diff options
Diffstat (limited to '78901-h')
| -rw-r--r-- | 78901-h/78901-h.htm | 9157 | ||||
| -rw-r--r-- | 78901-h/images/cover.jpg | bin | 0 -> 232037 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 78901-h/images/doggo.jpg | bin | 0 -> 4710 bytes | |||
| -rw-r--r-- | 78901-h/images/knopf.jpg | bin | 0 -> 8558 bytes |
4 files changed, 9157 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/78901-h/78901-h.htm b/78901-h/78901-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..3f846f1 --- /dev/null +++ b/78901-h/78901-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,9157 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html> +<html lang="en"> +<head> + <meta charset="UTF-8"> + <title> + Books in General | Project Gutenberg + </title> + <link rel="icon" href="images/cover.jpg" type="image/x-cover"> + <style> + +a { + text-decoration: none; +} + +body { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; +} + +h1,h2,h3 { + text-align: center; + clear: both; +} + +h2.nobreak { + page-break-before: avoid; +} + +hr.chap { + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + clear: both; + width: 65%; + margin-left: 17.5%; + margin-right: 17.5%; +} + +img.w100 { + width: 100%; +} + +div.chapter { + page-break-before: always; +} + +ul { + list-style-type: none; +} + +li { + margin-top: .5em; + padding-left: 2em; + text-indent: -2em; +} + +p { + margin-top: 0.5em; + text-align: justify; + margin-bottom: 0.5em; + text-indent: 1em; +} + +table { + margin: 1em auto 1em auto; + max-width: 40em; + border-collapse: collapse; +} + +td { + padding-left: 2.25em; + padding-right: 0.25em; + vertical-align: top; + text-indent: -2em; + text-align: justify; +} + +.tdpg { + vertical-align: bottom; + text-align: right; +} + +.antiqua { + font-style: normal; +} + +blockquote { + margin: 1.5em 10%; +} + +.box { + margin: auto; + width: 30em; + height: 40em; + border: double black; +} + +.box2 { + margin: 1em auto auto 1em; + width: 18em; + border: thin solid black; +} + +.center { + text-align: center; + text-indent: 0; +} + +.figcenter { + margin: auto; + text-align: center; +} + +.footnotes { + margin-top: 1em; + border: dashed 1px; +} + +.footnote { + margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + font-size: 0.9em; +} + +.footnote .label { + position: absolute; + right: 84%; + text-align: right; +} + +.fnanchor { + vertical-align: super; + font-size: .8em; + text-decoration: none; +} + +.hanging { + padding-left: 2em; + text-indent: -2em; +} + +.larger { + font-size: 150%; +} + +.noindent { + text-indent: 0; +} + +.pagenum { + position: absolute; + right: 4%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + font-style: normal; +} + +.poetry-container { + text-align: center; +} + +.poetry { + display: inline-block; + text-align: left; +} + +.poetry .stanza { + margin: 1em 0em 1em 0em; +} + +.poetry .verse { + padding-left: 3em; +} + +.poetry .indent0 {text-indent: -3.0em;} +.poetry .indent2 {text-indent: -2.0em;} +.poetry .indent4 {text-indent: -1.0em;} +.poetry .indent6 {text-indent: 0.0em;} +.poetry .indent8 {text-indent: 1.0em;} +.poetry .indent10 {text-indent: 2.0em;} +.poetry .indent12 {text-indent: 3.0em;} +.poetry .indent18 {text-indent: 6.0em;} + +.right { + text-align: right; +} + +.smaller { + font-size: 80%; +} + +.smcap { + font-variant: small-caps; + font-style: normal; +} + +.spacer { + margin-left: 4em; +} + +.titlepage { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 3em; + text-indent: 0; +} + +.x-ebookmaker img { + max-width: 100%; + width: auto; + height: auto; +} + +.x-ebookmaker .poetry { + display: block; + margin-left: 1.5em; +} + +.x-ebookmaker blockquote { + margin: 1.5em 5%; +} + +/* Illustration classes */ +.illowp100 {width: 100%;} +.illowp85 {width: 85%;} +.x-ebookmaker .illowp85 {width: 100%;} + </style> + </head> + +<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 & +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.⁠<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<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, & 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 &c.: & 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<a id="FNanchor_3" href="#Footnote_3" class="fnanchor">[3]</a>⁠</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> diff --git a/78901-h/images/cover.jpg b/78901-h/images/cover.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..3759b93 --- /dev/null +++ b/78901-h/images/cover.jpg diff --git a/78901-h/images/doggo.jpg b/78901-h/images/doggo.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..c7aa4ce --- /dev/null +++ b/78901-h/images/doggo.jpg diff --git a/78901-h/images/knopf.jpg b/78901-h/images/knopf.jpg Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..aae558c --- /dev/null +++ b/78901-h/images/knopf.jpg |
