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diff --git a/old/advbk10.txt b/old/advbk10.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6967630 --- /dev/null +++ b/old/advbk10.txt @@ -0,0 +1,8154 @@ +Project Gutenberg Etext of Adventures among Books, by Andrew Lang +#19 in our series by Andrew Lang + + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world, be sure to check +the copyright laws for your country before posting these files!! + +Please take a look at the important information in this header. +We encourage you to keep this file on your own disk, keeping an +electronic path open for the next readers. Do not remove this. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**Etexts Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*These Etexts Prepared By Hundreds of Volunteers and Donations* + +Information on contacting Project Gutenberg to get Etexts, and +further information is included below. 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FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END* + + + + + +This etext was prepared by David Price, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk +from the 1912 Longmans, Green and Co. edition. + + + + + +ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS + +by Andrew Lang + + + + +Contents: + +Preface +Adventures Among Books +Recollections of Robert Louis Stevenson +Rab's Friend +Oliver Wendell Holmes +Mr. Morris's Poems +Mrs. Radcliffe's Novels +A Scottish Romanticist of 1830 +The Confessions of Saint Augustine +Smollett +Nathaniel Hawthorne +The Paradise of Poets +Paris and Helen +Enchanted Cigarettes +Stories and Story-telling +The Supernatural in Fiction +An Old Scottish Psychical Researcher +The Boy + + + +PREFACE + + + +Of the Essays in this volume "Adventures among Books," and "Rab's +Friend," appeared in Scribner's Magazine; and "Recollections of +Robert Louis Stevenson" (to the best of the author's memory) in The +North American Review. The Essay on "Smollett" was in the Anglo- +Saxon, which has ceased to appear; and the shorter papers, such as +"The Confessions of Saint Augustine," in a periodical styled Wit +and Wisdom. For "The Poems of William Morris" the author has to +thank the Editor of Longman's Magazine; for "The Boy," and "Mrs. +Radcliffe's Novels," the Proprietors of The Cornhill Magazine; for +"Enchanted Cigarettes," and possibly for "The Supernatural in +Fiction," the Proprietors of The Idler. The portrait, after Sir +William Richmond, R.A., was done about the time when most of the +Essays were written--and that was not yesterday. + + + +CHAPTER I: ADVENTURES AMONG BOOKS + + + +In an age of reminiscences, is there room for the confessions of a +veteran, who remembers a great deal about books and very little +about people? I have often wondered that a Biographia Literaria +has so seldom been attempted--a biography or autobiography of a man +in his relations with other minds. Coleridge, to be sure, gave +this name to a work of his, but he wandered from his apparent +purpose into a world of alien disquisitions. The following pages +are frankly bookish, and to the bookish only do they appeal. The +habit of reading has been praised as a virtue, and has been +denounced as a vice. In no case, if we except the perpetual study +of newspapers (which cannot fairly be called reading), is the vice, +or the virtue, common. It is more innocent than opium-eating, +though, like opium-eating, it unlocks to us artificial paradises. +I try to say what I have found in books, what distractions from the +world, what teaching (not much), and what consolations. + +In beginning an autobiographia literaria, an account of how, and in +what order, books have appealed to a mind, which books have ever +above all things delighted, the author must pray to be pardoned for +the sin of egotism. There is no other mind, naturally, of which +the author knows so much as of his own. On n'a que soi, as the +poor girl says in one of M. Paul Bourget's novels. In literature, +as in love, one can only speak for himself. This author did not, +like Fulke Greville, retire into the convent of literature from the +strife of the world, rather he was born to be, from the first, a +dweller in the cloister of a library. Among the poems which I +remember best out of early boyhood is Lucy Ashton's song, in the +"Bride of Lammermoor":- + + +"Look not thou on beauty's charming, +Sit thou still when kings are arming, +Taste not when the wine-cup glistens, +Speak not when the people listens, +Stop thine ear against the singer, +From the red gold keep thy finger, +Vacant heart, and hand, and eye, +Easy live and quiet die." + + +The rhymes, unlearned, clung to my memory; they would sing +themselves to me on the way to school, or cricket-field, and, about +the age of ten, probably without quite understanding them, I had +chosen them for a kind of motto in life, a tune to murmur along the +fallentis semita vitae. This seems a queer idea for a small boy, +but it must be confessed. + +"It takes all sorts to make a world," some are soldiers from the +cradle, some merchants, some orators; nothing but a love of books +was the gift given to me by the fairies. It was probably derived +from forebears on both sides of my family, one a great reader, the +other a considerable collector of books which remained with us and +were all tried, persevered with, or abandoned in turn, by a student +who has not blanched before the Epigoniad. + +About the age of four I learned to read by a simple process. I had +heard the elegy of Cock Robin till I knew it by rote, and I picked +out the letters and words which compose that classic till I could +read it for myself. Earlier than that, "Robinson Crusoe" had been +read aloud to me, in an abbreviated form, no doubt. I remember the +pictures of Robinson finding the footstep in the sand, and a dance +of cannibals, and the parrot. But, somehow, I have never read +"Robinson" since: it is a pleasure to come. + +The first books which vividly impressed me were, naturally, fairy +tales, and chap-books about Robert Bruce, William Wallace, and Rob +Roy. At that time these little tracts could be bought for a penny +apiece. I can still see Bruce in full armour, and Wallace in a +kilt, discoursing across a burn, and Rob Roy slipping from the +soldier's horse into the stream. They did not then awaken a +precocious patriotism; a boy of five is more at home in Fairyland +than in his own country. The sudden appearance of the White Cat as +a queen after her head was cut off, the fiendish malice of the +Yellow Dwarf, the strange cake of crocodile eggs and millet seed +which the mother of the Princess Frutilla made for the Fairy of the +Desert--these things, all fresh and astonishing, but certainly to +be credited, are my first memories of romance. One story of a +White Serpent, with a woodcut of that mysterious reptile, I +neglected to secure, probably for want of a penny, and I have +regretted it ever since. One never sees those chap books now. +"The White Serpent," in spite of all research, remains introuvable. +It was a lost chance, and Fortune does not forgive. Nobody ever +interfered with these, or indeed with any other studies of ours at +that time, as long as they were not prosecuted on Sundays. "The +fightingest parts of the Bible," and the Apocrypha, and stories +like that of the Witch of Endor, were sabbatical literature, read +in a huge old illustrated Bible. How I advanced from the fairy +tales to Shakespeare, what stages there were on the way--for there +must have been stages--is a thing that memory cannot recover. A +nursery legend tells that I was wont to arrange six open books on +six chairs, and go from one to the others, perusing them by turns. +No doubt this was what people call "desultory reading," but I did +not hear the criticism till later, and then too often for my +comfort. Memory holds a picture, more vivid than most, of a small +boy reading the "Midsummer Night's Dream" by firelight, in a room +where candles were lit, and some one touched the piano, and a young +man and a girl were playing chess. The Shakespeare was a volume of +Kenny Meadows' edition; there are fairies in it, and the fairies +seemed to come out of Shakespeare's dream into the music and the +firelight. At that moment I think that I was happy; it seemed an +enchanted glimpse of eternity in Paradise; nothing resembling it +remains with me, out of all the years. + +We went from the border to the south of England, when the number of +my years was six, and in England we found another paradise, a +circulating library with brown, greasy, ill-printed, odd volumes of +Shakespeare and of the "Arabian Nights." How their stained pages +come before the eyes again--the pleasure and the puzzle of them! +What did the lady in the Geni's glass box want with the Merchants? +what meant all these conversations between the Fat Knight and Ford, +in the "Merry Wives"? It was delightful, but in parts it was +difficult. Fragments of "The Tempest," and of other plays, remain +stranded in my memory from these readings: Ferdinand and Miranda +at chess, Cleopatra cuffing the messenger, the asp in the basket of +figs, the Friar and the Apothecary, Troilus on the Ilian walls, a +vision of Cassandra in white muslin with her hair down. People +forbid children to read this or that. I am sure they need not, and +that even in our infancy the magician, Shakespeare, brings us +nothing worse than a world of beautiful visions, half realised. In +the Egyptian wizard's little pool of ink, only the pure can see the +visions, and in Shakespeare's magic mirror children see only what +is pure. Among other books of that time I only recall a kind of +Sunday novel, "Naomi; or, The Last Days of Jerusalem." Who, +indeed, could forget the battering-rams, and the man who cried on +the battlements, "Woe, woe to myself and to Jerusalem!" I seem to +hear him again when boys break the hum of London with yells of the +latest "disaster." + +We left England in a year, went back to Scotland, and awoke, as it +were, to know the glories of our birth. We lived in Scott's +country, within four miles of Abbotsford, and, so far, we had heard +nothing of it. I remember going with one of the maids into the +cottage of a kinsman of hers, a carpenter; a delightful place, +where there was sawdust, where our first fishing-rods were +fashioned. Rummaging among the books, of course, I found some +cheap periodical with verses in it. The lines began - + + +"The Baron of Smaylhome rose with day, +He spurred his courser on, +Without stop or stay, down the rocky way +That leads to Brotherstone." + + +A rustic tea-table was spread for us, with scones and honey, not to +be neglected. But they WERE neglected till we had learned how - + + +"The sable score of fingers four +Remains on that board impressed, +And for evermore that lady wore +A covering on her wrist." + + +We did not know nor ask the poet's name. Children, probably, say +very little about what is in their minds; but that unhappy knight, +Sir Richard of Coldinghame, and the Priest, with his chamber in the +east, and the moody Baron, and the Lady, have dwelt in our mind +ever since, and hardly need to be revived by looking at "The Eve of +St. John." + +Soon after that we were told about Sir Walter, how great he was, +how good, how, like Napoleon, his evil destiny found him at last, +and he wore his heart away for honour's sake. And we were given +the "Lay," and "The Lady of the Lake." It was my father who first +read "Tam o' Shanter" to me, for which I confess I did not care at +that time, preferring to take witches and bogies with great +seriousness. It seemed as if Burns were trifling with a noble +subject. But it was in a summer sunset, beside a window looking +out on Ettrick and the hill of the Three Brethren's Cairn, that I +first read, with the dearest of all friends, how - + + +"The stag at eve had drunk his fill +Where danced the moon on Monan's rill, +And deep his midnight lair had made +In lone Glenartney's hazel shade." + + +Then opened the gates of romance, and with Fitz-James we drove the +chase, till - + + +"Few were the stragglers, following far, +That reached the lake of Vennachar, +And when the Brig of Turk was won, +The foremost horseman rode alone." + + +From that time, for months, there was usually a little volume of +Scott in one's pocket, in company with the miscellaneous collection +of a boy's treasures. Scott certainly took his fairy folk +seriously, and the Mauth Dog was rather a disagreeable companion to +a small boy in wakeful hours. {1} After this kind of introduction +to Sir Walter, after learning one's first lessons in history from +the "Tales of a Grandfather," nobody, one hopes, can criticise him +in cold blood, or after the manner of Mr. Leslie Stephen, who is +not sentimental. Scott is not an author like another, but our +earliest known friend in letters; for, of course, we did not ask +who Shakespeare was, nor inquire about the private history of +Madame d'Aulnoy. Scott peopled for us the rivers and burnsides +with his reivers; the Fairy Queen came out of Eildon Hill and +haunted Carterhaugh; at Newark Tower we saw "the embattled portal +arch" - + + +"Whose ponderous grate and massy bar +Had oft rolled back the tide of war," - + + +just as, at Foulshiels, on Yarrow, we beheld the very roofless +cottage whence Mungo Park went forth to trace the waters of the +Niger, and at Oakwood the tower of the Wizard Michael Scott. + +Probably the first novel I ever read was read at Elgin, and the +story was "Jane Eyre." This tale was a creepy one for a boy of +nine, and Rochester was a mystery, St. John a bore. But the lonely +little girl in her despair, when something came into the room, and +her days of starvation at school, and the terrible first Mrs. +Rochester, were not to be forgotten. They abide in one's +recollection with a Red Indian's ghost, who carried a rusty ruined +gun, and whose acquaintance was made at the same time. + +I fancy I was rather an industrious little boy, and that I had +minded my lessons, and satisfied my teachers--I know I was reading +Pinnock's "History of Rome" for pleasure--till "the wicked day of +destiny" came, and I felt a "call," and underwent a process which +may be described as the opposite of "conversion." The "call" came +from Dickens. "Pickwick" was brought into the house. From that +hour it was all over, for five or six years, with anything like +industry and lesson-books. I read "Pickwick" in convulsions of +mirth. I dropped Pinnock's "Rome" for good. I neglected +everything printed in Latin, in fact everything that one was +understood to prepare for one's classes in the school whither I was +now sent, in Edinburgh. For there, living a rather lonely small +boy in the house of an aged relation, I found the Waverley Novels. +The rest is transport. A conscientious tutor dragged me through +the Latin grammar, and a constitutional dislike to being beaten on +the hands with a leather strap urged me to acquire a certain amount +of elementary erudition. But, for a year, I was a young hermit, +living with Scott in the "Waverleys" and the "Border Minstrelsy," +with Pope, and Prior, and a translation of Ariosto, with Lever and +Dickens, David Copperfield and Charles O'Malley, Longfellow and +Mayne Reid, Dumas, and in brief, with every kind of light +literature that I could lay my hands upon. Carlyle did not escape +me; I vividly remember the helpless rage with which I read of the +Flight to Varennes. In his work on French novelists, Mr. +Saintsbury speaks of a disagreeable little boy, in a French +romance, who found Scott assommant, stunningly stupid. This was a +very odious little boy, it seems (I have not read his adventures), +and he came, as he deserved, to a bad end. Other and better boys, +I learn, find Scott "slow." Extraordinary boys! Perhaps "Ivanhoe" +was first favourite of yore; you cannot beat Front de Boeuf, the +assault on his castle, the tournament. No other tournament need +apply. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, greatly daring, has attempted to +enter the lists, but he is a mere Ralph the Hospitaller. Next, I +think, in order of delight, came "Quentin Durward," especially the +hero of the scar, whose name Thackeray could not remember, +Quentin's uncle. Then "The Black Dwarf," and Dugald, our dear +Rittmeister. I could not read "Rob Roy" then, nor later; nay, not +till I was forty. Now Di Vernon is the lady for me; the queen of +fiction, the peerless, the brave, the tender, and true. + +The wisdom of the authorities decided that I was to read no more +novels, but, as an observer remarked, "I don't see what is the use +of preventing the boy from reading novels, for he's just reading +'Don Juan' instead." This was so manifestly no improvement, that +the ban on novels was tacitly withdrawn, or was permitted to become +a dead letter. They were far more enjoyable than Byron. The worst +that came of this was the suggestion of a young friend, whose life +had been adventurous--indeed he had served in the Crimea with the +Bashi Bazouks--that I should master the writings of Edgar Poe. I +do not think that the "Black Cat," and the "Fall of the House of +Usher," and the "Murders in the Rue Morgue," are very good reading +for a boy who is not peculiarly intrepid. Many a bad hour they +gave me, haunting me, especially, with a fear of being prematurely +buried, and of waking up before breakfast to find myself in a +coffin. Of all the books I devoured in that year, Poe is the only +author whom I wish I had reserved for later consideration, and whom +I cannot conscientiously recommend to children. + +I had already enjoyed a sip of Thackeray, reading at a venture, in +"Vanity Fair," about the Battle of Waterloo. It was not like +Lever's accounts of battles, but it was enchanting. However, +"Vanity Fair" was under a taboo. It is not easy to say why; but +Mr. Thackeray himself informed a small boy, whom he found reading +"Vanity Fair" under the table, that he had better read something +else. What harm can the story do to a child? He reads about +Waterloo, about fat Jos, about little George and the pony, about +little Rawdon and the rat-hunt, and is happy and unharmed. + +Leaving my hermitage, and going into the very different and very +disagreeable world of a master's house, I was lucky enough to find +a charming library there. Most of Thackeray was on the shelves, +and Thackeray became the chief enchanter. As Henry Kingsley says, +a boy reads him and thinks he knows all about life. I do not think +that the mundane parts, about Lady Kew and her wiles, about Ethel +and the Marquis of Farintosh, appealed to one or enlightened one. +Ethel was a mystery, and not an interesting mystery, though one +used to copy Doyle's pictures of her, with the straight nose, the +impossible eyes, the impossible waist. It was not Ethel who +captivated us; it was Clive's youth and art, it was J. J., the +painter, it was jolly F. B. and his address to the maid about the +lobster. "A finer fish, Mary, my dear, I have never seen. Does +not this solve the vexed question whether lobsters are fish, in the +French sense?" Then "The Rose and the Ring" came out. It was +worth while to be twelve years old, when the Christmas books were +written by Dickens and Thackeray. I got hold of "The Rose and the +Ring," I know, and of the "Christmas Carol," when they were damp +from the press. King Valoroso, and Bulbo, and Angelica were even +more delightful than Scrooge, and Tiny Tim, and Trotty Veck. One +remembers the fairy monarch more vividly, and the wondrous array of +egg-cups from which he sipped brandy--or was it right Nantes?-- +still "going on sipping, I am sorry to say," even after "Valoroso +was himself again." + +But, of all Thackeray's books, I suppose "Pendennis" was the +favourite. The delightful Marryat had entertained us with Peter +Simple and O'Brien (how good their flight through France is!) with +Mesty and Mr. Midshipman Easy, with Jacob Faithful (Mr. Thackeray's +favourite), and with Snarleyyow; but Marryat never made us wish to +run away to sea. That did not seem to be one's vocation. But the +story of Pen made one wish to run away to literature, to the +Temple, to streets where Brown, the famous reviewer, might be seen +walking with his wife and umbrella. The writing of poems "up to" +pictures, the beer with Warrington in the mornings, the suppers in +the back-kitchen, these were the alluring things, not society, and +Lady Rockminster, and Lord Steyne. Well, one has run away to +literature since, but where is the matutinal beer? Where is the +back-kitchen? Where are Warrington, and Foker, and F. B.? I have +never met them in this living world, though Brown, the celebrated +reviewer, is familiar to me, and also Mr. Sydney Scraper, of the +Oxford and Cambridge Club. Perhaps back-kitchens exist, perhaps +there are cakes and ale in the life literary, and F. B. may take +his walks by the Round Pond. But one never encounters these +rarities, and Bungay and Bacon are no longer the innocent and +ignorant rivals whom Thackeray drew. They do not give those +wonderful parties; Miss Bunnion has become quite conventional; +Percy Popjoy has abandoned letters; Mr. Wenham does not toady; Mr. +Wagg does not joke any more. The literary life is very like any +other, in London, or is it that we do not see it aright, not having +the eyes of genius? Well, a life on the ocean wave, too, may not +be so desirable as it seems in Marryat's novels: so many a lad +whom he tempted into the navy has discovered. The best part of the +existence of a man of letters is his looking forward to it through +the spectacles of Titmarsh. + +One can never say how much one owes to a school-master who was a +friend of literature, who kept a houseful of books, and who was +himself a graceful scholar, and an author, while he chose to write, +of poetic and humorous genius. Such was the master who wrote the +"Day Dreams of a Schoolmaster," Mr. D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson, to +whom, in this place, I am glad to confess my gratitude after all +these many years. While we were deep in the history of Pendennis +we were also being dragged through the Commentaries of Caius Julius +Caesar, through the Latin and Greek grammars, through Xenophon, and +the Eclogues of Virgil, and a depressing play of Euripides, the +"Phoenissae." I can never say how much I detested these authors, +who, taken in small doses, are far, indeed, from being attractive. +Horace, to a lazy boy, appears in his Odes to have nothing to say, +and to say it in the most frivolous and vexatious manner. Then +Cowper's "Task," or "Paradise Lost," as school-books, with notes, +seems arid enough to a school-boy. I remember reading ahead, in +Cowper, instead of attending to the lesson and the class-work. His +observations on public schools were not uninteresting, but the +whole English school-work of those days was repugnant. One's +English education was all got out of school. + +As to Greek, for years it seemed a mere vacuous terror; one +invented for one's self all the current arguments against +"compulsory Greek." What was the use of it, who ever spoke in it, +who could find any sense in it, or any interest? A language with +such cruel superfluities as a middle voice and a dual; a language +whose verbs were so fantastically irregular, looked like a barbaric +survival, a mere plague and torment. So one thought till Homer was +opened before us. Elsewhere I have tried to describe the vivid +delight of first reading Homer, delight, by the way, which St. +Augustine failed to appreciate. Most boys not wholly immersed in +dulness felt it, I think; to myself, for one, Homer was the real +beginning of study. One had tried him, when one was very young, in +Pope, and had been baffled by Pope, and his artificial manner, his +"fairs," and "swains." Homer seemed better reading in the absurd +"crib" which Mr. Buckley wrote for Bohn's series. Hector and Ajax, +in that disguise, were as great favourites as Horatius on the +Bridge, or the younger Tarquin. Scott, by the way, must have made +one a furious and consistent Legitimist. In reading the "Lays of +Ancient Rome," my sympathies were with the expelled kings, at least +with him who fought so well at Lake Regillus:- + + +"Titus, the youngest Tarquin, +Too good for such a breed." + + +Where - + + +"Valerius struck at Titus, +And lopped off half his crest; +But Titus stabbed Valerius +A span deep in the breast," - + + +I find, on the margin of my old copy, in a schoolboy's hand, the +words "Well done, the Jacobites!" Perhaps my politics have never +gone much beyond this sentiment. But this is a digression from +Homer. The very sound of the hexameter, that long, inimitable roll +of the most various music, was enough to win the heart, even if the +words were not understood. But the words proved unexpectedly easy +to understand, full as they are of all nobility, all tenderness, +all courage, courtesy, and romance. The "Morte d'Arthur" itself, +which about this time fell into our hands, was not so dear as the +"Odyssey," though for a boy to read Sir Thomas Malory is to ride at +adventure in enchanted forests, to enter haunted chapels where a +light shines from the Graal, to find by lonely mountain meres the +magic boat of Sir Galahad. + +After once being initiated into the mysteries of Greece by Homer, +the work at Greek was no longer tedious. Herodotus was a charming +and humorous story-teller, and, as for Thucydides, his account of +the Sicilian Expedition and its ending was one of the very rare +things in literature which almost, if not quite, brought tears into +one's eyes. Few passages, indeed, have done that, and they are +curiously discrepant. The first book that ever made me cry, of +which feat I was horribly ashamed, was "Uncle Tom's Cabin," with +the death of Eva, Topsy's friend. Then it was trying when Colonel +Newcome said Adsum, and the end of Socrates in the Phaedo moved one +more than seemed becoming--these, and a passage in the history of +Skalagrim Lamb's Tail, and, as I said, the ruin of the Athenians in +the Syracusan Bay. I have read these chapters in an old French +version derived through the Italian from a Latin translation of +Thucydides. Even in this far-descended form, the tale keeps its +pathos; the calm, grave stamp of that tragic telling cannot be worn +away by much handling, by long time, by the many changes of human +speech. "Others too," says Nicias, in that fatal speech, when - + + +"All was done that men may do, +And all was done in vain," - + + +"having achieved what men may, have borne what men must." This is +the very burden of life, and the last word of tragedy. For now all +is vain: courage, wisdom, piety, the bravery of Lamachus, the +goodness of Nicias, the brilliance of Alcibiades, all are expended, +all wasted, nothing of that brave venture abides, except torture, +defeat, and death. No play not poem of individual fortunes is so +moving as this ruin of a people; no modern story can stir us, with +all its eloquence, like the brief gravity of this ancient history. +Nor can we find, at the last, any wisdom more wise than that which +bids us do what men may, and bear what men must. Such are the +lessons of the Greek, of the people who tried all things, in the +morning of the world, and who still speak to us of what they tried +in words which are the sum of human gaiety and gloom, of grief and +triumph, hope and despair. The world, since their day, has but +followed in the same round, which only seems new: has only made +the same experiments, and failed with the same failure, but less +gallantly and less gloriously. + +One's school-boy adventures among books ended not long after +winning the friendship of Homer and Thucydides, of Lucretius and +Catullus. One's application was far too desultory to make a +serious and accurate scholar. + +I confess to having learned the classical languages, as it were by +accident, for the sake of what is in them, and with a provokingly +imperfect accuracy. Cricket and trout occupied far too much of my +mind and my time: Christopher North, and Walton, and Thomas Tod +Stoddart, and "The Moor and the Loch," were my holiday reading, and +I do not regret it. Philologists and Ireland scholars are not made +so, but you can, in no way, fashion a scholar out of a casual and +inaccurate intelligence. The true scholar is one whom I envy, +almost as much as I respect him; but there is a kind of mental +short-sightedness, where accents and verbal niceties are concerned, +which cannot be sharpened into true scholarship. Yet, even for +those afflicted in this way, and with the malady of being "idle, +careless little boys," the ancient classics have a value for which +there is no substitute. There is a charm in finding ourselves--our +common humanity, our puzzles, our cares, our joys, in the writings +of men severed from us by race, religion, speech, and half the gulf +of historical time--which no other literary pleasure can equal. +Then there is to be added, as the university preacher observed, +"the pleasure of despising our fellow-creatures who do not know +Greek." Doubtless in that there is great consolation. + +It would be interesting, were it possible, to know what proportion +of people really care for poetry, and how the love of poetry came +to them, and grew in them, and where and when it stopped. Modern +poets whom one meets are apt to say that poetry is not read at all. +Byron's Murray ceased to publish poetry in 1830, just when Tennyson +and Browning were striking their preludes. Probably Mr. Murray was +wise in his generation. But it is also likely that many persons, +even now, are attached to poetry, though they certainly do not buy +contemporary verse. How did the passion come to them? How long +did it stay? When did the Muse say good-bye? To myself, as I have +remarked, poetry came with Sir Walter Scott, for one read +Shakespeare as a child, rather in a kind of dream of fairyland and +enchanted isles, than with any distinct consciousness that one was +occupied with poetry. Next to Scott, with me, came Longfellow, who +pleased one as more reflective and tenderly sentimental, while the +reflections were not so deep as to be puzzling. I remember how +"Hiawatha" came out, when one was a boy, and how delightful was the +free forest life, and Minnehaha, and Paupukkeewis, and Nokomis. +One did not then know that the same charm, with a yet fresher dew +upon it, was to meet one later, in the "Kalewala." But, at that +time, one had no conscious pleasure in poetic style, except in such +ringing verse as Scott's, and Campbell's in his patriotic pieces. +The pleasure and enchantment of style first appealed to me, at +about the age of fifteen, when one read for the first time - + + +"So all day long the noise of battle rolled +Among the mountains by the winter sea; +Until King Arthur's Table, man by man, +Had fallen in Lyonnesse about their Lord." + + +Previously one had only heard of Mr. Tennyson as a name. When a +child I was told that a poet was coming to a house in the Highlands +where we chanced to be, a poet named Tennyson. "Is he a poet like +Sir Walter Scott?" I remember asking, and was told, "No, he was not +like Sir Walter Scott." Hearing no more of him, I was prowling +among the books in an ancient house, a rambling old place with a +ghost-room, where I found Tupper, and could not get on with +"Proverbial Philosophy." Next I tried Tennyson, and instantly a +new light of poetry dawned, a new music was audible, a new god came +into my medley of a Pantheon, a god never to be dethroned. "Men +scarcely know how beautiful fire is," Shelley says. I am convinced +that we scarcely know how great a poet Lord Tennyson is; use has +made him too familiar. The same hand has "raised the Table Round +again," that has written the sacred book of friendship, that has +lulled us with the magic of the "Lotus Eaters," and the melody of +"Tithonus." He has made us move, like his own Prince - + + +"Among a world of ghosts, +And feel ourselves the shadows of a dream." + + +He has enriched our world with conquests of romance; he has recut +and reset a thousand ancient gems of Greece and Rome; he has roused +our patriotism; he has stirred our pity; there is hardly a human +passion but he has purged it and ennobled it, including "this of +love." Truly, the Laureate remains the most various, the sweetest, +the most exquisite, the most learned, the most Virgilian of all +English poets, and we may pity the lovers of poetry who died before +Tennyson came. + +Here may end the desultory tale of a desultory bookish boyhood. It +was not in nature that one should not begin to rhyme for one's +self. But those exercises were seldom even written down; they +lived a little while in a memory which has lost them long ago. I +do remember me that I tried some of my attempts on my dear mother, +who said much what Dryden said to "Cousin Swift," "You will never +be a poet," a decision in which I straightway acquiesced. For to +rhyme is one thing, to be a poet quite another. A good deal of +mortification would be avoided if young men and maidens only kept +this obvious fact well posed in front of their vanity and their +ambition. + +In these bookish memories I have said nothing about religion and +religious books, for various reasons. But, unlike other Scots of +the pen, I got no harm from "The Shorter Catechism," of which I +remember little, and neither then nor now was or am able to +understand a single sentence. Some precocious metaphysicians +comprehended and stood aghast at justification, sanctification, +adoption, and effectual calling. These, apparently, were necessary +processes in the Scottish spiritual life. But we were not told +what they meant, nor were we distressed by a sense that we had not +passed through them. From most children, one trusts, Calvinism ran +like water off a duck's back; unlucky were they who first absorbed, +and later were compelled to get rid of, "The Shorter Catechism!" + +One good thing, if no more, these memories may accomplish. Young +men, especially in America, write to me and ask me to recommend "a +course of reading." Distrust a course of reading! People who +really care for books READ ALL OF THEM. There is no other course. +Let this be a reply. No other answer shall they get from me, the +inquiring young men. + + +II + + +People talk, in novels, about the delights of a first love. One +may venture to doubt whether everybody exactly knows which was his, +or her, first love, of men or women, but about our first loves in +books there can be no mistake. They were, and remain, the dearest +of all; after boyhood the bloom is off the literary rye. The first +parcel of these garrulities ended when the author left school, at +about the age of seventeen. One's literary equipment seems to have +been then almost as complete as it ever will be, one's tastes +definitely formed, one's favourites already chosen. As long as we +live we hope to read, but we never can "recapture the first fine +careless rapture." Besides, one begins to write, and that is +fatal. My own first essays were composed at school--for other +boys. Not long ago the gentleman who was then our English master +wrote to me, informing me he was my earliest public, and that he +had never credited my younger brother with the essays which that +unscrupulous lad ("I speak of him but brotherly") was accustomed to +present for his consideration. + +On leaving school at seventeen I went to St. Leonard's Hall, in the +University of St. Andrews. That is the oldest of Scotch +universities, and was founded by a papal bull. St. Leonard's Hall, +after having been a hospitium for pilgrims, a home for old ladies +(about 1500), and a college in the University, was now a kind of +cross between a master's house at school, and, as before 1750, a +college. We had more liberty than schoolboys, less than English +undergraduates. In the Scotch universities the men live scattered, +in lodgings, and only recently, at St. Andrews, have they begun to +dine together in hall. We had a common roof, common dinners, wore +scarlet gowns, possessed football and cricket clubs, and started, +of course, a kind of weekly magazine. It was only a manuscript +affair, and was profusely illustrated. For the only time in my +life, I was now an editor, under a sub-editor, who kept me up to my +work, and cut out my fine passages. The editor's duty was to write +most of the magazine--to write essays, reviews (of books by the +professors, very severe), novels, short stories, poems, +translations, also to illustrate these, and to "fag" his friends +for "copy" and drawings. A deplorable flippancy seems, as far as +one remembers, to have been the chief characteristic of the +periodical--flippancy and an abundant use of the supernatural. +These were the days of Lord' Lytton's "Strange Story," which I +continue to think a most satisfactory romance. Inspired by Lord +Lytton, and aided by the University library, I read Cornelius +Agrippa, Trithemius, Petrus de Abano, Michael Scott, and struggled +with Iamblichus and Plotinus. + +These are really but disappointing writers. It soon became evident +enough that the devil was not to be raised by their prescriptions, +that the philosopher's stone was beyond the reach of the amateur. +Iamblichus is particularly obscure and tedious. To any young +beginner I would recommend Petrus de Abano, as the most adequate +and gruesome of the school, for "real deevilry and pleesure," while +in the wilderness of Plotinus there are many beautiful passages and +lofty speculations. Two winters in the Northern University, with +the seamy side of school life left behind, among the kindest of +professors--Mr. Sellar, Mr. Ferrier, Mr. Shairp--in the society of +the warden, Mr. Rhoades, and of many dear old friends, are the +happiest time in my life. This was true literary leisure, even if +it was not too well employed, and the religio loci should be a +liberal education in itself. We had debating societies--I hope I +am now forgiven for an attack on the character of Sir William +Wallace, latro quidam, as the chronicler calls him, "a certain +brigand." But I am for ever writing about St. Andrews--writing +inaccurately, too, the Scotch critics declare. "Farewell," we +cried, "dear city of youth and dream," eternally dear and sacred. + +Here we first made acquaintance with Mr. Browning, guided to his +works by a parody which a lady wrote in our little magazine. Mr. +Browning was not a popular poet in 1861. His admirers were few, a +little people, but they were not then in the later mood of +reverence, they did not awfully question the oracles, as in after +years. They read, they admired, they applauded, on occasion they +mocked, good-humouredly. The book by which Mr. Browning was best +known was the two green volumes of "Men and Women." In these, I +still think, is the heart of his genius beating most strenuously +and with an immortal vitality. Perhaps this, for its compass, is +the collection of poetry the most various and rich of modern +English times, almost of any English times. But just as Mr. +Fitzgerald cared little for what Lord Tennyson wrote after 1842, so +I have never been able to feel quite the same enthusiasm for Mr. +Browning's work after "Men and Women." He seems to have more +influence, though that influence is vague, on persons who chiefly +care for thought, than on those who chiefly care for poetry. I +have met a lady who had read "The Ring and the Book" often, the +"Lotus Eaters" not once. Among such students are Mr. Browning's +disciples of the Inner Court: I dwell but in the Court of the +Gentiles. While we all--all who attempt rhyme--have more or less +consciously imitated the manner of Lord Tennyson, Mr. Swinburne, +Mr. Rossetti, such imitations of Mr. Browning are uncommonly +scarce. He is lucky enough not to have had the seed of his flower +stolen and sown everywhere till - + + +"Once again the people +Called it but a weed." + + +The other new poet of these days was Mr. Clough, who has many +undergraduate qualities. But his peculiar wistful scepticism in +religion had then no influence on such of us as were still happily +in the ages of faith. Anything like doubt comes less of reading, +perhaps, than of the sudden necessity which, in almost every life, +puts belief on her trial, and cries for an examination of the +creeds hitherto held upon authority, and by dint of use and wont. +In a different way one can hardly care for Mr. Matthew Arnold, as a +boy, till one has come under the influence of Oxford. So Mr. +Browning was the only poet added to my pantheon at St. Andrews, +though Macaulay then was admitted and appeared to be more the true +model of a prose writer than he seems in the light of later +reflection. Probably we all have a period of admiring Carlyle +almost exclusively. College essays, when the essayist cares for +his work, are generally based on one or the other. Then they +recede into the background. As for their thought, we cannot for +ever remain disciples. We begin to see how much that looks like +thought is really the expression of temperament, and how individual +a thing temperament is, how each of us must construct his world for +himself, or be content to wait for an answer and a synthesis "in +that far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves." So, +for one, in these high matters, I must be content as a "masterless +man" swearing by no philosopher, unless he be the imperial Stoic of +the hardy heart, Marcus Aurelius Antoninus. + +Perhaps nothing in education encourages this incredulity about +"masters" of thought like the history of philosophy. The professor +of moral philosophy, Mr. Ferrier, was a famous metaphysician and +scholar. His lectures on "The History of Greek Philosophy" were an +admirable introduction to the subject, afterwards pursued, in the +original authorities, at Oxford. Mr. Ferrier was an exponent of +other men's ideas so fair and persuasive that, in each new school, +we thought we had discovered the secret. We were physicists with +Thales and that pre-Socratic "company of gallant gentlemen" for +whom Sydney Smith confessed his lack of admiration. We were now +Empedocleans, now believers in Heraclitus, now in Socrates, now in +Plato, now in Aristotle. In each lecture our professor set up a +new master and gently disintegrated him in the next. "Amurath to +Amurath succeeds," as Mr. T. H. Green used to say at Oxford. He +himself became an Amurath, a sultan of thought, even before his +apotheosis as the guide of that bewildered clergyman, Mr. Robert +Elsmere. At Oxford, when one went there, one found Mr. Green +already in the position of a leader of thought, and of young men. +He was a tutor of Balliol, and lectured on Aristotle, and of him +eager youth said, in the words of Omar Khayyam, "HE KNOWS! HE +KNOWS!" What was it that Mr. Green knew? Where was the secret? +To a mind already sceptical about masters, it seemed that the +secret (apart from the tutor's noble simplicity and rare elevation +of character) was a knack of translating St. John and Aristotle +alike into a terminology which we then believed to be Hegelian. +Hegel we knew, not in the original German, but in lectures and in +translations. Reasoning from these inadequate premises, it seemed +to me that Hegel had invented evolution before Mr. Darwin, that his +system showed, so to speak, the spirit at work in evolution, the +something within the wheels. But this was only a personal +impression made on a mind which knew Darwin, and physical +speculations in general, merely in the vague popular way. Mr. +Green's pupils could generally write in his own language, more or +less, and could "envisage" things, as we said then, from his point +of view. To do this was believed, probably without cause, to be +useful in examinations. For one, I could never take it much more +seriously, never believed that "the Absolute," as the Oxford +Spectator said, had really been "got into a corner." The Absolute +has too often been apparently cornered, too often has escaped from +that situation. Somewhere in an old notebook I believe I have a +portrait in pencil of Mr. Green as he wrestled at lecture with +Aristotle, with the Notion, with his chair and table. Perhaps he +was the last of that remarkable series of men, who may have begun +with Wycliffe, among whom Newman's is a famous name, that were +successively accepted at Oxford as knowing something esoteric, as +possessing a shrewd guess at the secret. + + +"None the less +I still came out no wiser than I went." + + +All of these masters and teachers made their mark, probably won +their hold, in the first place, by dint of character, not of some +peculiar views of theology and philosophy. Doubtless it was the +same with Socrates, with Buddha. To be like them, not to believe +with them, is the thing needful. But the younger we are, the less, +perhaps, we see this clearly, and we persuade ourselves that there +is some mystery in these men's possession, some piece of knowledge, +some method of thinking which will lead us to certainty and to +peace. Alas, their secret is incommunicable, and there is no more +a philosophic than there is a royal road to the City. + +This may seem a digression from Adventures among Books into the +Book of Human Life. But while much of education is still orally +communicated by lectures and conversations, many thoughts which are +to be found in books, Greek or German, reach us through the +hearing. There are many pupils who can best be taught in this way; +but, for one, if there be aught that is desirable in a book, I +then, as now, preferred, if I could, to go to the book for it. + +Yet it is odd that one remembers so little of one's undergraduate +readings, apart from the constant study of the ancient classics, +which might not be escaped. Of these the calm wisdom of Aristotle, +in moral thought and in politics, made perhaps the deepest +impression. Probably politicians are the last people who read +Aristotle's "Politics." The work is, indeed, apt to disenchant one +with political life. It is melancholy to see the little Greek +states running the regular round--monarchy, oligarchy, tyranny, +democracy in all its degrees, the "ultimate democracy" of plunder, +lawlessness, license of women, children, and slaves, and then +tyranny again, or subjection to some foreign power. In politics, +too, there is no secret of success, of the happy life for all. +There is no such road to the City, either democratic or royal. +This is the lesson which Aristotle's "Polities" impresses on us, +this and the impossibility of imposing ideal constitutions on +mankind. + +"Whate'er is best administered is best." These are some of the +impressions made at Oxford by the studies of the schools, the more +or less inevitable "curricoolum," as the Scotch gentleman +pronounced the word. But at Oxford, for most men, the regular work +of the schools is only a small part of the literary education. +People read, in different degrees, according to their private +tastes. There are always a few men, at least, who love literary +studies for their own sake, regardless of lectures and of +"classes." In my own time I really believe you could know nothing +which might not "pay" in the schools and prove serviceable in +examinations. But a good deal depended on being able to use your +knowledge by way of literary illustration. Perhaps the cleverest +of my own juniors, since very well known in letters, did not use +his own special vein, even when he had the chance, in writing +answers to questions in examinations. Hence his academic success +was much below his deserts. For my own part, I remember my tutor +saying, "Don't write as if you were writing for a penny paper." +Alas, it was "a prediction, cruel, smart." But, "as yet no sin was +dreamed." + +At my own college we had to write weekly essays, alternately in +English and Latin. This might have been good literary training, +but I fear the essays were not taken very seriously. The chief +object was to make the late learned Dr. Scott bound on his chair by +paradoxes. But nobody ever succeeded. He was experienced in +trash. As for what may be called unacademic literature, there were +not many essays in that art. There have been very literary +generations, as when Corydon and Thyrsis "lived in Oxford as if it +had been a great country house;" so Corydon confessed. Probably +many of the poems by Mr. Matthew Arnold and many of Mr. Swinburne's +early works were undergraduate poems. A later generation produced +"Love in Idleness," a very pleasing volume. But the gods had not +made us poetical. In those days I remember picking up, in the +Union Reading-room, a pretty white quarto, "Atalanta in Calydon," +by A. C. Swinburne. Only once had I seen Mr. Swinburne's name +before, signing a brief tale in Once a Week. "Atalanta" was a +revelation; there was a new and original poet here, a Balliol man, +too. In my own mind "Atalanta" remains the best, the most +beautiful, the most musical of Mr. Swinburne's many poems. He +instantly became the easily parodied model of undergraduate +versifiers. + +Swinburnian prize poems, even, were attempted, without success. As +yet we had not seen Mr. Matthew Arnold's verses. I fell in love +with them, one long vacation, and never fell out of love. He is +not, and cannot be, the poet of the wide world, but his charm is +all the more powerful over those whom he attracts and subdues. He +is the one Oxford poet of Oxford, and his "Scholar Gypsy" is our +"Lycidas." At this time he was Professor of Poetry; but, alas, he +lectured just at the hour when wickets were pitched on Cowley +Marsh, and I never was present at his discourses, at his humorous +prophecies of England's fate, which are coming all too true. So +many weary lectures had to be attended, could not be "cut," that we +abstained from lectures of supererogation, so to speak. For the +rest there was no "literary movement" among contemporary +undergraduates. They read for the schools, and they rowed and +played cricket. We had no poets, except the stroke of the Corpus +boat, Mr. Bridges, and he concealed his courtship of the Muse. +Corpus is a small college, but Mr. Bridges pulled its boat to the +proud place of second on the river. B. N. C. was the head boat, +and even B. N. C. did Corpus bump. But the triumph was brief. B. +N. C. made changes in its crew, got a new ship, drank the foaming +grape, and bumped Corpus back. I think they went head next year, +but not that year. Thus Mr. Bridges, as Kingsley advises, was +doing noble deeds, not dreaming them, at that moment. + +There existed a periodical entirely devoted to verse, but nobody +knew anybody who wrote in it. A comic journal was started; I +remember the pride with which when a freshman, I received an +invitation to join its councils as an artist. I was to do the +caricatures of all things. Now, methought, I shall meet the Oxford +wits of whom I have read. But the wits were unutterably +disappointing, and the whole thing died early and not lamented. +Only one piece of academic literature obtained and deserved +success. This was The Oxford Spectator, a most humorous little +periodical, in shape and size like Addison's famous journal. The +authors were Mr. Reginald Copleston, now Bishop of Colombo, Mr. +Humphry Ward, and Mr. Nolan, a great athlete, who died early. +There have been good periodicals since; many amusing things occur +in the Echoes from the Oxford Magazine, but the Spectator was the +flower of academic journals. "When I look back to my own +experience," says the Spectator, "I find one scene, of all Oxford, +most deeply engraved upon 'the mindful tablets of my soul.' And +yet not a scene, but a fairy compound of smell and sound, and sight +and thought. The wonderful scent of the meadow air just above +Iffley, on a hot May evening, and the gay colours of twenty boats +along the shore, the poles all stretched out from the bank to set +the boats clear, and the sonorous cries of 'ten seconds more,' all +down from the green barge to the lasher. And yet that unrivalled +moment is only typical of all the term; the various elements of +beauty and pleasure are concentrated there." + +Unfortunately, life at Oxford is not all beauty and pleasure. +Things go wrong somehow. Life drops her happy mask. But this has +nothing to do with books. + +About books, however, I have not many more confessions that I care +to make. A man's old self is so far away that he can speak about +it and its adventures almost as if he were speaking about another +who is dead. After taking one's degree, and beginning to write a +little for publication, the topic has a tendency to become much +more personal. My last undergraduate literary discoveries were of +France and the Renaissance. Accidentally finding out that I could +read French, I naturally betook myself to Balzac. If you read him +straight on, without a dictionary, you begin to learn a good many +words. The literature of France has been much more popular in +England lately, but thirty years agone it was somewhat neglected. +There does seem to be something in French poetry which fails to +please "the German paste in our composition." Mr. Matthew Arnold, +a disciple of Sainte-Beuve, never could appreciate French poetry. +A poet-critic has even remarked that the French language is nearly +incapable of poetry! We cannot argue in such matters, where all +depends on the taste and the ear. + +Our ancestors, like the author of the "Faery Queen," translated and +admired Du Bellay and Ronsard; to some critics of our own time this +taste seems a modish affectation. For one, I have ever found an +original charm in the lyrics of the Pleiad, and have taken great +delight in Hugo's amazing variety of music, in the romance of +Alfred de Musset, in the beautiful cameos of Gautier. What is +poetical, if not the "Song of Roland," the only true national epic +since Homer? What is frank, natural verse, if not that of the old +Pastourelles? Where is there naivete of narrative and unconscious +charm, if not in Aucassin et Nicolette? In the long normally +developed literature of France, so variously rich, we find the +nearest analogy to the literature of Greece, though that of England +contains greater masterpieces, and her verse falls more winningly +on the ear. France has no Shakespeare and no Milton; we have no +Moliere and no "Song of Roland." One star differs from another in +glory, but it is a fortunate moment when this planet of France +swims into our ken. Many of our generation saw it first through +Mr. Swinburne's telescope, heard of it in his criticisms, and are +grateful to that watcher of the skies, even if we do not share all +his transports. There then arose at Oxford, out of old French, and +old oak, and old china, a "school" or "movement." It was +aesthetic, and an early purchaser of Mr. William Morris's wall +papers. It existed ten or twelve years before the public "caught +on," as they say, to these delights. But, except one or two of the +masters, the school were only playing at aesthetics, and laughing +at their own performances. There was more fun than fashion in the +cult, which was later revived, developed, and gossiped about more +than enough. + +To a writer now dead, and then first met, I am specially bound in +gratitude--the late Mr. J. F. M'Lennan. Mr. M'Lennan had the most +acute and ingenious of minds which I have encountered. His +writings on early marriage and early religion were revelations +which led on to others. The topic of folk-lore, and the +development of custom and myths, is not generally attractive, to be +sure. Only a few people seem interested in that spectacle, so full +of surprises--the development of all human institutions, from fairy +tales to democracy. In beholding it we learn how we owe all +things, humanly speaking, to the people and to genius. The natural +people, the folk, has supplied us, in its unconscious way, with the +stuff of all our poetry, law, ritual: and genius has selected from +the mass, has turned customs into codes, nursery tales into +romance, myth into science, ballad into epic, magic mummery into +gorgeous ritual. The world has been educated, but not as man would +have trained and taught it. "He led us by a way we knew not," led, +and is leading us, we know not whither; we follow in fear. + +The student of this lore can look back and see the long trodden way +behind him, the winding tracks through marsh and forest and over +burning sands. He sees the caves, the camps, the villages, the +towns where the race has tarried, for shorter times or longer, +strange places many of them, and strangely haunted, desolate +dwellings and inhospitable. But the scarce visible tracks converge +at last on the beaten ways, the ways to that city whither mankind +is wandering, and which it may never win. We have a foreboding of +a purpose which we know not, a sense as of will, working, as we +would not have worked, to a hidden end. + +This is the lesson, I think, of what we call folklore or +anthropology, which to many seems trivial, to many seems dull. It +may become the most attractive and serious of the sciences; +certainly it is rich in strange curiosities, like those mystic +stones which were fingered and arrayed by the pupils in that +allegory of Novalis. I am not likely to regret the accident which +brought me up on fairy tales, and the inquisitiveness which led me +to examine the other fragments of antiquity. But the poetry and +the significance of them are apt to be hidden by the enormous crowd +of details. Only late we find the true meaning of what seems like +a mass of fantastic, savage eccentricities. I very well remember +the moment when it occurred to me, soon after taking my degree, +that the usual ideas about some of these matters were the reverse +of the truth, that the common theory had to be inverted. The +notion was "in the air," it had already flashed on Mannhardt, +probably, but, like the White Knight in "Alice," I claimed it for +"my own invention." + +These reminiscences and reflections have now been produced as far +as 1872, or thereabouts, and it is not my intention to pursue them +further, nor to speak of any living contemporaries who have not won +their way to the classical. In writing of friends and teachers at +Oxford, I have not ventured to express gratitude to those who still +live, still teach, still are the wisest and kindest friends of the +hurrying generations. It is a silence not of thanklessness, but of +respect and devotion. About others--contemporaries, or juniors by +many years--who have instructed, consoled, strengthened, and amused +us, we must also be silent. + + + +CHAPTER II: RECOLLECTIONS OF ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON + + + +TUSITALA + +We spoke of a rest in a Fairy hill of the north, but he +Far from the firths of the east and the racing tides of the west +Sleeps in the sight and the sound of the infinite southern sea, +Weary and well content, in his grave on the Vaea crest. + +Tusitala, the lover of children, the teller of tales, +Giver of counsel and dreams, a wonder, a world's delight, +Looks o'er the labour of men in the plain and the hill, and the +sails +Pass and repass on the sea that he loved, in the day and the night. + +Winds of the west and the east in the rainy season blow, +Heavy with perfume, and all his fragrant woods are wet, +Winds of the east and the west as they wander to and fro, +Bear him the love of the lands he loved, and the long regret. + +Once we were kindest, he said, when leagues of the limitless sea, +Flowed between us, but now that no range of the refluent tides +Sunders us each from each, yet nearer we seem to be, +When only the unbridged stream of the River of Death divides. + + +Before attempting to give any "reminiscences" of Mr. Stevenson, it +is right to observe that reminiscences of him can best be found in +his own works. In his essay on "Child's Play," and in his "Child's +Garden of Verse," he gave to the world his vivid recollections of +his imaginative infancy. In other essays he spoke of his boyhood, +his health, his dreams, his methods of work and study. "The +Silverado Squatters" reveals part of his experience in America. +The Parisian scenes in "The Wrecker" are inspired by his sojourn in +French Bohemia; his journeys are recorded in "Travels with a +Donkey" and "An Inland Voyage"; while his South Sea sketches, which +appeared in periodicals, deal with his Oceanic adventures. He was +the most autobiographical of authors, with an egoism nearly as +complete, and to us as delightful, as the egoism of Montaigne. +Thus, the proper sources of information about the author of +"Kidnapped" are in his delightful books. + +"John's own John," as Dr. Holmes says, may be very unlike his +neighbour's John; but in the case of Mr. Stevenson, his Louis was +very similar to my Louis; I mean that, as he presents his +personality to the world in his writings, even so did that +personality appear to me in our intercourse. The man I knew was +always a boy. + + +"Sing me a song of the lad that is gone," + + +he wrote about Prince Charlie, but in his own case the lad was +never "gone." Like Keats and Shelley, he was, and he looked, of +the immortally young. He and I were at school together, but I was +an elderly boy of seventeen, when he was lost in the crowd of +"gytes," as the members of the lowest form are called. Like all +Scotch people, we had a vague family connection; a great-uncle of +his, I fancy, married an aunt of my own, called for her beauty, +"The Flower of Ettrick." So we had both heard; but these things +were before our day. A lady of my kindred remembers carrying +Stevenson about when he was "a rather peevish baby," and I have +seen a beautiful photograph of him, like one of Raffael's children, +taken when his years were three or four. But I never had heard of +his existence till, in 1873, I think, I was at Mentone, in the +interests of my health. Here I met Mr. Sidney Colvin, now of the +British Museum, and, with Mr. Colvin, Stevenson. He looked as, in +my eyes, he always did look, more like a lass than a lad, with a +rather long, smooth oval face, brown hair worn at greater length +than is common, large lucid eyes, but whether blue or brown I +cannot remember, if brown, certainly light brown. On appealing to +the authority of a lady, I learn that brown WAS the hue. His +colour was a trifle hectic, as is not unusual at Mentone, but he +seemed, under his big blue cloak, to be of slender, yet agile +frame. He was like nobody else whom I ever met. There was a sort +of uncommon celerity in changing expression, in thought and speech. +His cloak and Tyrolese hat (he would admit the innocent +impeachment) were decidedly dear to him. On the frontier of Italy, +why should he not do as the Italians do? It would have been well +for me if I could have imitated the wearing of the cloak! + +I shall not deny that my first impression was not wholly +favourable. "Here," I thought, "is one of your aesthetic young +men, though a very clever one." What the talk was about, I do not +remember; probably of books. Mr. Stevenson afterwards told me that +I had spoken of Monsieur Paul de St. Victor, as a fine writer, but +added that "he was not a British sportsman." Mr. Stevenson +himself, to my surprise, was unable to walk beyond a very short +distance, and, as it soon appeared, he thought his thread of life +was nearly spun. He had just written his essay, "Ordered South," +the first of his published works, for his "Pentland Rising" +pamphlet was unknown, a boy's performance. On reading "Ordered +South," I saw, at once, that here was a new writer, a writer +indeed; one who could do what none of us, nous autres, could rival, +or approach. I was instantly "sealed of the Tribe of Louis," an +admirer, a devotee, a fanatic, if you please. At least my taste +has never altered. From this essay it is plain enough that the +author (as is so common in youth, but with better reason than many +have) thought himself doomed. Most of us have gone through that, +the Millevoye phase, but who else has shown such a wise and gay +acceptance of the apparently inevitable? We parted; I remember +little of our converse, except a shrewd and hearty piece of +encouragement given me by my junior, who already knew so much more +of life than his senior will ever do. For he ran forth to embrace +life like a lover: HIS motto was never Lucy Ashton's- + + +"Vacant heart, and hand, and eye, +Easy live and quiet die." + + +Mr. Stevenson came presently to visit me at Oxford. I make no hand +of reminiscences; I remember nothing about what we did or said, +with one exception, which is not going to be published. I heard of +him, writing essays in the Portfolio and the Cornhill, those +delightful views of life at twenty-five, so brave, so real, so +vivid, so wise, so exquisite, which all should know. How we looked +for "R. L. S." at the end of an article, and how devout was our +belief, how happy our pride, in the young one! + +About 1878, I think (I was now a slave of the quill myself), I +received a brief note from Mr. Stevenson, introducing to me the +person whom, in his essay on his old college magazine, he called +"Glasgow Brown." What his real name was, whence he came, whence +the money came, I never knew. G. B. was going to start a weekly +Tory paper. Would I contribute? G. B. came to see me. Mr. +Stevenson has described him, NOT as I would have described him: +like Mr. Bill Sikes's dog, I have the Christian peculiarity of not +liking dogs "as are not of my breed." G. B.'s paper, London, was +to start next week. He had no writer of political leading +articles. Would I do a "leader"? But I was NOT in favour of Lord +Lytton's Afghan policy. How could I do a Tory leader? Well, I did +a neutral-tinted thing, with citations from Aristophanes! I found +presently some other scribes for G. B. + +What a paper that was! I have heard that G. B. paid in handfuls of +gold, in handfuls of bank-notes. Nobody ever read London, or +advertised in it, or heard of it. It was full of the most +wonderfully clever verses in old French forms. They were (it +afterwards appeared) by Mr. W. E. Henley. Mr. Stevenson himself +astonished and delighted the public of London (that is, the +contributors) by his "New Arabian Nights." Nobody knew about them +but ourselves, a fortunate few. Poor G. B. died and Mr. Henley +became the editor. I may not name the contributors, the flower of +the young lions, elderly lions now, there is a new race. But one +lion, a distinguished and learned lion, said already that fiction, +not essay, was Mr. Stevenson's field. Well, both fields were his, +and I cannot say whether I would be more sorry to lose Virginibus +Puerisque and "Studies of Men and Books," or "Treasure Island "and +"Catriona." With the decease of G. B., Pactolus dried up in its +mysterious sources, London struggled and disappeared. + +Mr. Stevenson was in town, now and again, at the old Saville Club, +in Saville Row, which had the tiniest and blackest of smoking- +rooms. Here, or somewhere, he spoke to me of an idea of a tale, a +Man who was Two Men. I said "'William Wilson' by Edgar Poe," and +declared that it would never do. But his "Brownies," in a vision +of the night, showed him a central scene, and he wrote "Jekyll and +Hyde." My "friend of these days and of all days," Mr. Charles +Longman, sent me the manuscript. In a very common-place London +drawing-room, at 10.30 P.M., I began to read it. Arriving at the +place where Utterson the lawyer, and the butler wait outside the +Doctor's room, I threw down the manuscript and fled in a hurry. I +had no taste for solitude any more. The story won its great +success, partly by dint of the moral (whatever that may be), more +by its terrible, lucid, visionary power. I remember Mr. Stevenson +telling me, at this time, that he was doing some "regular +crawlers," for this purist had a boyish habit of slang, and I THINK +it was he who called Julius Caesar "the howlingest cheese who ever +lived." One of the "crawlers" was "Thrawn Janet"; after "Wandering +Willie's Tale" (but certainly AFTER it), to my taste, it seems the +most wonderful story of the "supernatural" in our language. + +Mr. Stevenson had an infinite pleasure in Boisgobey, Montepin, and, +of course, Gaboriau. There was nothing of the "cultured person" +about him. Concerning a novel dear to culture, he said that he +would die by my side, in the last ditch, proclaiming it the worst +fiction in the world. I make haste to add that I have only known +two men of letters as free as Mr. Stevenson, not only from literary +jealousy, but from the writer's natural, if exaggerated, distaste +for work which, though in his own line, is very different in aim +and method from his own. I do not remember another case in which +he dispraised any book. I do remember his observations on a novel +then and now very popular, but not to his taste, nor, indeed, by +any means, impeccable, though stirring; his censure and praise were +both just. From his occasional fine efforts, the author of this +romance, he said, should have cleared away acres of brushwood, of +ineffectual matter. It was so, no doubt, as the writer spoken of +would be ready to acknowledge. But he was an improviser of genius, +and Mr. Stevenson was a conscious artist. + +Of course we did by no means always agree in literary estimates; no +two people do. But when certain works--in his line in one way-- +were stupidly set up as rivals of his, the person who was most +irritated was not he, but his equally magnanimous contemporary. +There was no thought of rivalry or competition in either mind. The +younger romancists who arose after Mr. Stevenson went to Samoa were +his friends by correspondence; from them, who never saw his face, I +hear of his sympathy and encouragement. Every writer knows the +special temptations of his tribe: they were temptations not even +felt, I do believe, by Mr. Stevenson. His heart was far too high, +his nature was in every way as generous as his hand was open. It +is in thinking of these things that one feels afresh the greatness +of the world's loss; for "a good heart is much more than style," +writes one who knew him only by way of letters. + +It is a trivial reminiscence that we once plotted a Boisgobesque +story together. There was a prisoner in a Muscovite dungeon. + +"We'll extract information from him," I said. + +"How?" + +"With corkscrews." + +But the mere suggestion of such a process was terribly distasteful +to him; not that I really meant to go to these extreme lengths. We +never, of course, could really have worked together; and, his +maladies increasing, he became more and more a wanderer, living at +Bournemouth, at Davos, in the Grisons, finally, as all know, in +Samoa. Thus, though we corresponded, not unfrequently, I never was +of the inner circle of his friends. Among men there were school or +college companions, or companions of Paris or Fontainebleau, +cousins, like Mr. R. A. M. Stevenson, or a stray senior, like Mr. +Sidney Colvin. From some of them, or from Mr. Stevenson himself, I +have heard tales of "the wild Prince and Poins." That he and a +friend travelled utterly without baggage, buying a shirt where a +shirt was needed, is a fact, and the incident is used in "The +Wrecker." Legend says that once he and a friend DID possess a bag, +and also, nobody ever knew why, a large bottle of scent. But there +was no room for the bottle in the bag, so Mr. Stevenson spilled the +whole contents over the other man's head, taking him unawares, that +nothing might be wasted. I think the tale of the endless +staircase, in "The Wrecker," is founded on fact, so are the stories +of the atelier, which I have heard Mr. Stevenson narrate at the +Oxford and Cambridge Club. For a nocturnal adventure, in the +manner of the "New Arabian Nights," a learned critic already spoken +of must be consulted. It is not my story. In Paris, at a cafe, I +remember that Mr. Stevenson heard a Frenchman say the English were +cowards. He got up and slapped the man's face. + +"Monsieur, vous m'avez frappe!" said the Gaul. + +"A ce qu'il parait," said the Scot, and there it ended. He also +told me that years ago he was present at a play, I forget what +play, in Paris, where the moral hero exposes a woman "with a +history." He got up and went out, saying to himself: + +"What a play! what a people!" + +"Ah, Monsieur, vous etes bien jeune!" said an old French gentleman. + +Like a right Scot, Mr. Stevenson was fond of "our auld ally of +France," to whom our country and our exiled kings owed so much. + +I rather vaguely remember another anecdote. He missed his train +from Edinburgh to London, and his sole portable property was a +return ticket, a meerschaum pipe, and a volume of Mr. Swinburne's +poems. The last he found unmarketable; the pipe, I think, he made +merchandise of, but somehow his provender for the day's journey +consisted in one bath bun, which he could not finish. + +These trivial tales illustrate a period in his life and adventures +which I only know by rumour. Our own acquaintance was, to a great +degree, literary and bookish. Perhaps it began "with a slight +aversion," but it seemed, like madeira, to be ripened and improved +by his long sea voyage; and the news of his death taught me, at +least, the true nature of the affection which he was destined to +win. Indeed, our acquaintance was like the friendship of a wild +singing bird and of a punctual, domesticated barn-door fowl, laying +its daily "article" for the breakfast-table of the citizens. He +often wrote to me from Samoa, sometimes with news of native manners +and folklore. He sent me a devil-box, the "luck" of some strange +island, which he bought at a great price. After parting with its +"luck," or fetish (a shell in a curious wooden box), the island was +unfortunate, and was ravaged by measles. + +I occasionally sent out books needed for Mr. Stevenson's studies, +of which more will be said. But I must make it plain that, in the +body, we met but rarely. His really intimate friends were Mr. +Colvin and Mr. Baxter (who managed the practical side of his +literary business between them); Mr. Henley (in partnership with +whom he wrote several plays); his cousin, Mr. R. A. M. Stevenson; +and, among other literati, Mr. Gosse, Mr. Austin Dobson, Mr. +Saintsbury, Mr Walter Pollock, knew him well. The best portrait of +Mr. Stevenson that I know is by Sir. W. B. Richmond, R.A., and is +in that gentleman's collection of contemporaries, with the effigies +of Mr. Holman Hunt, Mr. William Morris, Mr. Browning, and others. +It is unfinished, owing to an illness which stopped the sittings, +and does not show the subject at his best, physically speaking. +There is also a brilliant, slight sketch, almost a caricature, by +Mr. Sargent. It represents Mr. Stevenson walking about the room in +conversation. + +The people I have named, or some of them, knew Mr. Stevenson more +intimately than I can boast of doing. Unlike each other, opposites +in a dozen ways, we always were united by the love of letters, and +of Scotland, our dear country. He was a patriot, yet he spoke his +mind quite freely about Burns, about that apparent want of heart in +the poet's amours, which our countrymen do not care to hear +mentioned. Well, perhaps, for some reasons, it had to be mentioned +once, and so no more of it. + +Mr. Stevenson possessed, more than any man I ever met, the power of +making other men fall in love with him. I mean that he excited a +passionate admiration and affection, so much so that I verily +believe some men were jealous of other men's place in his liking. +I once met a stranger who, having become acquainted with him, spoke +of him with a touching fondness and pride, his fancy reposing, as +it seemed, in a fond contemplation of so much genius and charm. +What was so taking in him? and how is one to analyse that dazzling +surface of pleasantry, that changeful shining humour, wit, wisdom, +recklessness; beneath which beat the most kind and tolerant of +hearts? + +People were fond of him, and people were proud of him: his +achievements, as it were, sensibly raised their pleasure in the +world, and, to them, became parts of themselves. They warmed their +hands at that centre of light and heat. It is not every success +which has these beneficent results. We see the successful sneered +at, decried, insulted, even when success is deserved. Very little +of all this, hardly aught of all this, I think, came in Mr. +Stevenson's way. After the beginning (when the praises of his +earliest admirers were irritating to dull scribes) he found the +critics fairly kind, I believe, and often enthusiastic. He was so +much his own severest critic that he probably paid little heed to +professional reviewers. In addition to his "Rathillet," and other +MSS. which he destroyed, he once, in the Highlands, long ago, lost +a portmanteau with a batch of his writings. Alas, that he should +have lost or burned anything! "King's chaff," says our country +proverb, "is better than other folk's corn." + +I have remembered very little, or very little that I can write, and +about our last meeting, when he was so near death, in appearance, +and so full of courage--how can I speak? His courage was a strong +rock, not to be taken or subdued. When unable to utter a single +word, his pencilled remarks to his attendants were pithy and +extremely characteristic. This courage and spiritual vitality made +one hope that he would, if he desired it, live as long as Voltaire, +that reed among oaks. There were of course, in so rare a +combination of characteristics, some which were not equally to the +liking of all. He was highly original in costume, but, as his +photographs are familiar, the point does not need elucidation. +Life was a drama to him, and he delighted, like his own British +admirals, to do things with a certain air. He observed himself, I +used to think, as he observed others, and "saw himself" in every +part he played. There was nothing of the cabotin in this self- +consciousness; it was the unextinguished childish passion for +"playing at things" which remained with him. I have a theory that +all children possess genius, and that it dies out in the generality +of mortals, abiding only with people whose genius the world is +forced to recognise. Mr. Stevenson illustrates, and perhaps partly +suggested, this private philosophy of mine. + +I have said very little; I have no skill in reminiscences, no art +to bring the living aspect of the man before those who never knew +him. I faintly seem to see the eager face, the light nervous +figure, the fingers busy with rolling cigarettes; Mr. Stevenson +talking, listening, often rising from his seat, standing, walking +to and fro, always full of vivid intelligence, wearing a mysterious +smile. I remember one pleasant dark afternoon, when he told me +many tales of strange adventures, narratives which he had heard +about a murderous lonely inn, somewhere in the States. He was as +good to hear as to read. I do not recollect much of that delight +in discussion, in controversy, which he shows in his essay on +conversation, where he describes, I believe, Mr. Henley as +"Burley," and Mr. Symonds as "Opalstein." He had great pleasure in +the talk of the late Professor Fleeming Jenkin, which was both +various and copious. But in these noctes coenaeque deum I was +never a partaker. In many topics, such as angling, golf, cricket, +whereon I am willingly diffuse, Mr. Stevenson took no interest. He +was very fond of boating and sailing in every kind; he hazarded his +health by long expeditions among the fairy isles of ocean, but he +"was not a British sportsman," though for his measure of strength a +good pedestrian, a friend of the open air, and of all who live and +toil therein. + +As to his literary likings, they appear in his own confessions. He +revelled in Dickens, but, about Thackeray--well, I would rather +have talked to somebody else! To my amazement, he was of those (I +think) who find Thackeray "cynical." "He takes you into a garden, +and then pelts you with"--horrid things! Mr. Stevenson, on the +other hand, had a free admiration of Mr. George Meredith. He did +not so easily forgive the longueus and lazinesses of Scott, as a +Scot should do. He read French much; Greek only in translations. + +Literature was, of course, his first love, but he was actually an +advocate at the Scottish Bar, and, as such, had his name on a +brazen door-plate. Once he was a competitor for a Chair of Modern +History in Edinburgh University; he knew the romantic side of +Scottish history very well. In his novel, "Catriona," the +character of James Mohr Macgregor is wonderfully divined. Once I +read some unpublished letters of Catriona's unworthy father, +written when he was selling himself as a spy (and lying as he +spied) to the Hanoverian usurper. Mr. Stevenson might have written +these letters for James Mohr; they might be extracts from +"Catriona." + +In turning over old Jacobite pamphlets, I found a forgotten romance +of Prince Charles's hidden years, and longed that Mr. Stevenson +should retell it. There was a treasure, an authentic treasure; +there were real spies, a real assassin; a real, or reported, rescue +of a lovely girl from a fire at Strasbourg, by the Prince. The +tale was to begin sur le pont d'Avignon: a young Scotch exile +watching the Rhone, thinking how much of it he could cover with a +salmon fly, thinking of the Tay or Beauly. To him enter another +shady tramping exile, Blairthwaite, a murderer. And so it was to +run on, as the author's fancy might lead him, with Alan Breck and +the Master for characters. At last, in unpublished MSS. I found an +actual Master of Ballantrae, a Highland chief--noble, majestically +handsome--and a paid spy of England! All these papers I sent out +to Samoa, too late. The novel was to have been dedicated to me, +and that chance of immortality is gone, with so much else. + +Mr. Stevenson's last letters to myself were full of his concern for +a common friend of ours, who was very ill. Depressed himself, Mr. +Stevenson wrote to this gentleman--why should I not mention Mr. +James Payn?--with consoling gaiety. I attributed his depression to +any cause but his own health, of which he rarely spoke. He +lamented the "ill-staged fifth act of life"; he, at least, had no +long hopeless years of diminished force to bear. + +I have known no man in whom the pre-eminently manly virtues of +kindness, courage, sympathy, generosity, helpfulness, were more +beautifully conspicuous than in Mr. Stevenson, no man so much +loved--it is not too strong a word--by so many and such various +people. He was as unique in character as in literary genius. + + + +CHAPTER III: RAB'S FRIEND + + + +To say what ought to be said concerning Dr. John Brown, a man +should have known him well and long, and should remember much of +that old generation of Scotchmen to whom the author of "Rab and his +Friends" belonged. But that generation has departed. One by one +these wits and scholars of the North, these epigoni who were not, +indeed, of the heroes, but who had seen and remembered Scott and +Wilson, have passed away. Aytoun and Carlyle and Dr. Burton, and +last, Dr. Brown, are gone. Sir Theodore Martin alone is left. In +her memoir of Dr. Burton--the historian of Scotland, and author of +"The Book-hunter"--Mrs. Burton remarks that, in her husband's later +days, only Dr. John Brown and Professor Blackie remained of all her +husband's ancient friends and coevals, of all who remembered +Lockhart, and Hogg, and their times. But many are left who knew +Dr. Brown far better and more intimately than the author of this +notice. I can hardly say when I first became acquainted with him, +probably it was in my childhood. Ever since I was a boy, +certainly, I used to see him at intervals, especially in the +Christmas vacations. But he seldom moved from Edinburgh, except in +summer, which he frequently passed in the country house of certain +friends of his, whose affection made much of the happiness of his +latest years, and whose unfailing kindness attended him in his +dying hours. Living always in Scotland, Dr. Brown was seen but +rarely by his friends who resided in England. Thus, though Dr. +Brown's sweetness of disposition and charm of manner, his humour, +and his unfailing sympathy and encouragement, made one feel toward +him as to a familiar friend, yet, of his actual life I saw but +little, and have few reminiscences to contribute. One can only +speak of that singular geniality of his, that temper of goodness +and natural tolerance and affection, which, as Scotsmen best know, +is not universal among the Scots. Our race does not need to pray, +like the mechanic in the story, that Providence will give us "a +good conceit of ourselves." But we must acknowledge that the +Scotch temper is critical if not captious, argumentative, inclined +to look at the seamy side of men and of their performances, and to +dwell on imperfections rather than on merits and virtues. An +example of these blemishes of the Scotch disposition, carried to an +extreme degree in the nature of a man of genius, is offered to the +world in the writings and "Reminiscences" of Mr. Carlyle. + +Now, Dr. John Brown was at the opposite pole of feeling. He had no +mawkish toleration of things and people intolerable, but he +preferred not to turn his mind that way. His thoughts were with +the good, the wise, the modest, the learned, the brave of times +past, and he was eager to catch a reflection of their qualities in +the characters of the living, of all with whom he came into +contact. He was, for example, almost optimistic in his estimate of +the work of young people in art or literature. From everything +that was beautiful or good, from a summer day by the Tweed, or from +the eyes of a child, or from the humorous saying of a friend, or +from treasured memories of old Scotch worthies, from recollections +of his own childhood, from experience of the stoical heroism of the +poor, he seemed to extract matter for pleasant thoughts of men and +the world, and nourishment for his own great and gentle nature. I +have never known any man to whom other men seemed so dear--men +dead, and men living. He gave his genius to knowing them, and to +making them better known, and his unselfishness thus became not +only a great personal virtue, but a great literary charm. When you +met him, he had some "good story" or some story of goodness to +tell--for both came alike to him, and his humour was as unfailing +as his kindness. There was in his face a singular charm, blended, +as it were, of the expressions of mirth and of patience. Being +most sensitive to pain, as well as to pleasure, he was an exception +to that rule of Rochefoucauld's--"nous avons tous assez de force +pour supporter les maux d'autrui." {2} + +He did not bear easily the misfortunes of others, and the evils of +his own lot were heavy enough. They saddened him; but neither +illness, nor his poignant anxiety for others, could sour a nature +so unselfish. He appeared not to have lost that anodyne and +consolation of religious hope, which had been the strength of his +forefathers, and was his best inheritance from a remarkable race of +Scotsmen. Wherever he came, he was welcome; people felt glad when +they had encountered him in the streets--the streets of Edinburgh, +where almost every one knows every one by sight--and he was at +least as joyously received by the children and the dogs as by the +grown-up people of every family. A friend has kindly shown me a +letter in which it is told how Dr. Brown's love of dogs, his +interest in a half-blind old Dandy which was attached to him, was +evinced in the very last hours of his life. But enough has been +said, in general terms, about the character of "the beloved +physician," as Dr. Brown was called in Edinburgh, and a brief +account may be given, in some detail, of his life and ways. + +Dr. John Brown was born in Biggar, one of the gray, slaty-looking +little towns in the pastoral moorlands of southern Scotland. These +towns have no great beauty that they should be admired by +strangers, but the natives, as Scott said to Washington Irving, are +attached to their "gray hills," and to the Tweed, so beautiful +where man's greed does not pollute it, that the Border people are +all in love with it, as Tyro, in Homer, loved the divine Enipeus. +We hold it "far the fairest of the floods that run upon the earth." +How dear the border scenery was to Dr. John Brown, and how well he +knew and could express its legendary magic, its charm woven of +countless ancient spells, the music of old ballads, the sorcery of +old stories, may be understood by readers of his essay on +Minchmoor." {3} The father of Dr. Brown was the third in a lineage +of ministers of the sect called Seceders. To explain who the +Seceders were, it would be necessary to explore the sinking +morasses of Scotch ecclesiastical history. The minister was proud +of being not only a "Seceder" but a "Burgher." He inherited, to be +brief, the traditions of a most spiritually-minded and most +spirited set of men, too much bent, it may appear to us, on +establishing delicate distinctions of opinions, but certainly most +true to themselves and to their own ideals of liberty and of faith. +Dr. Brown's great-grandfather had been a shepherd boy, who taught +himself Greek that he might read the New Testament; who walked +twenty-four miles--leaving his folded sheep in the night--to buy +the precious volume in St. Andrews, and who, finally, became a +teacher of much repute among his own people. Of Dr. Brown's +father, he himself wrote a most touching and beautiful account in +his "Letter to John Cairns, D.D." This essay contains, perhaps, +the very finest passages that the author ever penned. His sayings +about his own childhood remind one of the manner of Lamb, without +that curious fantastic touch which is of the essence of Lamb's +style. The following lines, for example, are a revelation of +childish psychology, and probably may be applied, with almost as +much truth, to the childhood of our race:- + + +"Children are long of seeing, or at least of looking at what is +above them; they like the ground, and its flowers and stones, its +'red sodgers' and lady-birds, and all its queer things; THEIR WORLD +IS ABOUT THREE FEET HIGH, and they are more often stooping than +gazing up. I know I was past ten before I saw, or cared to see, +the ceilings of the rooms in the manse at Biggar." + + +I have often thought that the earliest fathers of our race, child- +like in so many ways, were child-like in this, and worshipped, not +the phenomena of the heavens, but objects more on a level with +their eyes--the "queer things" of their low-lying world. In this +essay on his father, Dr. Brown has written lines about a child's +first knowledge of death, which seem as noteworthy as Steele's +famous passage about his father's death and his own half-conscious +grief and anger. Dr. Brown describes a Scottish funeral--the +funeral of his own mother--as he saw it with the eyes of a boy of +five years old, while his younger brother, a baby of a few months - + + +"leaped up and crowed with joy at the strange sight--the crowding +horsemen, the coaches, and the nodding plumes of the hearse . . . +Then, to my surprise and alarm, the coffin, resting on its bearers, +was placed over the dark hole, and I watched with curious eye the +unrolling of those neat black bunches of cords, which I have often +enough seen since. My father took the one at the head, and also +another much smaller, springing from the same point as his, which +he had caused to be placed there, and unrolling it, put it into my +hand. I twisted it firmly round my fingers, and awaited the +result; the burial men with their real ropes lowered the coffin, +and when it rested at the bottom it was too far down for me to see +it. The grave was made very deep, as he used afterwards to tell +us, that it might hold us all. My father first and abruptly let +his cord drop, followed by the rest. This was too much. I now saw +what was meant, and held on and fixed my fist and feet, and I +believe my father had some difficulty in forcing open my small +fingers; he let the little black cord drop, and I remember, in my +misery and anger, seeing its open end disappearing in the gloom." +{4} + +The man who wrote this, and many another passage as true and +tender, might surely have been famous in fiction, if he had turned +his powers that way. He had imagination, humour, pathos; he was +always studying and observing life; his last volume, especially, is +like a collection of fragments that might have gone toward making a +work, in some ways not inferior to the romances of Scott. When the +third volume of Essays was published, in the spring of his last +year, a reviewer, who apparently had no personal knowledge of Dr. +Brown, asked why he did not write a novel. He was by that time +over seventy years of age, and, though none guessed it, within a +few weeks of his death. What he might have done, had he given +himself to literature only, it is impossible to guess. But he +caused so much happiness, and did so much good, in that gentle +profession of healing which he chose, and which brought him near to +many who needed consolation more than physic, that we need not +forget his deliberate choice. Literature had only his horae +subsecivae, as he said: Subseciva quaedam tempora quae ego perire +non patior, as Cicero writes, "shreds and waste ends of time, which +I suffer not to be lost." + +The kind of life which Dr. Brown's father and his people lived at +Biggar, the austere life of work, and of thought intensely bent on +the real aim of existence, on God, on the destiny of the soul, is +perhaps rare now, even in rural Scotland. We are less obedient +than of old to the motto of that ring found on Magus Moor, where +Archbishop Shairp was murdered, REMEMBER UPON DETHE. If any reader +has not yet made the acquaintance of Dr. Brown's works, one might +counsel him to begin with the "Letter to John Cairns, D.D.," the +fragment of biography and autobiography, the description of the +fountainheads from which the genius of the author flowed. In his +early boyhood, John Brown was educated by his father, a man who, +from his son's affectionate description, seems to have confined a +fiery and romantic genius within the channels of Seceder and +Burgher theology. When the father received a call to the "Rose +Street Secession Church," in Edinburgh, the son became a pupil of +that ancient Scottish seminary, the High School--the school where +Scott was taught not much Latin and no Greek worth mentioning. +Scott was still alive and strong in those days, and Dr. Brown +describes how he and his school companions would take off their +hats to the Shirra as he passed in the streets. + +"Though lame, he was nimble, and all rough and alive with power; +had you met him anywhere else, you would say he was a Liddesdale +store farmer, come of gentle blood--'a stout, blunt carle,' as he +says of himself, with the swing and stride and the eye of a man of +the hills--a large, sunny, out-of-door air all about him. On his +broad and stooping shoulders was set that head which, with +Shakespeare's and Bonaparte's, is the best known in all the world." +Scott was then living in 39 Castle Street. I do not know whether +the many pilgrims, whom one meets moving constantly in the +direction of Melrose and Abbotsford, have thought of making +pilgrimage to Castle Street, and to the grave, there, of Scott's +"dear old friend,"--his dog Camp. Of Dr. Brown's schoolboy days, +one knows little--days when "Bob Ainslie and I were coming up +Infirmary Street from the High School, our heads together, and our +arms intertwisted, as only lovers and boys know how or why." +Concerning the doctor's character, he has left it on record that he +liked a dog-fight. "'A dog-fight,' shouted Bob, and was off, and +so was I, both of us all hot, praying that it might not be over +before we were up . . . Dogs like fighting; old Isaac (Watts, not +Walton) says they 'delight' in it, and for the best of all reasons; +and boys are not cruel because they like to see the fight. This is +a very different thing from a love of making dogs fight." And this +was the most famous of all dog-fights--since the old Irish Brehons +settled the laws of that sport, and gravely decided what was to be +done if a child interfered, or an idiot, or a woman, or a one-eyed +man--for this was the dog-fight in which Rab first was introduced +to his historian. + +Six years passed after this battle, and Dr. Brown was a medical +student and a clerk at Minto Hospital. How he renewed his +acquaintance there, and in what sad circumstances, with Rab and his +friends, it is superfluous to tell, for every one who reads at all +has read that story, and most readers not without tears. As a +medical student in Edinburgh, Dr. Brown made the friendship of Mr. +Syme, the famous surgeon--a friendship only closed by death. I +only saw them once together, a very long time ago, and then from +the point of view of a patient. These occasions are not agreeable, +and patients, like the old cock which did not crow when plucked, +are apt to be "very much absorbed"; but Dr. Brown's attitude toward +the man whom he regarded with the reverence of a disciple, as well +as with the affection of a friend, was very remarkable. + +When his studies were over, Dr. Brown practised for a year as +assistant to a surgeon in Chatham. It must have been when he was +at Chatham that a curious event occurred. Many years later, +Charles Dickens was in Edinburgh, reading his stories in public, +and was dining with some Edinburgh people. Dickens began to speak +about the panic which the cholera had caused in England: how ill +some people had behaved. As a contrast, he mentioned that, at +Chatham, one poor woman had died, deserted by every one except a +young physician. Some one, however, ventured to open the door, and +found the woman dead, and the young doctor asleep, overcome with +the fatigue that mastered him on his patient's death, but quite +untouched by the general panic. "Why, that was Dr. John Brown," +one of the guests observed; and it seems that, thus early in his +career, the doctor had been setting an example of the courage and +charity of his profession. After a year spent in Chatham, he +returned to Edinburgh, where he spent the rest of his life, busy +partly with his art of healing, partly with literature. He lived +in Rutland Street, near the railway station, by which Edinburgh is +approached from the west, and close to Princes Street, the chief +street of the town, separated by a green valley, once a loch, from +the high Castle Rock. It was the room in which his friends were +accustomed to see Dr. Brown, and a room full of interest it was. +In his long life, the doctor had gathered round him many curious +relics of artists and men of letters; a drawing of a dog by Turner +I remember particularly, and a copy of "Don Juan," in the first +edition, with Byron's manuscript notes. Dr. Brown had a great love +and knowledge of art and of artists, from Turner to Leech; and he +had very many friends among men of letters, such as Mr. Ruskin and +Mr. Thackeray. Dr. Brown himself was a clever designer of rapid +little grotesques, rough sketches of dogs and men. One or two of +them are engraved in the little paper-covered booklets in which +some of his essays were separately published--booklets which he was +used to present to people who came to see him and who were +interested in all that he did. I remember some vivacious +grotesques which he drew for one of my brothers when we were +schoolboys. These little things were carefully treasured by boys +who knew Dr. Brown, and found him friendly, and capable of +sustaining a conversation on the points of a Dandy Dinmont terrier +and other mysteries important to youth. He was a bibliophile--a +taste which he inherited from his father, who "began collecting +books when he was twelve, and was collecting to his last hours." + +The last time I ever saw Dr. Brown, a year before his death, he was +kind enough to lend me one of the rarest of his treasures, "Poems," +by Mr. Ruskin. Probably Mr. Ruskin had presented the book to his +old friend; in no other way were it easy to procure writings which +the author withdrew from publication, if, indeed, they ever were, +properly speaking, published. Thus Dr. Brown was all things to all +men, and to all boys. He "had a word for every one," as poor +people say, and a word to the point, for he was as much at home +with the shepherd on the hills, or with the angler between Hollylea +and Clovenfords, as with the dusty book-hunter, or the doggy young +Border yeoman, or the child who asked him to "draw her a picture," +or the friend of genius famous through all the world, Thackeray, +when he "spoke, as he seldom did, of divine things." + +Three volumes of essays are all that Dr. Brown has left in the way +of compositions: a light, but imperishable literary baggage. His +studies are usually derived from personal experience, which he +reproduced with singular geniality and simplicity, or they are +drawn from the tradition of the elders, the reminiscences of long- +lived Scotch people, who, themselves, had listened attentively to +those who went before them. Since Scott, these ancient ladies with +wonderful memories have had no such attentive listener or +appreciative reporter as Dr. Brown. His paper called +"Mystifications," a narrative of the pranks of Miss Stirling +Graham, is a brief, vivid record of the clever and quaint society +of Scotland sixty years ago. Scotland, or at least Scottish +society, is now only English society--a little narrower, a little +prouder, sometimes even a little duller. But old people of +position spoke the old Scotch tongue sixty years ago, and were full +of wonderful genealogies, full of reminiscences of the "'45," and +the adventures of the Jacobites. The very last echoes of that +ancient world are dying now from memory, like the wide +reverberations of that gun which Miss Nelly MacWilliam heard on the +day when Prince Charles landed, and which resounded strangely all +through Scotland. + +The children of this generation, one fears, will hardly hear of +these old raids and duels, risings and rebellions, by oral +tradition handed down, unbroken, through aunts and grandmothers. +Scott reaped a full, late harvest of the memories of clannish and +feudal Scotland; Dr. Brown came as a later gleaner, and gathered +these stirring tales of "A Jacobite Family" which are published in +the last volume of his essays. When he was an observer, not a +hearer only, Dr. Brown chiefly studied and best wrote of the +following topics: passages and characters of humour and pathos +which he encountered in his life and profession; children, dogs, +Border scenery, and fellow-workers in life and science. Under one +or other of these categories all his best compositions might be +arranged. The most famous and most exquisite of all his works in +the first class is the unrivalled "Rab and his Friends"--a study of +the stoicism and tenderness of the Lowland character worthy of +Scott. In a minor way the little paper on "Jeems," the door-keeper +in a Dissenting house of the Lord, is interesting to Scotch people, +though it must seem a rather curious revelation to all others. +"Her last Half-crown" is another study of the honesty that survived +in a starving and outcast Scotch girl, when all other virtues, as +we commonly reckon virtue, had gone before her character to some +place where, let us hope, they may rejoin her; for if we are to +suffer for the vices which have abandoned us, may we not get some +credit for the virtues that we have abandoned, but that once were +ours, in some heaven paved with bad resolutions unfulfilled? "The +Black Dwarf's Bones" is a sketch of the misshapen creature from +whom Scott borrowed the character that gives a name to one of his +minor Border stories. The real Black Dwarf (David Ritchie he was +called among men) was fond of poetry, but hated Burns. He was +polite to the fair, but classed mankind at large with his favourite +aversions: ghosts, fairies, and robbers. There was this of human +about the Black Dwarf, that "he hated folk that are aye gaun to +dee, and never do't." The village beauties were wont to come to +him for a Judgment of Paris on their charms, and he presented each +with a flower, which was of a fixed value in his standard of things +beautiful. One kind of rose, the prize of the most fair, he only +gave thrice. Paris could not have done his dooms more courteously, +and, if he had but made judicious use of rose, lily, and lotus, as +prizes, he might have pleased all the three Goddesses; Troy still +might be standing, and the lofty house of King Priam. + +Among Dr. Brown's papers on children, that called "Pet Marjorie" +holds the highest place. Perhaps certain passages are "wrote too +sentimentally," as Marjorie Fleming herself remarked about the +practice of many authors. But it was difficult to be perfectly +composed when speaking of this wonderful fairy-like little girl, +whose affection was as warm as her humour and genius were +precocious. "Infant phenomena" are seldom agreeable, but Marjorie +was so humorous, so quick-tempered, so kind, that we cease to +regard her as an intellectual "phenomenon." Her memory remains +sweet and blossoming in its dust, like that of little Penelope +Boothby, the child in the mob cap whom Sir Joshua painted, and who +died very soon after she was thus made Immortal. + +It is superfluous to quote from the essay on Marjorie Fleming; +every one knows about her and her studies: "Isabella is teaching +me to make simme colings, nots of interrigations, peorids, commoes, +&c." Here is a Shakespearian criticism, of which few will deny the +correctness: "'Macbeth' is a pretty composition, but awful one." +Again, "I never read sermons of any kind, but I read novelettes and +my Bible." "'Tom Jones' and Gray's 'Elegy in a Country Churchyard' +are both excellent, and much spoke of by both sex, particularly by +the men." Her Calvinistic belief in "UNQUESTIONABLE fire and +brimston" is unhesitating, but the young theologian appears to have +substituted "unquestionable" for "unquenchable." There is +something humorous in the alteration, as if Marjorie refused to be +put off with an "excellent family substitute" for fire and +brimstone, and demanded the "unquestionable" article, no other +being genuine, please observe trade mark. + +Among Dr. Brown's contributions to the humorous study of dogs, +"Rab," of course, holds the same place as Marjorie among his +sketches of children. But if his "Queen Mary's Child Garden," the +description of the little garden in which Mary Stuart did NOT play +when a child, is second to "Marjorie," so "Our Dogs" is a good +second to "Rab." Perhaps Dr. Brown never wrote anything more +mirthful than his description of the sudden birth of the virtue of +courage in Toby, a comic but cowardly mongrel, a cur of low degree. + + +"Toby was in the way of hiding his culinary bones in the small +gardens before his own and the neighbouring doors. Mr. Scrymgeour, +two doors off, a bulky, choleric, red-faced man--torvo vultu--was, +by law of contrast, a great cultivator of flowers, and he had often +scowled Toby into all but non-existence by a stamp of his foot and +a glare of his eye. One day, his gate being open, in walks Toby +with a huge bone, and making a hole where Scrymgeour had two +minutes before been planting some precious slip, the name of which +on paper and on a stick Toby made very light of, substituted his +bone, and was engaged covering it, or thinking he was covering it +up with his shovelling nose, when S. spied him through the inner +glass door, and was out upon him, like the Assyrian, with a +terrific GOWL. I watched them. Instantly Toby made at him with a +roar too, and an eye more torve than Scrymgeour's, who, retreating +without reserve, fell prostrate, there is reason to believe, in his +own lobby. Toby contented himself with proclaiming his victory at +the door, and, returning, finished his bone-planting at his +leisure; the enemy, who had scuttled behind the glass door, glared +at him. From this moment Toby was an altered dog. Pluck at first +sight was lord of all . . . That very evening he paid a visit to +Leo, next door's dog, a big tyrannical bully and coward . . . To +him Toby paid a visit that very evening, down into his den, and +walked about, as much as to say, 'Come on, Macduff'; but Macduff +did not come on." + + +This story is one of the most amazing examples of instant change of +character on record, and disproves the sceptical remark that "no +one was ever converted, except prize-fighters, and colonels in the +army." I am sorry to say that Dr. Brown was too fond of dogs to be +very much attached to cats. I never heard him say anything against +cats, or, indeed, against anybody; but there are passages in his +writings which tend to show that, when young and thoughtless, he +was not far from regarding cats as "the higher vermin." He tells a +story of a Ghazi puss, so to speak, a victorious cat, which, +entrenched in a drain, defeated three dogs with severe loss, and +finally escaped unharmed from her enemies. Dr. Brown's family +gloried in the possession of a Dandy Dinmont named John Pym, whose +cousin (Auld Pepper) belonged to one of my brothers. Dr. Brown was +much interested in Pepper, a dog whose family pride was only +matched by that of the mother of Candide, and, at one time, +threatened to result in the extinction of this branch of the House +of Pepper. Dr. Brown had remarked, and my own observations confirm +it, that when a Dandy is not game, his apparent lack of courage +arises "from kindness of heart." + +Among Dr. Brown's landscapes, as one may call his descriptions of +scenery, and of the ancient historical associations with Scotch +scenery, "Minchmoor" is the most important. He had always been a +great lover of the Tweed. The walk which he commemorates in +"Minchmoor" was taken, if I am not mistaken, in company with +Principal Shairp, Professor of Poetry in the University of Oxford, +and author of one of the most beautiful of Tweedside songs, a +modern "Bush aboon Traquair:"- + + +"And what saw ye there, +At the bush aboon Traquair; +Or what did ye hear that was worth your heed? +I heard the cushie croon +Thro' the gowden afternoon, +And the Quair burn singing doon to the vale o' Tweed." + + +There is in the country of Scott no pleasanter walk than that which +Dr. Brown took in the summer afternoon. Within a few miles, many +places famous in history and ballad may be visited: the road by +which Montrose's men fled from Philiphaugh fight; Traquair House, +with the bears on its gates, as on the portals of the Baron of +Bradwardine; Williamhope, where Scott and Mungo Park, the African +explorer, parted and went their several ways. From the crest of +the road you see all the Border hills, the Maiden Paps, the Eildons +cloven in three, the Dunion, the Windburg, and so to the distant +Cheviots, and Smailholm Tower, where Scott lay when a child, and +clapped his hands at the flashes of the lightning, haud sine Dis +animosus infans, like Horace. + +From the crest of the hill you follow Dr. Brown into the valley of +Yarrow, and the deep black pools, now called the "dowie dens," and +so, "through the pomp of cultivated nature," as Wordsworth says, to +the railway at Selkirk, passing the plain where Janet won back +Tamlane from the queen of the fairies. All this country was +familiar to Dr. Brown, and on one of the last occasions when I met +him, he was living at Hollylea, on the Tweed, just above Ashestiel, +Scott's home while he was happy and prosperous, before he had the +unhappy thought of building Abbotsford. At the time I speak of, +Dr. Brown had long ceased to write, and his health suffered from +attacks of melancholy, in which the world seemed very dark to him. +I have been allowed to read some letters which he wrote in one of +these intervals of depression. With his habitual unselfishness, he +kept his melancholy to himself, and, though he did not care for +society at such times, he said nothing of his own condition that +could distress his correspondent. In the last year of his life, +everything around him seemed to brighten: he was unusually well, +he even returned to his literary work, and saw his last volume of +collected essays through the press. They were most favourably +received, and the last letters which I had from him spoke of the +pleasure which this success gave him. Three editions of his book +("John Leech, and Other Essays") were published in some six weeks. +All seemed to go well, and one might even have hoped that, with +renewed strength, he would take up his pen again. But his strength +was less than we had hoped. A cold settled on his lungs, and, in +spite of the most affectionate nursing, he grew rapidly weaker. He +had little suffering at the end, and his mind remained unclouded. +No man of letters could be more widely regretted, for he was the +friend of all who read his books, as, even to people who only met +him once or twice in life, he seemed to become dear and familiar. + +In one of his very latest writings, "On Thackeray's Death," Dr. +Brown told people (what some of them needed, and still need to be +told) how good, kind, and thoughtful for others was our great +writer--our greatest master of fiction, I venture to think, since +Scott. Some of the lines Dr. Brown wrote of Thackerary might be +applied to himself: "He looked always fresh, with that abounding +silvery hair, and his young, almost infantile face"--a face very +pale, and yet radiant, in his last years, and mildly lit up with +eyes full of kindness, and softened by sorrow. In his last year, +Mr. Swinburne wrote to Dr. Brown this sonnet, in which there seems +something of the poet's prophetic gift, and a voice sounds as of a +welcome home:- + + +"Beyond the north wind lay the land of old, +Where men dwelt blithe and blameless, clothed and fed +With joy's bright raiment, and with love's sweet bread, - +The whitest flock of earth's maternal fold, +None there might wear about his brows enrolled +A light of lovelier fame than rings your head, +Whose lovesome love of children and the dead +All men give thanks for; I, far off, behold +A dear dead hand that links us, and a light +The blithest and benignest of the night, - +The night of death's sweet sleep, wherein may be +A star to show your spirit in present sight +Some happier isle in the Elysian sea +Where Rab may lick the hand of Marjorie." + + + +CHAPTER IV: OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES + + + +Never but once did I enjoy the privilege of meeting the author of +"Elsie Venner"--Oliver Wendell Holmes. It was at a dinner given by +Mr. Lowell, and of conversation with Dr. Holmes I had very little. +He struck me as being wonderfully erect, active, and vivacious for +his great age. He spoke (perhaps I should not chronicle this +impression)--he spoke much, and freely, but rather as if he were +wound up to speak, so to say--wound up, I mean, by a sense of duty +to himself and kindness to strangers, who were naturally curious +about so well-known a man. In his aspect there was a certain +dryness, and, altogether, his vivacity, his ceaselessness, and a +kind of equability of tone in his voice, reminded me of what Homer +says concerning the old men around Priam, above the gate of Troy, +how they "chirped like cicalas on a summer day." About the matter +of his talk I remember nothing, only the manner remains with me, +and mine may have been a false impression, or the manner may have +been accidental, and of the moment: or, again, a manner +appropriate for conversation with strangers, each coming up one +after the other, to view respectfully so great a lion. Among his +friends and intimates he was probably a different man, with a tone +other and more reposeful. + +He had a long, weary task before him, then, to talk his way, ever +courteous, alert, attentive, through part of a London season. Yet, +when it was all over, he seems to have enjoyed it, being a man who +took pleasure in most sorts of experience. He did not affect me, +for that one time, with such a sense of pleasure as Mr. Lowell did- +-Mr. Lowell, whom I knew so much better, and who was so big, +strong, humorous, kind, learned, friendly, and delightfully +natural. + +Dr. Holmes, too, was a delightful companion, and I have merely +tried to make a sort of photographic "snap-shot" at him, in a +single casual moment, one of myriads of such moments. Turning to +Dr. Holmes's popular, as distinct from his professional writings, +one is reminded, as one often is, of the change which seems to come +over some books as the reader grows older. Many books are to one +now what they always were; some, like the Waverley novels and +Shakespeare, grow better on every fresh reading. There are books +which filled me, in boyhood or in youth, with a sort of admiring +rapture, and a delighted wonder at their novelty, their +strangeness, freshness, greatness. Thus Homer, and the best novels +of Thackeray, and of Fielding, the plays of Moliere and +Shakespeare, the poems of--well, of all the real poets, moved this +astonishment of admiration, and being read again, they move it +still. On a different level, one may say as much about books so +unlike each other, as those of Poe and of Sir Thomas Browne, of +Swift and of Charles Lamb. + +There are, again, other books which caused this happy emotion of +wonder, when first perused, long since, but which do so no longer. +I am not much surprised to find Charles Kingsley's novels among +them. + +In the case of Dr. Holmes's books, I am very sensible of this +disenchanting effect of time and experience. "The Professor at the +Breakfast Table" and the novels came into my hands when I was very +young, in "green, unknowing youth." They seemed extraordinary, +new, fantasies of wisdom and wit; the reflections were such as +surprised me by their depth, the illustrations dazzled by their +novelty and brilliance. Probably they will still be as fortunate +with young readers, and I am to be pitied, I hope, rather than +blamed, if I cannot, like the wise thrush - + + +"Recapture +The first fine careless rapture." + + +By this time, of course, one understands many of the constituents +of Dr. Holmes's genius, the social, historical, ancestral, and +professional elements thereof. Now, it is the business of +criticism to search out and illustrate these antecedents, and it +seems a very odd and unlucky thing, that the results of this +knowledge when acquired, should sometimes be a partial +disenchantment. But we are not disenchanted at all by this kind of +science, when the author whom we are examining is a great natural +genius, like Shakespeare or Shelley, Keats or Scott. Such natures +bring to the world far more than they receive, as far as our means +of knowing what they receive are concerned. The wind of the spirit +that is not of this earth, nor limited by time and space, breathes +through their words, and thoughts, and deeds. They are not mere +combinations, however deft and subtle, of KNOWN atoms. They must +continually delight, and continually surprise; custom cannot stale +them; like the heaven-born Laws in Sophocles, age can never lull +them to sleep. Their works, when they are authors, never lose hold +on our fancy and our interest. + +As far as my own feelings and admiration can inform me, Dr. Holmes, +though a most interesting and amiable and kindly man and writer, +was not of this class. As an essayist, a delineator of men and +morals, an unassuming philosopher, with a light, friendly wit, he +certainly does not hold one as, for example, Addison does. The old +Spectator makes me smile, pleases, tickles, diverts me now, even +more than when I lay on the grass and read it by Tweedside, as a +boy, when the trout were sluggish, in the early afternoon. It is +only a personal fact that Dr. Holmes, read in the same old seasons, +with so much pleasure and admiration and surprise, no longer +affects me in the old way. Carlyle, on the other hand, in his +"Frederick," which used to seem rather long, now entertains me far +more than ever. But I am well aware that this is a mere subjective +estimate; that Dr. Holmes may really be as great a genius as I was +wont to think him, for criticism is only a part of our impressions. +The opinion of mature experience, as a rule, ought to be sounder +than that of youth; in this case I cannot but think that it is +sounder. + +Dr. Holmes was a New Englander, and born in what he calls "the +Brahmin caste," the class which, in England, before the sailing of +the May Flower, and ever since, had always been literary and highly +educated. "I like books; I was born and bred among them," he says, +"and have the easy feeling, when I get into their presence, that a +stable-boy has among horses." He is fond of books, and, above all, +of old books--strange, old medical works, for example--full of +portents and prodigies, such as those of Wierus. + +New England, owing to its famous college, Harvard, and its steady +maintenance of the literary and learned tradition among the clergy, +was, naturally, the home of the earliest great American school of +writers. These men--Longfellow, Lowell, Ticknor, Prescott, +Hawthorne, and so many others--had all received the same sort of +education as Europeans of letters used to receive. They had not +started as printers' devils, or newspaper reporters, or playwrights +for the stage, but were academic. It does not matter much how a +genius begins--as a rural butcher, or an apothecary, or a clerk of +a Writer to the Signet. Still, the New Englanders were academic +and classical. New England has, by this time, established a +tradition of its literary origin and character. Her children are +sons of the Puritans, with their independence, their narrowness, +their appreciation of comfort, their hardiness in doing without it, +their singular scruples of conscience, their sense of the awfulness +of sin, their accessibility to superstition. We can read of the +later New Englanders in the making, among the works of Cotton +Mather, his father Increase Mather, and the witch-burning, periwig- +hating, doctrinal Judge Sewall, who so manfully confessed and +atoned for his mistake about the Salem witches. These men, or many +of them, were deeply-learned Calvinists, according to the standard +of their day, a day lasting from, say, the Restoration to 1730. +Cotton Mather, in particular, is erudite, literary--nay, full of +literary vanity--mystical, visionary, credulous to an amusing +degree. + +But he is really as British as Baxter, or his Scottish +correspondent and counterpart, Wodrow. The sons or grandsons of +these men gained the War of Independence. Of this they are +naturally proud, and the circumstance is not infrequently mentioned +in Dr. Holmes's works. Their democracy is not roaring modern +democracy, but that of the cultivated middle classes. Their stern +Calvinism slackened into many "isms," but left a kind of +religiosity behind it. One of Dr. Holmes's mouthpieces sums up his +whole creed in the two words Pater Noster. All these hereditary +influences are consciously made conspicuous in Dr. Holmes's +writings, as in Hawthorne's. In Hawthorne you see the old horror +of sin, the old terror of conscience, the old dread of witchcraft, +the old concern about conduct, converted into aesthetic sources of +literary pleasure, of literary effects. + +As a physician and a man of science, Dr. Holmes added abundant +knowledge of the new sort; and apt, unexpected bits of science made +popular, analogies and illustrations afforded by science are +frequent in his works. Thus, in "Elsie Venner," and in "The +Guardian Angel," "heredity" is his theme. He is always brooding +over the thought that each of us is so much made up of earlier +people, our ancestors, who bequeath to us so many disagreeable +things--vice, madness, disease, emotions, tricks of gesture. No +doubt these things are bequeathed, but all in such new proportions +and relations, that each of us is himself and nobody else, and +therefore had better make up his mind to BE himself, and for +himself responsible. + +All this doctrine of heredity, still so dimly understood, Dr. +Holmes derives from science. But, in passing through his mind, +that of a New Englander conscious of New England's past, science +takes a stain of romance and superstition. Elsie Venner, through +an experience of her mother's, inherits the nature of the serpent, +so the novel is as far from common life as the tale of "Melusine," +or any other echidna. The fantasy has its setting in a commonplace +New England environment, and thus recalls a Hawthorne less subtle +and concentrated, but much more humorous. The heroine of the +"Guardian Angel," again, exposes a character in layers, as it were, +each stratum of consciousness being inherited from a different +ancestor--among others, a red Indian. She has many personalities, +like the queer women we read about in French treatises on hysterics +and nervous diseases. These stories are "fairy tales of science," +by a man of science, who is also a humourist, and has a touch of +the poet, and of the old fathers who were afraid of witches. The +"blend" is singular enough, and not without its originality of +fascination. + +Though a man of science Dr. Holmes apparently took an imaginative +pleasure in all shapes of superstition that he could muster. I +must quote a passage from "The Professor at the Breakfast Table," +as peculiarly illustrative of his method, and his ways of half +accepting the abnormally romantic--accepting just enough for +pleasure, like Sir Walter Scott. Connected with the extract is a +curious anecdote. + +"I think I am a little superstitious. There were two things, when +I was a boy, that diabolised my imagination,--I mean, that gave me +a distinct apprehension of a formidable bodily shape which prowled +round the neighbourhood where I was born and bred. The first was a +series of marks called the 'Devil's footsteps.' These were patches +of sand in the pastures, where no grass grew, where even the low- +bush blackberry, the "dewberry," as our Southern neighbours call +it, in prettier and more Shakespearian language, did not spread its +clinging creepers, where even the pale, dry, sadly-sweet +'everlasting' could not grow, but all was bare and blasted. The +second was a mark in one of the public buildings near my home,--the +college dormitory named after a Colonial Governor. I do not think +many persons are aware of the existence of this mark,--little +having been said about the story in print, as it was considered +very desirable, for the sake of the Institution, to hush it up. In +the north-west corner, and on the level of the third or fourth +storey, there are signs of a breach in the walls, mended pretty +well, but not to be mistaken. A considerable portion of that +corner must have been carried away, from within outward. It was an +unpleasant affair, and I do not care to repeat the particulars; but +some young men had been using sacred things in a profane and +unlawful way, when the occurrence, which was variously explained, +took place. The story of the Appearance in the chamber was, I +suppose, invented afterwards; but of the injury to the building +there could be no question; and the zigzag line, where the mortar +is a little thicker than before, is still distinctly visible. + +"The queer burnt spots, called the 'Devil's footsteps,' had never +attracted attention before this time, though there is no evidence +that they had not existed previously, except that of the late Miss +M., a 'Goody,' so called, who was positive on the subject, but had +a strange horror of referring to an affair of which she was thought +to know something . . . I tell you it was not so pleasant for a +little boy of impressible nature to go up to bed in an old gambrel- +roofed house, with untenanted locked upper chambers, and a most +ghostly garret,--with 'Devil's footsteps' in the fields behind the +house, and in front of it the patched dormitory, where the +unexplained occurrence had taken place which startled those godless +youths at their mock devotions, so that one of them was epileptic +from that day forward, and another, after a dreadful season of +mental conflict, took to religion, and became renowned for his +ascetic sanctity." + +It is a pity that Dr. Holmes does not give the whole story, instead +of hinting at it, for a similar tale is told at Brazenose College, +and elsewhere. Now take, along with Dr. Holmes's confession to a +grain of superstition, this remark on, and explanation of, the +curious coincidences which thrust themselves on the notice of most +people. + +"Excuse me,--I return to my story of the Commonstable. Young +fellows being always hungry, and tea and dry toast being the meagre +fare of the evening meal, it was a trick of some of the boys to +impale a slice of meat upon a fork, at dinner-time, and stick the +fork, holding it, beneath the table, so that they could get it at +tea-time. The dragons that guarded this table of the Hesperides +found out the trick at last, and kept a sharp look-out for missing +forks;--they knew where to find one, if it was not in its place. +Now the odd thing was, that, after waiting so many years to hear of +this College trick, I should hear it mentioned a SECOND TIME within +the same twenty-four hours by a College youth of the present +generation. Strange, but true. And so it has happened to me and +to every person, often and often, to be hit in rapid succession by +these twinned facts or thoughts, as if they were linked like chain- +shot. + +"I was going to leave the simple reader to wonder over this, taking +it as an unexplained marvel. I think, however, I will turn over a +furrow of subsoil in it. The explanation is, of course, that in a +great many thoughts there must be a few coincidences, and these +instantly arrest our attention. Now we shall probably never have +the least idea of the enormous number of impressions which pass +through our consciousness, until in some future life we see the +photographic record of our thoughts and the stereoscopic picture of +our actions. + +"Now, my dear friends, who are putting your hands to your +foreheads, and saying to yourselves that you feel a little +confused, as if you had been waltzing until things began to whirl +slightly round you, is it possible that you do not clearly +apprehend the exact connection of all I have been saying, and its +bearing on what is now to come? Listen, then. The number of these +living elements in our bodies illustrates the incalculable +multitude of our thoughts; the number of our thoughts accounts for +those frequent coincidences spoken of; these coincidences in the +world of thought illustrate those which we constantly observe in +the world of outward events." + +Now for the anecdote--one of Mark Twain's. + +Some years ago, Mark Twain published in Harper's Magazine an +article on "Mental Telegraphy." He illustrated his meaning by a +story of how he once wrote a long letter on a complicated subject, +which had popped into his head between asleep and awake, to a +friend on the other side of America. He did not send the letter, +but, by return of post, received one from his friend. "Now, I'll +tell you what he is going to say," said Mark Twain, read his own +unsent epistle aloud, and then, opening his friend's despatch, +proved that they were essentially identical. This is what he calls +"Mental Telegraphy"; others call it "Telepathy," and the term is +merely descriptive. + +Now, on his own showing, in our second extract, Dr. Holmes should +have explained coincidences like this as purely the work of chance, +and I rather incline to think that he would have been right. But +Mark Twain, in his article on "Mental Telegraphy," cites Dr. Holmes +for a story of how he once, after dinner, as his letters came in, +felt constrained to tell, a propos des bottes, the story of the +last challenge to judicial combat in England (1817). He then +opened a newspaper directed to him from England, the Sporting +Times, and therein his eyes lighted on an account of this very +affair--Abraham Thornton's challenge to battle when he was accused +of murder, in 1817. According to Mark Twain, Dr. Holmes was +disposed to accept "Mental Telegraphy" rather than mere chance as +the cause of this coincidence. Yet the anecdote of the challenge +seems to have been a favourite of his. It occurs in, "The +Professor," in the fifth section. Perhaps he told it pretty +frequently; probably that is why the printed version was sent to +him; still, he was a little staggered by the coincidence. There +was enough of Cotton Mather in the man of science to give him +pause. + +The form of Dr. Holmes's best known books, the set concerned with +the breakfast-table and "Over the Teacups," is not very fortunate. +Much conversation at breakfast is a weariness of the flesh. We +want to eat what is necessary, and then to go about our work or +play. If American citizens in a boarding-house could endure these +long palavers, they must have been very unlike the hasty feeders +caricatured in "Martin Chuzzlewit." Macaulay may have monologuised +thus at his breakfast parties in the Albany; but breakfast parties +are obsolete--an unregrettable parcel of things lost. The +monologues, or dialogues, were published serially in the Atlantic +Monthly, but they have had a vitality and a vogue far beyond those +of the magazine causerie. Some of their popularity they may owe to +the description of the other boarders, and to the kind of novel +which connects the fortunes of these personages. But it is +impossible for an Englishman to know whether these American types +are exactly drawn or not. Their fortunes do not strongly interest +one, though the "Sculpin"--the patriotic, deformed Bostonian, with +his great-great-grandmother's ring (she was hanged for a witch)--is +a very original and singular creation. The real interest lies in +the wit, wisdom, and learning. The wit, now and then, seems to-day +rather in the nature of a "goak." One might give examples, but to +do so seems ill-natured and ungrateful. + +There are some very perishable puns. The learning is not so +recherche as it appeared when we knew nothing of Cotton Mather and +Robert Calef, the author of a book against the persecution of +witches. Calef, of course, was in the right, but I cannot forgive +him for refusing to see a lady, known to Mr. Mather, who floated +about in the air. That she did so was no good reason for hanging +or burning a number of parishioners; but, did she float, and, if +so, how? Mr. Calef said it would be a miracle, so he declined to +view the performance. His logic was thin, though of a familiar +description. Of all old things, at all events, Dr. Holmes was +fond. He found America scarcely aired, new and raw, devoid of +history and of associations. "The Tiber has a voice for me, as it +whispers to the piers of the Pons AElius, even more full of meaning +than my well-beloved Charles, eddying round the piles of West +Boston Bridge." No doubt this is a common sentiment among +Americans. + +Occasionally, like Hawthorne, they sigh for an historical +atmosphere, and then, when they come to Europe and get it, they do +not like it, and think Schenectady, New York, "a better place." It +is not easy to understand what ailed Hawthorne with Europe; he was +extremely caustic in his writings about that continent, and +discontented. Our matrons were so stout and placid that they +irritated him. Indeed, they are a little heavy in hand, still +there are examples of agreeable slimness, even in this poor old +country. Fond as he was of the historical past, Mr. Holmes +remained loyal to the historical present. He was not one of those +Americans who are always censuring England, and always hankering +after her. He had none of that irritable feeling, which made a +great contemporary of his angrily declare that HE could endure to +hear "Ye Mariners of England" sung, because of his own country's +successes, some time ago. They were gallant and conspicuous +victories of the American frigates; we do not grudge them. A fair +fight should leave no rancour, above all in the victors, and Dr. +Holmes's withers would have been unwrung by Campbell's ditty. + +He visited England in youth, and fifty years later. On the +anniversary of the American defeat at Bunker's Hill (June 17), Dr. +Holmes got his degree in the OLD Cambridge. He received degrees at +Edinburgh and at Oxford, in his "Hundred Days in Europe" he says +very little about these historic cities. The men at Oxford asked, +"Did he come in the 'One Hoss Shay'?" the name of his most familiar +poem in the lighter vein. The whole visit to England pleased and +wearied him. He likened it to the shass caffy of Mr. Henry Foker-- +the fillip at the end of the long banquet of life. He went to see +the Derby, for he was fond of horses, of racing, and, in a +sportsmanlike way, of boxing. He had the great boldness once, +audax juventa, to write a song in praise of that comfortable +creature--wine. The prudery of many Americans about the juice of +the grape is a thing very astonishing to a temperate Briton. An +admirable author, who wrote an account of the old convivial days of +an American city, found that reputable magazines could not accept +such a degrading historical record. There was no nonsense about +Dr. Holmes. His poems were mainly "occasional" verses for friendly +meetings; or humorous, like the celebrated "One Horse Shay." Of +his serious verses, the "Nautilus" is probably too familiar to need +quotation; a noble fancy is nobly and tunefully "moralised." +Pleasing, cultivated, and so forth, are adjectives not dear to +poets. To say "sublime," or "magical," or "strenuous," of Dr. +Holmes's muse, would be to exaggerate. How far he maintained his +scholarship, I am not certain; but it is odd that, in his preface +to "The Guardian Angel," he should quote from "Jonathan Edwards the +younger," a story for which he might have cited Aristotle. + +Were I to choose one character out of Dr. Holmes's creations as my +favourite, it would be "a frequent correspondent of his," and of +mine--the immortal Gifted Hopkins. Never was minor poet more +kindly and genially portrayed. And if one had to pick out three of +his books, as the best worth reading, they would be "The +Professor," "Elsie Venner," and "The Guardian Angel." They have +not the impeccable art and distinction of "The House of the Seven +Gables" and "The Scarlet Letter," but they combine fantasy with +living human interest, and with humour. With Sir Thomas Browne, +and Dr. John Brown, and--may we not add Dr. Weir Mitchell?--Dr. +Holmes excellently represents the physician in humane letters. He +has left a blameless and most amiable memory, unspotted by the +world. His works are full of the savour of his native soil, +naturally, without straining after "Americanism;" and they are +national, not local or provincial. He crossed the great gulf of +years, between the central age of American literary production--the +time of Hawthorne and Poe--to our own time, and, like Nestor, he +reigned among the third generation. As far as the world knows, the +shadow of a literary quarrel never fell on him; he was without envy +or jealousy, incurious of his own place, never vain, petulant, or +severe. He was even too good-humoured, and the worst thing I have +heard of him is that he could never say "no" to an autograph +hunter. + + + +CHAPTER V: MR. MORRIS'S POEMS + + + +"Enough," said the pupil of the wise Imlac, "you have convinced me +that no man can be a poet." The study of Mr. William Morris's +poems, in the new collected edition, {5} has convinced me that no +man, or, at least, no middle-aged man, can be a critic. I read Mr. +Morris's poems (thanks to the knightly honours conferred on the +Bard of Penrhyn, there is now no ambiguity as to 'Mr. Morris'), but +it is not the book only that I read. The scroll of my youth is +unfolded. I see the dear place where first I perused "The Blue +Closet"; the old faces of old friends flock around me; old chaff, +old laughter, old happiness re-echo and revive. St. Andrews, +Oxford, come before the mind's eye, with + + +"Many a place +That's in sad case +Where joy was wont afore, oh!" + + +as Minstrel Burne sings. These voices, faces, landscapes mingle +with the music and blur the pictures of the poet who enchanted for +us certain hours passed in the paradise of youth. A reviewer who +finds himself in this case may as well frankly confess that he can +no more criticise Mr. Morris dispassionately than he could +criticise his old self and the friends whom he shall never see +again, till he meets them + + +"Beyond the sphere of time, +And sin, and grief's control, +Serene in changeless prime +Of body and of soul." + + +To write of one's own "adventures among books" may be to provide +anecdotage more or less trivial, more or less futile, but, at +least, it is to write historically. We know how books have +affected, and do affect ourselves, our bundle of prejudices and +tastes, of old impressions and revived sensations. To judge books +dispassionately and impersonally, is much more difficult--indeed, +it is practically impossible, for our own tastes and experiences +must, more or less, modify our verdicts, do what we will. However, +the effort must be made, for to say that, at a certain age, in +certain circumstances, an individual took much pleasure in "The +Life and Death of Jason," the present of a college friend, is +certainly not to criticise "The Life and Death of Jason." + +There have been three blossoming times in the English poetry of the +nineteenth century. The first dates from Wordsworth, Coleridge, +Scott, and, later, from Shelley, Byron, Keats. By 1822 the +blossoming time was over, and the second blossoming time began in +1830-1833, with young Mr. Tennyson and Mr. Browning. It broke +forth again, in 1842 and did not practically cease till England's +greatest laureate sang of the "Crossing of the Bar." But while +Tennyson put out his full strength in 1842, and Mr. Browning rather +later, in "Bells and Pomegranates" ("Men and Women"), the third +spring came in 1858, with Mr. Morris's "Defence of Guenevere," and +flowered till Mr. Swinburne's "Atalanta in Calydon" appeared in +1865, followed by his poems of 1866. Mr. Rossetti's book of 1870 +belonged, in date of composition, mainly to this period. + +In 1858, when "The Defence of Guenevere" came out, Mr. Morris must +have been but a year or two from his undergraduateship. Every one +has heard enough about his companions, Mr. Burne Jones, Mr. +Rossetti, Canon Dixon, and the others of the old Oxford and +Cambridge Magazine, where Mr. Morris's wonderful prose fantasies +are buried. Why should they not be revived, these strangely +coloured and magical dreams? As literature, I prefer them vastly +above Mr. Morris's later romances in prose--"The Hollow Land" above +"News from Nowhere!" Mr. Morris and his friends were active in the +fresh dawn of a new romanticism, a mediaeval and Catholic revival, +with very little Catholicism in it for the most part. This revival +is more "innerly," as the Scotch say, more intimate, more "earnest" +than the larger and more genial, if more superficial, restoration +by Scott. The painful doubt, the scepticism of the Ages of Faith, +the dark hours of that epoch, its fantasy, cruelty, luxury, no less +than its colour and passion, inform Mr. Morris's first poems. The +fourteenth and the early fifteenth century is his "period." In +"The Defence of Guenevere" he is not under the influence of +Chaucer, whose narrative manner, without one grain of his humour, +inspires "The Life and Death of Jason" and "The Earthly Paradise." +In the early book the rugged style of Mr. Browning has left a mark. +There are cockney rhymes, too, such as "short" rhyming to +"thought." But, on the whole, Mr. Morris's early manner was all +his own, nor has he ever returned to it. In the first poem, "The +Queen's Apology," is this passage:- + + +"Listen: suppose your time were come to die, +And you were quite alone and very weak; +Yea, laid a-dying, while very mightily + +"The wind was ruffling up the narrow streak +Of river through your broad lands running well: +Suppose a hush should come, then some one speak: + +"'One of these cloths is heaven, and one is hell, +Now choose one cloth for ever, which they be, +I will not tell you, you must somehow tell + +"'Of your own strength and mightiness; here, see!' +Yea, yea, my lord, and you to ope your eyes, +At foot of your familiar bed to see + +"A great God's angel standing, with such dyes, +Not known on earth, on his great wings, and hands, +Held out two ways, light from the inner skies + +"Showing him well, and making his commands +Seem to be God's commands, moreover, too, +Holding within his hands the cloths on wands; + +"And one of these strange choosing-cloths was blue, +Wavy and long, and one cut short and red; +No man could tell the better of the two. + +"After a shivering half-hour you said, +'God help! heaven's colour, the blue;' and he said, 'Hell.' +Perhaps you then would roll upon your bed, + +"And cry to all good men that loved you well, +'Ah, Christ! if only I had known, known, known.'" + + +There was nothing like that before in English poetry; it has the +bizarrerie of a new thing in beauty. How far it is really +beautiful how can I tell? How can I discount the "personal bias"? +Only I know that it is unforgettable. Again (Galahad speaks):- + + +"I saw +One sitting on the altar as a throne, +Whose face no man could say he did not know, +And, though the bell still rang, he sat alone, +With raiment half blood-red, half white as snow." + + +Such things made their own special ineffaceable impact. + +Leaving the Arthurian cycle, Mr. Morris entered on his especially +sympathetic period--the gloom and sad sunset glory of the late +fourteenth century, the age of Froissart and wicked, wasteful wars. +To Froissart it all seemed one magnificent pageant of knightly and +kingly fortunes; he only murmurs a "great pity" for the death of a +knight or the massacre of a town. It is rather the pity of it that +Mr. Morris sees: the hearts broken in a corner, as in "Sir Peter +Harpedon's End," or beside "The Haystack in the Floods." Here is a +picture like life of what befell a hundred times. Lady Alice de la +Barde hears of the death of her knight:- + + +"ALICE + +"Can you talk faster, sir? +Get over all this quicker? fix your eyes +On mine, I pray you, and whate'er you see +Still go on talking fast, unless I fall, +Or bid you stop. + +"SQUIRE + +"I pray your pardon then, +And looking in your eyes, fair lady, say +I am unhappy that your knight is dead. +Take heart, and listen! let me tell you all. +We were five thousand goodly men-at-arms, +And scant five hundred had he in that hold; +His rotten sandstone walls were wet with rain, +And fell in lumps wherever a stone hit; +Yet for three days about the barriers there +The deadly glaives were gather'd, laid across, +And push'd and pull'd; the fourth our engines came; +But still amid the crash of falling walls, +And roar of bombards, rattle of hard bolts, +The steady bow-strings flash'd, and still stream'd out +St. George's banner, and the seven swords, +And still they cried, 'St. George Guienne,' until +Their walls were flat as Jericho's of old, +And our rush came, and cut them from the keep." + + +The astonishing vividness, again, of the tragedy told in "Geffray +Teste Noire" is like that of a vision in a magic mirror or a +crystal ball, rather than like a picture suggested by printed +words. "Shameful Death" has the same enchanted kind of +presentment. We look through a "magic casement opening on the +foam" of the old waves of war. Poems of a pure fantasy, unequalled +out of Coleridge and Poe, are "The Wind" and "The Blue Closet." +Each only lives in fantasy. Motives, and facts, and "story" are +unimportant and out of view. The pictures arise distinct, +unsummoned, spontaneous, like the faces and places which are +flashed on our eyes between sleeping and waking. Fantastic, too, +but with more of a recognisable human setting, is "Golden Wings," +which to a slight degree reminds one of Theophile Gautier's Chateau +de Souvenir. + + +"The apples now grow green and sour +Upon the mouldering castle wall, +Before they ripen there they fall: +There are no banners on the tower, + +The draggled swans most eagerly eat +The green weeds trailing in the moat; +Inside the rotting leaky boat +You see a slain man's stiffen'd feet." + + +These, with "The Sailing of the Sword," are my own old favourites. +There was nothing like them before, nor will be again, for Mr. +Morris, after several years of silence, abandoned his early manner. +No doubt it was not a manner to persevere in, but happily, in a +mood and a moment never to be re-born or return, Mr. Morris did +fill a fresh page in English poetry with these imperishable +fantasies. They were absolutely neglected by "the reading public," +but they found a few staunch friends. Indeed, I think of +"Guenevere" as FitzGerald did of Tennyson's poems before 1842. But +this, of course, is a purely personal, probably a purely +capricious, estimate. Criticism may aver that the influence of Mr. +Rossetti was strong on Mr. Morris before 1858. Perhaps so, but we +read Mr. Morris first (as the world read the "Lay" before +"Christabel"), and my own preference is for Mr. Morris. + +It was after eight or nine years of silence that Mr. Morris +produced, in 1866 or 1867, "The Life and Death of Jason." Young +men who had read "Guenevere" hastened to purchase it, and, of +course, found themselves in contact with something very unlike +their old favourite. Mr. Morris had told a classical tale in +decasyllabic couplets of the Chaucerian sort, and he regarded the +heroic age from a mediaeval point of view; at all events, not from +an historical and archaeological point of view. It was natural in +Mr. Morris to "envisage" the Greek heroic age in this way, but it +would not be natural in most other writers. The poem is not much +shorter than the "Odyssey," and long narrative poems had been out +of fashion since "The Lord of the Isles" (1814). + +All this was a little disconcerting. We read "Jason," and read it +with pleasure, but without much of the more essential pleasure +which comes from magic and distinction of style. The peculiar +qualities of Keats, and Tennyson, and Virgil are not among the +gifts of Mr. Morris. As people say of Scott in his long poems, so +it may be said of Mr. Morris--that he does not furnish many +quotations, does not glitter in "jewels five words long." + +In "Jason" he entered on his long career as a narrator; a poet +retelling the immortal primeval stories of the human race. In one +guise or another the legend of Jason is the most widely distributed +of romances; the North American Indians have it, and the Samoans +and the Samoyeds, as well as all Indo-European peoples. This tale, +told briefly by Pindar, and at greater length by Apollonius +Rhodius, and in the "Orphica," Mr. Morris took up and handled in a +single and objective way. His art was always pictorial, but, in +"Jason" and later, he described more, and was less apt, as it were, +to flash a picture on the reader, in some incommunicable way. + +In the covers of the first edition were announcements of the +"Earthly Paradise": that vast collection of the world's old tales +retold. One might almost conjecture that "Jason" had originally +been intended for a part of the "Earthly Paradise," and had +outgrown its limits. The tone is much the same, though the +"criticism of life" is less formally and explicitly stated. + +For Mr. Morris came at last to a "criticism of life." It would not +have satisfied Mr. Matthew Arnold, and it did not satisfy Mr. +Morris! The burden of these long narrative poems is vanitas +vanitatum: the fleeting, perishable, unsatisfying nature of human +existence, the dream "rounded by a sleep." The lesson drawn is to +make life as full and as beautiful as may be, by love, and +adventure, and art. The hideousness of modern industrialism was +oppressing to Mr. Morris; that hideousness he was doing his best to +relieve and redeem, by poetry, and by all the many arts and crafts +in which he was a master. His narrative poems are, indeed, part of +his industry in this field. He was not born to slay monsters, he +says, "the idle singer of an empty day." Later, he set about +slaying monsters, like Jason, or unlike Jason, scattering dragon's +teeth to raise forces which he could not lay, and could not direct. + +I shall go no further into politics or agitation, and I say this +much only to prove that Mr. Morris's "criticism of life," and +prolonged, wistful dwelling on the thought of death, ceased to +satisfy himself. His own later part, as a poet and an ally of +Socialism, proved this to be true. It seems to follow that the +peculiarly level, lifeless, decorative effect of his narratives, +which remind us rather of glorious tapestries than of pictures, was +no longer wholly satisfactory to himself. There is plenty of +charmed and delightful reading--"Jason" and the "Earthly Paradise" +are literature for The Castle of Indolence, but we do miss a +strenuous rendering of action and passion. These Mr. Morris had +rendered in "The Defence of Guinevere": now he gave us something +different, something beautiful, but something deficient in dramatic +vigour. Apollonius Rhodius is, no doubt, much of a pedant, a +literary writer of epic, in an age of Criticism. He dealt with the +tale of "Jason," and conceivably he may have borrowed from older +minstrels. But the Medea of Apollonius Rhodius, in her love, her +tenderness, her regret for home, in all her maiden words and ways, +is undeniably a character more living, more human, more passionate, +and more sympathetic, than the Medea of Mr. Morris. I could almost +wish that he had closely followed that classical original, the +first true love story in literature. In the same way I prefer +Apollonius's spell for soothing the dragon, as much terser and more +somniferous than the spell put by Mr. Morris into the lips of +Medea. Scholars will find it pleasant to compare these passages of +the Alexandrine and of the London poets. As a brick out of the +vast palace of "Jason" we may select the song of the Nereid to +Hylas--Mr. Morris is always happy with his Nymphs and Nereids:- + + +"I know a little garden-close +Set thick with lily and with rose, +Where I would wander if I might +From dewy dawn to dewy night, +And have one with me wandering. +And though within it no birds sing, +And though no pillared house is there, +And though the apple boughs are bare +Of fruit and blossom, would to God, +Her feet upon the green grass trod, +And I beheld them as before. +There comes a murmur from the shore, +And in the place two fair streams are, +Drawn from the purple hills afar, +Drawn down unto the restless sea; +The hills whose flowers ne'er fed the bee, +The shore no ship has ever seen, +Still beaten by the billows green, +Whose murmur comes unceasingly +Unto the place for which I cry. +For which I cry both day and night, +For which I let slip all delight, +That maketh me both deaf and blind, +Careless to win, unskilled to find, +And quick to lose what all men seek. +Yet tottering as I am, and weak, +Still have I left a little breath +To seek within the jaws of death +An entrance to that happy place, +To seek the unforgotten face +Once seen, once kissed, once rest from me +Anigh the murmuring of the sea." + + +"Jason" is, practically, a very long tale from the "Earthly +Paradise," as the "Earthly Paradise" is an immense treasure of +shorter tales in the manner of "Jason." Mr. Morris reverted for an +hour to his fourteenth century, a period when London was "clean." +This is a poetic license; many a plague found mediaeval London +abominably dirty! A Celt himself, no doubt, with the Celt's +proverbial way of being impossibilium cupitor, Mr. Morris was in +full sympathy with his Breton Squire, who, in the reign of Edward +III., sets forth to seek the Earthly Paradise, and the land where +Death never comes. Much more dramatic, I venture to think, than +any passage of "Jason," is that where the dreamy seekers of +dreamland, Breton and Northman, encounter the stout King Edward +III., whose kingdom is of this world. Action and fantasy are met, +and the wanderers explain the nature of their quest. One of them +speaks of death in many a form, and of the flight from death:- + + +"His words nigh made me weep, but while he spoke +I noted how a mocking smile just broke +The thin line of the Prince's lips, and he +Who carried the afore-named armoury +Puffed out his wind-beat cheeks and whistled low: +But the King smiled, and said, 'Can it be so? +I know not, and ye twain are such as find +The things whereto old kings must needs be blind. +For you the world is wide--but not for me, +Who once had dreams of one great victory +Wherein that world lay vanquished by my throne, +And now, the victor in so many an one, +Find that in Asia Alexander died +And will not live again; the world is wide +For you I say,--for me a narrow space +Betwixt the four walls of a fighting place. +Poor man, why should I stay thee? live thy fill +Of that fair life, wherein thou seest no ill +But fear of that fair rest I hope to win +One day, when I have purged me of my sin. +Farewell, it yet may hap that I a king +Shall be remembered but by this one thing, +That on the morn before ye crossed the sea +Ye gave and took in common talk with me; +But with this ring keep memory with the morn, +O Breton, and thou Northman, by this horn +Remember me, who am of Odin's blood.'" + + +All this encounter is a passage of high invention. The adventures +in Anahuac are such as Bishop Erie may have achieved when he set +out to find Vinland the Good, and came back no more, whether he was +or was not remembered by the Aztecs as Quetzalcoatl. The tale of +the wanderers was Mr. Morris's own; all the rest are of the +dateless heritage of our race, fairy tales coming to us, now +"softly breathed through the flutes of the Grecians," now told by +Sagamen of Iceland. The whole performance is astonishingly +equable; we move on a high tableland, where no tall peaks of +Parnassus are to be climbed. Once more literature has a narrator, +on the whole much more akin to Spenser than to Chaucer, Homer, or +Sir Walter. Humour and action are not so prominent as +contemplation of a pageant reflected in a fairy mirror. But Mr. +Morris has said himself, about his poem, what I am trying to say:- + + +"Death have we hated, knowing not what it meant; +Life have we loved, through green leaf and through sere, +Though still the less we knew of its intent; +The Earth and Heaven through countless year on year, +Slow changing, were to us but curtains fair, +Hung round about a little room, where play +Weeping and laughter of man's empty day." + + +Mr. Morris had shown, in various ways, the strength of his sympathy +with the heroic sagas of Iceland. He had rendered one into verse, +in "The Earthly Paradise," above all, "Grettir the Strong" and "The +Volsunga" he had done into English prose. His next great poem was +"The Story of Sigurd," a poetic rendering of the theme which is, to +the North, what the Tale of Troy is to Greece, and to all the +world. Mr. Morris took the form of the story which is most +archaic, and bears most birthmarks of its savage origin--the +version of the "Volsunga," not the German shape of the +"Nibelungenlied." He showed extraordinary skill, especially in +making human and intelligible the story of Regin, Otter, Fafnir, +and the Dwarf Andvari's Hoard. + + +"It was Reidmar the Ancient begat me; and now was he waxen old, +And a covetous man and a king; and he bade, and I built him a hall, +And a golden glorious house; and thereto his sons did he call, +And he bade them be evil and wise, that his will through them might +be wrought. +Then he gave unto Fafnir my brother the soul that feareth nought, +And the brow of the hardened iron, and the hand that may never +fail, +And the greedy heart of a king, and the ear that hears no wail. + +"But next unto Otter my brother he gave the snare and the net, +And the longing to wend through the wild-wood, and wade the +highways wet; +And the foot that never resteth, while aught be left alive +That hath cunning to match man's cunning or might with his might to +strive. + +"And to me, the least and the youngest, what gift for the slaying +of ease? +Save the grief that remembers the past, and the fear that the +future sees; +And the hammer and fashioning-iron, and the living coal of fire; +And the craft that createth a semblance, and fails of the heart's +desire; +And the toil that each dawning quickens, and the task that is never +done; +And the heart that longeth ever, nor will look to the deed that is +won. + +"Thus gave my father the gifts that might never be taken again; +Far worse were we now than the Gods, and but little better than +men. +But yet of our ancient might one thing had we left us still: +We had craft to change our semblance, and could shift us at our +will +Into bodies of the beast-kind, or fowl, or fishes cold; +For belike no fixed semblance we had in the days of old, +Till the Gods were waxen busy, and all things their form must take +That knew of good and evil, and longed to gather and make." + + +But when we turn to the passage of the eclaircissement between +Sigurd and Brynhild, that most dramatic and most MODERN moment in +the ancient tragedy, the moment where the clouds of savage fancy +scatter in the light of a hopeless human love, then, I must +confess, I prefer the simple, brief prose of Mr. Morris's +translation of the "Volsunga" to his rather periphrastic +paraphrase. Every student of poetry may make the comparison for +himself, and decide for himself whether the old or the new is +better. Again, in the final fight and massacre in the hall of +Atli, I cannot but prefer the Slaying of the Wooers, at the close +of the "Odyssey," or the last fight of Roland at Roncesvaux, or the +prose version of the "Volsunga." All these are the work of men who +were war-smiths as well as song-smiths. Here is a passage from the +"murder grim and great":- + + +"So he saith in the midst of the foemen with his war-flame reared +on high, +But all about and around him goes up a bitter cry +From the iron men of Atli, and the bickering of the steel +Sends a roar up to the roof-ridge, and the Niblung war-ranks reel +Behind the steadfast Gunnar: but lo, have ye seen the corn, +While yet men grind the sickle, by the wind streak overborne +When the sudden rain sweeps downward, and summer groweth black, +And the smitten wood-side roareth 'neath the driving thunder-wrack? +So before the wise-heart Hogni shrank the champions of the East +As his great voice shook the timbers in the hall of Atli's feast, +There he smote and beheld not the smitten, and by nought were his +edges stopped; +He smote and the dead were thrust from him; a hand with its shield +he lopped; +There met him Atli's marshal, and his arm at the shoulder he shred; +Three swords were upreared against him of the best of the kin of +the dead; +And he struck off a head to the rightward, and his sword through a +throat he thrust, +But the third stroke fell on his helm-crest, and he stooped to the +ruddy dust, +And uprose as the ancient Giant, and both his hands were wet: +Red then was the world to his eyen, as his hand to the labour he +set; +Swords shook and fell in his pathway, huge bodies leapt and fell; +Harsh grided shield and war-helm like the tempest-smitten bell, +And the war-cries ran together, and no man his brother knew, +And the dead men loaded the living, as he went the war-wood +through; +And man 'gainst man was huddled, till no sword rose to smite, +And clear stood the glorious Hogni in an island of the fight, +And there ran a river of death 'twixt the Niblung and his foes, +And therefrom the terror of men and the wrath of the Gods arose." + + +I admit that this does not affect me as does the figure of Odysseus +raining his darts of doom, or the courtesy of Roland when the +blinded Oliver smites him by mischance, and, indeed, the Keeping of +the Stair by Umslopogaas appeals to me more vigorously as a +strenuous picture of war. To be just to Mr. Morris, let us give +his rendering of part of the Slaying of the Wooers, from his +translation of the "Odyssey":- + + +"And e'en as the word he uttered, he drew his keen sword out +Brazen, on each side shearing, and with a fearful shout +Rushed on him; but Odysseus that very while let fly +And smote him with the arrow in the breast, the pap hard by, +And drove the swift shaft to the liver, and adown to the ground +fell the sword +From out of his hand, and doubled he hung above the board, +And staggered; and whirling he fell, and the meat was scattered +around, +And the double cup moreover, and his forehead smote the ground; +And his heart was wrung with torment, and with both feet spurning +he smote +The high-seat; and over his eyen did the cloud of darkness float. + +"And then it was Amphinomus, who drew his whetted sword +And fell on, making his onrush 'gainst Odysseus the glorious lord, +If perchance he might get him out-doors: but Telemachus him +forewent, +And a cast of the brazen war-spear from behind him therewith sent +Amidmost of his shoulders, that drave through his breast and out, +And clattering he fell, and the earth all the breadth of his +forehead smote." + + +There is no need to say more of Mr. Morris's "Odysseus." Close to +the letter of the Greek he usually keeps, but where are the surge +and thunder of Homer? Apparently we must accent the penultimate in +"Amphinomus" if the line is to scan. I select a passage of +peaceful beauty from Book V.:- + + +"But all about that cavern there grew a blossoming wood, +Of alder and of poplar and of cypress savouring good; +And fowl therein wing-spreading were wont to roost and be, +For owls were there and falcons, and long-tongued crows of the sea, +And deeds of the sea they deal with and thereof they have a care +But round the hollow cavern there spread and flourished fair +A vine of garden breeding, and in its grapes was glad; +And four wells of the white water their heads together had, +And flowing on in order four ways they thence did get; +And soft were the meadows blooming with parsley and violet. +Yea, if thither indeed had come e'en one of the Deathless, e'en he +Had wondered and gladdened his heart with all that was there to +see. +And there in sooth stood wondering the Flitter, the Argus-bane. +But when o'er all these matters in his soul he had marvelled amain, +Then into the wide cave went he, and Calypso, Godhead's Grace, +Failed nowise there to know him as she looked upon his face; +For never unknown to each other are the Deathless Gods, though they +Apart from one another may be dwelling far away. +But Odysseus the mighty-hearted within he met not there, +Who on the beach sat weeping, as oft he was wont to wear +His soul with grief and groaning, and weeping; yea, and he +As the tears he was pouring downward yet gazed o'er the untilled +sea." + + +This is close enough to the Greek, but + + +"And flowing on in order four ways they thence did get" + + +is not precisely musical. Why is Hermes "The Flitter"? But I have +often ventured to remonstrate against these archaistic +peculiarities, which to some extent mar our pleasure in Mr. +Morris's translations. In his version of the rich Virgilian +measure they are especially out of place. The "AEneid" is rendered +with a roughness which might better befit a translation of Ennius. +Thus the reader of Mr. Morris's poetical translations has in his +hands versions of almost literal closeness, and (what is extremely +rare) versions of poetry by a poet. But his acquaintance with +Early English and Icelandic has added to the poet a strain of the +philologist, and his English in the "Odyssey," still more in the +"AEneid," is occasionally more ARCHAIC than the Greek of 900 B.C. +So at least it seems to a reader not unversed in attempts to fit +the classical poets with an English rendering. But the true test +is in the appreciation of the lovers of poetry in general. + +To them, as to all who desire the restoration of beauty in modern +life, Mr. Morris has been a benefactor almost without example. +Indeed, were adequate knowledge mine, Mr. Morris's poetry should +have been criticised as only a part of the vast industry of his +life in many crafts and many arts. His place in English life and +literature is unique as it is honourable. He did what he desired +to do--he made vast additions to simple and stainless pleasures. + + + +CHAPTER VI: MRS. RADCLIFFE'S NOVELS + + + +Does any one now read Mrs. Radcliffe, or am I the only wanderer in +her windy corridors, listening timidly to groans and hollow voices, +and shielding the flame of a lamp, which, I fear, will presently +flicker out, and leave me in darkness? People know the name of +"The Mysteries of Udolpho;" they know that boys would say to +Thackeray, at school, "Old fellow, draw us Vivaldi in the +Inquisition." But have they penetrated into the chill galleries of +the Castle of Udolpho? Have they shuddered for Vivaldi in face of +the sable-clad and masked Inquisition? Certainly Mrs. Radcliffe, +within the memory of man, has been extremely popular. The thick +double-columned volume in which I peruse the works of the +Enchantress belongs to a public library. It is quite the dirtiest, +greasiest, most dog's-eared, and most bescribbled tome in the +collection. Many of the books have remained, during the last +hundred years, uncut, even to this day, and I have had to apply the +paper knife to many an author, from Alciphron (1790) to Mr. Max +Muller, and Dr. Birkbeck Hill's edition of Bozzy's "Life of Dr. +Johnson." But Mrs. Radcliffe has been read diligently, and +copiously annotated. + +This lady was, in a literary sense, and though, like the sire of +Evelina, he cast her off, the daughter of Horace Walpole. Just +when King Romance seemed as dead as Queen Anne, Walpole produced +that Gothic tale, "The Castle of Otranto," in 1764. In that very +year was born Anne Ward, who, in 1787, married William Radcliffe, +Esq., M.A., Oxon. In 1789 she published "The Castles of Athlin and +Dunbayne." The scene, she tells us, is laid in "the most romantic +part of the Highlands, the north-east coast of Scotland." On +castles, anywhere, she doted. Walpole, not Smollett or Miss +Burney, inspired her with a passion for these homes of old romance. +But the north-east coast of Scotland is hardly part of the +Highlands at all, and is far from being very romantic. The period +is "the dark ages" in general. Yet the captive Earl, when "the +sweet tranquillity of evening threw an air of tender melancholy +over his mind . . . composed the following sonnet, which (having +committed it to paper) he the next evening dropped upon the +terrace. He had the pleasure to observe that the paper was taken +up by the ladies, who immediately retired into the castle." These +were not the manners of the local Mackays, of the Sinclairs, and of +"the small but fierce clan of Gunn," in the dark ages. + +But this was Mrs. Radcliffe's way. She delighted in descriptions +of scenery, the more romantic the better, and usually drawn +entirely from her inner consciousness. Her heroines write sonnets +(which never but once ARE sonnets) and other lyrics, on every +occasion. With his usual generosity Scott praised her landscape +and her lyrics, but, indeed, they are, as Sir Walter said of Mrs. +Hemans, "too poetical," and probably they were skipped, even by her +contemporary devotees. "The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne" +frankly do not permit themselves to be read, and it was not till +1790, with "A Sicilian Romance," that Mrs. Radcliffe "found +herself," and her public. After reading, with breathless haste, +through, "A Sicilian Romance," and "The Romance of the Forest," in +a single day, it would ill become me to speak lightly of Mrs. +Radcliffe. Like Catherine Morland, I love this lady's tender yet +terrific fancy. + +Mrs. Radcliffe does not always keep on her highest level, but we +must remember that her last romance, "The Italian," is by far her +best. She had been feeling her way to this pitch of excellence, +and, when she had attained to it, she published no more. The +reason is uncertain. She became a Woman's Rights woman, and wrote +"The Female Advocate," not a novel! Scott thinks that she may have +been annoyed by her imitators, or by her critics, against whom he +defends her in an admirable passage, to be cited later. Meanwhile +let us follow Mrs. Radcliffe in her upward course. + +The "Sicilian Romance" appeared in 1790, when the author's age was +twenty-six. The book has a treble attraction, for it contains the +germ of "Northanger Abbey," and the germ of "Jane Eyre," and--the +germ of Byron! Like "Joseph Andrews," "Northanger Abbey" began as +a parody (of Mrs. Radcliffe) and developed into a real novel of +character. So too Byron's gloomy scowling adventurers, with their +darkling past, are mere repetitions in rhyme of Mrs. Radcliffe's +Schedoni. This is so obvious that, when discussing Mrs. +Radcliffe's Schedoni, Scott adds, in a note, parallel passages from +Byron's "Giaour." Sir Walter did not mean to mock, he merely +compared two kindred spirits. "The noble poet" "kept on the +business still," and broke into octosyllabics, borrowed from Scott, +his descriptions of miscreants borrowed from Mrs. Radcliffe. + +"A Sicilian Romance" has its scene in the palace of Ferdinand, +fifth Marquis of Mazzini, on the northern coast of Sicily. The +time is about 1580, but there is nothing in the manners or costume +to indicate that, or any other period. Such "local colour" was +unknown to Mrs. Radcliffe, as to Clara Reeve. In Horace Walpole, +however, a character goes so far in the mediaeval way as to say "by +my halidome." + +The Marquis Mazzini had one son and two daughters by his first +amiable consort, supposed to be long dead when the story opens. +The son is the original of Henry Tilney in "Northanger Abbey," and +in General Tilney does Catherine Morland recognise a modern Marquis +of Mazzini. But the Marquis's wife, to be sure, is NOT dead; like +the first Mrs. Rochester she is concealed about the back premises, +and, as in "Jane Eyre," it is her movements, and those of her +gaolers, that produce mystery, and make the reader suppose that +"the place is haunted." It is, of course, only the mystery and the +"machinery" of Mrs. Radcliffe that Miss Bronte adapted. These +passages in "Jane Eyre" have been censured, but it is not easy to +see how the novel could do without them. Mrs. Radcliffe's tale +entirely depends on its machinery. Her wicked Marquis, having +secretly immured Number One, has now a new and beautiful Number +Two, whose character does not bear inspection. This domestic +position, as Number Two, we know, was declined by the austere +virtue of Jane Eyre. + +"Phenomena" begin in the first chapter of "A Sicilian Romance," +mysterious lights wander about uninhabited parts of the castle, and +are vainly investigated by young Ferdinand, son of the Marquis. +This Hippolytus the Chaste, loved all in vain by the reigning +Marchioness, is adored by, and adores, her stepdaughter, Julia. +Jealousy and revenge are clearly indicated. But, in chasing +mysterious lights and figures through mouldering towers, Ferdinand +gets into the very undesirable position of David Balfour, when he +climbs, in the dark, the broken turret stair in his uncle's house +of Shaws (in "Kidnapped"). Here is a FOURTH author indebted to +Mrs. Radcliffe: her disciples are Miss Austen, Byron, Miss Bronte, +and Mr. Louis Stevenson! Ferdinand "began the ascent. He had not +proceeded very far, when the stones of a step which his foot had +just quitted gave way, and, dragging with them those adjoining, +formed a chasm in the staircase that terrified even Ferdinand, who +was left tottering on the suspended half of the steps, in momentary +expectation of falling to the bottom with the stone on which he +rested. In the terror which this occasioned, he attempted to save +himself by catching at a kind of beam which suspended over the +stairs, when the lamp dropped from his hand, and he was left in +total darkness." + +Can anything be more "amazing horrid," above all as there are +mysterious figures in and about the tower? Mrs. Radcliffe's lamps +always fall, or are blown out, in the nick of time, an expedient +already used by Clara Reeve in that very mild but once popular +ghost story, "The Old English Baron" (1777). All authors have such +favourite devices, and I wonder how many fights Mr. Stanley +Weyman's heroes have fought, from the cellar to their favourite +tilting ground, the roof of a strange house! + +Ferdinand hung on to the beam for an hour, when the ladies came +with a light, and he scrambled back to solid earth. In his next +nocturnal research, "a sullen groan arose from beneath where he +stood," and when he tried to force a door (there are scores of such +weird doors in Mrs. Radcliffe) "a groan was repeated, more hollow +and dreadful than the first. His courage forsook him"--and no +wonder! Of course he could not know that the author of the groans +was, in fact, his long-lost mother, immured by his father, the +wicked Marquis. We need not follow the narrative through the +darkling crimes and crumbling galleries of this terrible castle on +the north coast of Sicily. Everybody is always "gazing in silent +terror," and all the locks are rusty. "A savage and dexterous +banditti" play a prominent part, and the imprisoned Ferdinand "did +not hesitate to believe that the moans he heard came from the +restless spirit of the murdered della Campo." No working +hypothesis could seem more plausible, but it was erroneous. Mrs. +Radcliffe does not deal in a single avowed ghost. She finally +explains away, by normal causes, everything that she does not +forget to explain. At the most, she indulges herself in a +premonitory dream. On this point she is true to common sense, +without quite adopting the philosophy of David Hume. "I do not say +that spirits have appeared," she remarks, "but if several discreet +unprejudiced persons were to assure me that they had seen one--I +should not be bold or proud enough to reply, it is impossible!" +But Hume WAS bold and proud enough: he went further than Mrs. +Radcliffe. + +Scott censures Mrs. Radcliffe's employment of explanations. He is +in favour of "boldly avowing the use of supernatural machinery," or +of leaving the matter in the vague, as in the appearance of the +wraith of the dying Alice to Ravenswood. But, in Mrs. Radcliffe's +day, common sense was so tyrannical, that the poor lady's romances +would have been excluded from families, if she had not provided +normal explanations of her groans, moans, voices, lights, and +wandering figures. The ghost-hunt in the castle finally brings +Julia to a door, whose bolts, "strengthened by desperation, she +forced back." There was a middle-aged lady in the room, who, after +steadily gazing on Julia, "suddenly exclaimed, 'My daughter!' and +fainted away." Julia being about seventeen, and Madame Mazzini, +her mamma, having been immured for fifteen years, we observe, in +this recognition, the force of the maternal instinct. + +The wicked Marquis was poisoned by the partner of his iniquities, +who anon stabbed herself with a poniard. The virtuous Julia +marries the chaste Hippolytus, and, says the author, "in reviewing +this story, we perceive a singular and striking instance of moral +retribution." + +We also remark the futility of locking up an inconvenient wife, +fabled to be defunct, in one's own country house. Had Mr. +Rochester, in "Jane Eyre," studied the "Sicilian Romance," he would +have shunned an obsolete system, inconvenient at best, and apt, in +the long run, to be disastrous. + +In the "Romance of the Forest" (1791), Mrs. Radcliffe remained true +to Mr. Stanley Weyman's favourite period, the end of the sixteenth +century. But there are no historical characters or costumes in the +story, and all the persons, as far as language and dress go, might +have been alive in 1791. + +The story runs thus: one de la Motte, who appears to have fallen +from dissipation to swindling, is, on the first page, discovered +flying from Paris and the law, with his wife, in a carriage. Lost +in the dark on a moor, he follows a light, and enters an old lonely +house. He is seized by ruffians, locked in, and expects to be +murdered, which he knows that he cannot stand, for he is timid by +nature. In fact, a ruffian puts a pistol to La Motte's breast with +one hand, while with the other he drags along a beautiful girl of +eighteen. "Swear that you will convey this girl where I may never +see her more," exclaims the bully, and La Motte, with the young +lady, is taken back to his carriage. "If you return within an hour +you will be welcomed with a brace of bullets," is the ruffian's +parting threat. + +So La Motte, Madame La Motte, and the beautiful girl drive away, La +Motte's one desire being to find a retreat safe from the police of +an offended justice. + +Is this not a very original, striking, and affecting situation; +provocative, too, of the utmost curiosity? A fugitive from +justice, in a strange, small, dark, ancient house, is seized, +threatened, and presented with a young and lovely female stranger. +In this opening we recognise the hand of a master genius. There +MUST be an explanation of proceedings so highly unconventional, and +what can the reason be? The reader is empoigne in the first page, +and eagerly follows the flight of La Motte, also of Peter, his +coachman, an attached, comic, and familiar domestic. After a few +days, the party observe, in the recesses of a gloomy forest, the +remains of a Gothic abbey. They enter; by the light of a +flickering lamp they penetrate "horrible recesses," discover a room +handsomely provided with a trapdoor, and determine to reside in a +dwelling so congenial, though, as La Motte judiciously remarks, +"not in all respects strictly Gothic." After a few days, La Motte +finds that somebody is inquiring for him in the nearest town. He +seeks for a hiding-place, and explores the chambers under the +trapdoor. Here he finds, in a large chest--what do you suppose he +finds? It was a human skeleton! Yet in this awful vicinity he and +his wife, with Adeline (the fair stranger) conceal themselves. The +brave Adeline, when footsteps are heard, and a figure is beheld in +the upper rooms, accosts the stranger. His keen eye presently +detects the practicable trapdoor, he raises it, and the cowering La +Motte recognises in the dreaded visitor--his own son, who had +sought him out of filial affection. + +Already Madame La Motte has become jealous of Adeline, especially +as her husband is oddly melancholy, and apt to withdraw into a +glade, where he mysteriously disappears into the recesses of a +genuine Gothic sepulchre. This, to the watchful eyes of a wife, is +proof of faithlessness on the part of a husband. As the son, +Louis, really falls in love with Adeline, Madame La Motte becomes +doubly unkind to her, and Adeline now composes quantities of poems +to Night, to Sunset, to the Nocturnal Gale, and so on. + +In this uncomfortable situation, two strangers arrive in a terrific +thunderstorm. One is young, the other is a Marquis. On seeing +this nobleman, "La Motte's limbs trembled, and a ghastly paleness +overspread his countenance. The Marquis was little less agitated," +and was, at first, decidedly hostile. La Motte implored +forgiveness--for what?--and the Marquis (who, in fact, owned the +Abbey, and had a shooting lodge not far off) was mollified. They +all became rather friendly, and Adeline asked La Motte about the +stories of hauntings, and a murder said to have been, at some time, +committed in the Abbey. La Motte said that the Marquis could have +no connection with such fables; still, there WAS the skeleton. + +Meanwhile, Adeline had conceived a flame for Theodore, the young +officer who accompanied his colonel, the Marquis, on their first +visit to the family. Theodore, who returned her passion, had +vaguely warned her of an impending danger, and then had failed to +keep tryst with her, one evening, and had mysteriously disappeared. +Then unhappy Adeline dreamed about a prisoner, a dying man, a +coffin, a voice from the coffin, and the appearance within it of +the dying man, amidst torrents of blood. The chamber in which she +saw these visions was most vividly represented. Next day the +Marquis came to dinner, and, THOUGH RELUCTANTLY, consented to pass +the night: Adeline, therefore, was put in a new bedroom. +Disturbed by the wind shaking the mouldering tapestry, she found a +concealed door behind the arras and a suite of rooms, ONE OF WHICH +WAS THE CHAMBER OF HER DREAM! On the floor lay a rusty dagger! +The bedstead, being touched, crumbled, and disclosed a small roll +of manuscripts. They were not washing bills, like those discovered +by Catherine Morland in "Northanger Abbey." Returning to her own +chamber, Adeline heard the Marquis professing to La Motte a passion +for herself. Conceive her horror! Silence then reigned, till all +was sudden noise and confusion; the Marquis flying in terror from +his room, and insisting on instant departure. His emotion was +powerfully displayed. + +What had occurred? Mrs. Radcliffe does not say, but horror, +whether caused by a conscience ill at ease, or by events of a +terrific and supernatural kind, is plainly indicated. In daylight, +the Marquis audaciously pressed his unholy suit, and even offered +marriage, a hollow mockery, for he was well known to be already a +married man. The scenes of Adeline's flight, capture, retention in +an elegant villa of the licentious noble, renewed flight, rescue by +Theodore, with Theodore's arrest, and wounding of the tyrannical +Marquis, are all of breathless interest. Mrs. Radcliffe excels in +narratives of romantic escapes, a topic always thrilling when well +handled. Adeline herself is carried back to the Abbey, but La +Motte, who had rather not be a villain if he could avoid it, +enables her again to secure her freedom. He is clearly in the +power of the Marquis, and his life has been unscrupulous, but he +retains traces of better things. Adeline is now secretly conveyed +to a peaceful valley in Savoy, the home of the honest Peter (the +coachman), who accompanies her. Here she learns to know and value +the family of La Luc, the kindred of her Theodore (by a romantic +coincidence), and, in the adorable scenery of Savoy, she throws +many a ballad to the Moon. + +La Motte, on the discovery of Adeline's flight, was cast into +prison by the revengeful Marquis, for, in fact, soon after settling +in the Abbey, it had occurred to La Motte to commence highwayman. +His very first victim had been the Marquis, and, during his +mysterious retreats to a tomb in a glade in the forest, he had, in +short, been contemplating his booty, jewels which he could not +convert into ready money. Consequently, when the Marquis first +entered the Abbey, La Motte had every reason for alarm, and only +pacified the vindictive aristocrat by yielding to his cruel schemes +against the virtue of Adeline. + +Happily for La Motte, a witness appeared at his trial, who cast a +lurid light on the character of the Marquis. That villain, to be +plain, had murdered his elder brother (the skeleton of the Abbey), +and had been anxious to murder, it was added, his own natural +daughter--that is, Adeline! His hired felons, however, placed her +in a convent, and, later (rather than kill her, on which the +Marquis insisted), simply thrust her into the hands of La Motte, +who happened to pass by that way, as we saw in the opening of this +romance. Thus, in making love to Adeline, his daughter, the +Marquis was, unconsciously, in an awkward position. On further +examination of evidence, however, things proved otherwise. Adeline +was NOT the natural daughter of the Marquis, but his niece, the +legitimate daughter and heiress of his brother (the skeleton of the +Abbey). The MS. found by Adeline in the room of the rusty dagger +added documentary evidence, for it was a narrative of the +sufferings of her father (later the skeleton), written by him in +the Abbey where he was imprisoned and stabbed, and where his bones +were discovered by La Motte. The hasty nocturnal flight of the +Marquis from the Abbey is thus accounted for: he had probably been +the victim of a terrific hallucination representing his murdered +brother; whether it was veridical or merely subjective Mrs. +Radcliffe does not decide. Rather than face the outraged justice +of his country, the Marquis, after these revelations, took poison. +La Motte was banished; and Adeline, now mistress of the Abbey, +removed the paternal skeleton to "the vault of his ancestors." +Theodore and Adeline were united, and virtuously resided in a villa +on the beautiful banks of the Lake of Geneva. + +Such is the "Romance of the Forest," a fiction in which character +is subordinate to plot and incident. There is an attempt at +character drawing in La Motte, and in his wife; the hero and +heroine are not distinguishable from Julia and Hippolytus. But +Mrs. Radcliffe does not aim at psychological niceties, and we must +not blame her for withholding what it was no part of her purpose to +give. "The Romance of the Forest" was, so far, infinitely the most +thrilling of modern English works of fiction. "Every reader felt +the force," says Scott, "from the sage in his study, to the family +group in middle life," and nobody felt it more than Scott himself, +then a young gentleman of nineteen, who, when asked how his time +was employed, answered, "I read no Civil Law." He did read Mrs. +Radcliffe, and, in "The Betrothed," followed her example in the +story of the haunted chamber where the heroine faces the spectre +attached to her ancient family. + +"The Mysteries of Udolpho," Mrs. Radcliffe's next and most +celebrated work, is not (in the judgment of this reader, at least) +her masterpiece. The booksellers paid her what Scott, erroneously, +calls "the unprecedented sum of 500 pounds" for the romance, and they +must have made a profitable bargain. "The public," says Scott, +"rushed upon it with all the eagerness of curiosity, and rose from +it with unsated appetite." I arise with a thoroughly sated +appetite from the "Mysteries of Udolpho." The book, as Sir Walter +saw, is "The Romance of the Forest" raised to a higher power. We +have a similar and similarly situated heroine, cruelly detached +from her young man, and immured in a howling wilderness of a +brigand castle in the Apennines. In place of the Marquis is a +miscreant on a larger and more ferocious scale. The usual +mysteries of voices, lights, secret passages, and innumerable doors +are provided regardless of economy. The great question, which I +shall not answer, is, WHAT DID THE BLACK VEIL CONCEAL? NOT "the +bones of Laurentina," as Catherine Morland supposed. + +Here is Emily's adventure with the veil. "She paused again, and +then, with a timid hand, lifted the veil; but instantly let it +fall--perceiving that what it had concealed was no picture, and +before she could leave the chamber she dropped senseless on the +floor. When she recovered her recollection, . . . horror occupied +her mind." Countless mysteries coagulate around this veil, and the +reader is apt to be disappointed when the awful curtain is +withdrawn. But he has enjoyed, for several hundred pages, the +pleasures of anticipation. A pedantic censor may remark that, +while the date of the story is 1580, all the virtuous people live +in an idyllic fashion, like creatures of Rousseau, existing solely +for landscape and the affections, writing poetry on Nature, animate +and inanimate, including the common Bat, and drawing in water +colours. In those elegant avocations began, and in these, after an +interval of adventures "amazing horrid," concluded the career of +Emily. + +Mrs. Radcliffe keeps the many entangled threads of her complex web +well in hand, and incidents which puzzle you at the beginning fall +naturally into place before the end. The character of the +heroine's silly, vain, unkind, and unreasonable aunt is vividly +designed (that Emily should mistake the corse of a moustached +bandit for that of her aunt is an incident hard to defend). +Valancourt is not an ordinary spotless hero, but sows his wild +oats, and reaps the usual harvest; and Annette is a good sample of +the usual soubrette. When one has said that the landscapes and +bandits of this romance are worthy of Poussin and Salvator Rosa, +from whom they were probably translated into words, not much +remains to be added. Sir Walter, after repeated perusals, +considered "Udolpho" "a step beyond Mrs. Radcliffe's former work, +high as that had justly advanced her." But he admits that "persons +of no mean judgment" preferred "The Romance of the Forest." With +these amateurs I would be ranked. The ingenuity and originality of +the "Romance" are greater: our friend the skeleton is better than +that Thing which was behind the Black Veil, the escapes of Adeline +are more thrilling than the escape of Emily, and the "Romance" is +not nearly so long, not nearly so prolix as "Udolpho." + +The roof and crown of Mrs. Radcliffe's work is "The Italian" +(1797), for which she received 800 pounds. {6} The scene is Naples, the +date about 1764; the topic is the thwarted loves of Vivaldi and +Ellena; the villain is the admirable Schedoni, the prototype of +Byron's lurid characters. + +"The Italian" is an excellent novel. The Prelude, "the dark and +vaulted gateway," is not unworthy of Hawthorne, who, I suspect, had +studied Mrs. Radcliffe. The theme is more like a theme of this +world than usual. The parents of a young noble might well try to +prevent him from marrying an unknown and penniless girl. The +Marchese Vivaldi only adopts the ordinary paternal measures; the +Marchesa, and her confessor the dark-souled Schedoni, go farther-- +as far as assassination. The casuistry by which Schedoni brings +the lady to this pass, while representing her as the originator of +the scheme, is really subtle, and the scenes between the pair show +an extraordinary advance on Mrs. Radcliffe's earlier art. The +mysterious Monk who counteracts Schedoni remains an unsolved +mystery to me, but of that I do not complain. He is as good as the +Dweller in the Catacombs who haunts Miriam in Hawthorne's "Marble +Faun." The Inquisition, its cells, and its tribunals are coloured + + +"As when some great painter dips +His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse." + + +The comic valet, Paulo, who insists on being locked up in the +dungeons of the Inquisition merely because his master is there, +reminds one of Samuel Weller, he is a Neapolitan Samivel. The +escapes are Mrs. Radcliffe's most exciting escapes, and to say that +is to say a good deal. Poetry is not written, or not often, by the +heroine. The scene in which Schedoni has his dagger raised to +murder Ellena, when he discovers that she is his daughter, "is of a +new, grand, and powerful character" (Scott), while it is even more +satisfactory to learn later that Ellena was NOT Schedoni's daughter +after all. + +Why Mrs. Radcliffe, having reached such a pitch of success, never +again published a novel, remains more mysterious than any of her +Mysteries. Scott justly remarks that her censors attacked her "by +showing that she does not possess the excellences proper to a style +of composition totally different from that which she has +attempted." This is the usual way of reviewers. Tales that +fascinated Scott, Fox, and Sheridan, "which possess charms for the +learned and unlearned, the grave and gay, the gentleman and clown," +do not deserve to be dismissed with a sneer by people who have +never read them. Following Horace Walpole in some degree, Mrs. +Radcliffe paved the way for Scott, Byron, Maturin, Lewis, and +Charlotte Bronte, just as Miss Burney filled the gap between +Smollett and Miss Austen. Mrs. Radcliffe, in short, kept the Lamp +of Romance burning much more steadily than the lamps which, in her +novels, are always blown out, in the moment of excited +apprehension, by the night wind walking in the dank corridors of +haunted abbeys. But mark the cruelty of an intellectual parent! +Horace Walpole was Mrs. Radcliffe's father in the spirit. Yet, on +September 4, 1794, he wrote to Lady Ossory: "I have read some of +the descriptive verbose tales, of which your Ladyship says I was +the patriarch by several mothers" (Miss Reeve and Mrs. Radcliffe?). +"All I can say for myself is that I do not think my concubines have +produced issue more natural for excluding the aid of anything +marvellous." + + + +CHAPTER VII: A SCOTTISH ROMANTICIST OF 1830 + + + +The finding of a rare book that you have wanted long is one of the +happier moments in life. Whatever we may think of life when we +contemplate it as a whole, it is a delight to discover what one has +sought for years, especially if the book be a book which you really +want to read, and not a thing whose value is given by the fashion +of collecting. Perhaps nobody ever collected before + + +THE +DEATH-WAKE, OR LUNACY +A NECROMAUNT + +In Three Chimeras + +BY THOMAS T. STODDART. + +"Is't like that lead contains her? - +It were too gross +To rib her cerecloth in the obscure grave." - +Shakespeare. + +EDINBURGH: +Printed for HENRY CONSTABLE, Edinburgh, +And HURST, CHANCE, & CO., London. +MDCCCXXXI. + + +This is my rare book, and it is rare for an excellent good reason, +as will be shown. But first of the author. Mr. Thomas Tod +Stoddart was born in 1810. He died in 1880. Through all his +pilgrimage of three-score years and ten, his "rod and staff did +comfort him," as the Scottish version of the Psalms has it; nay, +his staff was his rod. He "was an angler," as he remarked when a +friend asked: "Well, Tom, what are you doing now." He was the +patriarch, the Father Izaak, of Scottish fishers, and he sleeps, +according to his desire, like Scott, within hearing of the Tweed. +His memoir, published by his daughter, in "Stoddart's Angling +Songs" (Blackwood), is an admirable biography, quo fit ut omnis +Votiva pateat veluti descripta tabella Vita senis. + +But it is with the "young Tom Stoddart," the poet of twenty, not +with the old angling sage, that we have to do. Miss Stoddart has +discreetly republished only the Angling Songs of her father, the +pick of them being classical in their way. Now, as Mr. Arnold +writes:- + + +"Two desires toss about +The poet's feverish blood, +One drives him to the world without, +And one to solitude." + + +The young Stoddart's two desires were poetry and fishing. He began +with poetry. "At the age of ten his whole desire was to produce an +immortal tragedy . . . Blood and battle were the powers with which +he worked, and with no meaner tool. Every other dramatic form he +despised." It is curious to think of the schoolboy, the born +Romanticist, labouring at these things, while Gerard de Nerval, and +Victor Hugo, and Theophile Gautier, and Petrus Borel were boys +also--boys of the same ambitions, and with much the same romantic +tastes. Stoddart had, luckily, another love besides the Muse. +"With the spring and the May fly, the dagger dipped in gore paled +before the supple rod, and the dainty midge." Finally, the rod and +midge prevailed. + + +"Wee dour-looking hooks are the thing, +Mouse body and laverock wing." + + +But before he quite abandoned all poetry save fishing ditties, he +wrote and published the volume whose title-page we have printed, +"The Death Wake." The lad who drove home from an angling +expedition in a hearse had an odd way of combining his amusements. +He lived among poets and critics who were anglers--Hogg, the +Ettrick Shepherd (who cast but a heavy line, they say, in Yarrow), +Aytoun, Christopher North, De Quincey - + + +"No fisher +But a well-wisher +To the game," + + +as Scott has it--these were his companions, older or younger. None +of these, certainly not Wilson, nor Hogg, nor Aytoun, were friends +of the Romantic school, as illustrated by Keats and Shelley. None +of them probably knew much of Gautier, De Nerval, Borel, le +lycanthrope, and the other boys in that boyish movement of 1830. +It was only Stoddart, unconsciously in sympathy with Paris, and +censured by his literary friends, who produced the one British +Romantic work of 1830. The title itself shows that he was partly +laughing at his own performance; he has the mockery of Les Jeunes +France in him, as well as the wormy and obituary joys of La Comedie +de la Mort. The little book came out, inspired by "all the +poetasters." Christopher North wrote, four years later, in +Blackwood's Magazine, a tardy review. He styled it "an ingeniously +absurd poem, with an ingeniously absurd title, written in a +strange, namby-pamby sort of style, between the weakest of Shelley +and the strongest of Barry Cornwall." The book "fell dead from the +Press," far more dead than "Omar Khayyam." Nay, misfortune pursued +it, Miss Stoddart kindly informs me, and it was doomed to the +flames. The "remainder," the bulk of the edition, was returned to +the poet in sheets, and by him was deposited in a garret. The +family had a cook, one Betty, a descendant, perhaps, of "that +unhappy Betty or Elizabeth Barnes, cook of Mr. Warburton, Somerset +Herald," who burned, among other quartos, Shakespeare's "Henry I.," +"Henry II.," and "King Stephen." True to her inherited instincts, +Mr. Stoddart's Betty, slowly, relentlessly, through forty years, +used "The Death Wake" for the needs and processes of her art. The +whole of the edition, except probably a few "presentation copies," +perished in the kitchen. As for that fell cook, let us hope that + + +"The Biblioclastic Dead +Have diverse pains to brook, +They break Affliction's bread +With Betty Barnes, the Cook," + + +as the author of "The Bird Bride" sings. + +Miss Stoddart had just informed me of this disaster, which left one +almost hopeless of ever owning a copy of "The Death Wake," when I +found a brown paper parcel among many that contained to-day's minor +poetry "with the author's compliments," and lo, in this unpromising +parcel was the long-sought volume! Ever since one was a small boy, +reading Stoddart's "Scottish Angler," and old Blackwood's, one had +pined for a sight of "The Necromaunt," and here, clean in its "pure +purple mantle" of smooth cloth, lay the desired one! + + +"Like Dian's kiss, unasked, unsought, +It gave itself, and was not bought," + + +being, indeed, the discovery and gift of a friend who fishes and +studies the Lacustrine Muses. + +The copy has a peculiar interest; it once belonged to Aytoun, the +writer of "The Scottish Cavaliers," of "The Bon Gaultier Ballads," +and of "Firmilian," the scourge of the Spasmodic School. Mr. +Aytoun has adorned the margins with notes and with caricatures of +skulls and cross-bones, while the fly-leaves bear a sonnet to the +author, and a lyric in doggerel. Surely this is, indeed, a +literary curiosity. The sonnet runs thus:- + + +"O wormy Thomas Stoddart, who inheritest +Rich thoughts and loathsome, nauseous words and rare, +Tell me, my friend, why is it that thou ferretest +And gropest in each death-corrupted lair? +Seek'st thou for maggots such as have affinity +With those in thine own brain, or dost thou think +That all is sweet which hath a horrid stink? +Why dost thou make Haut-gout thy sole divinity? +Here is enough of genius to convert +Vile dung to precious diamonds and to spare, +Then why transform the diamond into dirt, +And change thy mind, which should be rich and fair, +Into a medley of creations foul, +As if a Seraph would become a Ghoul?" + + +No doubt Mr. Stoddart's other passion for angling, in which he used +a Scottish latitude concerning bait, {7} impelled him to search for +"worms and maggots":- + + +"Fire and faggots, +Worms and maggots," + + +as Aytoun writes on the other fly-leaf, are indeed the matter of +"The Death Wake." + +Then, why, some one may ask, write about "The Death Wake" at all? +Why rouse again the nightmare of a boy of twenty? Certainly I am +not to say that "The Death Wake" is a pearl of great price, but it +does contain passages of poetry--of poetry very curious because it +is full of the new note, the new melody which young Mr. Tennyson +was beginning to waken. It anticipates Beddoes, it coincides with +Gautier and Les Chimeres of Gerard, it answers the accents, then +unheard in England, of Poe. Some American who read out of the way +things, and was not too scrupulous, recognised, and robbed, a +brother in Tom Stoddart. Eleven years after "The Death Wake" +appeared in England, it was published in Graham's Magazine, as +"Agatha, a Necromaunt in Three Chimeras," by Louis Fitzgerald +Tasistro. Now Poe was closely connected with Graham's Magazine, +and after "Arthur Gordon Pym," "Louis Fitzgerald Tasistro" does +suggest Edgar Allen Poe. But Poe was not Tasistro. + +So much for the literary history of the Lunacy. + +The poem begins--Chimera I. begins:- + + +"An anthem of a sister choristry! +And, like a windward murmur of the sea, +O'er silver shells, so solemnly it falls!" + + +The anthem accompanies a procession of holy fathers towards a bier; + + +"Agathe +Was on the lid--a name. And who? No more! +'Twas only Agathe." + + +A solitary monk is prowling around in the moonlit cathedral; he has +a brow of stony marble, he has raven hair, and he falters out the +name of Agathe. He has said adieu to that fair one, and to her +sister Peace, that lieth in her grave. He has loved, and loves, +the silent Agathe. He was the son of a Crusader, + + +"And Julio had fain +Have been a warrior, but his very brain +Grew fevered at the sickly thought of death, +And to be stricken with a want of breath." + + +On the whole he did well not to enter the service. Mr. Aytoun has +here written--"A rum Cove for a hussar." + + +"And he would say +A curse be on their laurels. +And anon +Was Julio forgotten and his line - +No wonder for this frenzied tale of mine." + + +How? asks Aytoun, nor has the grammatical enigma yet been +unriddled. + + +"Oh! he was wearied of this passing scene! +But loved not Death; his purpose was between +Life and the grave; and it would vibrate there +Like a wild bird that floated far and fair +Betwixt the sun and sea!" + + +So "he became monk," and was sorry he had done so, especially when +he met a pretty maid, + + +"And this was Agathe, young Agathe, +A motherless fair girl," + + +whose father was a kind of Dombey, for + + +"When she smiled +He bade no father's welcome to the child, +But even told his wish, and will'd it done, +For her to be sad-hearted, and a nun!" + + +So she "took the dreary veil." + +They met like a blighted Isabella and Lorenzo: + + +"They met many a time +In the lone chapels after vesper chime, +They met in love and fear." + + +Then, one day, + + +"He heard it said: +Poor Julio, thy Agathe is dead." + + +She died + + +"Like to a star within the twilight hours +Of morning, and she was not! Some have thought +The Lady Abbess gave her a mad draught." + + +Here Mr. Aytoun, with sympathy, writes "Damn her!" (the Lady +Abbess, that is) and suggests that thought must be read "thaft." + +Through "the arras of the gloom" (arras is good), the pale breezes +are moaning, and Julio is wan as stars unseen for paleness. +However, he lifts the tombstone "as it were lightsome as a summer +gladness." "A summer gladness," remarks Mr. Aytoun, "may possibly +weigh about half-an-ounce." Julio came on a skull, a haggard one, +in the grave, and Mr. Aytoun kindly designs a skeleton, ringing a +bell, and crying "Dust ho!" + +Now go, and give your poems to your friends! + +Finally Julio unburies Agathe:- + + +"Thou must go, +My sweet betrothed, with me, but not below, +Where there is darkness, dream, and solitude, +But where is light, and life, and one to brood +Above thee, till thou wakest. Ha, I fear +Thou wilt not wake for ever, sleeping here, +Where there are none but the winds to visit thee. +And Convent fathers, and a choristry +Of sisters saying Hush! But I will sing +Rare songs to thy pure spirit, wandering +Down on the dews to hear me; I will tune +The instrument of the ethereal moon, +And all the choir of stars, to rise and fall +In harmony and beauty musical." + + +Is this not melodious madness, and is this picture of the +distraught priest, setting forth to sail the seas with his dead +lady, not an invention that Nanteuil might have illustrated, and +the clan of Bousingots approved? + +The Second Chimera opens nobly:- + + +"A curse! a curse! {8} the beautiful pale wing +Of a sea-bird was worn with wandering, +And, on a sunny rock beside the shore, +It stood, the golden waters gazing o'er; +And they were nearing a brown amber flow +Of weeds, that glittered gloriously below!" + + +Julio appears with Agathe in his arms, and what ensues is excellent +of its kind:- + + +"He dropt upon a rock, and by him placed, +Over a bed of sea-pinks growing waste, +The silent ladye, and he mutter'd wild, +Strange words about a mother and no child. +"And I shall wed thee, Agathe! although +Ours be no God-blest bridal--even so!" +And from the sand he took a silver shell, +That had been wasted by the fall and swell +Of many a moon-borne tide into a ring - +A rude, rude ring; it was a snow-white thing, +Where a lone hermit limpet slept and died +In ages far away. 'Thou art a bride, +Sweet Agathe! Wake up; we must not linger!' +He press'd the ring upon her chilly finger, +And to the sea-bird on its sunny stone +Shouted, 'Pale priest that liest all alone +Upon thy ocean altar, rise, away +To our glad bridal!' and its wings of gray +All lazily it spread, and hover'd by +With a wild shriek--a melancholy cry! +Then, swooping slowly o'er the heaving breast +Of the blue ocean, vanished in the west." + + +Julio sang a mad song of a mad priest to a dead maid:- + + +. . . +"A rosary of stars, love! a prayer as we glide, +And a whisper on the wind, and a murmur on the tide, +And we'll say a fair adieu to the flowers that are seen, +With shells of silver sown in radiancy between. + +"A rosary of stars, love! the purest they shall be, +Like spirits of pale pearls in the bosom of the sea; +Now help thee, {9} Virgin Mother, with a blessing as we go, +Upon the laughing waters that are wandering below." + + +One can readily believe that Poe admired this musical sad song, if, +indeed, he ever saw the poem. + +One may give too many extracts, and there is scant room for the +extraordinary witchery of the midnight sea and sky, where the dead +and the distraught drift wandering, + + +"And the great ocean, like the holy hall, +Where slept a Seraph host maritimal, +Was gorgeous with wings of diamond" - + + +it was a sea + + +"Of radiant and moon-breasted emerald." + + +There follows another song - + + +"'Tis light to love thee living, girl, when hope is full and fair, +In the springtide of thy beauty, when there is no sorrow there +No sorrow on thy brow, and no shadow on thy heart, +When, like a floating sea-bird, bright and beautiful thou art + +. . . + +"But when the brow is blighted, like a star at morning tide +And faded is the crimson blush upon the cheek beside, +It is to love as seldom love the brightest and the best, +When our love lies like a dew upon the one that is at rest." + + +We ought to distrust our own admiration of what is rare, odd, novel +to us, found by us in a sense, and especially one must distrust +one's liking for the verses of a Tweedside angler, of a poet whose +forebears lie in the green kirkyard of Yarrow. But, allowing for +all this, I cannot but think these very musical, accomplished, and, +in their place, appropriate verses, to have been written by a boy +of twenty. Nor is it a common imagination, though busy in this +vulgar field of horrors, that lifts the pallid bride to look upon +the mirror of the sea - + + +"And bids her gaze into the startled sea, +And says, 'Thine image, from eternity, +Hath come to meet thee, ladye!' and anon +He bade the cold corse kiss the shadowy one +That shook amid the waters." + + +The picture of the madness of thirst, allied to the disease of the +brain, is extremely powerful, the delirious monk tells the salt sea +waves + + +"That ye have power, and passion, and a sound +As of the flying of an angel round +The mighty world; that ye are one with time!" + + +Here, I can't but think, is imagination. + +Mr. Aytoun, however, noted none of those passages, nor that where, +in tempest and thunder, a shipwrecked sailor swims to the strange +boat, sees the Living Love and the Dead, and falls back into the +trough of the wave. But even the friendly pencil of Bon Gaultier +approves the passage where an isle rises above the sea, and the +boat is lightly stranded on the shore of pure and silver shells. +The horrors of corruption, in the Third Chimera, may be left +unquoted, Aytoun parodies - + + +"The chalk, the chalk, the cheese, the cheese, the cheeses, +And straightway dropped he down upon his kneeses." + + +Julio comes back to reason, hates the dreadful bride, and feeds on +limpets, "by the mass, he feasteth well!" + +There was a holy hermit on the isle, + + +"I ween like other hermits, so was he." + + +He is Agathe's father, and he has retired to an eligible island +where he may repent his cruelty to his daughter. Julio tells his +tale, and goes mad again. The apostrophe to Lunacy which follows +is marked "Beautiful" by Aytoun, and is in the spirit of Charles +Lamb's remark that madness has pleasures unknown to the sane. + + +"Thou art, thou art alone, +A pure, pure being, but the God on high +Is with thee ever as thou goest by." + + +Julio watches again beside the Dead, till morning comes, bringing + + +"A murmur far and far, of those that stirred +Within the great encampment of the sea." + + +The tide sweeps the mad and the dead down the shores. "He perished +in a dream." As for the Hermit, he buried them, not knowing who +they were, but on a later day found and recognised the golden cross +of Agathe, + + +"For long ago he gave that blessed cross +To his fair girl, and knew the relic still." + + +So the Hermit died of remorse, and one cannot say, with Walton, +"and I hope the reader is sorry." + +The "other poems" are vague memories of Shelley, or anticipations +of Poe. One of them is curiously styled "Her, a Statue," and +contains a passage that reminds us of a rubaiyat of Omar's, + + +"She might see +A love-wing'd Seraph glide in glory by, +Striking the tent of its mortality. + +"But that is but a tent wherein may rest +A Sultan to the realm of Death addrest; +The Sultan rises, and the dark Ferrash +Strikes, and prepares it for another guest." + + +Most akin to Poe is the "Hymn to Orion," + + +"Dost thou, in thy vigil, hail +Arcturus on his chariot pale, +Leading him with a fiery flight - +Over the hollow hill of night?" + + +This, then, is a hasty sketch, and incomplete, of a book which, +perhaps, is only a curiosity, but which, I venture to think, gave +promise of a poet. Where is the lad of twenty who has written as +well to-day--nay, where is the mature person of forty? There was a +wind of poetry abroad in 1830, blowing over the barricades of +Paris, breathing by the sedges of Cam, stirring the heather on the +hills of Yarrow. Hugo, Mr. Browning, Lord Tennyson, caught the +breeze in their sails, and were borne adown the Tigris of romance. +But the breath that stirred the loch where Tom Stoddart lay and +mused in his boat, soon became to him merely the curl on the waters +of lone St. Mary's or Loch Skene, and he began casting over the +great uneducated trout of a happier time, forgetful of the Muse. +He wrote another piece, with a sonorous and delightful title, +"Ajalon of the Winds." Where is "Ajalon of the Winds"? Miss +Stoddart knows nothing of it, but I fancy that the thrice-loathed +Betty could have told a tale. + + +MALIM CONVIVIS QVAM PLACVISSE COQVIS. + + +We need not, perhaps, regret that Mr. Stoddart withdrew from the +struggles and competitions of poetic literature. No very high +place, no very glorious crown, one fancies, would have been his. +His would have been anxiety, doubt of self, disappointment, or, if +he succeeded, the hatred, and envyings, and lies which even then +dogged the steps of the victor. It was better to be quiet and go +a-fishing. + + +"Sorrow, sorrow speed away +To our angler's quiet mound, +With the old pilgrim, twilight gray, +Enter through the holy ground; +There he sleeps whose heart is twined +With wild stream and wandering burn, +Wooer of the western wind +Watcher of the April morn!" + + + +CHAPTER VIII: THE CONFESSIONS OF SAINT AUGUSTINE + + + +My copy of the Confessions is a dark little book, "a size +uncumbersome to the nicest hand," in the format of an Elzevir, +bound in black morocco, and adorned with "blind-tooled," that is +ungilt, skulls and crossbones. It has lost the title-page with the +date, but retains the frontispiece, engraved by Huret. Saint +Augustine, in his mitre and other episcopal array, with a quill in +his hand, sits under a flood of inspiring sunshine. The dumpy book +has been much read, was at some time the property of Mr. John +Philips, and bears one touching manuscript note, of which more +hereafter. It is, I presume, a copy of the translation by Sir Toby +Matthew. The author of the Preface declares, with truth, that the +translator "hath consulted so closely and earnestly with the saint +that he seemeth to have lighted his torch att his fire, and to +speak in the best and most significant English, what and how he +would have done had he understood our language." + +There can be no better English version of this famous book, in +which Saint Augustine tells the story of his eager and passionate +youth--a youth tossed about by the contending tides of Love, human +and divine. Reading it to-day, with a mundane curiosity, we may +half regret the space which he gives to theological metaphysics, +and his brief tantalising glimpses of what most interests us now-- +the common life of men when the Church was becoming mistress of the +world, when the old Religions were dying of allegory and moral +interpretations and occult dreams. But, even so, Saint Augustine's +interest in himself, in the very obscure origins of each human +existence, in the psychology of infancy and youth, in school +disputes, and magical pretensions; his ardent affections, his +exultations, and his faults, make his memoirs immortal among the +unveilings of the spirit. He has studied babies, that he may know +his dark beginnings, and the seeds of grace and of evil. "Then, by +degrees, I began to find where I was; and I had certain desires to +declare my will to those by whom it might be executed. But I could +not do it, . . . therefore would I be tossing my arms, and sending +out certain cryes, . . . and when they obeyed me not . . . I would +fall into a rage, and that not against such as were my subjects or +servants, but against my Elders and my betters, and I would revenge +myself upon them by crying." He has observed that infants "begin +to laugh, first sleeping, and then shortly waking;" a curious note, +but he does not ask wherefore the sense of humour, or the +expression of it, comes to children first in their slumber. Of +what do babies dream? And what do the nested swallows chirrup to +each other in their sleep? + +"Such have I understood that such infants are as I could know, and +such have I been told that I was by them who brought me up, though +even they may rather be accounted not to know, than to know these +things." One thing he knows, "that even infancy is subject to +sin." From the womb we are touched with evil. "Myselfe have seene +and observed some little child, who could not speake; and yet he +was all in an envious kind of wrath, looking pale with a bitter +countenance upon his foster-brother." In an envious kind of wrath! +Is it not the motive of half our politics, and too much of our +criticism? Such is man's inborn nature, not to be cured by laws or +reforms, not to be washed out of his veins, though "blood be shed +like rain, and tears like a mist." For "an infant cannot endure a +companion to feed with him in a fountain of milk which is richly +abounding and overflowing, although that companion be wholly +destitute, and can take no other food but that." This is the +Original Sin, inherited, innate, unacquired; for this are "babes +span-long" to suffer, as the famous or infamous preacher declared. +"Where, or at what time, was I ever innocent?" he cries, and hears +no answer from "the dark backward and abysm" of the pre-natal life. + +Then the Saint describes a child's learning to speak; how he +amasses verbal tokens of things, "having tamed, and, as it were, +broken my mouth to the pronouncing of them." "And so I began to +launch out more deeply into the tempestuous traffique and society +of mankind." Tempestuous enough he found or made it--this child of +a Pagan father and a Christian saint, Monica, the saint of +Motherhood. The past generations had "chalked out certain +laborious ways of learning," and, perhaps, Saint Augustine never +forgave the flogging pedagogue--the plagosus Orbilius of his +boyhood. Long before his day he had found out that the sorrows of +children, and their joys, are no less serious than the sorrows of +mature age. "Is there, Lord, any man of so great a mind that he +can think lightly of those racks, and hooks, and other torments, +for the avoiding whereof men pray unto Thee with great fear from +one end of the world to the other, as that he can make sport at +such as doe most sharply inflict these things upon them, as our +parents laughed at the torments which we children susteyned at our +master's hands?" Can we suppose that Monica laughed, or was it +only the heathen father who approved of "roughing it?" "Being yet +a childe, I began to beg Thy ayde and succour; and I did loosen the +knots of my tongue in praying Thee; and I begged, being yet a +little one, with no little devotion, that I might not be beaten at +the schoole." One is reminded of Tom Tulliver, who gave up even +praying that he might learn one part of his work: "Please make +Mr.--say that I am not to do mathematics." + +The Saint admits that he lacked neither memory nor wit, "but he +took delight in playing." "The plays and toys of men are called +business, yet, when children fall unto them, the same men punish +them." Yet the schoolmaster was "more fed upon by rage," if beaten +in any little question of learning, than the boy; "if in any match +at Ball I had been maistered by one of my playfellows." He +"aspired proudly to be victorious in the matches which he made," +and I seriously regret to say that he would buy a match, and pay +his opponent to lose when he could not win fairly. He liked +romances also, "to have myne eares scratched with lying fables"--a +"lazy, idle boy," like him who dallied with Rebecca and Rowena in +the holidays of Charter House. + +Saint Augustine, like Sir Walter Scott at the University of +Edinburgh, was "The Greek Dunce." Both of these great men, to +their sorrow and loss, absolutely and totally declined to learn +Greek. "But what the reason was why I hated the Greeke language, +while I was taught it, being a child, I do not yet understand." +The Saint was far from being alone in that distaste, and he who +writes loathed Greek like poison--till he came to Homer. Latin the +Saint loved, except "when reading, writing, and casting of accounts +was taught in Latin, which I held not for lesse paynefull or penal +than the very Greeke. I wept for Dido's death, who made herselfe +away with the sword," he declares, "and even so, the saying that +two and two makes foure was an ungrateful song in mine ears; +whereas the wooden horse full of armed men, the burning of Troy, +and the very Ghost of Creusa, was a most delightful spectacle of +vanity." + +In short, the Saint was a regular Boy--a high-spirited, clever, +sportive, and wilful creature. He was as fond as most boys of the +mythical tales, "and for that I was accounted to be a towardly +boy." Meanwhile he does not record that Monica disliked his +learning the foolish dear old heathen fables--"that flood of hell!" + +Boyhood gave place to youth, and, allowing for the vanity of self- +accusation, there can be little doubt that the youth of Saint +Augustine was une jeunesse orageuse. "And what was that wherein I +took delight but to love and to be beloved." There was ever much +sentiment and affection in his amours, but his soul "could not +distinguish the beauty of chast love from the muddy darkness of +lust. Streams of them did confusedly boyl in me"--in his African +veins. "With a restless kind of weariness" he pursued that Other +Self of the Platonic dream, neglecting the Love of God: + + +"Oh, how late art thou come, O my Joy!" + + +The course of his education--for the Bar, as we should say--carried +him from home to Carthage, where he rapidly forgot the pure +counsels of his mother "as old wife's consailes." "And we +delighted in doing ill, not only for the pleasure of the fact, but +even for the affection of prayse." Even Monica, it seems, +justified the saying: + + +"Every woman is at heart a Rake." + + +Marriage would have been his making, Saint Augustine says, "but she +desired not even that so very much, lest the cloggs of a wife might +have hindered her hopes of me . . . In the meantime the reins were +loosed to me beyond reason." Yet the sin which he regrets most +bitterly was nothing more dreadful than the robbery of an orchard! +Pears he had in plenty, none the less he went, with a band of +roisterers, and pillaged another man's pear tree. "I loved the +sin, not that which I obtained by the same, but I loved the sin +itself." There lay the sting of it! They were not even unusually +excellent pears. "A Peare tree ther was, neere our vineyard, heavy +loaden with fruite, which tempted not greatly either the sight or +tast. To the shaking and robbing thereof, certaine most wicked +youthes (whereof I was one) went late at night. We carried away +huge burthens of fruit from thence, not for our owne eating, but to +be cast before the hoggs." + +Oh, moonlit night of Africa, and orchard by these wild seabanks +where once Dido stood; oh, laughter of boys among the shaken +leaves, and sound of falling fruit; how do you live alone out of so +many nights that no man remembers? For Carthage is destroyed, +indeed, and forsaken of the sea, yet that one hour of summer is to +be unforgotten while man has memory of the story of his past. + +Nothing of this, to be sure, is in the mind of the Saint, but a +long remorse for this great sin, which he earnestly analyses. Nor +is he so penitent but that he is clear-sighted, and finds the +spring of his mis-doing in the Sense of Humour! "It was a delight +and laughter which tickled us, even at the very hart, to find that +we were upon the point of deceiving them who feared no such thing +from us, and who, if they had known it, would earnestly have +procured the contrary." + +Saint Augustine admits that he lived with a fast set, as people say +now--"the Depravers" or "Destroyers"; though he loved them little, +"whose actions I ever did abhor, that is, their Destruction of +others, amongst whom I yet lived with a kind of shameless +bashfulness." In short, the "Hell-Fire Club" of that day numbered +a reluctant Saint among its members! It was no Christian gospel, +but the Hortensius of Cicero which won him from this perilous +society. "It altered my affection, and made me address my prayers +to Thee, O Lord, and gave me other desires and purposes than I had +before. All vain hopes did instantly grow base in myne eyes, and I +did, with an incredible heat of hart, aspire towards the +Immortality of Wisdom." Thus it was really "Saint Tully," and not +the mystic call of Tolle! Lege! that "converted" Augustine, +diverting the current of his life into the channel of +Righteousness. "How was I kindled then, oh, my God, with a desire +to fly from earthly things towards Thee." + +There now remained only the choice of a Road. Saint Augustine +dates his own conversion from the day of his turning to the strait +Christian orthodoxy. Even the Platonic writings, had he known +Greek, would not have satisfied his desire. "For where was that +Charity that buildeth upon the foundation of Humility, which is +Christ Jesus? . . . These pages" (of the Platonists) "carried not +in them this countenance of piety--the tears of confession, and +that sacrifice of Thine which is an afflicted spirit, a contrite +and humbled heart, the salvation of Thy people, the Spouse, the +City, the pledge of Thy Holy Spirit, the Cup of our Redemption. No +man doth there thus express himself. Shall not my soul be subject +to God, for of Him is my salvation? For He is my God, and my +salvation, my protectour; I shall never be moved. No man doth +there once call and say to him: 'Come unto me all you that +labour.'" + +The heathen doctors had not the grace which Saint Augustine +instinctively knew he lacked--the grace of Humility, nor the +Comfort that is not from within but from without. To these he +aspired; let us follow him on the path by which he came within +their influence; but let us not forget that the guide on the way to +the City was kind, clever, wordy, vain old Marcus Tullius Cicero. +It is to the City that all our faces should be set, if we knew what +belongs to our peace; thither we cast fond, hopeless, backward +glances, even if we be of those whom Tertullian calls "Saint +Satan's Penitents." Here, in Augustine, we meet a man who found +the path--one of the few who have found it, of the few who have won +that Love which is our only rest. It may be worth while to follow +him to the journey's end. + +The treatise of Cicero, then, inflamed Augustine "to the loving and +seeking and finding and holding and inseparably embracing of wisdom +itself, wheresoever it was." Yet, when he looked for wisdom in the +Christian Scriptures, all the literary man, the rhetorician in him, +was repelled by the simplicity of the style. Without going further +than Mr. Pater's book, "Marius, the Epicurean," and his account of +Apuleius, an English reader may learn what kind of style a learned +African of that date found not too simple. But Cicero, rather than +Apuleius, was Augustine's ideal; that verbose and sonorous +eloquence captivated him, as it did the early scholars when +learning revived. Augustine had dallied a little with the sect of +the Manichees, which appears to have grieved his mother more than +his wild life. + +But she was comforted by a vision, when she found herself in a +wood, and met "a glorious young man," who informed her that "where +she was there should her son be also." Curious it is to think that +this very semblance of a glorious young man haunts the magical +dreams of heathen Red Indians, advising them where they shall find +game, and was beheld in such ecstasies by John Tanner, a white man +who lived with the Indians, and adopted their religion. The Greeks +would have called this appearance Hermes, even in this guise +Odysseus met him in the oak wood of Circe's Isle. But Augustine +was not yet in his mother's faith; he still taught and studied +rhetoric, contending for its prizes, but declining to be aided by a +certain wizard of his acquaintance. He had entered as a competitor +for a "Tragicall poeme," but was too sportsmanlike to seek victory +by art necromantic. Yet he followed after Astrologers, because +they used no sacrifices, and did not pretend to consult spirits. +Even the derision of his dear friend Nebridius could not then move +him from those absurd speculations. His friend died, and "his +whole heart was darkened;" "mine eyes would be looking for him in +all places, but they found him not, and I hated all things because +they told me no news of him." He fell into an extreme weariness of +life, and no less fear of death. He lived but by halves; having +lost dimidium animae suae, and yet dreaded death, "Lest he might +chance to have wholy dyed whome I extremely loved." So he returned +to Carthage for change, and sought pleasure in other friendships; +but "Blessed is the man that loves Thee and his friend in Thee and +his enemy for Thee. For he only never loseth a dear friend to whom +all men are dear, for His sake, who is never lost." + +Here, on the margin of the old book, beside these thoughts, so +beautiful if so helpless, like all words, to console, some reader +long dead has written:- + + +"Pray for your poor servant, J. M." + + +And again, + + +"Pray for your poor friend." + + +Doubtless, some Catholic reader, himself bereaved, is imploring the +prayers of a dear friend dead; and sure we need their petitions +more than they need ours, who have left this world of temptation, +and are at peace. + +After this loss Saint Augustine went to Rome, his ambition urging +him, perhaps, but more his disgust with the violent and riotous +life of students in Carthage. To leave his mother was difficult, +but "I lyed to my mother, yea, such a mother, and so escaped from +her." And now he had a dangerous sickness, and afterwards betook +himself to converse with the orthodox, for example at Milan with +Saint Ambrose. In Milan his mother would willingly have continued +in the African ritual--a Pagan survival--carrying wine and food to +the graves of the dead; but this Saint Ambrose forbade, and she +obeyed him for him "she did extremely affect for the regard of my +spirituall good." + +From Milan his friend Alipius preceded him to Rome, and there "was +damnably delighted" with the gladiatorial combats, being "made +drunk with a delight in blood." Augustine followed him to Rome, +and there lost the girl of his heart, "so that my heart was +wounded, as that the very blood did follow." The lady had made a +vow of eternal chastity, "having left me with a son by her." But +he fell to a new love as the old one was departed, and yet the +ancient wound pained him still "after a more desperate and dogged +manner." + +Haeret letalis arundo! + +By these passions his conversion was delayed, the carnal and +spiritual wills fighting against each other within him. "Give me +chastity and continency, O Lord," he would pray, "but do not give +it yet," and perhaps this is the frankest of the confessions of +Saint Augustine. In the midst of this war of the spirit and the +flesh, "Behold I heard a voyce, as if it had been of some boy or +girl from some house not farre off, uttering and often repeating +these words in a kind of singing voice, + + +"Tolle, Lege; Tolle, Lege, +Take up and read, take up and read." + + +So he took up a Testament, and, opening it at random, after the +manner of his Virgilian lots, read:- + +"Not in surfeiting and wantonness, not in causality and +uncleanness," with what follows. "Neither would I read any +further, neither was there any cause why I should." Saint +Augustine does not, perhaps, mean us to understand (as his +translator does), that he was "miraculously called." He knew what +was right perfectly well before; the text only clinched a resolve +which he has found it very hard to make. Perhaps there was a +trifle of superstition in the matter. We never know how +superstitious we are. At all events, henceforth "I neither desired +a wife, nor had I any ambitious care of any worldly thing." He +told his mother, and Monica rejoiced, believing that now her +prayers were answered. + +Such is the story of the conversion of Saint Augustine. It was the +maturing of an old purpose, and long deferred. Much stranger +stories are told of Bunyan and Colonel Gardiner. He gave up +rhetoric; another man was engaged "to sell words" to the students +of Milan. Being now converted, the Saint becomes less interesting, +except for his account of his mother's death, and of that ecstatic +converse they held "she and I alone, leaning against a window, +which had a prospect upon the garden of our lodging at Ostia." +They + + +"Came on that which is, and heard +The vast pulsations of the world." + + +"And whilest we thus spake, and panted towards the divine, we grew +able to take a little taste thereof, with the whole strife of our +hearts, and we sighed profoundly, and left there, confined, the +very top and flower of our souls and spirits; and we returned to +the noyse of language again, where words are begun and ended." + +Then Monica fell sick to death, and though she had ever wished to +lie beside her husband in Africa, she said: "Lay this Body where +you will. Let not any care of it disquiet you; only this I +entreat, that you will remember me at the altar of the Lord, +wheresoever you be." "But upon the ninth day of her sickness, in +the six-and-fiftieth year of her age, and the three-and-thirtieth +of mine, that religious and pious soul was discharged from the +prison of her body." + +The grief of Augustine was not less keen, it seems, than it had +been at the death of his friend. But he could remember how "she +related with great dearness of affection, how she never heard any +harsh or unkind word to be darted out of my mouth against her." +And to this consolation was added who knows what of confidence and +tenderness of certain hope, or a kind of deadness, perhaps, that +may lighten the pain of a heart very often tried and inured to +every pain. For it is certain that "this green wound" was green +and grievous for a briefer time than the agony of his earlier +sorrows. He himself, so earnest in analysing his own emotions, is +perplexed by the short date of his tears, and his sharpest grief: +"Let him read it who will, and interpret it as it pleaseth him." + +So, with the death of Monica, we may leave Saint Augustine. The +most human of books, the "Confessions," now strays into theology. +Of all books that which it most oddly resembles, to my fancy at +least, is the poems of Catullus. The passion and the tender heart +they have in common, and in common the war of flesh and spirit; the +shameful inappeasable love of Lesbia, or of the worldly life; so +delightful and dear to the poet and to the saint, so despised in +other moods conquered and victorious again, among the battles of +the war in our members. The very words in which the Veronese and +the Bishop of Hippo described the pleasure and gaiety of an early +friendship are almost the same, and we feel that, born four hundred +years later, the lover of Lesbia, the singer of Sirmio might +actually have found peace in religion, and exchanged the earthly +for the heavenly love. + + + +CHAPTER IX: SMOLLETT + + + +The great English novelists of the eighteenth century turned the +course of English Literature out of its older channel. Her streams +had descended from the double peaks of Parnassus to irrigate the +enamelled fields and elegant parterres of poetry and the drama, as +the critics of the period might have said. But Richardson, +Fielding, Smollett, and Sterne, diverted the waters, from poetry +and plays, into the region of the novel, whither they have brought +down a copious alluvial deposit. Modern authors do little but till +this fertile Delta: the drama is now in the desert, poetry is a +drug, and fiction is literature. Among the writers who made this +revolution, Smollett is, personally, the least well known to the +world, despite the great part which autobiography and confessions +play in his work. He is always talking about himself, and +introducing his own experiences. But there is little evidence from +without; his extant correspondence is scanty; he was not in Dr. +Johnson's circle, much less was he in that of Horace Walpole. He +was not a popular man, and probably he has long ceased to be a +popular author. About 1780 the vendors of children's books issued +abridgments of "Tom Jones" and "Pamela," "Clarissa" and "Joseph +Andrews," adapted to the needs of infant minds. It was a curious +enterprise, certainly, but the booksellers do not seem to have +produced "Every Boy's Roderick Random," or "Peregrine Pickle for +the Young." Smollett, in short, is less known than Fielding and +Sterne, even Thackeray says but a word about him, in the "English +Humorists," and he has no place in the series of "English Men of +Letters." + +What we know of Smollett reveals a thoroughly typical Scot of his +period; a Scot of the species absolutely opposed to Sir Pertinax +Macsycophant, and rather akin to the species of Robert Burns. +"Rather akin," we may say, for Smollett, like Burns, was a +humorist, and in his humour far from dainty; he was a personal +satirist, and a satirist far from chivalrous. Like Burns, too, he +was a poet of independence; like Burns, and even more than Burns, +in a time of patronage he was recalcitrant against patrons. But, +unlike Burns, he was farouche to an extreme degree; and, unlike +Burns, he carried very far his prejudices about his "gentrice," his +gentle birth. Herein he is at the opposite pole from the great +peasant poet. + +Two potent characteristics of his country were at war within him. +There was, first, the belief in "gentrice," in a natural difference +of kind between men of coat armour and men without it. Thus +Roderick Random, the starving cadet of a line of small lairds, +accepts the almost incredible self-denial and devotion of Strap as +merely his due. Prince Charles could not have taken the devotion +of Henry Goring, or of Neil MacEachain, more entirely as a matter +of course, involving no consideration in return, than Roderick took +the unparalleled self-sacrifice of his barber friend and school- +mate. Scott has remarked on this contemptuous and ungrateful +selfishness, and has contrasted it with the relations of Tom Jones +and Partridge. Of course, it is not to be assumed that Smollett +would have behaved like Roderick, when, "finding the fire in my +apartment almost extinguished, I vented my fury upon poor Strap, +whose ear I pinched with such violence that he roared hideously +with pain . . . " To be sure Roderick presently "felt unspeakable +remorse . . . foamed at the mouth, and kicked the chairs about the +room." Now Strap had rescued Roderick from starvation, had +bestowed on him hundreds of pounds, and had carried his baggage, +and dined on his leavings. But Strap was not gently born! +Smollett would not, probably, have acted thus, but he did not +consider such conduct a thing out of nature. + +On the other side was Smollett's Scottish spirit of independence. +As early as 1515, James Ingles, chaplain of Margaret Tudor, wrote +to Adam Williamson, "You know the use of this country. . . . The +man hath more words than the master, and will not be content except +he know the master's counsel. There is no order among us." Strap +had the instinct of feudal loyalty to a descendant of a laird. But +Smollett boasts that, being at the time about twenty, and having +burdened a nobleman with his impossible play, "The Regicide," +"resolved to punish his barbarous indifference, and actually +discarded my Patron." HE was not given to "booing" (in the sense +of bowing), but had, of all known Scots, the most "canty conceit o' +himsel'." These qualities, with a violence of temper which took +the form of beating people when on his travels, cannot have made +Smollett a popular character. He knew his faults, as he shows in +the dedication of "Ferdinand, Count Fathom," to himself. "I have +known you trifling, superficial, and obstinate in dispute; meanly +jealous and awkwardly reserved; rash and haughty in your +resentment; and coarse and lowly in your connections." + +He could, it is true, on occasion, forgive (even where he had not +been wronged), and could compensate, in milder moods, for the +fierce attacks made in hours when he was "meanly jealous." Yet, in +early life at least, he regarded his own Roderick Random as "modest +and meritorious," struggling nobly with the difficulties which +beset a "friendless orphan," especially from the "selfishness, +envy, malice, and base indifference of mankind." Roderick himself +is, in fact, the incarnation of the basest selfishness. In one of +his adventures he is guilty of that extreme infamy which the +d'Artagnan of "The Three Musketeers" and of the "Memoirs" +committed, and for which the d'Artagnan of Le Vicomte de Bragelonne +took shame to himself. While engaged in a virtuous passion, +Roderick not only behaves like a vulgar debauchee, but pursues the +meanest arts of the fortune-hunter who is ready to marry any woman +for her money. Such is the modest and meritorious orphan, and +mankind now carries its "base indifference" so far, that Smollett's +biographer, Mr. Hannay, says, "if Roderick had been hanged, I, for +my part, should have heard the tidings unmoved . . . Smollett +obviously died without realising how nearly the hero, who was in +some sort a portrait of himself, came to being a ruffian." + +Dr. Carlyle, in 1758, being in London, found Smollett "much of a +humorist, and not to be put out of his way." A "humorist," here, +means an overbearingly eccentric person, such as Smollett, who +lived much in a society of literary dependants, was apt to become. +But Dr. Carlyle also found that, though Smollett "described so well +the characters of ruffians and profligates," he did not resemble +them. Dr. Robertson, the historian, "expressed great surprise at +his polished and agreeable manners, and the great urbanity of his +conversation." He was handsome in person, as his portrait shows, +but his "nervous system was exceedingly irritable and subject to +passion," as he says in the Latin account of his health which, in +1763, he drew up for the physician at Montpellier. Though, when he +chose, he could behave like a man of breeding, and though he +undeniably had a warm heart for his wife and daughter, he did not +always choose to behave well. Except Dr. Moore, his biographer, he +seems to have had few real friends during most of his career. + +As to persons whom he chose to regard as his enemies, he was beyond +measure rancorous and dangerous. From his first patron, Lord +Lyttelton, to his last, he pursued them with unscrupulous +animosity. If he did not mean actually to draw portraits of his +grandfather, his cousins, his school-master, and the apothecary +whose gallipots he attended--in "Roderick Random,"--yet he left the +originals who suggested his characters in a very awkward situation. +For assuredly he did entertain a spite against his grandfather: +and as many of the incidents in "Roderick Random" were +autobiographical, the public readily inferred that others were +founded on fact + +The outlines of Smollett's career are familiar, though gaps in our +knowledge occur. Perhaps they may partly be filled up by the aid +of passages in his novels, plays, and poems: in these, at all +events, he describes conditions and situations through which he +himself may, or must, have passed. + +Born in 1721, he was a younger son of Archibald, a younger son of +Sir James Smollett of Bonhill, a house on the now polluted Leven, +between Loch Lomond and the estuary of the Clyde. Smollett's +father made an imprudent marriage: the grandfather provided a +small, but competent provision for him and his family, during his +own life. The father, Archibald, died; the grandfather left +nothing to the mother of Tobias and her children, but they were +assisted with scrimp decency by the heirs. Hence the attacks on +the grandfather and cousins of Roderick Random: but, later, +Smollett returned to kinder feelings. + +In some ways Tobias resembled his old grandsire. About 1710 that +gentleman wrote a Memoir of his own life. Hence we learn that HE, +in childhood, like Roderick Random, was regarded as "a clog and +burden," and was neglected by his father, ill-used by his step- +mother. Thus Tobias had not only his own early poverty to resent, +but had a hereditary grudge against fortune, and "the base +indifference of mankind." The old gentleman was lodged "with very +hard and penurious people," at Glasgow University. He rose in the +world, and was a good Presbyterian Whig, but "had no liberty" to +help to forfeit James II. "The puir child, his son" (James III. +and VIII.), "if he was really such, was innocent, and it were hard +to do anything that would touch the son for the father's fault." +The old gentleman, therefore, though a Member of Parliament, evaded +attending the first Parliament after the Union: "I had no freedom +to do it, because I understood that the great business to be +agitated therein was to make laws for abjuring the Pretender . . . +which I could not go in with, being always of opinion that it was +hard to impose oaths on people who had not freedom to take them." + +This was uncommonly liberal conduct, in a Whig, and our Smollett, +though no Jacobite, was in distinct and courageous sympathy with +Jacobite Scotland. Indeed, he was as patriotic as Burns, or as his +own Lismahago. These were times, we must remember, in which +Scottish patriotism was more than a mere historical sentiment. +Scotland was inconceivably poor, and Scots, in England, were +therefore ridiculous. The country had, so far, gained very little +by the Union, and the Union was detested even by Scottish Whig +Earls. It is recorded by Moore that, while at the Dumbarton +Grammar School, Smollett wrote "verses to the memory of Wallace, of +whom he became an early admirer," having read "Blind Harry's +translation of the Latin poems of John Blair," chaplain to that +hero. There probably never were any such Latin poems, but Smollett +began with the same hero-worship as Burns. He had the attachment +of a Scot to his native stream, the Leven, which later he was to +celebrate. Now if Smollett had credited Roderick Random with these +rural, poetical, and patriotic tastes, his hero would have been +much more human and amiable. There was much good in Smollett which +is absent in Random. But for some reason, probably because +Scotland was unpopular after the Forty-Five, Smollett merely +describes the woes, ill usage, and retaliations of Roderick. That +he suffered as Random did is to the last degree improbable. He had +a fair knowledge of Latin, and was not destitute of Greek, while +his master, a Mr. Love, bore a good character both for humanity and +scholarship. He must have studied the classics at Glasgow +University, where he was apprenticed to Mr. Gordon, a surgeon. +Gordon, again, was an excellent man, appreciated by Smollett +himself in after days, and the odious Potion of "Roderick Random" +must, like his rival, Crab, have been merely a fancy sketch of +meanness, hypocrisy, and profligacy. Perhaps the good surgeon +became the victim of that "one continued string of epigrammatic +sarcasms," such as Mr. Colquhoun told Ramsay of Ochtertyre, +Smollett used to play off on his companions, "for which no talents +could compensate." Judging by Dr. Carlyle's Memoirs this +intolerable kind of display was not unusual in Caledonian +conversation: but it was not likely to make Tobias popular in +England. + +Thither he went in 1739, with very little money, "and a very large +assortment of letters of recommendation: whether his relatives +intended to compensate for the scantiness of the one by their +profusion in the other is uncertain; but he has often been heard to +declare that their liberality in the last article was prodigious." +The Smolletts were not "kinless loons"; they had connections: but +who, in Scotland, had money? Tobias had passed his medical +examinations, but he rather trusted in his MS. tragedy, "The +Regicide." Tragical were its results for the author. Inspired by +George Buchanan's Latin history of Scotland, Smollett had produced +a play, in blank verse, on the murder of James I. That a boy, even +a Scottish boy, should have an overweening passion for this unlucky +piece, that he should expect by such a work to climb a step on +fortune's ladder, is nowadays amazing. For ten years he clung to +it, modified it, polished, improved it, and then published it in +1749, after the success of "Roderick Random." Twice he told the +story of his theatrical mishaps and disappointments, which were +such as occur to every writer for the stage. He wailed over them +in "Roderick Random," in the story of Mr. Melopoyn; he prolonged +his cry, in the preface to "The Regicide," and probably the noble +whom he "lashed" (very indecently) in his two satires ("Advice," +1746, "Reproof," 1747, and in "Roderick Random") was the patron who +could not get the tragedy acted. First, in 1739, he had a patron +whom he "discarded." Then he went to the West Indies, and, +returning in 1744, he lugged out his tragedy again, and fell foul +again of patrons, actors, and managers. What befell him was the +common fate. People did not, probably, hasten to read his play: +managers and "supercilious peers" postponed that entertainment, or, +at least, the noblemen could not make the managers accept it if +they did not want it. Our taste differs so much from that of the +time which admired Home's "Douglas," and "The Regicide" was so +often altered to meet objections, that we can scarcely criticise +it. Of course it is absolutely unhistorical; of course it is empty +of character, and replete with fustian, and ineffably tedious; but +perhaps it is not much worse than other luckier tragedies of the +age. Naturally a lover calls his wounded lady "the bleeding fair." +Naturally she exclaims - + + +"Celestial powers +Protect my father, shower upon his--oh!" (Dies). + + +Naturally her adorer answers with - + + +"So may our mingling souls +To bliss supernal wing our happy--oh!" (Dies). + + +We are reminded of - + + +"Alas, my Bom!" (Dies). +"'Bastes' he would have said!" + + +The piece, if presented, must have been damned. But Smollett was +so angry with one patron, Lord Lyttelton, that he burlesqued the +poor man's dirge on the death of his wife. He was so angry with +Garrick that he dragged him into "Roderick Random" as Marmozet. +Later, obliged by Garrick, and forgiving Lyttelton, he wrote +respectfully about both. But, in 1746 (in "Advice"), he had +assailed the "proud lord, who smiles a gracious lie," and "the +varnished ruffians of the State." Because Tobias's play was +unacted, people who tried to aid him were liars and ruffians, and a +great deal worse, for in his satire, as in his first novel, +Smollett charges men of high rank with the worst of unnamable +crimes. Pollio and Lord Strutwell, whoever they may have been, +were probably recognisable then, and were undeniably libelled, +though they did not appeal to a jury. It is improbable that Sir +John Cope had ever tried to oblige Smollett. His ignoble attack on +Cope, after that unfortunate General had been fairly and honourably +acquitted of incompetence and cowardice, was, then, wholly +disinterested. Cope is "a courtier Ape, appointed General." + + +"Then Pug, aghast, fled faster than the wind, +Nor deign'd, in three-score miles, to look behind; +While every band for orders bleat in vain, +And fall in slaughtered heaps upon the plain," - + + +of Preston Pans. + +Nothing could be more remote from the truth, or more unjustly +cruel. Smollett had not here even the excuse of patriotism. Sir +John Cope was no Butcher Cumberland. In fact the poet's friend is +not wrong, when, in "Reproof," he calls Smollett "a flagrant +misanthrope." The world was out of joint for the cadet of Bonhill: +both before and after his very trying experiences as a ship surgeon +the managers would not accept "The Regicide." This was reason good +why Smollett should try to make a little money and notoriety by +penning satires. They are fierce, foul-mouthed, and pointless. +But Smollett was poor, and he was angry; he had the examples of +Pope and Swift before him; which, as far as truculence went, he +could imitate. Above all, it was then the fixed belief of men of +letters that some peer or other ought to aid and support them; and, +as no peer did support Smollett, obviously they were "varnished +ruffians." He erred as he would not err now, for times, and ways +of going wrong, are changed. But, at best, how different are his +angry couplets from the lofty melancholy of Johnson's satires! + +Smollett's "small sum of money" did not permit him long to push the +fortunes of his tragedy, in 1739; and as for his "very large +assortment of letters of recommendation," they only procured for +him the post of surgeon's mate in the Cumberland of the line. Here +he saw enough of the horrors of naval life, enough of misery, +brutality, and mismanagement, at Carthagena (1741), to supply +materials for the salutary and sickening pages on that theme in +"Roderick Random." He also saw and appreciated the sterling +qualities of courage, simplicity, and generosity, which he has made +immortal in his Bowlings and Trunnions. + +It is part of a novelist's business to make one half of the world +know how the other half lives; and in this province Smollett +anticipated Dickens. He left the service as soon as he could, when +the beaten fleet was refitting at Jamaica. In that isle he seems +to have practised as a doctor; and he married, or was betrothed to, +a Miss Lascelles, who had a small and far from valuable property. +The real date of his marriage is obscure: more obscure are +Smollett's resources on his return to London, in 1744. Houses in +Downing Street can never have been cheap, but we find "Mr. +Smollett, surgeon in Downing Street, Westminster," and, in 1746, he +was living in May Fair, not a region for slender purses. His +tragedy was now bringing in nothing but trouble, to himself and +others. His satires cannot have been lucrative. As a dweller in +May Fair he could not support himself, like his Mr. Melopoyn, by +writing ballads for street singers. Probably he practised in his +profession. In "Count Fathom" he makes his adventurer "purchase an +old chariot, which was new painted for the occasion, and likewise +hire a footman . . . This equipage, though much more expensive than +his finances could bear, he found absolutely necessary to give him +a chance of employment . . . A walking physician was considered as +an obscure pedlar." A chariot, Smollett insists, was necessary to +"every raw surgeon"; while Bob Sawyer's expedient of "being called +from church" was already vieux jeu, in the way of advertisement. +Such things had been "injudiciously hackneyed." In this passage of +Fathom's adventures, Smollett proclaims his insight into methods of +getting practice. A physician must ingratiate himself with +apothecaries and ladies' maids, or "acquire interest enough" to +have an infirmary erected "by the voluntary subscriptions of his +friends." Here Smollett denounces hospitals, which "encourage the +vulgar to be idle and dissolute, by opening an asylum to them and +their families, from the diseases of poverty and intemperance." +This is odd morality for one who suffered from "the base +indifference of mankind." He ought to have known that poverty is +not a vice for which the poor are to be blamed; and that +intemperance is not the only other cause of their diseases. +Perhaps the unfeeling passage is a mere paradox in the style of his +own Lismahago. + +With or without a chariot, it is probable that Tobias had not an +insinuating style, or "a good bedside manner"; friends to support a +hospital for his renown he had none; but, somehow, he could live in +May Fair, and, in 1746, could meet Dr. Carlyle and Stewart, son of +the Provost of Edinburgh, and other Scots, at the Golden Ball in +Cockspur Street. There they were enjoying "a frugal supper and a +little punch," when the news of Culloden arrived. Carlyle had been +a Whig volunteer: he, probably, was happy enough; but Stewart, +whose father was in prison, grew pale, and left the room. Smollett +and Carlyle then walked home through secluded streets, and were +silent, lest their speech should bewray them for Scots. "John +Bull," quoth Smollett, "is as haughty and valiant to-day, as he was +abject and cowardly on the Black Wednesday when the Highlanders +were at Derby." + +"Weep, Caledonia, weep!" he had written in his tragedy. Now he +wrote "Mourn, hapless Caledonia, mourn." Scott has quoted, from +Graham of Gartmore, the story of Smollett's writing verses, while +Gartmore and others were playing cards. He read them what he had +written, "The Tears of Scotland," and added the last verse on the +spot, when warned that his opinions might give offence. + + +"Yes, spite of thine insulting foe, +My sympathising verse shall flow." + + +The "Tears" are better than the "Ode to Blue-Eyed Ann," probably +Mrs. Smollett. But the courageous author of "The Tears of +Scotland," had manifestly broken with patrons. He also broke with +Rich, the manager at Covent Garden, for whom he had written an +opera libretto. He had failed as doctor, and as dramatist; nor, as +satirist, had he succeeded. Yet he managed to wear wig and sword, +and to be seen in good men's company. Perhaps his wife's little +fortune supported him, till, in 1748, he produced "Roderick +Random." It is certain that we never find Smollett in the deep +distresses of Dr. Johnson and Goldsmith. Novels were now in vogue; +"Pamela" was recent, "Joseph Andrews" was yet more recent, +"Clarissa Harlowe" had just appeared, and Fielding was publishing +"Tom Jones." Smollett, too, tried his hand, and, at last, he +succeeded. + +His ideas of the novel are offered in his preface. The Novel, for +him, is a department of Satire; "the most entertaining and +universally improving." To Smollett, "Roderick Random" seemed an +"improving" work! Ou le didacticisme va t'il se nicher? Romance, +he declares, "arose in ignorance, vanity, and superstition," and +declined into "the ludicrous and unnatural." Then Cervantes +"converted romance to purposes far more useful and entertaining, by +making it assume the sock, and point out the follies of ordinary +life." Romance was to revive again some twenty years after its +funeral oration was thus delivered. As for Smollett himself, he +professedly "follows the plan" of Le Sage, in "Gil Blas" (a plan as +old as Petronius Arbiter, and the "Golden Ass" of Apuleius); but he +gives more place to "compassion," so as not to interfere with +"generous indignation, which ought to animate the reader against +the sordid and vicious disposition of the world." As a contrast to +sordid vice, we are to admire "modest merit" in that exemplary +orphan, Mr. Random. This gentleman is a North Briton, because only +in North Britain can a poor orphan get such an education as +Roderick's "birth and character require," and for other reasons. +Now, as for Roderick, the schoolmaster "gave himself no concern +about the progress I made," but, "should endeavour, with God's +help, to prevent my future improvement." It must have been at +Glasgow University, then, that Roderick learned "Greek very well, +and was pretty far advanced in the mathematics," and here he must +have used his genius for the belles lettres, in the interest of his +"amorous complexion," by "lampooning the rivals" of the young +ladies who admired him. + +Such are the happy beginnings, accompanied by practical jokes, of +this interesting model. Smollett's heroes, one conceives, were +intended to be fine, though not faultless young fellows; men, not +plaster images; brave, generous, free-living, but, as Roderick +finds once, when examining his conscience, pure from serious stains +on that important faculty. To us these heroes often appear no +better than ruffians; Peregrine Pickle, for example, rather excels +the infamy of Ferdinand, Count Fathom, in certain respects; though +Ferdinand is professedly "often the object of our detestation and +abhorrence," and is left in a very bad, but, as "Humphrey Clinker" +shows, in by no means a hopeless way. Yet, throughout, Smollett +regarded himself as a moralist, a writer of improving tendencies; +one who "lashed the vices of the age." He was by no means wholly +mistaken, but we should probably wrong the eighteenth century if we +accepted all Smollett's censures as entirely deserved. The vices +which he lashed are those which he detected, or fancied that he +detected, in people who regarded a modest and meritorious Scottish +orphan with base indifference. Unluckily the greater part of +mankind was guilty of this crime, and consequently was capable of +everything. + +Enough has probably been said about the utterly distasteful figure +of Smollett's hero. In Chapter LX. we find him living on the +resources of Strap, then losing all Strap's money at play, and then +"I bilk my taylor." That is, Roderick orders several suits of new +clothes, and sells them for what they will fetch. Meanwhile Strap +can live honestly anywhere, while he has his ten fingers. Roderick +rescues himself from poverty by engaging, with his uncle, in the +slave trade. We are apt to consider this commerce infamous. But, +in 1763, the Evangelical director who helped to make Cowper "a +castaway," wrote, as to the slaver's profession: "It is, indeed, +accounted a genteel employment, and is usually very profitable, +though to me it did not prove so, the Lord seeing that a large +increase of wealth could not be good for me." The reverend +gentleman had, doubtless, often sung - + + +"Time for us to go, +Time for us to go, +And when we'd got the hatches down, +'Twas time for us to go!" + + +Roderick, apart from "black ivory," is aided by his uncle and his +long lost father. The base world, in the persons of Strap, +Thompson, the uncle, Mr. Sagely, and other people, treats him +infinitely better than he deserves. His very love (as always in +Smollett) is only an animal appetite, vigorously insisted upon by +the author. By a natural reaction, Scott, much as he admired +Smollett, introduced his own blameless heroes, and even Thackeray +could only hint at the defects of youth, in "Esmond." Thackeray is +accused of making his good people stupid, or too simple, or +eccentric, and otherwise contemptible. Smollett went further: +Strap, a model of benevolence, is ludicrous and a coward; even +Bowling has the stage eccentricities of the sailor. Mankind was +certain, in the long run, to demand heroes more amiable and worthy +of respect. Our inclinations, as Scott says, are with "the open- +hearted, good-humoured, and noble-minded Tom Jones, whose +libertinism (one particular omitted) is perhaps rendered but too +amiable by his good qualities." To be sure Roderick does befriend +"a reclaimed street-walker" in her worst need, but why make her the +confidante of the virginal Narcissa? Why reward Strap with her +hand? Fielding decidedly, as Scott insists, "places before us +heroes, and especially heroines, of a much higher as well as more +pleasing character, than Smollett was able to present." + +"But the deep and fertile genius of Smollett afforded resources +sufficient to make up for these deficiencies . . . If Fielding had +superior taste, the palm of more brilliancy of genius, more +inexhaustible richness of invention, must in justice be awarded to +Smollett. In comparison with his sphere, that in which Fielding +walked was limited . . . " The second part of Scott's parallel +between the men whom he considered the greatest of our novelists, +qualifies the first. Smollett's invention was not richer than +Fielding's, but the sphere in which he walked, the circle of his +experience, was much wider. One division of life they knew about +equally well, the category of rakes, adventurers, card-sharpers, +unhappy authors, people of the stage, and ladies without +reputations, in every degree. There were conditions of higher +society, of English rural society, and of clerical society, which +Fielding, by birth and education, knew much better than Smollett. +But Smollett had the advantage of his early years in Scotland, then +as little known as Japan; with the "nautical multitude," from +captain to loblolly boy, he was intimately familiar; with the West +Indies he was acquainted; and he later resided in Paris, and +travelled in Flanders, so that he had more experience, certainly, +if not more invention, than Fielding. + +In "Roderick Random" he used Scottish "local colour" very little, +but his life had furnished him with a surprising wealth of "strange +experiences." Inns were, we must believe, the favourite home of +adventures, and Smollett could ring endless changes on mistakes +about bedrooms. None of them is so innocently diverting as the +affair of Mr. Pickwick and the lady in yellow curl-papers; but the +absence of that innocence which heightens Mr. Pickwick's distresses +was welcome to admirers of what Lady Mary Wortley Montagu calls +"gay reading." + +She wrote from abroad, in 1752, "There is something humorous in R. +Random, that makes me believe that the author is H. Fielding"--her +kinsman. Her ladyship did her cousin little justice. She did not +complain of the morals of "R. Random," but thought "Pamela" and +"Clarissa" "likely to do more general mischief than the works of +Lord Rochester." Probably "R. Random" did little harm. His career +is too obviously ideal. Too many ups and downs occur to him, and +few orphans of merit could set before themselves the ideal of +bilking their tailors, gambling by way of a profession, dealing in +the slave trade, and wheedling heiresses. + +The variety of character in the book is vast; in Morgan we have an +excellent, fiery, Welshman, of the stage type; the different minor +miscreants are all vividly designed; the eccentric lady author may +have had a real original; Miss Snapper has much vivacity as a wit; +the French adventures in the army are, in their rude barbaric way, +a forecast of Barry Lyndon's; and, generally, both Scott and +Thackeray owe a good deal to Smollett in the way of suggestions. +Smollett's extraordinary love of dilating on noisome smells and +noisome sights, that intense affection for the physically nauseous, +which he shared with Swift, is rather less marked in "Roderick" +than in "Humphrey Clinker," and "The Adventures of an Atom." The +scenes in the Marshalsea must have been familiar to Dickens. The +terrible history of Miss Williams is Hogarth's Harlot's Progress +done into unsparing prose. Smollett guides us at a brisk pace +through the shady and brutal side of the eighteenth century; his +vivacity is as unflagging as that of his disagreeable rattle of a +hero. The passion usually understood as love is, to be sure, one +of which he seems to have no conception; he regards a woman much as +a greedy person might regard a sirloin of beef, or, at least, a +plate of ortolans. At her marriage a bride is "dished up;" that is +all. + +Thus this "gay writing" no longer makes us gay. In reading +"Peregrine Pickle" and "Humphrey Clinker," a man may find himself +laughing aloud, but hardly in reading "Roderick Random." The fun +is of the cruel primitive sort, arising merely from the +contemplation of somebody's painful discomfiture. Bowling and +Rattlin may be regarded with affectionate respect; but Roderick has +only physical courage and vivacity to recommend him. Whether +Smollett, in Flaubert's deliberate way, purposely abstained from +moralising on the many scenes of physical distress which he +painted; or whether he merely regarded them without emotion, has +been debated. It seems more probable that he thought they carried +their own moral. It is the most sympathetic touch in Roderick's +character, that he writes thus of his miserable crew of slaves: +"Our ship being freed from the disagreeable lading of negroes, TO +WHOM INDEED I HAD BEEN A MISERABLE SLAVE SINCE OUR LEAVING THE +COAST OF GUINEA, I began to enjoy myself." Smollett was a +physician, and had the pitifulness of his profession; though we see +how casually he makes Random touch on his own unwonted benevolence. + +People had not begun to know the extent of their own brutality in +the slave trade, but Smollett probably did know it. If a curious +prophetic letter attributed to him, and published more than twenty +years after his death, be genuine; he had the strongest opinions +about this form of commercial enterprise. But he did not wear his +heart on his sleeve, where he wore his irritable nervous system. +It is probable enough that he felt for the victims of poverty, +neglect, and oppression (despite his remarks on hospitals) as +keenly as Dickens. We might regard his offensively ungrateful +Roderick as a purely dramatic exhibition of a young man, if his +other heroes were not as bad, or worse; if their few redeeming +qualities were not stuck on in patches; and if he had omitted his +remark about Roderick's "modest merit." On the other hand, the +good side of Matthew Bramble seems to be drawn from Smollett's own +character, and, if that be the case, he can have had little +sympathy with his own humorous Barry Lyndons. Scott and Thackeray +leaned to the favourable view: Smollett, his nervous system apart, +was manly and kindly. + +As regards plot, "Roderick Random" is a mere string of picturesque +adventures. It is at the opposite pole from "Tom Jones" in the +matter of construction. There is no reason why it should ever stop +except the convenience of printers and binders. Perhaps we lay too +much stress on the somewhat mechanical art of plot-building. +Fielding was then setting the first and best English example of a +craft in which the very greatest authors have been weak, or of +which they were careless. Smollett was always rather more +incapable, or rather more indifferent, in plot-weaving, than +greater men. + +In our day of royalties, and gossip about the gains of authors, it +would be interesting to know what manner and size of a cheque +Smollett received from his publisher, the celebrated Mr. Osborne. +We do not know, but Smollett published his next novel "on +commission," "printed for the Author"; so probably he was not well +satisfied with the pecuniary result of "Roderick Random." Thereby, +says Dr. Moore, he "acquired much more reputation than money." So +he now published "The Regicide" "by subscription, that method of +publication being then more reputable than it has been thought +since" (1797). Of "The Regicide," and its unlucky preface, enough, +or more, has been said. The public sided with the managers, not +with the meritorious orphan. + +For the sake of pleasure, or of new experiences, or of economy, +Smollett went to Paris in 1750, where he met Dr. Moore, later his +biographer, the poetical Dr. Akenside, and an affected painter. He +introduced the poet and painter into "Peregrine Pickle"; and makes +slight use of a group of exiled Jacobites, including Mr. Hunter of +Burnside. In 1750, there were Jacobites enough in the French +capital, all wondering very much where Prince Charles might be, and +quite unconscious that he was their neighbour in a convent in the +Rue St. Dominique. Though Moore does not say so (he is provokingly +economical of detail), we may presume that Smollett went wandering +in Flanders, as does Peregrine Pickle. It is curious that he +should introduce a Capucin, a Jew, and a black-eyed damsel, all in +the Ghent diligence, when we know that Prince Charles did live in +Ghent, with the black-eyed Miss Walkenshaw, did go about disguised +as a Capucin, and was tracked by a Jewish spy, while the other spy, +Young Glengarry, styled himself "Pickle." But all those events +occurred about a year after the novel was published in 1751. + +Before that date Smollett had got an M.D. degree from Aberdeen +University, and, after returning from France, he practised for a +year or two at Bath. But he could not expect to be successful +among fashionable invalids, and, in "Humphrey Clinker," he make +Matthew Bramble give such an account of the Bath waters as M. Zola +might envy. He was still trying to gain ground in his profession, +when, in March 1751, Mr. D. Wilson published the first edition of +"Peregrine Pickle" "for the Author," unnamed. I have never seen +this first edition, which was "very curious and disgusting." +Smollett, in his preface to the second edition, talks of "the art +and industry that were used to stifle him in the birth, by certain +booksellers and others." He now "reformed the manners, and +corrected the expressions," removed or modified some passages of +personal satire, and held himself exempt from "the numerous shafts +of envy, rancour, and revenge, that have lately, both in private +and public, been levelled at his reputation." Who were these base +and pitiless dastards? Probably every one who did not write +favourably about the book. Perhaps Smollett suspected Fielding, +whom he attacks in several parts of his works, treating him as a +kind of Jonathan Wild, a thief-taker, and an associate with +thieves. Why Smollett thus misconducted himself is a problem, +unless he was either "meanly jealous," or had taken offence at some +remarks in Fielding's newspaper. Smollett certainly began the war, +in the first edition of "Peregrine Pickle." He made a kind of +palinode to the "trading justice" later, as other people of his +kind have done. + +A point in "Peregrine Pickle" easily assailed was the long episode +about a Lady of Quality: the beautiful Lady Vane, whose memoirs +Smollett introduced into his tale. Horace Walpole found that she +had omitted the only feature in her career of which she had just +reason to be proud: the number of her lovers. Nobody doubted that +Smollett was paid for casting his mantle over Lady Vane: moreover, +he might expect a success of scandal. The roman a clef is always +popular with scandal-mongers, but its authors can hardly hope to +escape rebuke. + +It was not till 1752 that Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, in Italy, +received "Peregrine," with other fashionable romances--"Pompey the +Little," "The Parish Girl," "Eleanora's Adventures," "The Life of +Mrs. Theresa Constantia Phipps," "The Adventures of Mrs. Loveil," +and so on. Most of them contained portraits of real people, and, +no doubt, most of them were therefore successful. But where are +they now? Lady Mary thought Lady Vane's part of "Peregrine" "more +instructive to young women than any sermon that I know." She +regarded Fielding as with Congreve, the only "original" of her age, +but Fielding had to write for bread, and that is "the most +contemptible way of getting bread." She did not, at this time, +even know Smollett's name, but she admired him, and, later, calls +him "my dear Smollett." This lady thought that Fielding did not +know what sorry fellows his Tom Jones and Captain Booth were. Not +near so sorry as Peregine Pickle were they, for this gentleman is a +far more atrocious ruffian than Roderick Random. + +None the less "Peregrine" is Smollett's greatest work. Nothing is +so rich in variety of character, scene, and adventure. We are +carried along by the swift and copious volume of the current, +carried into very queer places, and into the oddest miscellaneous +company, but we cannot escape from Smollett's vigorous grasp. Sir +Walter thought that "Roderick" excelled its successor in "ease and +simplicity," and that Smollett's sailors, in "Pickle," "border on +caricature." No doubt they do: the eccentricities of Hawser +Trunnion, Esq., are exaggerated, and Pipes is less subdued than +Rattlin, though always delightful. But Trunnion absolutely makes +one laugh out aloud: whether he is criticising the sister of Mr. +Gamaliel Pickle in that gentleman's presence, at a pot-house; or +riding to the altar with his squadron of sailors, tacking in an +unfavourable gale; or being run away into a pack of hounds, and +clearing a hollow road over a waggoner, who views him with +"unspeakable terror and amazement." Mr. Winkle as an equestrian is +not more entirely acceptable to the mind than Trunnion. We may +speak of "caricature," but if an author can make us sob with +laughter, to criticise him solemnly is ungrateful. + +Except Fielding occasionally, and Smollett, and Swift, and +Sheridan, and the authors of "The Rovers," one does not remember +any writers of the eighteenth century who quite upset the gravity +of the reader. The scene of the pedant's dinner after the manner +of the ancients, does not seem to myself so comic as the adventures +of Trunnion, while the bride is at the altar, and the bridegroom is +tacking and veering with his convoy about the fields. One sees how +the dinner is done: with a knowledge of Athenaeus, Juvenal, +Petronius, and Horace, many men could have written this set piece. +But Trunnion is quite inimitable: he is a child of humour and of +the highest spirits, like Mr. Weller the elder. Till Scott created +Mause Headrig, no Caledonian had ever produced anything except "Tam +o' Shanter," that could be a pendant to Trunnion. His pathos is +possibly just a trifle overdone, though that is not my own opinion. +Dear Trunnion! he makes me overlook the gambols of his detestable +protege, the hero. + +That scoundrel is not an impossible caricature of an obstinate, +vain, cruel libertine. Peregrine was precisely the man to fall in +love with Emilia pour le bon motif, and then attempt to ruin her, +though she was the sister of his friend, by devices worthy of +Lovelace at his last and lowest stage. Peregrine's overwhelming +vanity, swollen by facile conquests, would inevitably have degraded +him to this abyss. The intrigue was only the worst of those +infamous practical jokes of his, in which Smollett takes a cruel +and unholy delight. Peregrine, in fact, is a hero of naturalisme, +except that his fits of generosity are mere patches daubed on, and +that his reformation is a farce, in which a modern naturaliste +would have disdained to indulge. Emilia, in her scene with +Peregrine in the bouge to which he has carried her, rises much +above Smollett's heroines, and we could like her, if she had never +forgiven behaviour which was beneath pardon. + +Peregrine's education at Winchester bears out Lord Elcho's +description of that academy in his lately published Memoirs. It +was apt to develop Peregrines; and Lord Elcho himself might have +furnished Smollett with suitable adventures. There can be no doubt +that Cadwallader Crabtree suggested Sir Malachi Malagrowther to +Scott, and that Hatchway and Pipes, taking up their abode with +Peregrine in the Fleet, gave a hint to Dickens for Sam Weller and +Mr. Pickwick in the same abode. That "Peregrine" "does far excel +'Joseph Andrews' and 'Amelia'," as Scott declares, few modern +readers will admit. The world could do much better without +"Peregrine" than without "Joseph"; while Amelia herself alone is a +study greatly preferable to the whole works of Smollett: such, at +least, is the opinion of a declared worshipper of that peerless +lady. Yet "Peregrine" is a kind of Odyssey of the eighteenth +century: an epic of humour and of adventure. + +In February 1753, Smollett "obliged the town" with his "Adventures +of Ferdinand, Count Fathom," a cosmopolitan swindler and +adventurer. The book is Smollett's "Barry Lyndon," yet as his hero +does not tell his own story, but is perpetually held up as a +"dreadful example," there is none of Thackeray's irony, none of his +subtlety. "Here is a really bad man, a foreigner too," Smollett +seems to say, "do not be misled, oh maidens, by the wiles of such a +Count! Impetuous youth, play not with him at billiards, basset, or +gleek. Fathers, on such a rogue shut your doors: collectors, +handle not his nefarious antiques. Let all avoid the path and shun +the example of Ferdinand, Count Fathom!" + +Such is Smollett's sermon, but, after all, Ferdinand is hardly +worse than Roderick or Peregrine. The son of a terrible old sutler +and camp-follower, a robber and slayer of wounded men, Ferdinand +had to live by his wits, and he was hardly less scrupulous, after +all, than Peregrine and Roderick. The daubs of casual generosity +were not laid on, and that is all the difference. As Sophia +Western was mistaken for Miss Jenny Cameron, so Ferdinand was +arrested as Prince Charles, who, in fact, caused much inconvenience +to harmless travellers. People were often arrested as "The +Pretender's son" abroad as well as in England. + +The life and death of Ferdinand's mother, shot by a wounded hussar +in her moment of victory, make perhaps the most original and +interesting part of this hero's adventures. The rest is much akin +to his earlier novels, but the history of Rinaldo and Monimia has a +passage not quite alien to the vein of Mrs. Radcliffe. Some +remarks in the first chapter show that Smollett felt the censures +on his brutality and "lowness," and he promises to seek "that goal +of perfection where nature is castigated almost even to still life +. . . where decency, divested of all substance, hovers about like a +fantastic shadow." + +Smollett never reached that goal, and even the shadow of decency +never haunted him so as to make him afraid with any amazement. +Smollett avers that he "has had the courage to call in question the +talents of a pseudo-patron," and so is charged with "insolence, +rancour, and scurrility." Of all these things, and of worse, he +had been guilty; his offence had never been limited to "calling in +question the talents" of persons who had been unsuccessful in +getting his play represented. Remonstrance merely irritated +Tobias. His new novel was but a fainter echo of his old novels, a +panorama of scoundrelism, with the melodramatic fortunes of the +virtuous Monimia for a foil. If read to-day, it is read as a +sketch of manners, or want of manners. The scene in which the +bumpkin squire rooks the accomplished Fathom at hazard, in Paris, +is prettily conceived, and Smollett's indignation at the British +system of pews in church is edifying. But when Monimia appears to +her lover as he weeps at her tomb, and proves to be no phantom, but +a "warm and substantial" Monimia, capable of being "dished up," +like any other Smollettian heroine, the reader is sensibly annoyed. +Tobias as un romantique is absolutely too absurd; "not here, oh +Tobias, are haunts meet for thee." + +Smollett's next novel, "Sir Launcelot Greaves," was not published +till 1761, after it had appeared in numbers, in The British +Magazine. This was a sixpenny serial, published by Newbery. The +years between 1753 and 1760 had been occupied by Smollett in +quarrelling, getting imprisoned for libel, editing the Critical +Review, writing his "History of England," translating (or adapting +old translations of) "Don Quixote," and driving a team of literary +hacks, whose labours he superintended, and to whom he gave a weekly +dinner. These exploits are described by Dr. Carlyle, and by +Smollett himself, in "Humphrey Clinker." He did not treat his +vassals with much courtesy or consideration; but then they expected +no such treatment. We have no right to talk of his doings as "a +blood-sucking method, literary sweating," like a recent biographer +of Smollett. Not to speak of the oddly mixed metaphor, we do not +know what Smollett's relations to his retainers really were. As an +editor he had to see his contributors. The work of others he may +have recommended, as "reader" to publishers. Others may have made +transcripts for him, or translations. That Smollett "sweated" men, +or sucked their blood, or both, seems a crude way of saying that he +found them employment. Nobody says that Johnson "sweated" the +persons who helped him in compiling his Dictionary; or that Mr. +Jowett "sweated" the friends and pupils who aided him in his +translation of Plato. Authors have a perfect right to procure +literary assistance, especially in learned books, if they pay for +it, and acknowledge their debt to their allies. On the second +point, Smollett was probably not in advance of his age. + +"Sir Launcelot Greaves" is, according to Chambers, "a sorry +specimen of the genius of the author," and Mr. Oliphant Smeaton +calls it "decidedly the least popular" of his novels, while Scott +astonishes us by preferring it to "Jonathan Wild." Certainly it is +inferior to "Roderick Random" and to "Peregrine Pickle," but it +cannot be so utterly unreal as "The Adventures of an Atom." I, for +one, venture to prefer "Sir Launcelot" to "Ferdinand, Count +Fathom." Smollett was really trying an experiment in the +fantastic. Just as Mr. Anstey Guthrie transfers the mediaeval myth +of Venus and the Ring, or the Arabian tale of the bottled-up geni +(or djinn) into modern life, so Smollett transferred Don Quixote. +His hero, a young baronet of wealth, and of a benevolent and +generous temper, is crossed in love. Though not mad, he is +eccentric, and commences knight-errant. Scott, and others, object +to his armour, and say that, in his ordinary clothes, and with his +well-filled purse, he would have been more successful in righting +wrongs. Certainly, but then the comic fantasy of the armed knight +arriving at the ale-house, and jangling about the rose-hung lanes +among the astonished folk of town and country, would have been +lost. Smollett is certainly less unsuccessful in wild fantasy, +than in the ridiculous romantic scenes where the substantial +phantom of Monimia disports itself. The imitation of the knight by +the nautical Captain Crowe (an excellent Smollettian mariner) is +entertaining, and Sir Launcelot's crusty Sancho is a pleasant +variety in squires. The various forms of oppression which the +knight resists are of historical interest, as also is the contested +election between a rustic Tory and a smooth Ministerialist: +"sincerely attached to the Protestant succession, in detestation of +a popish, an abjured, and an outlawed Pretender." The heroine, +Aurelia Darrel, is more of a lady, and less of a luxury, than +perhaps any other of Smollett's women. But how Smollett makes +love! "Tea was called. The lovers were seated; he looked and +languished; she flushed and faltered; all was doubt and delirium, +fondness and flutter." + +"All was gas and gaiters," said the insane lover of Mrs. Nickleby, +with equal delicacy and point. + +Scott says that Smollett, when on a visit to Scotland, used to +write his chapter of "copy" in the half-hour before the post went +out. Scott was very capable of having the same thing happen to +himself. "Sir Launcelot" is hurriedly, but vigorously written: +the fantasy was not understood as Smollett intended it to be, and +the book is blotted, as usual, with loathsome medical details. But +people in Madame du Deffand's circle used openly to discuss the +same topics, to the confusion of Horace Walpole. As the hero of +this book is a generous gentleman, as the most of it is kind and +manly, and the humour provocative of an honest laugh, it is by no +means to be despised, while the manners, if caricatured, are based +on fact. + +It is curious to note that in "Sir Launcelot Greaves," we find a +character, Ferret, who frankly poses as a strugforlifeur. M. +Daudet's strugforlifeur had heard of Darwin. Mr. Ferret had read +Hobbes, learned that man was in a state of nature, and inferred +that we ought to prey upon each other, as a pike eats trout. Miss +Burney, too, at Bath, about 1780, met a perfectly emancipated young +"New Woman." She had read Bolingbroke and Hume, believed in +nothing, and was ready to be a "Woman who Did." Our ancestors +could be just as advanced as we are. + +Smollett went on compiling, and supporting himself by his +compilations, and those of his vassals. In 1762 he unluckily +edited a paper called The Briton in the interests of Lord Bute. +The Briton was silenced by Wilkes's North Briton. Smollett lost +his last patron; he fell ill; his daughter died; he travelled +angrily in France and Italy. His "Travels" show the choleric +nature of the man, and he was especially blamed for not admiring +the Venus de Medici. Modern taste, enlightened by the works of a +better period of Greek art, has come round to Smollett's opinions. +But, in his own day, he was regarded as a Vandal and a heretic. + +In 1764, he visited Scotland, and was warmly welcomed by his +kinsman, the laird of Bonhill. In 1769, he published "The +Adventures of an Atom," a stupid, foul, and scurrilous political +satire, in which Lord Bute, having been his patron, was "lashed" in +Smollett's usual style. In 1768, Smollett left England for ever. +He desired a consulship, but no consulship was found for him, which +is not surprising. He died at Monte Nova, near Leghorn, in +September (others say October) 1771. He had finished "Humphrey +Clinker," which appeared a day or two before his death. + +Thackeray thought "Humphrey Clinker" the most laughable book that +ever was written. Certainly nobody is to be envied who does not +laugh over the epistles of Winifred Jenkins. The book is too well +known for analysis. The family of Matthew Bramble, Esq., are on +their travels, with his nephew and niece, young Melford and Lydia +Melford, with Miss Jenkins, and the squire's tart, greedy, and +amorous old maid of a sister, Tabitha Bramble. This lady's +persistent amours and mean avarice scarcely strike modern readers +as amusing. Smollett gave aspects of his own character in the +choleric, kind, benevolent Matthew Bramble, and in the patriotic +and paradoxical Lieutenant Lismahago. Bramble, a gouty invalid, is +as full of medical abominations as Smollett himself, as ready to +fight, and as generous and open-handed. Probably the author shared +Lismahago's contempt of trade, his dislike of the Union (1707), his +fiery independence (yet he DOES marry Tabitha!), and those opinions +in which Lismahago heralds some of the social notions of Mr. +Ruskin. + +Melford is an honourable kind of "walking gentleman"; Lydia, though +enamoured, is modest and dignified; Clinker is a worthy son of +Bramble, with abundant good humour, and a pleasing vein of Wesleyan +Methodism. But the grotesque spelling, rural vanity, and naivete +of Winifred Jenkins, with her affection for her kitten, make her +the most delightful of this wandering company. After beholding the +humours and partaking of the waters of Bath, they follow Smollett's +own Scottish tour, and each character gives his picture of the +country which Smollett had left at its lowest ebb of industry and +comfort, and found so much more prosperous. The book is a mine for +the historian of manners and customs: the novel-reader finds Count +Fathom metamorphosed into Mr. Grieve, an exemplary apothecary, "a +sincere convert to virtue," and "unaffectedly pious." + +Apparently a wave of good-nature came over Smollett: he forgave +everybody, his own relations even, and he reclaimed his villain. A +patron might have played with him. He mellowed in Scotland: +Matthew there became less tart, and more tolerant; an actual +English Matthew would have behaved quite otherwise. "Humphrey +Clinker" is an astonishing book, as the work of an exiled, poor, +and dying man. None of his works leaves so admirable an impression +of Smollett's virtues: none has so few of his less amiable +qualities. + +With the cadet of Bonhill, outworn with living, and with labour, +died the burly, brawling, picturesque old English novel of humour +and of the road. We have nothing notable in this manner, before +the arrival of Mr. Pickwick. An exception will scarcely be made in +the interest of Richard Cumberland, who, as Scott says, "has +occasionally . . . become disgusting, when he meant to be +humorous." Already Walpole had begun the new "Gothic romance," and +the "Castle of Otranto," with Miss Burney's novels, was to lead up +to Mrs. Radcliffe and Scott, to Miss Edgeworth and Miss Austen. + + + +CHAPTER X: NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE + + + +Sainte-Beuve says somewhere that it is impossible to speak of "The +German Classics." Perhaps he would not have allowed us to talk of +the American classics. American literature is too nearly +contemporary. Time has not tried it. But, if America possesses a +classic author (and I am not denying that she may have several), +that author is decidedly Hawthorne. His renown is unimpeached: +his greatness is probably permanent, because he is at once such an +original and personal genius, and such a judicious and determined +artist. + +Hawthorne did not set himself to "compete with life." He did not +make the effort--the proverbially tedious effort--to say +everything. To his mind, fiction was not a mirror of commonplace +persons, and he was not the analyst of the minutest among their +ordinary emotions. Nor did he make a moral, or social, or +political purpose the end and aim of his art. Moral as many of his +pieces naturally are, we cannot call them didactic. He did not +expect, nor intend, to better people by them. He drew the Rev. +Arthur Dimmesdale without hoping that his Awful Example would +persuade readers to "make a clean breast" of their iniquities and +their secrets. It was the moral situation that interested him, not +the edifying effect of his picture of that situation upon the minds +of novel-readers. + +He set himself to write Romance, with a definite idea of what +Romance-writing should be; "to dream strange things, and make them +look like truth." Nothing can be more remote from the modern +system of reporting commonplace things, in the hope that they will +read like truth. As all painters must do, according to good +traditions, he selected a subject, and then placed it in a +deliberately arranged light--not in the full glare of the noonday +sun, and in the disturbances of wind, and weather, and cloud. +Moonshine filling a familiar chamber, and making it unfamiliar, +moonshine mixed with the "faint ruddiness on walls and ceiling" of +fire, was the light, or a clear brown twilight was the light by +which he chose to work. So he tells us in the preface to "The +Scarlet Letter." The room could be filled with the ghosts of old +dwellers in it; faint, yet distinct, all the life that had passed +through it came back, and spoke with him, and inspired him. He +kept his eyes on these figures, tangled in some rare knot of Fate, +and of Desire: these he painted, not attending much to the bustle +of existence that surrounded them, not permitting superfluous +elements to mingle with them, and to distract him. + +The method of Hawthorne can be more easily traced than that of most +artists as great as himself. Pope's brilliant passages and +disconnected trains of thought are explained when we remember that +"paper-sparing," as he says, he wrote two, or four, or six couplets +on odd, stray bits of casual writing material. These he had to +join together, somehow, and between his "Orient Pearls at Random +Strung" there is occasionally "too much string," as Dickens once +said on another opportunity. Hawthorne's method is revealed in his +published note-books. In these he jotted the germ of an idea, the +first notion of a singular, perhaps supernatural moral situation. +Many of these he never used at all, on others he would dream, and +dream, till the persons in the situations became characters, and +the thing was evolved into a story. Thus he may have invented such +a problem as this: "The effect of a great, sudden sin on a simple +and joyous nature," and thence came all the substance of "The +Marble Faun" ("Transformation"). The original and germinal idea +would naturally divide itself into another, as the protozoa +reproduce themselves. Another idea was the effect of nearness to +the great crime on a pure and spotless nature: hence the character +of Hilda. In the preface to "The Scarlet Letter," Hawthorne shows +us how he tried, by reflection and dream, to warm the vague persons +of the first mere notion or hint into such life as characters in +romance inherit. While he was in the Civil Service of his country, +in the Custom House at Salem, he could not do this; he needed +freedom. He was dismissed by political opponents from office, and +instantly he was himself again, and wrote his most popular and, +perhaps, his best book. The evolution of his work was from the +prime notion (which he confessed that he loved best when "strange") +to the short story, and thence to the full and rounded novel. All +his work was leisurely. All his language was picked, though not +with affectation. He did not strive to make a style out of the use +of odd words, or of familiar words in odd places. Almost always he +looked for "a kind of spiritual medium, seen through which" his +romances, like the Old Manse in which he dwelt, "had not quite the +aspect of belonging to the material world." + +The spiritual medium which he liked, he was partly born into, and +partly he created it. The child of a race which came from England, +robust and Puritanic, he had in his veins the blood of judges--of +those judges who burned witches and persecuted Quakers. His fancy +is as much influenced by the old fanciful traditions of Providence, +of Witchcraft, of haunting Indian magic, as Scott's is influenced +by legends of foray and feud, by ballad, and song, and old wives' +tales, and records of conspiracies, fire-raisings, tragic love- +adventures, and border wars. Like Scott, Hawthorne lived in +phantasy--in phantasy which returned to the romantic past, wherein +his ancestors had been notable men. It is a commonplace, but an +inevitable commonplace, to add that he was filled with the idea of +Heredity, with the belief that we are all only new combinations of +our fathers that were before us. This has been made into a kind of +pseudo-scientific doctrine by M. Zola, in the long series of his +Rougon-Macquart novels. Hawthorne treated it with a more delicate +and a serener art in "The House of the Seven Gables." + +It is curious to mark Hawthorne's attempts to break away from +himself--from the man that heredity, and circumstance, and the +divine gift of genius had made him. He naturally "haunts the +mouldering lodges of the past"; but when he came to England (where +such lodges are abundant), he was ill-pleased and cross-grained. +He knew that a long past, with mysteries, dark places, malisons, +curses, historic wrongs, was the proper atmosphere of his art. But +a kind of conscientious desire to be something other than himself-- +something more ordinary and popular--make him thank Heaven that his +chosen atmosphere was rare in his native land. He grumbled at it, +when he was in the midst of it; he grumbled in England; and how he +grumbled in Rome! He permitted the American Eagle to make her nest +in his bosom, "with the customary infirmity of temper that +characterises this unhappy fowl," as he says in his essay "The +Custom House." "The general truculency of her attitude" seems to +"threaten mischief to the inoffensive community" of Europe, and +especially of England and Italy. + +Perhaps Hawthorne travelled too late, when his habits were too much +fixed. It does not become Englishmen to be angry because a voyager +is annoyed at not finding everything familiar and customary in +lands which he only visits because they are strange. This is an +inconsistency to which English travellers are particularly prone. +But it is, in Hawthorne's case, perhaps, another instance of his +conscientious attempts to be, what he was not, very much like other +people. His unexpected explosions of Puritanism, perhaps, are +caused by the sense of being too much himself. He speaks of "the +Squeamish love of the Beautiful" as if the love of the Beautiful +were something unworthy of an able-bodied citizen. In some arts, +as in painting and sculpture, his taste was very far from being at +home, as his Italian journals especially prove. In short, he was +an artist in a community for long most inartistic. He could not do +what many of us find very difficult--he could not take Beauty with +gladness as it comes, neither shrinking from it as immoral, nor +getting girlishly drunk upon it, in the aesthetic fashion, and +screaming over it in an intoxication of surprise. His tendency was +to be rather shy and afraid of Beauty, as a pleasant but not +immaculately respectable acquaintance. Or, perhaps, he was merely +deferring to Anglo-Saxon public opinion. + +Possibly he was trying to wean himself from himself, and from his +own genius, when he consorted with odd amateur socialists in farm- +work, and when he mixed, at Concord, with the "queer, strangely- +dressed, oddly-behaved mortals, most of whom took upon themselves +to be important agents of the world's destiny, yet were simple +bores of a very intense water." They haunted Mr. Emerson as they +haunted Shelley, and Hawthorne had to see much of them. But they +neither made a convert of him, nor irritated him into resentment. +His long-enduring kindness to the unfortunate Miss Delia Bacon, an +early believer in the nonsense about Bacon and Shakespeare, was a +model of manly and generous conduct. He was, indeed, an admirable +character, and his goodness had the bloom on it of a courteous and +kindly nature that loved the Muses. But, as one has ventured to +hint, the development of his genius and taste was hampered now and +then, apparently, by a desire to put himself on the level of the +general public, and of their ideas. This, at least, is how one +explains to oneself various remarks in his prefaces, journals, and +note-books. This may account for the moral allegories which too +weirdly haunt some of his short, early pieces. Edgar Poe, in a +passage full of very honest and well-chosen praise, found fault +with the allegorical business. + +Mr. Hutton, from whose "Literary Essays" I borrow Poe's opinion, +says: "Poe boldly asserted that the conspicuously ideal +scaffoldings of Hawthorne's stories were but the monstrous fruits +of the bad transcendental atmosphere which he breathed so long." +But I hope this way of putting it is not Poe's. "Ideal +scaffoldings," are odd enough, but when scaffoldings turn out to be +"fruits" of an "atmosphere," and monstrous fruits of a "bad +transcendental atmosphere," the brain reels in the fumes of mixed +metaphors. "Let him mend his pen," cried Poe, "get a bottle of +visible ink, come out from the Old Manse, cut Mr. Alcott," and, in +fact, write about things less impalpable, as Mr. Mallock's heroine +preferred to be loved, "in a more human sort of way." + +Hawthorne's way was never too ruddily and robustly human. Perhaps, +even in "The Scarlet Letter," we feel too distinctly that certain +characters are moral conceptions, not warmed and wakened out of the +allegorical into the real. The persons in an allegory may be real +enough, as Bunyan has proved by examples. But that culpable +clergyman, Mr. Arthur Dimmesdale, with his large, white brow, his +melancholy eyes, his hand on his heart, and his general resemblance +to the High Church Curate in Thackeray's "Our Street," is he real? +To me he seems very unworthy to be Hester's lover, for she is a +beautiful woman of flesh and blood. Mr. Dimmesdale was not only +immoral; he was unsportsmanlike. He had no more pluck than a +church-mouse. His miserable passion was degraded by its brevity; +how could he see this woman's disgrace for seven long years, and +never pluck up heart either to share her shame or peccare forliter? +He is a lay figure, very cleverly, but somewhat conventionally made +and painted. The vengeful husband of Hester, Roger Chillingworth, +is a Mr. Casaubon stung into jealous anger. But his attitude, +watching ever by Dimmesdale, tormenting him, and yet in his +confidence, and ever unsuspected, reminds one of a conception dear +to Dickens. He uses it in "David Copperfield," where Mr. Micawber +(of all people!) plays this trick on Uriah Heep; he uses it in +"Hunted Down"; he was about using it in "Edwin Drood"; he used it +(old Martin and Pecksniff) in "Martin Chuzzlewit." The person of +Roger Chillingworth and his conduct are a little too melodramatic +for Hawthorne's genius. + +In Dickens's manner, too, is Hawthorne's long sarcastic address to +Judge Pyncheon (in "The House of the Seven Gables"), as the judge +sits dead in his chair, with his watch ticking in his hand. +Occasionally a chance remark reminds one of Dickens; this for +example: He is talking of large, black old books of divinity, and +of their successors, tiny books, Elzevirs perhaps. "These little +old volumes impressed me as if they had been intended for very +large ones, but had been unfortunately blighted at an early stage +of their growth." This might almost deceive the elect as a piece +of the true Boz. Their widely different talents did really +intersect each other where the perverse, the grotesque, and the +terrible dwell. + +To myself "The House of the Seven Gables" has always appeared the +most beautiful and attractive of Hawthorne's novels. He actually +gives us a love story, and condescends to a pretty heroine. The +curse of "Maule's Blood" is a good old romantic idea, terribly +handled. There is more of lightness, and of a cobwebby dusty +humour in Hepzibah Pyncheon, the decayed lady shopkeeper, than +Hawthorne commonly cares to display. Do you care for the "first +lover," the Photographer's Young Man? It may be conventional +prejudice, but I seem to see him going about on a tricycle, and I +don't think him the right person for Phoebe. Perhaps it is really +the beautiful, gentle, oppressed Clifford who haunts one's memory +most, a kind of tragic and thwarted Harold Skimpole. "How pleasant, +how delightful," he murmured, but not as if addressing any one. +"Will it last? How balmy the atmosphere through that open window! +An open window! How beautiful that play of sunshine. Those +flowers, how very fragrant! That young girl's face, how cheerful, +how blooming. A flower with the dew on it, and sunbeams in the +dewdrops . . . " This comparison with Skimpole may sound like an +unkind criticism of Clifford's character and place in the story--it +is only a chance note of a chance resemblance. + +Indeed, it may be that Hawthorne himself was aware of the +resemblance. "An individual of Clifford's character," he remarks, +"can always be pricked more acutely through his sense of the +beautiful and harmonious than through his heart." And he suggests +that, if Clifford had not been so long in prison, his aesthetic +zeal "might have eaten out or filed away his affections." This was +what befell Harold Skimpole--himself "in prisons often"--at +Coavinses! The Judge Pyncheon of the tale is also a masterly study +of swaggering black-hearted respectability, and then, in addition +to all the poetry of his style, and the charm of his haunted air, +Hawthorne favours us with a brave conclusion of the good sort, the +old sort. They come into money, they marry, they are happy ever +after. This is doing things handsomely, though some of our modern +novelists think it coarse and degrading. Hawthorne did not think +so, and they are not exactly better artists than Hawthorne. + +Yet he, too, had his economies, which we resent. I do not mean his +not telling us what it was that Roger Chillingworth saw on Arthur +Dimmesdale's bare breast. To leave that vague is quite legitimate. +But what had Miriam and the spectre of the Catacombs done? Who was +the spectre? What did he want? To have told all this would have +been better than to fill the novel with padding about Rome, +sculpture, and the Ethics of Art. As the silly saying runs: "the +people has a right to know" about Miriam and her ghostly +acquaintance. {10} But the "Marble Faun" is not of Hawthorne's +best period, beautiful as are a hundred passages in the tale. + +Beautiful passages are as common in his prose as gold in the +richest quartz. How excellent are his words on the first faint but +certain breath of Autumn in the air, felt, perhaps, early in July. +"And then came Autumn, with his immense burthen of apples, dropping +them continually from his overladen shoulders as he trudged along." +Keats might have written so of Autumn in the orchards--if Keats had +been writing prose. + +There are geniuses more sunny, large, and glad than Hawthorne's, +none more original, more surefooted, in his own realm of moonlight +and twilight. + + + +CHAPTER XI: THE PARADISE OF POETS + + + +We were talking of Love, Constancy, the Ideal. "Who ever loved +like the poets?" cried Lady Violet Lebas, her pure, pale cheek +flushing. "Ah, if ever I am to love, he shall be a singer!" + +"Tenors are popular, very," said Lord Walter. + +"I mean a poet," she answered witheringly. + +Near them stood Mr. Witham, the author of "Heart's Chords Tangled." + +"Ah," said he, "that reminds me. I have been trying to catch it +all the morning. That reminds me of my dream." + +"Tell us your dream," murmured Lady Violet Lebas, and he told it. + +"It was through an unfortunate but pardonable blunder," said Mr. +Witham, "that I died, and reached the Paradise of Poets. I had, +indeed, published volumes of verse, but with the most blameless +motives. Other poets were continually sending me theirs, and, as I +could not admire them, and did not like to reply by critical +remarks, I simply printed some rhymes for the purpose of sending +them to the gentlemen who favoured me with theirs. I always wrote +on the fly-leaf a quotation from the "Iliad," about giving copper +in exchange for gold; and the few poets who could read Greek were +gratified, while the others, probably, thought a compliment was +intended. Nothing could be less culpable or pretentious, but, +through some mistake on the part of Charon, I was drafted off to +the Paradise of Poets. + +"Outside the Golden Gate a number of Shadows were waiting, in +different attitudes of depression and languor. Bavius and Maevius +were there, still complaining of 'cliques,' railing at Horace for a +mere rhymer of society, and at Virgil as a plagiarist, 'Take away +his cribs from Homer and Apollonius Rhodius,' quoth honest Maevius, +'and what is there left of him?' I also met a society of +gentlemen, in Greek costume, of various ages, from a half-naked +minstrel with a tortoiseshell lyre in his hand to an elegant of the +age of Pericles. They all consorted together, talking various +dialects of Aeolic, Ionian, Attic Greek, and so forth, which were +plainly not intelligible to each other. I ventured to ask one of +the company who he was, but he, with a sweep of his hand, said, 'We +are Homer!' When I expressed my regret and surprise that the +Golden Gate had not yet opened for so distinguished, though +collective, an artist, my friend answered that, according to Fick, +Peppmuller, and many other learned men, they were Homer. 'But an +impostor from Chios has got in somehow,' he said; 'they don't pay +the least attention to the Germans in the Paradise of Poets.' + +"At this moment the Golden Gates were thrown apart, and a fair +lady, in an early Italian costume, carrying a laurel in her hand, +appeared at the entrance. All the Shadows looked up with an air of +weary expectation, like people waiting for their turn in a doctor's +consulting-room. She beckoned to me, however, and I made haste to +follow her. The words 'Charlatan!' 'You a poet!' in a variety of +languages, greeted me by way of farewell from the Shadows. + +"'The renowned Laura, if I am not mistaken,' I ventured to remark, +recognising her, indeed, from the miniature in the Laurentian +library at Florence. + +"She bowed, and I began to ask for her adorer, Petrarch. + +"'Excuse me,' said Laura, as we glided down a mossy path, under the +shade of trees particularly dear to poets, 'excuse me, but the +sonneteer of whom you speak is one whose name I cannot bear to +mention. His conduct with Burns's Clarinda, his heartless +infatuation for Stella--' + +"'You astonish me,' I said. 'In the Paradise of Poets--' + +"'They are poets still--incorrigible!' answered the lady; then +slightly raising her voice of silver, as a beautiful appearance in +a toga drew near, she cried 'Catullo mio!' + +"The greeting between these accomplished ghosts was too kindly to +leave room for doubt as to the ardour of their affections. + +"'Will you, my Catullus,' murmured Laura, 'explain to this poet +from the land of fogs, any matters which, to him, may seem puzzling +and unfamiliar in our Paradise?' + +"The Veronese, with a charming smile, took my hand, and led me to a +shadowy arbour, whence we enjoyed a prospect of many rivers and +mountains in the poets' heaven. Among these I recognised the +triple crest of the Eildons, Grongar Hill, Cithaeron and Etna; +while the reed-fringed waters of the Mincius flowed musically +between the banks and braes o' bonny Doon to join the Tweed. +Blithe ghosts were wandering by, in all varieties of apparel, and I +distinctly observed Dante's Beatrice, leaning loving on the arm of +Sir Philip Sidney, while Dante was closely engaged in conversation +with the lost Lenore, celebrated by Mr. Edgar Allan Poe. + +"'In what can my knowledge of the Paradise of Poets be serviceable +to you, sir?' said Catullus, as he flung himself at the feet of +Laura, on the velvet grass. + +"'I am disinclined to seem impertinently curious,' I answered, 'but +the ladies in this fair, smiling country--have the gods made them +poetical?' + +"'Not generally,' replied Catullus. 'Indeed, if you would be well +with them, I may warn you never to mention poetry in their hearing. +They never cared for it while on earth, and in this place it is a +topic which the prudent carefully avoid among ladies. To tell the +truth, they have had to listen to far too much poetry, and too many +discussions on the caesura. There are, indeed, a few lady poets-- +very few. Sappho, for example; indeed I cannot recall any other at +this moment. The result is that Phaon, of all the shadows here, is +the most distinguished by the fair. He was not a poet, you know; +he got in on account of Sappho, who adored him. They are estranged +now, of course.' + +"'You interest me deeply,' I answered. 'And now, will you kindly +tell me why these ladies are here, if they were not poets?' + +"'The women that were our ideals while we dwelt on earth, the women +we loved but never won, or, at all events, never wedded, they for +whom we sighed while in the arms of a recognised and legitimate +affection, have been chosen by the Olympians to keep us company in +Paradise!' + +"'Then wherefore,' I interrupted, 'do I see Robert Burns loitering +with that lady in a ruff,--Cassandra, I make no doubt--Ronsard's +Cassandra? And why is the incomparable Clarinda inseparable from +Petrarch; and Miss Patty Blount, Pope's flame, from the Syrian +Meleager, while HIS Heliodore is manifestly devoted to Mr. Emerson, +whom, by the way, I am delighted, if rather surprised, to see +here?' + +"'Ah,' said Catullus, 'you are a new-comer among us. Poets will be +poets, and no sooner have they attained their desire, and dwelt in +the company of their earthly Ideals, than they feel strangely, yet +irresistibly drawn to Another. So it was in life, so it will ever +be. No Ideal can survive a daily companionship, and fortunate is +the poet who did not marry his first love!' + +"'As far as that goes,' I answered, 'most of you were highly +favoured; indeed, I do not remember any poet whose Ideal was his +wife, or whose first love led him to the altar.' + +"'I was not a marrying man myself,' answered the Veronese; 'few of +us were. Myself, Horace, Virgil--we were all bachelors.' + +"'And Lesbia!' + +"I said this in a low voice, for Laura was weaving bay into a +chaplet, and inattentive to our conversation. + +"'Poor Lesbia!' said Catullus, with a suppressed sigh. 'How I +misjudged that girl! How cruel, how causeless were my reproaches,' +and wildly rending his curled locks and laurel crown, he fled into +a thicket, whence there soon arose the melancholy notes of the +Ausonian lyre.' + +"'He is incorrigible,' said Laura, very coldly; and she +deliberately began to tear and toss away the fragments of the +chaplet she had been weaving. 'I shall never break him of that +habit of versifying. But they are all alike.' + +"'Is there nobody here,' said I, 'who is happy with his Ideal-- +nobody but has exchanged Ideals with some other poet?' + +"'There is one,' she said. 'He comes of a northern tribe; and in +his life-time he never rhymed upon his unattainable lady, or if +rhyme he did, the accents never carried her name to the ears of the +vulgar. Look there.' + +"She pointed to the river at our feet, and I knew the mounted +figure that was riding the ford, with a green-mantled lady beside +him like the Fairy Queen. + +"Surely I had read of her, and knew her - + + +"'She whose blue eyes their secret told, +Though shaded by her locks of gold.' + + +"'They are different; I know not why. They are constant,' said +Laura, and rising with an air of chagrin, she disappeared among the +boughs of the trees that bear her name. + +"'Unhappy hearts of poets,' I mused. 'Light things and sacred they +are, but even in their Paradise, and among their chosen, with every +wish fulfilled, and united to their beloved, they cannot be at +rest!' + +"Thus moralising, I wended my way to a crag, whence there was a +wide prospect. Certain poets were standing there, looking down +into an abyss, and to them I joined myself. + +"'Ah, I cannot bear it!' said a voice, and, as he turned away, his +brow already clearing, his pain already forgotten, I beheld the +august form of Shakespeare. + +"Marking my curiosity before it was expressed, he answered the +unuttered question. + +"'That is a sight for Pagans,' he said, 'and may give them +pleasure. But my Paradise were embittered if I had to watch the +sorrows of others, and their torments, however well deserved. The +others are gazing on the purgatory of critics and commentators.' + +"He passed from me, and I joined the 'Ionian father of the rest'-- +Homer, who, with a countenance of unspeakable majesty, was seated +on a throne of rock, between the Mantuan Virgil of the laurel +crown, Hugo, Sophocles, Milton, Lovelace, Tennyson, and Shelley. + +"At their feet I beheld, in a vast and gloomy hall, many an honest +critic, many an erudite commentator, an army of reviewers. Some +were condemned to roll logs up insuperable heights, whence they +descended thundering to the plain. Others were set to impositions, +and I particularly observed that the Homeric commentators were +obliged to write out the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" in their complete +shape, and were always driven by fiends to the task when they +prayed for the bare charity of being permitted to leave out the +'interpolations.' Others, fearful to narrate, were torn into as +many fragments as they had made of these immortal epics. Others, +such as Aristarchus, were spitted on their own critical signs of +disapproval. Many reviewers were compelled to read the books which +they had criticised without perusal, and it was terrible to watch +the agonies of the worthy pressmen who were set to this unwonted +task. 'May we not be let off with the preface?' they cried in +piteous accents. 'May we not glance at the table of contents and +be done with it?' But the presiding demons (who had been Examiners +in the bodily life) drove them remorseless to their toils. + +"Among the condemned I could not but witness, with sympathy, the +punishment reserved for translators. The translators of Virgil, in +particular, were a vast and motley assemblage of most respectable +men. Bishops were there, from Gawain Douglas downwards; Judges, in +their ermine; professors, clergymen, civil servants, writhing in +all the tortures that the blank verse, the anapaestic measure, the +metre of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," the heroic couplet and +similar devices can inflict. For all these men had loved Virgil, +though not wisely: and now their penance was to hear each other +read their own translations." + +"That must have been more than they could bear," said Lady Violet + +"Yes," said Mr. Witham; "I should know, for down I fell into +Tartarus with a crash, and writhed among the Translators." + +"Why?" asked Lady Violet. + +"Because I have translated Theocritus!" + +"Mr. Witham," said Lady Violet, "did you meet your ideal woman when +you were in the Paradise of Poets?" + +"She yet walks this earth," said the bard, with a too significant +bow. + +Lady Violet turned coldly away. + +* * * + +Mr. Witham was never invited to the Blues again--the name of Lord +Azure's place in Kent. + +The Poet is shut out of Paradise. + + + +CHAPTER XII: PARIS AND HELEN + + + +The first name in romance, the most ancient and the most enduring, +is that of Argive Helen. During three thousand years fair women +have been born, have lived, and been loved, "that there might be a +song in the ears of men of later time," but, compared to the renown +of Helen, their glory is dim. Cleopatra, who held the world's fate +in her hands, and lay in the arms of Caesar; Mary Stuart (Maria +Verticordia), for whose sake, as a northern novelist tells, +peasants have lain awake, sorrowing that she is dead; Agnes Sorel, +Fair Rosamond, la belle Stuart, "the Pompadour and the Parabere," +can still enchant us from the page of history and chronicle. "Zeus +gave them beauty, which naturally rules even strength itself," to +quote the Greek orator on the mistress of them all, on her who, +having never lived, can never die, the Daughter of the Swan. + +While Helen enjoys this immortality, and is the ideal of beauty +upon earth, it is curious to reflect on the modernite of her story, +the oldest of the love stories of the world. In Homer we first +meet her, the fairest of women in the song of the greatest of +poets. It might almost seem as if Homer meant to justify, by his +dealing with Helen, some of the most recent theories of literary +art. In the "Iliad" and "Odyssey" the tale of Helen is without a +beginning and without an end, like a frieze on a Greek temple. She +crosses the stage as a figure familiar to all, the poet's audience +clearly did not need to be told who Helen was, nor anything about +her youth. + +The famous judgment of Paris, the beginning of evil to Achaeans and +Ilian men, is only mentioned once by Homer, late, and in a passage +of doubtful authenticity. Of her reconciliation to her wedded +lord, Menelaus, not a word is said; of her end we are told no more +than that for her and him a mansion in Elysium is prepared - + + +"Where falls not hail, or rain, or any snow." + + +We leave her happy in Argos, a smile on her lips, a gift in her +hands, as we met her in Troy, beautiful, adored despite her guilt, +as sweet in her repentance as in her unvexed Argive home. Women +seldom mention her, in the epic, but with horror and anger; men +never address her but in gentle courtesy. What is her secret? How +did she leave her home with Paris--beguiled by love, by magic, or +driven by the implacable Aphrodite? Homer is silent on all of +these things; these things, doubtless, were known by his audience. +In his poem Helen moves as a thing of simple grace, courtesy, and +kindness, save when she rebels against her doom, after seeing her +lover fly from her husband's spear. Had we only Homer, by far our +earliest literary source, we should know little of the romance of +Helen; should only know that a lawless love brought ruin on Troy +and sorrow on the Achaeans; and this is thrown out, with no moral +comment, without praise or blame. The end, we learn, was peace, +and beauty was reconciled to life. There is no explanation, no +denouement; and we know how much denouement and explanations +hampered Scott and Shakespeare. From these trammels Homer is free, +as a god is free from mortal limitations. + +All this manner of telling a tale--a manner so ancient, so +original--is akin, in practice, to recent theories of what art +should be, and what art seldom is, perhaps never is, in modern +hands. + +Modern enough, again, is the choice of a married woman for the +heroine of the earliest love tale. Apollonius Rhodius sings (and +no man has ever sung so well) of a maiden's love; Virgil, of a +widow's; Homer, of love that has defied law, blindly obedient to +destiny, which dominates even Zeus. Once again, Helen is not a +very young girl; ungallant chronologists have attributed to her I +know not what age. We think of her as about the age of the Venus +of Milo; in truth, she was "ageless and immortal." Homer never +describes her beauty; we only see it reflected in the eyes of the +old men, white and weak, thin-voiced as cicalas: but hers is a +loveliness "to turn an old man young." "It is no marvel," they +say, "that for her sake Trojans and Achaeans slay each other." + +She was embroidering at a vast web, working in gold and scarlet the +sorrows that for her sake befell mankind, when they called her to +the walls to see Paris fight Menelaus, in the last year of the war. +There she stands, in raiment of silvery white, her heart yearning +for her old love and her own city. Already her thought is far from +Paris. Was her heart ever with Paris? That is her secret. A very +old legend, mentioned by the Bishop of Thessalonica, Eustathius, +tells us that Paris magically beguiled her, disguised in the form +of Menelaus, her lord, as Uther beguiled Ygerne. She sees the son +of Priam play the dastard in the fight; she turns in wrath on +Aphrodite, who would lure her back to his arms; but to his arms she +must go, "for the daughter of Zeus was afraid." Violence is put +upon beauty; it is soiled, or seems soiled, in its way through the +world. Helen urges Paris again into the war. He has a heart +invincibly light and gay; shame does not weigh on him. "Not every +man is valiant every day," he says; yet once engaged in battle, he +bears him bravely, and his arrows rain death among the mail-clad +Achaeans. + +What Homer thinks of Paris we can only guess. His beauty is the +bane of Ilios; but Homer forgives so much to beauty. In the end of +the "Iliad," Helen sings the immortal dirge over Hector, the +stainless knight, "with thy loving kindness and thy gentle speech." + +In the "Odyssey," she is at home again, playing the gracious part +of hostess to Odysseus's wandering son, pouring into the bowl the +magic herb of Egypt, "which brings forgetfulness of sorrow." The +wandering son of Odysseus departs with a gift for his bride, "to +wear upon the day of her desire, a memorial of the hands of Helen," +the beautiful hands, that in Troy or Argos were never idle. + +Of Helen, from Homer, we know no more. Grace, penitence in exile, +peace at home, these are the portion of her who set East and West +at war and ruined the city of Priam of the ashen spear. As in the +strange legend preserved by Servius, the commentator on Virgil, who +tells us that Helen wore a red "star-stone," whence fell gouts of +blood that vanished ere they touched her swan's neck; so all the +blood shed for her sake leaves Helen stainless. Of Homer's Helen +we know no more. + +The later Greek fancy, playing about this form of beauty, wove a +myriad of new fancies, or disinterred from legend old beliefs +untouched by Homer. Helen was the daughter of the Swan--that is, +as was later explained, of Zeus in the shape of a swan. Her +loveliness, even in childhood, plunged her in many adventures. +Theseus carried her off; her brothers rescued her. All the princes +of Achaea competed for her hand, having first taken an oath to +avenge whomsoever she might choose for her husband. The choice +fell on the correct and honourable, but rather inconspicuous, +Menelaus, and they dwelt in Sparta, beside the Eurotas, "in a +hollow of the rifted hills." Then, from across the sea, came the +beautiful and fatal Paris, son of Priam, King of Troy. As a child, +Paris had been exposed on the mountains, because his mother dreamed +that she brought forth a firebrand. He was rescued and fostered by +a shepherd; he tended the flocks; he loved the daughter of a river +god, OEnone. Then came the naked Goddesses, to seek at the hand of +the most beautiful of mortals the prize of beauty. Aphrodite won +the golden apple from the queen of heaven, Hera, and from the +Goddess of war and wisdom, Athena, bribing the judge by the promise +of the fairest wife in the world. No incident is more frequently +celebrated in poetry and art, to which it lends such gracious +opportunities. Paris was later recognised as of the royal blood of +Troy. He came to Lacedaemon on an embassy, he saw Helen, and +destiny had its way. + +Concerning the details in this most ancient love-story, we learn +nothing from Homer, who merely makes Paris remind Helen of their +bridal night in the isle of Cranae. But from Homer we learn that +Paris carried off not only the wife of Menelaus, but many of his +treasures. To the poet of the "Iliad," the psychology of the +wooing would have seemed a simple matter. Like the later vase- +painters, he would have shown us Paris beside Helen, Aphrodite +standing near, accompanied by the figure of Peitho--Persuasion. + +Homer always escapes our psychological problems by throwing the +weight of our deeds and misdeeds on a God or a Goddess, or on +destiny. To have fled from her lord and her one child, Hermione, +was not in keeping with the character of Helen as Homer draws it. +Her repentance is almost Christian in its expression, and +repentance indicates a consciousness of sin and of shame, which +Helen frequently professes. Thus she, at least, does not, like +Homer, in his chivalrous way, throw all the blame on the Immortals +and on destiny. The cheerful acquiescence of Helen in destiny +makes part of the comic element in La Belle Helene, but the mirth +only arises out of the incongruity between Parisian ideas and those +of ancient Greece. + +Helen is freely and bitterly blamed in the "Odyssey" by Penelope, +chiefly because of the ruinous consequences which followed her +flight. Still, there is one passage, when Penelope prudently +hesitates about recognising her returned lord, which makes it just +possible that a legend chronicled by Eustathius was known to +Homer,--namely, the tale already mentioned, that Paris beguiled her +in the shape of Menelaus. The incident is very old, as in the +story of Zeus and Amphitryon, and might be used whenever a lady's +character needed to be saved. But this anecdote, on the whole, is +inconsistent with the repentance of Helen, and is not in Homer's +manner. + +The early lyric poet, Stesichorus, is said to have written harshly +against Helen. She punished him by blindness, and he indited a +palinode, explaining that it was not she who went to Troy, but a +woman fashioned in her likeness, by Zeus, out of mist and light. +The real Helen remained safely and with honour in Egypt. Euripides +has made this idea, which was calculated to please him, the +groundwork of his "Helena," but it never had a strong hold on the +Greek imagination. Modern fancy is pleased by the picture of the +cloud-bride in Troy, Greeks and Trojans dying for a phantasm. +"Shadows we are, and shadows we pursue." + +Concerning the later feats, and the death of Paris, Homer says very +little. He slew Achilles by an arrow-shot in the Scaean gate, and +prophecy was fulfilled. He himself fell by another shaft, perhaps +the poisoned shaft of Philoctetes. In the fourth or fifth century +of our era a late poet, Quintus Smyrnaeus, described Paris's +journey, in quest of a healing spell, to the forsaken OEnone, and +her refusal to aid him; her death on his funeral pyre. Quintus is +a poet of extraordinary merit for his age, and scarcely deserves +the reproach of laziness affixed on him by Lord Tennyson. + +On the whole, Homer seems to have a kind of half-contemptuous +liking for the beautiful Paris. Later art represents him as a +bowman of girlish charms, wearing a Phrygian cap. There is a late +legend that he had a son, Corythus, by OEnone, and that he killed +the lad in a moment of jealousy, finding him with Helen and failing +to recognise him. On the death of Paris, perhaps by virtue of the +custom of the Levirate, Helen became the wife of his brother, +Deiphobus. + +How her reconciliation with Menelaus was brought about we do not +learn from Homer, who, in the "Odyssey," accepts it as a fact. The +earliest traditional hint on the subject is given by the famous +"Coffer of Cypselus," a work of the seventh century, B.C., which +Pausanias saw at Olympia, in A.D. 174. Here, on a band of ivory, +was represented, among other scenes from the tale of Troy, Menelaus +rushing, sword in hand, to slay Helen. According to Stesichorus, +the army was about to stone her after the fall of Ilios, but +relented, amazed by her beauty. + +Of her later life in Lacedaemon, nothing is known on really ancient +authority, and later traditions vary. The Spartans showed her +sepulchre and her shrine at Therapnae, where she was worshipped. +Herodotus tells us how Helen, as a Goddess, appeared in her temple +and healed a deformed child, making her the fairest woman in +Sparta, in the reign of Ariston. It may, perhaps, be conjectured +that in Sparta, Helen occupied the place of a local Aphrodite. In +another late story she dwells in the isle of Leuke, a shadowy bride +of the shadowy Achilles. The mocking Lucian, in his Vera Historia, +meets Helen in the Fortunate Islands, whence she elopes with one of +his companions. Again, the sons of Menelaus, by a concubine, were +said to have driven Helen from Sparta on the death of her lord, and +she was murdered in Rhodes, by the vengeance of Polyxo, whose +husband fell at Troy. But, among all these inventions, that of +Homer stands out pre-eminent. Helen and Menelaus do not die, they +are too near akin to Zeus; they dwell immortal, not among the +shadows of heroes and of famous ladies dead and gone, but in +Elysium, the paradise at the world's end, unvisited by storms. + + +"Beyond these voices there is peace." + + +It is plain that, as a love-story, the tale of Paris and Helen must +to modern readers seem meagre. To Greece, in every age, the main +interest lay not in the passion of the beautiful pair, but in its +world-wide consequences: the clash of Europe and Asia, the deaths +of kings, the ruin wrought in their homes, the consequent fall of +the great and ancient Achaean civilisation. To the Greeks, the +Trojan war was what the Crusades are in later history. As in the +Crusades, the West assailed the East for an ideal, not to recover +the Holy Sepulchre of our religion, but to win back the living type +of beauty and of charm. Perhaps, ere the sun grows cold, men will +no more believe in the Crusades, as an historical fact, than we do +in the siege of Troy. In a sense, a very obvious sense, the myth +of Helen is a parable of Hellenic history. They sought beauty, and +they found it; they bore it home, and, with beauty, their bane. +Wherever Helen went "she brought calamity," in this a type of all +the famous and peerless ladies of old days, of Cleopatra and of +Mary Stuart. Romance and poetry have nothing less plausible than +the part which Cleopatra actually played in the history of the +world, a world well lost by Mark Antony for her sake. The flight +from Actium might seem as much a mere poet's dream as the gathering +of the Achaeans at Aulis, if we were not certain that it is truly +chronicled. + +From the earliest times, even from times before Homer (whose +audience is supposed to know all about Helen), the imagination of +Greece, and later, the imagination of the civilised world, has +played around Helen, devising about her all that possibly could be +devised. She was the daughter of Zeus by Nemesis, or by Leda; or +the daughter of the swan, or a child of the changeful moon, +brooding on "the formless and multi-form waters." She could speak +in the voices of all women, hence she was named "Echo," and we +might fancy that, like the witch of the Brocken, she could appear +to every man in the likeness of his own first love. The ancient +Egyptians either knew her, or invented legends of her to amuse the +inquiring Greeks. She had touched at Sidon, and perhaps Astaroth +is only her Sidonian name. Whatever could be told of beauty, in +its charm, its perils, the dangers with which it surrounds its +lovers, the purity which it retains, unsmirched by all the sins +that are done for beauty's sake, could be told of Helen. + +Like a golden cup, as M. Paul de St. Victor says, she was carried +from lips to lips of heroes, but the gold remains unsullied and +unalloyed. To heaven she returns again, to heaven which is her +own, and looks down serenely on men slain, and women widowed, and +sinking ships, and burning towns. Yet with death she gives +immortality by her kiss, and Paris and Menelaus live, because they +have touched the lips of Helen. Through the grace of Helen, for +whom he fell, Sarpedon's memory endures, and Achilles and Memnon, +the son of the Morning, and Troy is more imperishable than +Carthage, or Rome, or Corinth, though Helen + + +"Burnt the topless towers of Ilium." + + +In one brief passage, Marlowe did more than all poets since +Stesichorus, or, at least since the epithalamium of Theocritus, for +the glory of Helen. Roman poets knew her best as an enemy of their +fabulous ancestors, and in the "AEneid," Virgil's hero draws his +sword to slay her. Through the Middle Ages, in the romances of +Troy, she wanders as a shining shadow of the ideally fair, like +Guinevere, who so often recalls her in the Arthurian romances. The +chivalrous mediaeval poets and the Celts could understand better +than the Romans the philosophy of "the world well lost" for love. +Modern poetry, even in Goethe's "Second part of Faust," has not +been very fortunately inspired by Helen, except in the few lines +which she speaks in "The Dream of Fair Women." + + +"I had great beauty; ask thou not my name." + + +Mr. William Morris's Helen, in the "Earthly Paradise," charms at +the time of reading, but, perhaps, leaves little abiding memory. +The Helen of "Troilus and Cressida" is not one of Shakespeare's +immortal women, and Mr. Rossetti's ballad is fantastic and somewhat +false in tone--a romantic pastiche. Where Euripides twice failed, +in the "Troades" and the "Helena," it can be given to few to +succeed. Helen is best left to her earliest known minstrel, for +who can recapture the grace, the tenderness, the melancholy, and +the charm of the daughter of Zeus in the "Odyssey" and "Iliad"? +The sightless eyes of Homer saw her clearest, and Helen was best +understood by the wisdom of his unquestioning simplicity. + +As if to prove how entirely, though so many hands paltered with her +legend, Helen is Homer's alone, there remains no great or typical +work of Greek art which represents her beauty, and the breasts from +which were modelled cups of gold for the service of the gods. We +have only paintings on vases, or work on gems, which, though +graceful, is conventional and might represent any other heroine, +Polyxena, or Eriphyle. No Helen from the hands of Phidias or +Scopas has survived to our time, and the grass may be growing in +Therapnae over the shattered remains of her only statue. + +As Stesichorus fabled that only an eidolon of Helen went to Troy, +so, except in the "Iliad" and "Odyssey," we meet but shadows of her +loveliness, phantasms woven out of clouds, and the light of setting +suns. + + + +CHAPTER XIII: ENCHANTED CIGARETTES + + + +To dream over literary projects, Balzac says, is like "smoking +enchanted cigarettes," but when we try to tackle our projects, to +make them real, the enchantment disappears. We have to till the +soil, to sow the seed, to gather the leaves, and then the +cigarettes must be manufactured, while there may be no market for +them after all. Probably most people have enjoyed the fragrance of +these enchanted cigarettes, and have brooded over much which they +will never put on paper. Here are some of "the ashes of the weeds +of my delight"--memories of romances whereof no single line is +written, or is likely to be written. + +Of my earliest novel I remember but little. I know there had been +a wreck, and that the villain, who was believed to be drowned, came +home and made himself disagreeable. I know that the heroine's +mouth was NOT "too large for regular beauty." In that respect she +was original. All heroines are "muckle-mou'd," I know not why. It +is expected of them. I know she was melancholy and merry; it would +not surprise me to learn that she drowned herself from a canoe. +But the villain never descended to crime, the first lover would not +fall in love, the heroine's own affections were provokingly +disengaged, and the whole affair came to a dead stop for want of a +plot. Perhaps, considering modern canons of fiction, this might +have been a very successful novel. It was entirely devoid of +incident or interest, and, consequently, was a good deal like real +life, as real life appears to many cultivated authors. On the +other hand, all the characters were flippant. This would never +have done, and I do not regret novel No. I., which had not even a +name. + +The second story had a plot, quantities of plot, nothing but plot. +It was to have been written in collaboration with a very great +novelist, who, as far as we went, confined himself to making +objections. This novel was stopped (not that my friend would ever +have gone on) by "Called Back," which anticipated part of the idea. +The story was entitled "Where is Rose?" and the motto was - + + +"Rosa quo locorum +Sera moratur." + + +The characters were--(1) Rose, a young lady of quality. (2) The +Russian Princess, her friend (need I add that, to meet a public +demand, HER name was Vera?). (3) Young man engaged to Rose. (4) +Charles, his friend. (5) An enterprising person named "The +Whiteley of Crime," the universal Provider of Iniquity. In fact, +he anticipated Sir Arthur Doyle's Professor Moriarty. The rest +were detectives, old ladies, mob, and a wealthy young Colonial +larrikin. Neither my friend nor I was fond of describing love +scenes, so we made the heroine disappear in the second chapter, and +she never turned up again till chapter the last. After playing in +a comedy at the house of an earl, Rosa and Vera entered her +brougham. Soon afterwards the brougham drew up, EMPTY, at Rose's +own door. Where WAS Rose? Traces of her were found, of all +places, in the Haunted House in Berkeley Square, which is not +haunted any longer. After that Rose was long sought in vain. + +This, briefly, is what had occurred. A Russian detective "wanted" +Vera, who, to be sure, was a Nihilist. To catch Vera he made an +alliance with "The Whiteley of Crime." He was a man who would +destroy a parish register, or forge a will, or crack a crib, or +break up a Pro-Boer meeting, or burn a house, or kidnap a rightful +heir, or manage a personation, or issue amateur bank-notes, or what +you please. Thinking to kill two birds with one stone, he carried +off Rose for her diamonds and Vera for his friend, the Muscovite +police official, lodging them both in the Haunted House. But there +he and the Russian came to blows, and, in the confusion, Vera made +her escape, while Rose was conveyed, AS VERA, to Siberia. Not +knowing how to dispose of her, the Russian police consigned her to +a nunnery at the mouth of the Obi. Her lover, in a yacht, found +her hiding-place, and got a friendly nun to give her some narcotic +known to the Samoyeds. It was the old truc of the Friar in "Romeo +and Juliet." At the mouth of the Obi they do not bury the dead, +but lay them down on platforms in the open air. Rose was picked up +there by her lover (accompanied by a chaperon, of course), was got +on board the steam yacht, and all went well. I forget what +happened to "The Whiteley of Crime." After him I still rather +hanker--he was a humorous ruffian. Something could be made of "The +Whiteley of Crime." Something HAS been made, by the author of +"Sherlock Holmes." + +In yet another romance, a gentleman takes his friend, in a country +place, to see his betrothed. The friend, who had only come into +the neighbourhood that day, is found dead, next morning, hanging to +a tree. Gipsies and others are suspected. But the lover was the +murderer. He had been a priest, in South America, and the lady was +a Catholic (who knew not of his Orders). Now the friend fell in +love with the lady at first sight, on being introduced to her by +the lover. As the two men walked home, the friend threatened to +reveal the lover's secret--his tonsure--which would be fatal to his +hopes. They quarrelled, parted, and the ex-priest lassoed his +friend. The motive, I think, is an original one, and not likely to +occur to the first comer. The inventor is open to offers. + +The next novel, based on a dream, was called "In Search of Qrart." + +What is Qrart? I decline to divulge this secret beyond saying that +Qrart was a product of the civilisation which now sleeps under the +snows of the pole. It was an article of the utmost value to +humanity. Farther I do not intend to commit myself. The Bride of +a God was one of the characters. + +The next novel is, at present, my favourite cigarette. The scene +is partly in Greece, partly at the Parthian Court, about 80-60 B.C. +Crassus is the villain. The heroine was an actress in one of the +wandering Greek companies, splendid strollers, who played at the +Indian and Asiatic Courts. The story ends with the representation +of the "Bacchae," in Parthia. The head of Pentheus is carried by +one of the Bacchae in that drama. Behold, it is not a mask, but +THE HEAD OF CRASSUS, and thus conveys the first news of the Roman +defeat. Obviously, this is a novel that needs a great deal of +preliminary study, as much, indeed, as "Salammbo." + +Another story will deal with the Icelandic discoverers of America. +Mr. Kipling, however, has taken the wind out of its sails with his +sketch, "The Finest Story in the World." There are all the marvels +and portents of the Eyrbyggja Saga to draw upon, there are +Skraelings to fight, and why should not Karlsefni's son kill the +last mastodon, and, as Quetzalcoatl, be the white-bearded god of +the Aztecs? After that a romance on the intrigues to make Charles +Edward King of Poland sounds commonplace. But much might be made +of that, too, if the right man took it in hand. Believe me, there +are plenty of stories left, waiting for the man who can tell them. +I have said it before, but I say it again, if I were king I would +keep court officials, Mr. Stanley Weyman, Mr. Mason, Mr. Kipling, +and others, to tell me my own stories. I know the kind of thing +which I like, from the discovery of Qrart to that of the French +gold in the burn at Loch Arkaig, or in "the wood by the lochside" +that Murray of Broughton mentions. + +Another cigarette I have, the adventures of a Poet, a Poet born in +a Puritan village of Massachusetts about 1670. Hawthorne could +have told me my story, and how my friend was driven into the +wilderness and lived among the Red Men. I think he was killed in +an attempt to warn his countrymen of an Indian raid; I think his +MS. poems have a bullet-hole through them, and blood on the leaves. +They were in Carew's best manner, these poems. + +Another tale Hawthorne might have told me, the tale of an excellent +man, whose very virtues, by some baneful moral chemistry, corrupt +and ruin the people with whom he comes in contact. I do not mean +by goading them into the opposite extremes, but rather something +like a moral jettatura. This needs a great deal of subtlety, and +what is to become of the hero? Is he to plunge into vice till +everybody is virtuous again? It wants working out. I have +omitted, after all, a schoolboy historical romance, explaining WHY +QUEEN ELIZABETH WAS NEVER MARRIED. A Scottish paper offered a +prize for a story of Queen Mary Stuart's reign. I did not get the +prize--perhaps did not deserve it, but my story ran thus: You must +know that Queen Elizabeth was singularly like Darnley in personal +appearance. What so natural as that, disguised as a page, her +Majesty should come spying about the Court of Holyrood? Darnley +sees her walking out of Queen Mary's room, he thinks her an +hallucination, discovers that she is real, challenges her, and they +fight at Faldonside, by the Tweed, Shakespeare holding Elizabeth's +horse. Elizabeth is wounded, and is carried to the Kirk of Field, +and laid in Darnley's chamber, while Darnley goes out and makes +love to my rural heroine, the lady of Fernilee, a Kerr. That night +Bothwell blows up the Kirk of Field, Elizabeth and all. Darnley +has only one resource. Borrowing the riding habit of the rural +heroine, the lady of Fernilee, he flees across the Border, and, for +the rest of his life, personates Queen Elizabeth. That is why +Elizabeth, who was Darnley, hated Mary so bitterly (on account of +the Kirk of Field affair), and THAT IS WHY QUEEN ELIZABETH WAS +NEVER MARRIED. Side-lights on Shakespeare's Sonnets were obviously +cast. The young man whom Shakespeare admired so, and urged to +marry, was--Darnley. This romance did not get the prize (the +anachronism about Shakespeare is worthy of Scott), but I am +conceited enough to think it deserved an honourable mention. + +Enough of my own cigarettes. But there are others of a more +fragrant weed. Who will end for me the novel of which Byron only +wrote a chapter; who, as Bulwer Lytton is dead? A finer opening, +one more mysteriously stirring, you can nowhere read. And the +novel in letters, which Scott began in 1819, who shall finish it, +or tell us what he did with his fair Venetian courtezan, a +character so much out of Sir Walter's way? He tossed it aside--it +was but an enchanted cigarette--and gave us "The Fortunes of Nigel" +in its place. I want both. We cannot call up those who "left half +told" these stories. In a happier world we shall listen to their +endings, and all our dreams shall be coherent and concluded. +Meanwhile, without trouble, and expense, and disappointment, and +reviews, we can all smoke our cigarettes of fairyland. Would that +many people were content to smoke them peacefully, and did not rush +on pen, paper, and ink! + + + +CHAPTER XIV: STORIES AND STORY-TELLING +(From STRATH NAVER) + + + +We have had a drought for three weeks. During a whole week this +northern strath has been as sunny as the Riviera is expected to be. +The streams can be crossed dry-shod, kelts are plunging in the +pools, but even kelts will not look at a fly. Now, by way of a +pleasant change, an icy north wind is blowing, with gusts of snow, +not snow enough to swell the loch that feeds the river, but just +enough snow (as the tourist said of the water in the River Styx) +"to swear by," or at! The Field announces that a duke, who rents +three rods on a neighbouring river, has not yet caught one salmon. +The acrimoniously democratic mind may take comfort in that +intelligence, but, if the weather will not improve for a duke, it +is not likely to change for a mere person of letters. Thus the +devotee of the Muses is driven back, by stress of climate, upon +literature, and as there is nothing in the lodge to read he is +compelled to write. + +Now certainly one would not lack material, if only one were capable +of the art of fiction. The genesis of novels and stories is a +topic little studied, but I am inclined to believe that, like the +pearls in the mussels of the river, fiction is a beautiful disease +of the brain. Something, an incident or an experience, or a +reflection, gets imbedded, incrusted, in the properly constituted +mind, and becomes the nucleus of a pearl of romance. Mr. Marion +Crawford, in a recent work, describes his hero, who is a novelist, +at work. This young gentleman, by a series of faults or +misfortunes, has himself become a centre of harrowing emotion. Two +young ladies, to each of whom he has been betrothed, are weeping +out their eyes for him, or are kneeling to heaven with despairing +cries, or are hardening their hearts to marry men for whom they "do +not care a bawbee." The hero's aunt has committed a crime; +everybody, in fact, is in despair, when an idea occurs to the hero. +Indifferent to the sorrows of his nearest and dearest, he sits down +with his notion and writes a novel--writes like a person possessed. + +He has the proper kind of brain, the nucleus has been dropped into +it, the pearl begins to grow, and to assume prismatic hues. So he +is happy, and even the frozen-out angler might be happy if he could +write a novel in the absence of salmon. Unluckily, my brain is not +capable of this aesthetic malady, and to save my life, or to "milk +a fine warm cow rain," as the Zulus say, I could not write a novel, +or even a short story. About The Short Story, as they call it, +with capital letters, our critical American cousins have much to +say. Its germ, one fancies, is usually an incident, or a mere +anecdote, according to the nature of the author's brain; this germ +becomes either the pearl of a brief conte, or the seed of a stately +tree, in three volumes. An author of experience soon finds out how +he should treat his material. One writer informs me that, given +the idea, the germinal idea, it is as easy for him to make a novel +out of it as a tale--as easy, and much more satisfactory and +remunerative. Others, like M. Guy de Maupassant, for example, seem +to find their strength in brevity, in cutting down, not in +amplifying; in selecting and reducing, not in allowing other ideas +to group themselves round the first, other characters to assemble +about those who are essential. That seems to be really the whole +philosophy of this matter, concerning which so many words are +expended. The growth of the germinal idea depends on the nature of +an author's talent--he may excel in expansion, or in reduction; he +may be economical, and out of an anecdote may spin the whole cocoon +of a romance; or he may be extravagant, and give a capable idea +away in the briefest form possible. + +These ideas may come to a man in many ways, as we said, from a +dream, from a fragmentary experience (as most experiences in life +are fragmentary), from a hint in a newspaper, from a tale told in +conversation. Not long ago, for example, I heard an anecdote out +of which M. Guy de Maupassant could have made the most ghastly, the +most squalid, and the most supernaturally moving of all his contes. +Indeed, that is not saying much, as he did not excel in the +supernatural. Were it written in French, it might lie in my lady's +chamber, and, as times go, nobody would be shocked. But, by our +curious British conventions, this tale cannot be told in an English +book or magazine. It was not, in its tendency, immoral; those +terrible tales never are. The events were rather calculated to +frighten the hearer into the paths of virtue. When Mr. Richard +Cameron, the founder of the Cameronians, and the godfather of the +Cameronian Regiment, was sent to his parish, he was bidden by Mr. +Peden to "put hell-fire to the tails" of his congregation. This +vigorous expression was well fitted to describe the conte which I +have in my mind (I rather wish I had it not), and which is not to +be narrated here, nor in English. + +For a combination of pity and terror, it seemed to me unmatched in +the works of the modern fancy, or in the horrors of modern +experience; whether in experience or in imagination it had its +original source. But even the English authors, who plume +themselves on their audacity, or their realism, or their contempt +for "the young person," would not venture this little romance, much +less, then, is a timidly uncorrect pen-man likely to tempt Mr. +Mudie with the conte. It is one of two tales, both told as true, +which one would like to be able to narrate in the language of +Moliere. The other is also very good, and has a wonderful scene +with a corpse and a chapelle ardente, and a young lady; it is +historical, and of the last generation but one. + +Even our frozen strath here has its modern legend, which may be +told in English, and out of which, I am sure, a novelist could make +a good short story, or a pleasant opening chapter of a romance. +What is the mysterious art by which these things are done? What +makes the well-told story seem real, rich with life, actual, +engrossing? It is the secret of genius, of the novelist's art, and +the writer who cannot practise the art might as well try to +discover the Philosopher's Stone, or to "harp fish out of the +water." However, let me tell the legend as simply as may be, and +as it was told to me. + +The strath runs due north, the river flowing from a great loch to +the Northern sea. All around are low, undulating hills, brown with +heather, and as lonely almost as the Sahara. On the horizon to the +south rise the mountains, Ben this and Ben that, real mountains of +beautiful outline, though no higher than some three thousand feet. +Before the country was divided into moors and forests, tenanted by +makers of patent corkscrews, and boilers of patent soap, before the +rivers were distributed into beats, marked off by white and red +posts, there lived over to the south, under the mountains, a +sportsman of athletic frame and adventurous disposition. His name +I have forgotten, but we may call him Dick Lindsay. It is told of +him that he once found a poacher in the forest, and, being unable +to catch the intruder, fired his rifle, not at him, but in his +neighbourhood, whereon the poacher, deliberately kneeling down, +took a long shot at Dick. How the duel ended, and whether either +party flew a flag of truce, history does not record. + +At all events, one stormy day in late September, Dick had stalked +and wounded a stag on the hills to the south-east of the strath. +Here, if only one were a novelist, one could weave several pages of +valuable copy out of the stalk. The stag made for the strath here, +and Dick, who had no gillie, but was an independent sportsman of +the old school, pursued on foot. Plunging down the low, birch-clad +hills, the stag found the flooded river before him, black and +swollen with rain. He took the water, crossing by the big pool, +which looked almost like a little loch, tempestuous under a north +wind blowing up stream, and covered with small white, vicious +crests. The stag crossed and staggered up the bank, where he stood +panting. It is not a humane thing to leave a deer to die slowly of +a rifle bullet, and Dick, reaching the pool, hesitated not, but +threw off his clothes, took his skene between his teeth, plunged +in, and swam the river. + +All naked as he was he cut the stag's throat in the usual manner, +and gralloched him with all the skill of Bucklaw. This was very +well, and very well it would be to add a description of the stag at +bay; but as I never happened to see a stag at bay, I omit all that. +Dick had achieved success, but his clothes were on one side of a +roaring river in spate, and he and the dead stag were on the other. +There was no chance of fording the stream, and there was then no +bridge. He did not care to swim back, for the excitement was out +of him. He was trembling with cold, and afraid of cramp. "A +mother-naked man," in a wilderness, with a flood between him and +his raiment, was in a pitiable position. It did not occur to him +to flay the stag, and dress in the hide, and, indeed, he would have +been frozen before he could have accomplished that task. So he +reconnoitred. + +There was nobody within sight but one girl, who was herding cows. +Now for a naked man, with a knife, and bedabbled with blood, to +address a young woman on a lonely moor is a delicate business. The +chances were that the girl would flee like a startled fawn, and +leave Dick to walk, just as he was, to the nearest farmhouse, about +a mile away. However, Dick had to risk it; he lay down so that +only his face appeared above the bank, and he shouted to the +maiden. When he had caught her attention he briefly explained the +unusual situation. Then the young woman behaved like a trump, or +like a Highland Nausicaa, for students of the "Odyssey" will +remember how Odysseus, simply clad in a leafy bough of a tree, made +supplication to the sea-king's daughter, and how she befriended +him. Even if Dick had been a reader of Homer, which is not +probable, there were no trees within convenient reach, and he could +not adopt the leafy covering of Odysseus. + +"You sit still; if you move an inch before I give you the word, +I'll leave you where you are!" said Miss Mary. She then cast her +plaid over her face, marched up to the bank where Dick was +crouching and shivering, dropped her ample plaid over him, and sped +away towards the farmhouse. When she had reached its shelter, and +was giving an account of the adventure, Dick set forth, like a +primeval Highlander, the covering doing duty both for plaid and +kilt. Clothes of some kind were provided for him at the cottage, a +rickety old boat was fetched, and he and his stag were rowed across +the river to the place where his clothes lay. + +That is all, but if one were a dealer in romance, much play might +be made with the future fortunes of the sportsman and the maiden, +happy fortunes or unhappy. In real life, the lassie "drew up with" +a shepherd lad, as Miss Jenny Denison has it, married him, and +helped to populate the strath. As for Dick, history tells no more +of his adventures, nor is it alleged that he ever again visited the +distant valley, or beheld the face of his Highland Nausicaa. + +Now, if one were a romancer, this mere anecdote probably would +"rest, lovely pearl, in the brain, and slowly mature in the +oyster," till it became a novel. Properly handled, the incident +would make a very agreeable first chapter, with the aid of scenery, +botany, climate, and remarks on the manners and customs of the red +deer stolen from St. John, or the Stuarts d'Albanie. Then, +probably, one would reflect on the characters of Mary and of +Richard; Mary must have parents, of course, and one would make them +talk in Scottish. Probably she already had a lover; how should she +behave to that lover? There is plenty of room for speculation in +that problem. As to Dick, is he to be a Lothario, or a lover pour +le bon motif? What are his distinguished family to think of the +love affair, which would certainly ensue in fiction, though in real +life nobody thought of it at all? Are we to end happily, with a +marriage or marriages, or are we to wind all up in the pleasant, +pessimistic, realistic, fashionable modern way? Is Mary to drown +the baby in the Muckle Pool? Is she to suffer the penalty of her +crime at Inverness? Or, happy thought, shall we not make her +discarded rival lover meet Dick in the hills on a sunny day and +then--are they not (taking a hint from facts) to fight a duel with +rifles? I see Dick lying, with a bullet in his brow, on the side +of a corrie; his blood crimsons the snow, an eagle stoops from the +sky. That makes a pretty picturesque conclusion to the unwritten +romance of the strath. + +Another anecdote occurs to me; good, I think, for a short story, +but capable, also, of being dumped down in the middle of a long +novel. It was in the old coaching days. A Border squire was going +north, in the coach, alone. At a village he was joined by a man +and a young lady: their purpose was manifest, they were a runaway +couple, bound for Gretna Green. They had not travelled long +together before the young lady, turning to the squire, said, "Vous +parlez francais, Monsieur?" He did speak French--it was plain that +the bridegroom did not--and, to the end of the journey, that +remarkable lady conducted a lively and affectionate conversation +with the squire in French! Manifestly, he had only to ask and +receive, but, alas! he was an unadventurous, plain gentleman; he +alighted at his own village; he drove home in his own dogcart; the +fugitive pair went forward, and the Gretna blacksmith united them +in holy matrimony. The rest is silence. + +I would give much to know what that young person's previous history +and adventures had been, to learn what befell her after her +wedding, to understand, in brief, her conduct and her motives. +Were I a novelist, a Maupassant, or a Meredith, the Muse, "from +whatsoever quarter she chose," would enlighten me about all, and I +would enlighten you. But I can only marvel, only throw out the +hint, only deposit the grain of sand, the nucleus of romance, in +some more fertile brain. Indeed the topic is much more puzzling +than the right conclusion for my Highland romance. In that case +fancy could find certain obvious channels, into one or other of +which it must flow. But I see no channels for the lives of these +three queerly met people in the coach. + +As a rule, fancies are capable of being arranged in but a few +familiar patterns, so that it seems hardly worth while to make the +arrangement. But he who looks at things thus will never be a +writer of stories. Nay, even of the slowly unfolding tale of his +own existence he may weary, for the combinations therein have all +occurred before; it is in a hackneyed old story that he is living, +and you, and I. Yet to act on this knowledge is to make a bad +affair of our little life: we must try our best to take it +seriously. And so of story-writing. As Mr. Stevenson says, a man +must view "his very trifling enterprise with a gravity that would +befit the cares of empire, and think the smallest improvement worth +accomplishing at any expense of time and industry. The book, the +statue, the sonata, must be gone upon with the unreasoning good +faith and the unflagging spirit of children at their play." + +That is true, that is the worst of it. The man, the writer, over +whom the irresistible desire to mock at himself, his work, his +puppets and their fortunes has power, will never be a novelist. +The novelist must "make believe very much"; he must be in earnest +with his characters. But how to be in earnest, how to keep the +note of disbelief and derision "out of the memorial"? Ah, there is +the difficulty, but it is a difficulty of which many authors appear +to be insensible. Perhaps they suffer from no such temptations. + + + +CHAPTER XV: THE SUPERNATURAL IN FICTION + + + +It is a truism that the supernatural in fiction should, as a +general rule, be left in the vague. In the creepiest tale I ever +read, the horror lay in this--THERE WAS NO GHOST! You may describe +a ghost with all the most hideous features that fancy can suggest-- +saucer eyes, red staring hair, a forked tail, and what you please-- +but the reader only laughs. It is wiser to make as if you were +going to describe the spectre, and then break off, exclaiming, "But +no! No pen can describe, no memory, thank Heaven, can recall, the +horror of that hour!" So writers, as a rule, prefer to leave their +terror (usually styled "The Thing") entirely in the dark, and to +the frightened fancy of the student. Thus, on the whole, the +treatment of the supernaturally terrible in fiction is achieved in +two ways, either by actual description, or by adroit suggestion, +the author saying, like cabmen, "I leave it to yourself, sir." +There are dangers in both methods; the description, if attempted, +is usually overdone and incredible: the suggestion is apt to +prepare us too anxiously for something that never becomes real, and +to leave us disappointed. + +Examples of both methods may be selected from poetry and prose. +The examples in verse are rare enough; the first and best that +occurs in the way of suggestion is, of course, the mysterious lady +in "Christabel." + + +"She was most beautiful to see, +Like a lady of a far countree." + + +Who was she? What did she want? Whence did she come? What was +the horror she revealed to the night in the bower of Christabel? + + +"Then drawing in her breath aloud +Like one that shuddered, she unbound +The cincture from beneath her breast. +Her silken robe and inner vest +Dropt to her feet, and full in view +Behold her bosom and half her side - +A sight to dream of, not to tell! +O shield her! shield sweet Christabel!" + + +And then what do her words mean? + + +"Thou knowest to-night, and wilt know to-morrow, +This mark of my shame, this seal of my sorrow." + + +What was it--the "sight to dream of, not to tell?" + +Coleridge never did tell, and, though he and Mr. Gilman said he +knew, Wordsworth thought he did not know. He raised a spirit that +he had not the spell to lay. In the Paradise of Poets has he +discovered the secret? We only know that the mischief, whatever it +may have been, was wrought. + + +"O sorrow and shame! Can this be she - +The lady who knelt at the old oak tree?" +. . . +"A star hath set, a star hath risen, +O Geraldine, since arms of thine +Have been the lovely lady's prison. +O Geraldine, one hour was thine." {11} + + +If Coleridge knew, why did he never tell? And yet he maintains +that "in the very first conception of the tale, I had the whole +present to my mind, with the wholeness no less than with the +liveliness of a vision," and he expected to finish the three +remaining parts within the year. The year was 1816, the poem was +begun in 1797, and finished, as far as it goes, in 1800. If +Coleridge ever knew what he meant, he had time to forget. The +chances are that his indolence, or his forgetfulness, was the +making of "Christabel," which remains a masterpiece of supernatural +suggestion. + +For description it suffices to read the "Ancient Mariner." These +marvels, truly, are speciosa miracula, and, unlike Southey, we +believe as we read. "You have selected a passage fertile in +unmeaning miracles," Lamb wrote to Southey (1798), "but have passed +by fifty passages as miraculous as the miracles they celebrate." +Lamb appears to have been almost alone in appreciating this +masterpiece of supernatural description. Coleridge himself shrank +from his own wonders, and wanted to call the piece "A Poet's +Reverie." "It is as bad as Bottom the weaver's declaration that he +is not a lion, but only the scenical representation of a lion. +What new idea is gained by this title but one subversive of all +credit--which the tale should force upon us--of its truth?" Lamb +himself was forced, by the temper of the time, to declare that he +"disliked all the miraculous part of it," as if it were not ALL +miraculous! Wordsworth wanted the Mariner "to have a character and +a profession," perhaps would have liked him to be a gardener, or a +butler, with "an excellent character!" In fact, the love of the +supernatural was then at so low an ebb that a certain Mr. Marshall +"went to sleep while the 'Ancient Mariner' was reading," and the +book was mainly bought by seafaring men, deceived by the title, and +supposing that the "Ancient Mariner" was a nautical treatise. + +In verse, then, Coleridge succeeds with the supernatural, both by +way of description in detail, and of suggestion. If you wish to +see a failure, try the ghost, the moral but not affable ghost, in +Wordsworth's "Laodamia." It is blasphemy to ask the question, but +is the ghost in "Hamlet" quite a success? Do we not see and hear a +little too much of him? Macbeth's airy and viewless dagger is +really much more successful by way of suggestion. The stage makes +a ghost visible and familiar, and this is one great danger of the +supernatural in art. It is apt to insist on being too conspicuous. +Did the ghost of Darius, in "AEschylus," frighten the Athenians? +Probably they smiled at the imperial spectre. There is more +discretion in Caesar's ghost - + + +"I think it is the weakness of mine eyes +That shapes this monstrous apparition," + + +says Brutus, and he lays no very great stress on the brief visit of +the appearance. For want of this discretion, Alexandre Dumas's +ghosts, as in "The Corsican Brothers," are failures. They make +themselves too common and too cheap, like the spectre in Mrs. +Oliphant's novel, "The Wizard's Son." This, indeed, is the crux of +the whole adventure. If you paint your ghost with too heavy a +hand, you raise laughter, not fear. If you touch him too lightly, +you raise unsatisfied curiosity, not fear. It may be easy to +shudder, but it is difficult to teach shuddering. + +In prose, a good example of the over vague is Miriam's mysterious +visitor--the shadow of the catacombs--in "Transformation; or, The +Marble Faun." Hawthorne should have told us more or less; to be +sure his contemporaries knew what he meant, knew who Miriam and the +Spectre were. The dweller in the catacombs now powerfully excites +curiosity, and when that curiosity is unsatisfied, we feel +aggrieved, vexed, and suspect that Hawthorne himself was puzzled, +and knew no more than his readers. He has not--as in other tales +he has--managed to throw the right atmosphere about this being. He +is vague in the wrong way, whereas George Sand, in Les Dames +Vertes, is vague in the right way. We are left in Les Dames Vertes +with that kind of curiosity which persons really engaged in the +adventure might have felt, not with the irritation of having a +secret kept from us, as in "Transformation." + +In "Wandering Willie's Tale" (in "Redgauntlet"), the right +atmosphere is found, the right note is struck. All is vividly +real, and yet, if you close the book, all melts into a dream again. +Scott was almost equally successful with a described horror in "The +Tapestried Chamber." The idea is the commonplace of haunted +houses, the apparition is described as minutely as a burglar might +have been; and yet we do not mock, but shudder as we read. Then, +on the other side--the side of anticipation--take the scene outside +the closed door of the vanished Dr. Jekyll, in Mr. Stevenson's +well-known apologue: + +They are waiting on the threshold of the chamber whence the doctor +has disappeared--the chamber tenanted by what? A voice comes from +the room. "Sir," said Poole, looking Mr. Utterson in the eyes, +"was that my master's voice?" + +A friend, a man of affairs, and a person never accused of being +fanciful, told me that he read through the book to that point in a +lonely Highland chateau, at night, and that he did not think it +well to finish the story till next morning, but rushed to bed. So +the passage seems "well-found" and successful by dint of +suggestion. On the other side, perhaps, only Scotsmen brought up +in country places, familiar from childhood with the terrors of +Cameronian myth, and from childhood apt to haunt the lonely +churchyards, never stirred since the year of the great Plague +choked the soil with the dead, perhaps THEY only know how much +shudder may be found in Mr. Stevenson's "Thrawn Janet." The black +smouldering heat in the hills and glens that are commonly so fresh, +the aspect of the Man, the Tempter of the Brethren, we know them, +and we have enough of the old blood in us to be thrilled by that +masterpiece of the described supernatural. It may be only a local +success, it may not much affect the English reader, but it is of +sure appeal to the lowland Scot. The ancestral Covenanter within +us awakens, and is terrified by his ancient fears. + +Perhaps it may die out in a positive age--this power of learning to +shudder. To us it descends from very long ago, from the far-off +forefathers who dreaded the dark, and who, half starved and all +untaught, saw spirits everywhere, and scarce discerned waking +experience from dreams. When we are all perfect positivist +philosophers, when a thousand generations of nurses that never +heard of ghosts have educated the thousand and first generation of +children, then the supernatural may fade out of fiction. But has +it not grown and increased since Wordsworth wanted the "Ancient +Mariner" to have "a profession and a character," since Southey +called that poem a Dutch piece of work, since Lamb had to pretend +to dislike its "miracles"? Why, as science becomes more cock-sure, +have men and women become more and more fond of old follies, and +more pleased with the stirring of ancient dread within their veins? + +As the visible world is measured, mapped, tested, weighed, we seem +to hope more and more that a world of invisible romance may not be +far from us, or, at least, we care more and more to follow fancy +into these airy regions, et inania regna. The supernatural has not +ceased to tempt romancers, like Alexandre Dumas, usually to their +destruction; more rarely, as in Mrs. Oliphant's "Beleaguered City," +to such success as they do not find in the world of daily +occupation. The ordinary shilling tales of "hypnotism" and +mesmerism are vulgar trash enough, and yet I can believe that an +impossible romance, if the right man wrote it in the right mood, +might still win us from the newspapers, and the stories of shabby +love, and cheap remorses, and commonplace failures. + + +"But it needs Heaven-sent moments for this skill." + + + +CHAPTER XVI: AN OLD SCOTTISH PSYCHICAL RESEARCHER + + + +ADVERTISEMENT + +"If any Gentlemen, and others, will be pleased to send me any +relations about Spirits, Witches, and Apparitions, In any part of +the Kingdom; or any Information about the Second Sight, Charms, +Spells, Magic, and the like, They shall oblige the Author, and have +them publisht to their satisfaction. + +"Direct your Relations to Alexander Ogstouns, Shop Stationer, at +the foot of the Plain-stones, at Edinburgh, on the North-side of +the Street." + + +Is this not a pleasing opportunity for Gentlemen, and Others, whose +Aunts have beheld wraiths, doubles, and fetches? It answers very +closely to the requests of the Society for Psychical Research, who +publish, as some one disparagingly says, "the dreams of the middle +classes." Thanks to Freedom, Progress, and the decline of +Superstition, it is now quite safe to see apparitions, and even to +publish the narrative of their appearance. + +But when Mr. George Sinclair, sometime Professor of Philosophy in +Glasgow, issued the invitation which I have copied, at the end of +his "Satan's Invisible World Discovered," {12} the vocation of a +seer was not so secure from harm. He, or she, might just as +probably be burned as not, on the charge of sorcery, in the year of +grace, 1685. However, Professor Sinclair managed to rake together +an odd enough set of legends, "proving clearly that there are +Devils," a desirable matter to have certainty about. "Satan's +Invisible World Discovered" is a very rare little book; I think +Scott says in a MS. note that he had great difficulty in procuring +it, when he was at work on his "infernal demonology." As a copy +fell in my way, or rather as I fell in its way, a helpless victim +to its charms and its blue morocco binding, I take this chance of +telling again the old tales of 1685. + +Mr. Sinclair began with a long dedicatory Epistle about nothing at +all, to the Lord Winton of the period. The Earl dug coal-mines, +and constructed "a moliminous rampier for a harbour." A +"moliminous rampier" is a choice phrase, and may be envied by +novelists who aim at distinction of style. "Your defending the +salt pans against the imperious waves of the raging sea from the +NE. is singular," adds the Professor, addressing "the greatest coal +and salt-master in Scotland, who is a nobleman, and the greatest +nobleman who is a Coal and Salt Merchant." Perhaps it is already +plain to the modern mind that Mr. George Sinclair, though a +Professor of Philosophy, was not a very sagacious character. + +Mr. Sinclair professes that his proofs of the existence of Devils +"are no old wife's trattles about the fire, but such as may bide +the test." He lived, one should remember, in an age when faith was +really seeking aid from ghost stories. Glanvil's books--and, in +America, those of Cotton Mather--show the hospitality to anecdotes +of an edifying sort, which we admire in Mr. Sinclair. Indeed, +Sinclair borrows from Glanvil and Henry More, authors who, like +himself, wished to establish the existence of the supernatural on +the strange incidents which still perplex us, but which are +scarcely regarded as safe matter to argue upon. The testimony for +a Ghost would seldom go to a jury in our days, though amply +sufficient in the time of Mr. Sinclair. About "The Devil of +Glenluce" he took particular care to be well informed, and first +gave it to the world in a volume on--you will never guess what +subject--Hydrostatics! In the present work he offers us + + +"The Devil of Glenluce Enlarged +With several Remarkable Additions +from an Eye and Ear Witness, +A Person of undoubted +Honesty." + + +Mr. Sinclair recommends its "usefulness for refuting Atheism." +Probably Mr. Sinclair got the story, or had it put off on him +rather, through one Campbell, a student of philosophy in Glasgow, +the son of Gilbert Campbell, a weaver of Glenluce, in Galloway; the +scene in our own time, of a mysterious murder. Campbell had +refused alms to Alexander Agnew, a bold and sturdy beggar, who, +when asked by the Judge whether he believed in a God, answered: +"He knew no God but Salt, Meal, and Water." In consequence of the +refusal of alms, "The Stirs first began." The "Stirs" are ghostly +disturbances. They commenced with whistling in the house and out +of it, "such as children use to make with their small, slender +glass whistles." "About the Middle of November," says Mr. +Sinclair, "the Foul Fiend came on with his extraordinary assaults." +Observe that he takes the Foul Fiend entirely for granted, and that +he never tells us the date of the original quarrel, and the early +agitation. Stones were thrown down the chimney and in at the +windows, but nobody was hurt. + +Naturally Gilbert Campbell carried his tale of sorrow to the parish +Minister. This did not avail him. His warp and threads were cut +on his loom, and even the clothes of his family were cut while they +were wearing them. At night something tugged the blankets off +their beds, a favourite old spiritual trick, which was played, if I +remember well, on a Roman Emperor, according to Suetonius. Poor +Campbell had to remove his stock-in-trade, and send his children to +board out, "to try whom the trouble did most follow." After this, +all was quiet (as perhaps might be expected), and quiet all +remained, till a son named Thomas was brought home again. Then the +house was twice set on fire, and it might have been enough to give +Thomas a beating. On the other hand, Campbell sent Thomas to stay +with the Minister. But the troubles continued in the old way. At +last the family became so accustomed to the Devil, "that they were +no more afraid to keep up the Clash" (chatter) "with the Foul Fiend +than to speak to each other." They were like the Wesleys, who were +so familiar with the fiend Jeffrey, that haunted their home. + +The Minister, with a few of the gentry, heard of their unholy +friendship, and paid Campbell a visit. "At their first coming in +the Devil says: 'Quum Literarum is good Latin.'" These are the +first words of the Latin rudiments which scholars are taught when +they go to the Grammar School. Then they all prayed, and a Voice +came from under the bed: "Would you know the Witches of Glenluce?" +The Voice named a few, including one long dead. But the Minister, +with rare good sense, remarked that what Satan said was not +evidence. + +Let it be remarked that "the lad Tom" had that very day "come back +with the Minister." The Fiend then offered terms. "Give me a +spade and shovel, and depart from the house for seven days, and I +will make a grave, and lie down in it, and trouble you no more." +Hereon Campbell, with Scottish caution, declined to give the Devil +the value of a straw. The visitors then hunted after the voice, +observing that some of the children were in bed. They found +nothing, and then, as the novelists say, "a strange thing +happened." + +There appeared a naked hand and an arm, from the elbow down, +beating upon the floor till the house did shake again. "The Fiend +next exclaimed that if the candle were put out he would appear in +the shape of Fireballs." + +Let it be observed that now, for the first time, we learn that all +the scene occurred in candle-light. The appearance of floating +balls of fire is frequent (if we may believe the current reports) +at spiritualistic seances. But what a strange, ill-digested tale +is Mr. Sinclair's! He lets slip an expression which shows that the +investigators were in one room, the But, while the Fiend was +diverting himself in the other room, the Ben! The Fiend (nobody +going Ben) next chaffed a gentleman who wore a fashionable broad- +brimmed hat, "whereupon he presently imagined that he felt a pair +of shears going about his hat," but there was no such matter. The +voice asked for a piece of bread, which the others were eating, and +said the maid gave him a crust in the morning. This she denied, +but admitted that something had "clicked" a piece of bread out of +her hand. + +The seance ended, the Devil slapping a safe portion of the +children's bodies, with a sound resembling applause. After many +months of this really annoying conduct, poor Campbell laid his case +before the Presbyters, in 1655, thirty years before the date of +publication. So a "solemn humiliation" was actually held all +through the bounds of the synod. But to little purpose did +Glenluce sit in sackcloth and ashes. The good wife's plate was +snatched away before her very eyes, and then thrown back at her. +In similar "stirs," described by a Catholic missionary in Peru soon +after Pizarro's conquest, the cup of an Indian chief was lifted up +by an invisible hand, and set down empty. In that case, too, +stones were thrown, as by the Devil of Glenluce. + +And what was the end of it all? Mr. Sinclair has not even taken +the trouble to inquire. It seems by some conjuration or other, the +Devil suffered himself to be put away, and gave the weaver a +habitation. The weaver "has been a very Odd man that endured so +long these marvellous disturbances." + +This is the tale which Mr. Sinclair offers, without mentioning his +authority. He complains that Dr. Henry More had plagiarised it, +from his book of Hydrostatics. Two points may be remarked. First: +modern Psychical Inquirers are more particular about evidence than +Mr. Sinclair. Not for nothing do we live in an age of science. +Next: the stories of these "stirs" are always much the same +everywhere, in Glenluce, at Tedworth, where the Drummer came, in +Peru, in Wesley's house, in heroic Iceland, when Glam, the vampire, +"rode the roofs." It is curious to speculate on how the tradition +of making themselves little nuisances in this particular manner has +been handed down among children, if we are to suppose that children +do the trick. Last autumn a farmer's house in Scotland was annoyed +exactly as the weaver's home was, and that within a quarter of a +mile of a well-known man of science. The mattress of the father +was tenanted by something that wriggled like a snake. The mattress +was opened, nothing was found, and the disturbance began again as +soon as the bed was restored to its place. This occurred when the +farmer's children had been sent to a distance. + +One cannot but be perplexed by the problem which these tales +suggest. Almost bare of evidence as they are, their great number, +their wide diffusion, in many countries and in times ancient and +modern, may establish some substratum of truth. Scott mentions a +case in which the imposture was detected by a sheriff's officer. +But a recent anecdote makes me almost distrust the detection. + +Some English people, having taken a country house in Ireland, were +vexed by the usual rappings, stone-throwings, and all the rest of +the business. They sent to Dublin for two detectives, who arrived. +On their first night, the lady of the house went into a room, where +she found one of the policemen asleep in his chair. Being a lively +person, she rapped twice or thrice on the table. He awakened, and +said: "Ah, so I suspected. It was hardly worth while, madam, to +bring us so far for this." And next day the worthy men withdrew in +dudgeon, but quite convinced that they had discovered the agent in +the hauntings. + +But they had not! + +On the other hand, Scott (who had seen one ghost, if not two, and +had heard a "warning") states that Miss Anne Robinson managed the +Stockwell disturbances by tying horsehairs to plates and light +articles, which then demeaned themselves as if possessed. + +Here we have vera causa, a demonstrable cause of "stirs," and it +may be inferred that all the other historical occurrences had a +similar origin. We have, then, only to be interested in the +persistent tradition, in accordance with which mischievous persons +always do exactly the same sort of thing. But this is a mere +example of the identity of human nature. + +It is curious to see how Mr. Sinclair plumes himself on this Devil +of Glenluce as a "moliminous rampier" against irreligion. "This +one Relation is worth all the price that can be given for the +Book." The price I have given for the volume is Ten Golden +Guineas, and perhaps the Foul Thief of Glenluce is hardly worth the +money. + +"I believe if the Obdurest Atheist among men would seriously and in +good earnest consider that relation, and ponder all the +circumstances thereof, he would presently cry out, as a Dr. of +Physick did, hearing a story less considerable, 'I believe I have +been in the wrong all the time--if this be true.'" + +Mr. Sinclair is also a believer in the Woodstock devils, on which +Scott founded his novel. He does not give the explanation that +Giles Sharp, alias Joseph Collins of Oxford, alias Funny Joe, was +all the Devil in that affair. Scott had read the story of Funny +Joe, but could never remember "whether it exists in a separate +collection, or where it is to be looked for." + +Indifferent to evidence, Mr. Sinclair confutes the Obdurest +Atheists with the Pied Piper of Hamelin, with the young lady from +Howells' "Letters," whose house, like Rahab's, was "on the city +wall," and with the ghost of the Major who appeared to the Captain +(as he had promised), and scolded him for not keeping his sword +clean. He also gives us Major Weir, at full length, convincing us +that, as William Erskine said, "The Major was a disgusting fellow, +a most ungentlemanlike character." Scott, on the other hand, +remarked, long before "Waverley," "if I ever were to become a +writer of prose romances, I think I would choose Major Weir, if not +for my hero, at least for an agent and a leading one, in my +production." He admitted that the street where the Major lived was +haunted by a woman "twice the common length," "but why should we +set him down for an ungentlemanly fellow?" Readers of Mr. Sinclair +will understand the reason very well, and it is not necessary, nor +here even possible, to justify Erskine's opinion by quotations. +Suffice it that, by virtue of his enchanted staff, which was burned +with him, the Major was enabled "to commit evil not to be named, +yea, even to reconcile man and wife when at variance." His sister, +who was hanged, had Redgauntlet's horse-shoe mark on her brow, and +one may marvel that Scott does not seem to have remembered this +coincidence. "There was seen an exact Horse-shoe, shaped for +nails, in her wrinkles. Terrible enough, I assure you, to the +stoutest beholder!" + +Most modern readers will believe that both the luckless Major and +his sister were religious maniacs. Poverty, solitude, and the +superstition of their time were the true demon of Major Weir, +burned at the stake in April 1670. Perhaps the most singular +impression made by "Satan's Invisible World Discovered" is that in +Sinclair's day, people who did not believe in bogies believed in +nothing, while people who shared the common creed of Christendom +were capable of believing in everything. + +Atheists are as common as ghosts in his marvellous relations, and +the very wizards themselves were often Atheists. + +NOTE.--I have said that Scott himself had seen one ghost, if not +two, and heard a "warning." The ghost was seen near Ashestiel, on +an open spot of hillside, "please to observe it was before dinner." +The anecdote is in Gillis's, "Recollections of Sir Walter Scott," +p. 170. The vision of Lord Byron standing in the great hall of +Abbotsford is described in the "Demonology and Witchcraft ." Scott +alleges that it resolved itself into "great coats, shawls, and +plaids"--a hallucination. But Lockhart remarks (" Life," ix. p. +141) that he did not care to have the circumstance discussed in +general. The "stirs" in Abbotsford during the night when his +architect, Bullock, died in London, are in Lockhart, v. pp. 309- +315. "The noise resembled half-a-dozen men hard at work putting up +boards and furniture, and nothing can be more certain than that +there was nobody on the premises at the time." The noise, +unluckily, occurred twice, April 28 and 29, 1818, and Lockhart does +not tell us on which of these two nights Mr. Bullock died. Such is +the casualness of ghost story-tellers. Lockhart adds that the +coincidence made a strong impression on Sir Walter's mind. He did +not care to ascertain the point in his own mental constitution +"where incredulity began to waver," according to his friend, Mr. J. +L. Adolphus. + + + +CHAPTER XVII: THE BOY + + + +As a humble student of savage life, I have found it necessary to +make researches into the manners and customs of boys. Boys are not +what a vain people supposes. If you meet them in the holidays, you +find them affable and full of kindness and good qualities. They +will condescend to your weakness at lawn-tennis, they will aid you +in your selection of fly-hooks, and, to be brief, will behave with +much more than the civility of tame Zulus or Red Men on a +missionary settlement. But boys at school and among themselves, +left to the wild justice and traditional laws which many +generations of boys have evolved, are entirely different beings. +They resemble that Polynesian prince who had rejected the errors of +polytheism for those of an extreme sect of Primitive Seceders. For +weeks at a time this prince was known to be "steady," but every +month or so he disappeared, and his subjects said he was "lying +off." To adopt an American idiom, he "felt like brandy and water"; +he also "felt like" wearing no clothes, and generally rejecting his +new conceptions of duty and decency. In fact, he had a good bout +of savagery, and then he returned to his tall hat, his varnished +boots, his hymn-book, and his edifying principles. The life of +small boys at school (before they get into long-tailed coats and +the upper-fifth) is often a mere course of "lying-off"--of relapse +into native savagery with its laws and customs. + +If any one has so far forgotten his own boyhood as to think this +description exaggerated, let him just fancy what our comfortable +civilised life would be, if we could become boys in character and +custom. Let us suppose that you are elected to a new club, of +which most of the members are strangers to you. You enter the +doors for the first time, when two older members, who have been +gossiping in the hall, pounce upon you with the exclamation, +"Hullo, here's a new fellow! You fellow, what's your name?" You +reply, let us say, "Johnson." "I don't believe it, it's such a rum +name. What's your father?" Perhaps you are constrained to answer +"a Duke" or (more probably) "a solicitor." In the former case your +friends bound up into the smoking-room, howling, "Here's a new +fellow says his father is a Duke. Let's take the cheek out of +him." And they "take it out" with umbrellas, slippers, and other +surgical instruments. Or, in the latter case (your parent being a +solicitor) they reply, "Then your father must be a beastly cad. +All solicitors are sharks. MY father says so, and he knows. How +many sisters have you?" The new member answers, "Four." "Any of +them married?" "No." "How awfully awkward for you." + +By this time, perhaps, luncheon is ready, or the evening papers +come in, and you are released for a moment. You sneak up into the +library, where you naturally expect to be entirely alone, and you +settle on a sofa with a novel. But an old member bursts into the +room, spies a new fellow, and puts him through the usual catechism. +He ends with, "How much tin have you got?" You answer "twenty +pounds," or whatever the sum may be, for perhaps you had +contemplated playing whist. "Very well, fork it out; you must give +a dinner, all new fellows must, and YOU are not going to begin by +being a stingy beast?" Thus addressed, as your friend is a big +bald man, who looks mischievous, you do "fork out" all your ready +money, and your new friend goes off to consult the cook. Meanwhile +you "shed a blooming tear," as Homer says, and go home heart- +broken. Now, does any grown-up man call this state of society +civilisation? Would life be worth living (whatever one's religious +consolations) on these terms? Of course not, and yet this picture +is a not overdrawn sketch of the career of some new boy, at some +schools new or old. The existence of a small schoolboy is, in +other respects, not unlike that of an outsider in a lawless +"Brotherhood," as the Irish playfully call their murder clubs. + +The small boy is IN the society, but not OF it, as far as any +benefits go. He has to field out (and I admit that the discipline +is salutary) while other boys bat. Other boys commit the faults, +and compel him to copy out the impositions--say five hundred lines +of Virgil--with which their sins are visited. Other boys enjoy the +pleasures of football, while the small boy has to run vaguely +about, never within five yards of the ball. Big boys reap the +glories of paperchases, the small boy gets lost in the bitter +weather, on the open moors, or perhaps (as in one historical case) +is frozen to death within a measurable distance of the school +playground. And the worst of it is that, as a member of the great +school secret society, the small boy can never complain of his +wrongs, or divulge the name of his tormentors. It is in this +respect that he resembles a harmless fellow, dragged into the coils +of an Anarchist "Inner Brotherhood." He is exposed to all sorts of +wrongs from his neighbours, and he can only escape by turning +"informer," by breaking the most sacred law of his society, losing +all social status, and, probably, obliging his parents to remove +him from school. Life at school, as among the Celtic peoples, +turns on the belief that law and authority are natural enemies, +against which every one is banded. + +The chapter of bullying among boys is one on which a man enters +with reluctance. Boys are, on the whole, such good fellows, and so +full of fine unsophisticated qualities, that the mature mind would +gladly turn away its eyes from beholding their iniquities. Even a +cruel bully does not inevitably and invariably develop into a bad +man. He is, let us hope, only passing through the savage stage, in +which the torture of prisoners is a recognised institution. He +has, perhaps, too little imagination to understand the pain he +causes. Very often bullying is not physically cruel, but only a +perverted sort of humour, such as Kingsley, in "Hypatia," +recognised among his favourite Goths. I remember a feeble foolish +boy at school (feeble he certainly was, and was thought foolish) +who became the subject of much humorous bullying. His companions +used to tie a thin thread round his ear, and attach this to a bar +at such a height that he could only avoid breaking it by standing +on tiptoe. But he was told that he must not break the thread. To +avoid infringing this commandment, he put himself to considerable +inconvenience and afforded much enjoyment to the spectators. + +Men of middle age, rather early middle age, remember the two +following species of bullying to which they were subjected, and +which, perhaps, are obsolescent. Tall stools were piled up in a +pyramid, and the victim was seated on the top, near the roof of the +room. The other savages brought him down from this bad eminence by +hurling other stools at those which supported him. Or the victim +was made to place his hands against the door, with the fingers +outstretched, while the young tormentors played at the Chinese +knife-trick. They threw knives, that is to say, at the door +between the apertures of the fingers, and, as a rule, they hit the +fingers and not the door. These diversions I know to be correctly +reported, but the following pretty story is, perhaps, a myth. At +one of the most famous public schools, a praepostor, or monitor, or +sixth-form boy having authority, heard a pistol-shot in the room +above his own. He went up and found a big boy and a little boy. +They denied having any pistol. The monitor returned to his +studies, again was sure he heard a shot, went up, and found the +little boy dead. The big boy had been playing the William Tell +trick with him, and had hit his head instead of the apple. That is +the legend. Whether it be true or false, all boys will agree that +the little victim could not have escaped by complaining to the +monitor. No. Death before dishonour. But the side not so seamy +of this picture of school life is the extraordinary power of honour +among boys. Of course the laws of the secret society might well +terrify a puerile informer. But the sentiment of honour is even +more strong than fear, and will probably outlast the very +disagreeable circumstances in which it was developed. + +People say bullying is not what it used to be. The much abused +monitorial system has this in it of good, that it enables a clever +and kindly boy who is high up in the school to stop the cruelties +(if he hears of them) of a much bigger boy who is low in the +school. But he seldom hears of them. Habitual bullies are very +cunning, and I am acquainted with instances in which they carry +their victims off to lonely torture cells (so to speak) and +deserted places fit for the sport. Some years ago a small boy, +after a long course of rope's-ending in out-of-the-way dens, +revealed the abominations of some naval cadets. There was not much +sympathy with him in the public mind, and perhaps his case was not +well managed. But it was made clear that whereas among men an +unpopular person is only spoken evil of behind his back, an +unpopular small boy among boys is made to suffer in a more direct +and very unpleasant way. + +Most of us leave school with the impression that there was a good +deal of bullying when we were little, but that the institution has +died out. The truth is that we have grown too big to be bullied, +and too good-natured to bully ourselves. When I left school, I +thought bullying was an extinct art, like encaustic painting +(before it was rediscovered by Sir William Richmond). But a +distinguished writer, who was a small boy when I was a big one, has +since revealed to me the most abominable cruelties which were being +practised at the very moment when I supposed bullying to have had +its day and ceased to be. Now, the small boy need only have +mentioned the circumstances to any one of a score of big boys, and +the tormentor would have been first thrashed, and then, probably, +expelled. + +A friend of my own was travelling lately in a wild and hilly region +on the other side of the world, let us say in the Mountains of the +Moon. In a mountain tavern he had thrust upon him the society of +the cook, a very useless young man, who astonished him by +references to one of our universities, and to the enjoyments of +that seat of learning. This youth (who was made cook, and a very +bad cook too, because he could do nothing else) had been expelled +from a large English school. And he was expelled because he had +felled a bully with a paving-stone, and had expressed his readiness +to do it again. Now, there was no doubt that this cook in the +mountain inn was a very unserviceable young fellow. But I wish +more boys who have suffered things literally unspeakable from +bullies would try whether force (in the form of a paving stone) is +really no remedy. + +The Catholic author of a recent book ("Schools," by Lieut.-Col. +Raleigh Chichester), is very hard on "Protestant Schools," and +thinks that the Catholic system of constant watching is a remedy +for bullying and other evils. "Swing-doors with their upper half +glazed, might have their uses," he says, and he does not see why a +boy should not be permitted to complain, if he is roasted, like Tom +Brown, before a large fire. The boys at one Catholic school +described by Colonel Raleigh Chichester, "are never without +surveillance of some sort." This is true of most French schools, +and any one who wishes to understand the consequences (there) may +read the published confessions of a pion--an usher, or "spy." A +more degraded and degrading life than that of the wretched pion, it +is impossible to imagine. In an English private school, the system +of espionnage and tale bearing, when it exists, is probably not +unlike what Mr. Anstey describes in Vice Versa. But in the +Catholic schools spoken of by Colonel Raleigh Chichester, the +surveillance may be, as he says, "that of a parent; an aid to the +boys in their games rather than a check." The religious question +as between Catholics and Protestants has no essential connection +with the subject. A Protestant school might, and Grimstone's did, +have tale-bearers; possibly a Catholic school might exist without +parental surveillance. That system is called by its foes a +"police," by its friends a "paternal" system. But fathers don't +exercise the "paternal" system themselves in this country, and we +may take it for granted that, while English society and religion +are as they are, surveillance at our large schools will be +impossible. If any one regrets this, let him read the descriptions +of French schools and schooldays, in Balzac's Louis Lambert, in the +"Memoirs" of M. Maxime du Camp, in any book where a Frenchman +speaks his mind about his youth. He will find spying (of course) +among the ushers, contempt and hatred on the side of the boys, +unwholesome and cruel punishments, a total lack of healthy +exercise; and he will hear of holidays spent in premature +excursions into forbidden and shady quarters of the town. + +No doubt the best security against bullying is in constant +occupation. There can hardly (in spite of Master George Osborne's +experience in "Vanity Fair") be much bullying in an open cricket- +field. Big boys, too, with good hearts, should not only stop +bullying when they come across it, but make it their business to +find out where it exists. Exist it will, more or less, despite all +precautions, while boys are boys--that is, are passing through a +modified form of the savage state. + +There is a curious fact in the boyish character which seems, at +first sight, to make good the opinion that private education, at +home, is the true method. Before they go out into school life, +many little fellows of nine, or so, are extremely original, +imaginative, and almost poetical. They are fond of books, fond of +nature, and, if you can win their confidence, will tell you all +sorts of pretty thoughts and fancies which lie about them in their +infancy. I have known a little boy who liked to lie on the grass +and to people the alleys and glades of that miniature forest with +fairies and dwarfs, whom he seemed actually to see in a kind of +vision. But he went to school, he instantly won the hundred yards +race for boys under twelve, and he came back a young barbarian, +interested in "the theory of touch" (at football), curious in the +art of bowling, and no more capable than you or I of seeing fairies +in a green meadow. He was caught up into the air of the boy's +world, and his imagination was in abeyance for a season. + +This is a common enough thing, and rather a melancholy spectacle to +behold. One is tempted to believe that school causes the loss of a +good deal of genius, and that the small boys who leave home poets, +and come back barbarians, have been wasted. But, on the other +hand, if they had been kept at home and encouraged, the chances are +that they would have blossomed into infant phenomena and nothing +better. The awful infancy of Mr. John Stuart Mill is a standing +warning. Mr. Mill would probably have been a much happier and +wiser man if he had not been a precocious linguist, economist, and +philosopher, but had passed through a healthy stage of indifference +to learning and speculation at a public school. Look again, at the +childhood of Bishop Thirlwall. His Primitiae were published (by +Samuel Tipper, London, 1808), when young Connop was but eleven +years of age. His indiscreet father "launched this slender bark," +as he says, and it sailed through three editions between 1808 and +1809. Young Thirlwall was taught Latin at three years of age, "and +at four read Greek with an ease and fluency which astonished all +who heard him." At seven he composed an essay, "On the Uncertainty +of Human Life," but "his taste for poetry was not discovered till a +later period." His sermons, some forty, occupy most of the little +volume in which these Primitiae were collected. + +He was especially concerned about Sabbath desecration. "I +confess," observes this sage of ten, "when I look upon the present +and past state of our public morals, and when I contrast our +present luxury, dissipation, and depravity, with past frugality and +virtue, I feel not merely a sensation of regret, but also of +terror, for the result of the change." "The late Revolution in +France," he adds, "has afforded us a remarkable lesson how +necessary religion is to a State, and that from a deficiency on +that head arise the chief evils which can befall society." He then +bids us "remember that the Nebuchadnezzar who may destroy our +Israel is near at hand," though it might be difficult to show how +Nebuchadnezzar destroyed Israel. + +As to the uncertainty of life, he remarks that "Edward VI. died in +his minority, and disappointed his subjects, to whom he had +promised a happy reign." Of this infant's thirty-nine sermons +(just as many as the Articles), it may be said that they are in no +way inferior to other examples of this class of literature. But +sermons are among the least "scarce" and "rare" of human essays, +and many parents would rather see their boy patiently acquiring the +art of wicket-keeping at school than moralising on the uncertainty +of life at home. Some one "having presented to the young author a +copy of verses on the trite and familiar subject of the Ploughboy," +he replied with an ode on "The Potboy." + + +"Bliss is not always join'd to wealth, +Nor dwells beneath the gilded roof +For poverty is bliss with health, +Of that my potboy stands a proof." + + +The volume ends with this determination, + + +"Still shall I seek Apollo's shelt'ring ray, +To cheer my spirits and inspire my lay." + + +If any parent or guardian desires any further information about Les +Enfans devenus celebres par leurs ecrits, he will find it in a work +of that name, published in Paris in 1688. The learned Scioppius +published works at sixteen, "which deserved" (and perhaps obtained) +"the admiration of dotards." M. Du Maurier asserts that, at the +age of fifteen, Grotius pleaded causes at the Bar. At eleven +Meursius made orations and harangues which were much admired. At +fifteen, Alexandre le Jeune wrote anacreontic verses, and (less +excusably) a commentary on the Institutions of Gaius. Grevin +published a tragedy and two comedies at the age of thirteen, and at +fifteen Louis Stella was a professor of Greek. But no one reads +Grevin now, nor Stella, nor Alexandre le Jeune, and perhaps their +time might have been better occupied in being "soaring human boys" +than in composing tragedies and commentaries. Monsieur le Duc de +Maine published, in 1678, his OEuvres d'un Auteur de Sept Ans, a +royal example to be avoided by all boys. These and several score +of other examples may perhaps reconcile us to the spectacle of +puerile genius fading away in the existence of the common British +schoolboy, who is nothing of a poet, and still less of a +jurisconsult. + +The British authors who understand boys best are not those who have +written books exclusively about boys. There is Canon Farrar, for +example, whose romances of boyish life appear to be very popular, +but whose boys, somehow, are not real boys. They are too good when +they are good, and when they are bad, they are not perhaps too bad +(that is impossible), but they are bad in the wrong way. They are +bad with a mannish and conscious vice, whereas even bad boys seem +to sin less consciously and after a ferocious fashion of their own. +Of the boys in "Tom Brown" it is difficult to speak, because the +Rugby boy under Arnold seems to have been of a peculiar species. A +contemporary pupil was asked, when an undergraduate, what he +conceived to be the peculiar characteristic of Rugby boys. He +said, after mature reflection, that "the differentia of the Rugby +boy was his moral thoughtfulness." Now the characteristic of the +ordinary boy is his want of what is called moral thoughtfulness. + +He lives in simple obedience to school traditions. These may +compel him, at one school, to speak in a peculiar language, and to +persecute and beat all boys who are slow at learning this language. +At another school he may regard dislike of the manly game of +football as the sin with which "heaven heads the count of crimes." +On the whole this notion seems a useful protest against the +prematurely artistic beings who fill their studies with photographs +of Greek fragments, vases, etchings by the newest etcher, bits of +China, Oriental rugs, and very curious old brass candlesticks. The +"challenge cup" soon passes away from the keeping of any house in a +public school where Bunthorne is a popular and imitated character. +But when we reach aesthetic boys, we pass out of the savage stage +into hobbledehoyhood. The bigger boys at public schools are often +terribly "advanced," and when they are not at work or play, they +are vexing themselves with the riddle of the earth, evolution, +agnosticism, and all that kind of thing. Latin verses may not be +what conservatives fondly deem them, and even cricket may, it is +said, become too absorbing a pursuit, but either or both are better +than precocious freethinking and sacrifice on the altar of the +Beautiful. + +A big boy who is tackling Haeckel or composing virelais in playtime +is doing himself no good, and is worse than useless to the society +of which he is a member. The small boys, who are the most ardent +of hero-worshippers, either despise him or they allow him to +address them in chansons royaux, and respond with trebles in +triolets. At present a great many boys leave school, pass three +years or four at the universities, and go back as masters to the +place where some of their old schoolfellows are still pupils. It +is through these very young masters, perhaps, that "advanced" +speculations and tastes get into schools, where, however excellent +in themselves, they are rather out of place. Indeed, the very +young master, though usually earnest in his work, must be a sage +indeed if he can avoid talking to the elder boys about the problems +that interest him, and so forcing their minds into precocious +attitudes. The advantage of Eton boys used to be, perhaps is +still, that they came up to college absolutely destitute of +"ideas," and guiltless of reading anything more modern than Virgil. +Thus their intellects were quite fallow, and they made astonishing +progress when they bent their fresh and unwearied minds to study. +But too many boys now leave school with settled opinions derived +from the very latest thing out, from the newest German pessimist or +American socialist. It may, however, be argued that ideas of these +sorts are like measles, and that it is better to take them early +and be done with them for ever. + +While schools are reformed and Latin grammars of the utmost +ingenuity and difficulty are published, boys on the whole change +very little. They remain the beings whom Thackeray understood +better than any other writer: Thackeray, who liked boys so much +and was so little blind to their defects. I think he exaggerates +their habit of lying to masters, or, if they lied in his day, their +character has altered in that respect, and they are more truthful +than many men find it expedient to be. And they have given up +fighting; the old battles between Berry and Biggs, or Dobbin and +Cuff (major) are things of the glorious past. Big boys don't +fight, and there is a whisper that little boys kick each other's +shins when in wrath. That practice can hardly be called an +improvement, even if we do not care for fisticuffs. Perhaps the +gloves are the best peacemakers at school. When all the boys, by +practice in boxing, know pretty well whom they can in a friendly +way lick, they are less tempted to more crucial experiments +"without the gloves." + +But even the ascertainment of one's relative merits with the gloves +hurts a good deal, and one may thank heaven that the fountain of +youth (as described by Pontus de Tyarde) is not a common beverage. +By drinking this liquid, says the old Frenchman, one is insensibly +brought back from old to middle age, and to youth and boyhood. But +one would prefer to stop drinking of the fountain before actually +being reduced to boy's estate, and passing once more through the +tumultuous experiences of that period. And of these, NOT HAVING +ENOUGH TO EAT is by no means the least common. The evidence as to +execrable dinners is rather dispiriting, and one may end by saying +that if there is a worse fellow than a bully, it is a master who +does not see that his boys are supplied with plenty of wholesome +food. He, at least, could not venture, like a distinguished +headmaster, to preach and publish sermons on "Boys' Life: its +Fulness." A schoolmaster who has boarders is a hotel-keeper, and +thereby makes his income, but he need not keep a hotel which would +be dispraised in guide books. Dinners are a branch of school +economy which should not be left to the wives of schoolmasters. +THEY have never been boys. + + + +Footnotes: + +{1} "Mauth" is Manx for dog, I am told. + +{2} It is easy to bear the misfortunes of others. + +{3} In the third volume of his essays. + +{4} "I remember I went into the room where my father's body lay, +and my mother sat weeping alone by it. I had my battledore in my +hand, and fell a-beating the coffin and calling 'Papa,' for I know +not how, I had some slight idea that he was locked up there."-- +STEELE, The Tatler, June 6, 1710. + +{5} Longmans. + +{6} I like to know what the author got. + +{7} Salmon roe, I am sorry to say. + +{8} "Why and Wherefore," Aytoun. + +{9} Fersitan legendum, "Help Thou." + +{10} I know, now, who Miriam was and who was the haunter of the +Catacombs. But perhaps the people is as well without the knowledge +of an old and "ower true tale" that shook a throne. + +{11} Cannot the reader guess? I am afraid that I can! + +{12} Edinburgh, 1685. + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg Etext of Adventures among Books, by Andrew Lang + |