writhing
+hotel; and for “temporalities” he has nothing but
+“loaves and fishes”—which is simply offensive.
+If one began using words like these promiscuously,
+one would simply (here I consult the <i>Word-Book</i>
+again) be asking for misluck.</p>
+
+<p>To turn to the other lot, it is altogether too late
+to ask us to say “rede-craft” for “logic”; “back-jaw”
+for “retort”; “handmaid” for “servant”;
+“outganger” for “emigrant”; “wanhope” (a
+most beautiful word, I admit) for “despair”;
+“scald” or “songsmith” for “poet”; “hight”
+or “yclept” for “denominated”; “uplooking”
+for “aspiring”; “fourwinkled” for “quadrangular”;
+and, above all, to replace “depilatory” by
+“hair-bane.” “Ereold” and “foreold” for
+“ancient” are no longer possible; and the man who
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_274">[274]</span>should say that the King was crowned and besmeared
+in Westminster Abbey would be quite unable
+to persuade people that he wasn’t merely a
+rather coarse satirist. In cases where both terms
+are alive, the Latin is often more convenient—because
+shorter—than the Saxon. If we always used
+“breach of wedlock” instead of “adultery,” many
+modern novels, and most Sunday newspapers, would
+use up twice as much paper and ink. (There was
+once a half-way word: the mediæval heralds used
+to say that the leopard was “begotten in spouse-breach
+between the lion and the pard.”) In proposing
+“hand-grip” for portmanteau, our wordloresman
+is doing an audacious thing: adopting a bit
+of modern American—though, as often as not, the
+term is shortened, across the water, to “grip” <i>tout
+court</i>.</p>
+
+<p>There remain, of course, a very large number of
+words for which “C. L. D.” does provide genuine
+living synonyms which, in many cases, are stronger
+and terser than the originals. Even here, of course,
+there are occasional difficulties; we have, at any rate
+in print, thrown over “C. L. D.’s” favourites
+“belly-ache” and “gripes” in favour of “colic”
+simply because they <i>are</i> what is called “good sturdy
+Saxon,” altogether too apt and sturdy. As for his
+proposal of “ropes” and “manifolds” for “intestines,”
+all I can say is that I much prefer here to
+remain under the Norman yoke. At the same time,
+too much Latinity is a nuisance and a danger to the
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_275">[275]</span>vividness of our tongue; and, whilst refraining from
+following “C. L. D.” to his thorps or Barnes to his
+folk-wain, I think I shall sometimes find the <i>Word-Book</i>
+useful.</p>
+
+<hr class="chap x-ebookmaker-drop" aria-hidden="true">
+
+<div class="chapter">
+
+<p><span class="pagenum" id="Page_276">[276]</span></p>
+
+<h2 class="nobreak" id="On_Destroying_Books">On Destroying Books</h2>
+
+</div>
+
+<p>“It says in the paper” that over two million volumes
+have been presented to the troops by the
+public. It would be interesting to inspect
+them. Most of them, no doubt, are quite ordinary
+and suitable; but it was publicly stated the other day
+that some people were sending the oddest things,
+such as magazines twenty years old, guides to the
+Lake District, Bradshaws, and back numbers of
+<i>Whitaker’s Almanack</i>. In some cases, one imagines,
+such indigestibles get into the parcels by accident;
+but it is likely that there are those who jump at the
+opportunity of getting rid of books they don’t want.
+Why have kept them if they don’t want them? But
+most people, especially non-bookish people, are very
+reluctant to throw away anything that looks like a
+book. In the most illiterate houses that one knows
+every worthless or ephemeral volume that is bought
+finds its way to a shelf and stays there. In reality
+it is not merely absurd to keep rubbish merely because
+it is printed: it is positively a public duty to
+destroy it. Destruction not merely makes more
+room for new books and saves one’s heirs the trouble
+of sorting out the rubbish or storing it: it may also
+prevent posterity from making a fool of itself. We
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_277">[277]</span>may be sure that if we do not burn, sink, or blast all
+the superseded editions of Bradshaw, two hundred
+years hence some collector will be specializing in old
+railway timetables, gathering, at immense cost, a
+complete series, and ultimately leaving his “treasures”
+(as the Press will call them) to a Public Institution.</p>
+
+<p>But it is not always easy to destroy books. They
+may not have as many lives as a cat, but they certainly
+die hard; and it is sometimes difficult to find
+a scaffold for them. This difficulty once brought
+me almost within the Shadow of the Rope. I was
+living in a small and (as Shakespeare would say)
+heaven-kissing flat in Chelsea, and books of inferior
+minor verse gradually accumulated there until at last
+I was faced with the alternative of either evicting
+the books or else leaving them in sole, undisturbed
+tenancy and taking rooms elsewhere for myself.
+Now, no one would have bought these books. I
+therefore had to throw them away or wipe them
+off the map altogether. But how? There were
+scores of them. I had no kitchen range, and I could
+not toast them on the gas-cooker or consume them
+leaf by leaf in my small study fire—for it is almost
+as hopeless to try to burn a book without opening it
+as to try to burn a piece of granite. I had no dustbin;
+my debris went down a kind of flue behind the
+staircase, with small trap-doors opening to the landings.
+The difficulty with this was that the larger
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_278">[278]</span>books might choke it; the authorities, in fact, had
+labelled it “Dust and Ashes Only”; and in any
+case I did not want to leave the books intact, and
+some dustman’s unfortunate family to get a false
+idea of English poetry from them. So in the end
+I determined to do to them what so many people
+do to the kittens: tie them up and consign them to
+the river. I improvised a sack, stuffed the books
+into it, put it over my shoulder, and went down
+the stairs into the darkness.</p>
+
+<p>It was nearly midnight as I stepped into the street.
+There was a cold nip in the air; the sky was full of
+stars; and the greenish-yellow lamps threw long
+gleams across the smooth, hard road. Few people
+were about; under the trees at the corner a Guardsman
+was bidding a robust good night to his girl,
+and here and there rang out the steps of solitary
+travellers making their way home across the bridge
+to Battersea. I turned up my overcoat collar,
+settled my sack comfortably across my shoulders,
+and strode off towards the little square glow of the
+coffee-stall which marked the near end of the bridge,
+whose sweeping iron girders were just visible against
+the dark sky behind. A few doors down I passed
+a policeman who was flashing his lantern on the
+catches of basement windows. He turned. I
+fancied he looked suspicious, and I trembled slightly.
+The thought occurred to me: “Perhaps he suspects
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_279">[279]</span>I have swag in this sack.” I was not seriously disturbed,
+as I knew that I could bear investigation,
+and that nobody would be suspected of having stolen
+such goods (though they <i>were</i> all first editions) as
+I was carrying. Nevertheless I could not help the
+slight unease which comes to all who are eyed suspiciously
+by the police, and to all who are detected
+in any deliberately furtive act, however harmless.
+He acquitted me, apparently; and, with a step that,
+making an effort, I prevented from growing more
+rapid, I walked on until I reached the Embankment.</p>
+
+<p>It was then that all the implications of my act
+revealed themselves. I leaned against the parapet
+and looked down into the faintly luminous swirls of
+the river. Suddenly I heard a step near me; quite
+automatically I sprang back from the wall and began
+walking on with, I fervently hoped, an air of rumination
+and unconcern. The pedestrian came by me
+without looking at me. It was a tramp, who had
+other things to think about; and, calling myself an
+ass, I stopped again. “Now’s for it,” I thought;
+but just as I was preparing to cast my books upon
+the waters I heard another step—a slow and measured
+one. The next thought came like a blaze of
+terrible blue lightning across my brain: “What about
+the splash?” A man leaning at midnight over the
+Embankment wall: a sudden fling of his arms: a
+great splash in the water. Surely, and not without
+reason, whoever was within sight and hearing (and
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_280">[280]</span>there always seemed to be some one near) would
+at once rush at me and seize me. In all probability
+they would think it was a baby. What on earth
+would be the good of telling a London constable
+that I had come out into the cold and stolen down
+alone to the river to get rid of a pack of poetry?
+I could almost hear his gruff, sneering laugh: “You
+tell that to the Marines, my son!”</p>
+
+<p>So for I do not know how long I strayed up and
+down, increasingly fearful of being watched, summoning
+up my courage to take the plunge and quailing
+from it at the last moment. At last I did it. In
+the middle of Chelsea Bridge there are projecting
+circular bays with seats in them. In an agony of
+decision I left the Embankment and hastened
+straight for the first of these. When I reached it
+I knelt on the seat. Looking over, I hesitated again.
+But I had reached the turning-point. “What!” I
+thought savagely, “under the resolute mask that you
+show your friends is there really a shrinking and
+contemptible coward? If you fail now, you must
+never hold your head up again. Anyhow, what if
+you <i>are</i> hanged for it? Good God! you worm, better
+men than you have gone to the gallows!” With
+the courage of despair I took a heave. The sack
+dropped sheer. A vast splash. Then silence fell
+again. No one came. I turned home; and as I
+walked I thought a little sadly of all those books
+falling into that cold torrent, settling slowly down
+<span class="pagenum" id="Page_281">[281]</span>through the pitchy dark, and subsiding at last on the
+ooze of the bottom, there to lie forlorn and forgotten
+whilst the unconscious world of men went on.</p>
+
+<p>Horrible bad books, poor innocent books, you are
+lying there still; covered, perhaps, with mud by this
+time, with only a stray rag of your sacking sticking
+out of the slime into the opaque brown tides. Odes
+to Diana, Sonnets to Ethel, Dramas on the Love of
+Lancelot, Stanzas on a First Glimpse of Venice, you
+lie there in a living death, and your fate is perhaps
+worse than you deserved. I was harsh with you.
+I am sorry I did it. But even if I had kept you, I
+will certainly say this: I should not have sent you
+to the soldiers.</p>
+
+<p class="titlepage">THE END</p>
+
+<figure class="figcenter illowp85" id="knopf" style="max-width: 12.5em;">
+  <img class="w100" src="images/knopf.jpg" alt="">
+</figure>
+
+</main>
+<div style='text-align:center'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 78901 ***</div>
+</body>
+</html>
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author	www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org>	2026-06-20 20:08:03 -0700
committer	www-data <www-data@mail.pglaf.org>	2026-06-20 20:08:03 -0700
commit	5cc01b1b8bba31b28a0796cded1e19363ae12288 (patch)
tree	9b309fa7a19255f27bae8a97083f68e9e9f51750 /78901-h