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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Bibliotaph, by Leon H. Vincent
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Bibliotaph
+       and Other People
+
+Author: Leon H. Vincent
+
+Release Date: May 2, 2007 [EBook #21272]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BIBLIOTAPH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BIBLIOTAPH
+
+And Other People
+
+
+BY
+
+
+LEON H. VINCENT
+
+
+
+BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
+The Riverside Press, Cambridge
+1899
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY LEON H. VINCENT
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+
+
+
+
+TO MY FATHER
+THE REV. B. T. VINCENT, D.D.
+THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS
+Dedicated
+WITH LOVE AND ADMIRATION
+
+
+
+
+Four of these papers--the first Bibliotaph, and the notes on Keats,
+Gautier, and Stevenson's _St. Ives_--are reprinted from the _Atlantic
+Monthly_ by the kind permission of the editor.
+
+I am also indebted to the literary editor of the _Springfield
+Republican_ and to the editors of _Poet-Lore_, respectively, for
+allowing me to reprint the paper on _Thomas Hardy_ and the lecture on
+_An Elizabethan Novelist_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE BIBLIOTAPH: A PORTRAIT NOT WHOLLY IMAGINARY
+THE BIBLIOTAPH: HIS FRIENDS, SCRAP-BOOKS, AND 'BINS'
+LAST WORDS ON THE BIBLIOTAPH
+THOMAS HARDY
+A READING IN THE LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS
+AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST
+THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FAIR-MINDED MAN
+CONCERNING A RED WAISTCOAT
+STEVENSON: THE VAGABOND AND THE PHILOSOPHER
+STEVENSON'S ST. IVES
+
+
+
+
+THE BIBLIOTAPH AND OTHER PEOPLE
+
+
+
+
+THE BIBLIOTAPH: A PORTRAIT NOT WHOLLY IMAGINARY
+
+
+A popular and fairly orthodox opinion concerning
+book-collectors is that their vices are many, their virtues of a
+negative sort, and their ways altogether past finding out. Yet the
+most hostile critic is bound to admit that the fraternity of
+bibliophiles is eminently picturesque. If their doings are
+inscrutable, they are also romantic; if their vices are numerous, the
+heinousness of those vices is mitigated by the fact that it is
+possible to sin humorously. Regard him how you will, the sayings and
+doings of the collector give life and color to the pages of those
+books which treat of books. He is amusing when he is purely an
+imaginary creature. For example, there was one Thomas Blinton. Every
+one who has ever read the volume called _Books and Bookmen_ knows
+about Thomas Blinton. He was a man who wickedly adorned his volumes
+with morocco bindings, while his wife 'sighed in vain for some old
+_point d'Alençon lace_.' He was a man who was capable of bidding
+fifteen pounds for a Foppens edition of the essays of Montaigne,
+though fifteen pounds happened to be 'exactly the amount which he owed
+his plumber and gas-fitter, a worthy man with a large family.' From
+this fictitious Thomas Blinton all the way back to Richard Heber, who
+was very real, and who piled up books as other men heap together
+vulgar riches, book-collectors have been a picturesque folk.
+
+The name of Heber suggests the thought that all men who buy books are
+not bibliophiles. He alone is worthy the title who acquires his
+volumes with something like passion. One may buy books like a
+gentleman, and that is very well. One may buy books like a gentleman
+and a scholar, which counts for something more. But to be truly of the
+elect one must resemble Richard Heber, and buy books like a gentleman,
+a scholar, and a madman.
+
+You may find an account of Heber in an old file of _The Gentleman's
+Magazine_. He began in his youth by making a library of the classics.
+Then he became interested in rare English books, and collected them
+_con amore_ for thirty years. He was very rich, and he had never given
+hostages to fortune; it was therefore possible for him to indulge his
+fine passion without stint. He bought only the best books, and he
+bought them by thousands and by tens of thousands. He would have held
+as foolishness that saying from the Greek which exhorts one to do
+nothing too much. According to Heber's theory, it is impossible to
+have too many good books. Usually one library is supposed to be enough
+for one man. Heber was satisfied only with eight libraries, and then
+he was hardly satisfied. He had a library in his house at Hodnet. 'His
+residence in Pimlico, where he died, was filled, like Magliabecchi's
+at Florence, with books from the top to the bottom; every chair, every
+table, every passage containing piles of erudition.' He had a house in
+York Street which was crowded with books. He had a library in Oxford,
+one at Paris, one at Antwerp, one at Brussels, and one at Ghent. The
+most accurate estimate of his collections places the number at 146,827
+volumes. Heber is believed to have spent half a million dollars for
+books. After his death the collections were dispersed. The catalogue
+was published in twelve parts, and the sales lasted over three years.
+
+Heber had a witty way of explaining why he possessed so many copies of
+the same book. When taxed with the sin of buying duplicates he replied
+in this manner: 'Why, you see, sir, no man can comfortably do without
+_three_ copies of a book. One he must have for his show copy, and he
+will probably keep it at his country house; another he will require
+for his own use and reference; and unless he is inclined to part with
+this, which is very inconvenient, or risk the injury of his best copy,
+he must needs have a third at the service of his friends.'
+
+In the pursuit of a coveted volume Heber was indefatigable. He was not
+of those Sybaritic buyers who sit in their offices while agents and
+dealers do the work. 'On hearing of a curious book he has been known
+to put himself into the mail-coach, and travel three, four, or five
+hundred miles to obtain it, fearful to trust his commission to a
+letter.' He knew the solid comfort to be had in reading a book
+catalogue. Dealers were in the habit of sending him the advance sheets
+of their lists. He ordered books from his death-bed, and for anything
+we know to the contrary died with a catalogue in his fingers.
+
+A life devoted to such a passion is a stumbling-block to the
+practical man, and to the Philistine foolishness. Yet you may hear men
+praised because up to the day of death they were diligent in
+business,--business which added to life nothing more significant than
+that useful thing called money. Thoreau used to say that if a man
+spent half his time in the woods for the love of the woods he was in
+danger of being looked upon as a loafer; but if he spent all his time
+as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making Earth bald before
+her time, he was regarded as an upright and industrious citizen.
+
+Heber had a genius for friendship as well as for gathering together
+choice books. Sir Walter Scott addressed verses to him. Professor
+Porson wrote emendations for him in his favorite copy of _Athenæus_.
+To him was inscribed Dr. Ferrier's poetical epistle on Bibliomania.
+His virtues were celebrated by Dibdin and by Burton. In brief, the
+sketch of Heber in The_ Gentleman's Magazine_ for January, 1834,
+contains a list of forty-six names,--all men of distinction by birth,
+learning, or genius, and all men who were proud to call Richard Heber
+friend. He was a mighty hunter of books. He was genial, scholarly,
+generous. Out-of-door men will be pleased to know that he was active
+physically. He was a tremendous walker, and enjoyed tiring out his
+bailiff by an all-day tramp.
+
+Of many good things said of him this is one of the best: 'The learned
+and curious, whether rich or poor, have always free access to his
+library.' Thus was it possible for Scott very truthfully to say to
+Heber, 'Thy volumes open as thy heart.'
+
+No life of this Prince of Book-Hunters has been written, I believe.
+Some one with access to the material, and a sympathy with the love of
+books as books, should write a memoir of Heber the Magnificent. It
+ought not to be a large volume, but it might well be about the size of
+Henry Stevens's _Recollections of James_ _Lenox_. And if it were
+equally readable it were a readable book indeed.
+
+Dibdin thought that Heber's tastes were so catholic as to make it
+difficult to classify him among hunters of books. The implication is
+that most men can be classified. They have their specialties. What
+pleases one collector much pleases another but little or not at all.
+Collectors differ radically in the attitude they take with respect to
+their volumes. One man buys books to read, another buys them to gloat
+over, a third that he may fortify them behind glass doors and keep the
+key in his pocket. Therefore have learned words been devised to make
+apparent the varieties of motive and taste. These words begin with
+_biblio_; you may have a _biblio_ almost anything.
+
+Two interesting types of maniac are known respectively as the
+bibliotaph and the biblioclast. A biblioclast is one who indulges
+himself in the questionable pleasure of mutilating books in order more
+sumptuously to fit out a particular volume. The disease is English in
+origin, though some of the worst cases have been observed in America.
+Clergymen and presidents of colleges have been known to be seized with
+it. The victim becomes more or less irresponsible, and presently runs
+mad. Such an one was John Bagford, of diabolical memory, who mutilated
+not less than ten thousand volumes to form his vast collection of
+title-pages. John Bagford died an unrepentant sinner, lamenting with
+one of his later breaths that he could not live long enough to get
+hold of a genuine Caxton and rip the initial page out of that.
+
+The bibliotaph buries books; not literally, but sometimes with as much
+effect as if he had put his books underground. There are several
+varieties of him. The dog-in-the-manger bibliotaph is the worst; he
+uses his books but little himself, and allows others to use them not
+at all. On the other hand, a man may be a bibliotaph simply from
+inability to get at his books. He may be homeless, a bachelor, a
+denizen of boarding-houses, a wanderer upon the face of the earth. He
+may keep his books in storage or accumulate them in the country,
+against the day when he shall have a town house with proper library.
+
+The most genial lover of books who has walked city streets for many a
+day was a bibliotaph. He accumulated books for years in the huge
+garret of a farmhouse standing upon the outskirts of a Westchester
+County village. A good relative 'mothered' the books for him in his
+absence. When the collection outgrew the garret it was moved into a
+big village store. It was the wonder of the place. The country folk
+flattened their noses against the panes and tried to peer into the
+gloom beyond the half-drawn shades. The neighboring stores were in
+comparison miracles of business activity. On one side was a
+harness-shop; on the other a nondescript establishment at which one
+might buy anything, from sunbonnets and corsets to canned salmon and
+fresh eggs. Between these centres of village life stood the silent
+tomb for books. The stranger within the gates had this curiosity
+pointed out to him along with the new High School and the Soldiers'
+Monument.
+
+By shading one's eyes to keep away the glare of the light, it was
+possible to make out tall carved oaken cases with glass doors, which
+lined the walls. They gave distinction to the place. It was not
+difficult to understand the point of view of the dressmaker from
+across the way who stepped over to satisfy her curiosity concerning
+the stranger, and his concerning the books, and who said in a friendly
+manner as she peered through a rent in the adjoining shade, 'It's
+almost like a cathedral, ain't it?'
+
+To an inquiry about the owner of the books she replied that he was
+brought up in that county; that there were people around there who
+said that he had been an exhorter years ago; her impression was that
+now he was a 'political revivalist,' if I knew what that was.
+
+The phrase seemed hopeless, but light was thrown upon it when, later,
+I learned that this man of many buried books gave addresses upon the
+responsibilities of citizenship, upon the higher politics, and upon
+themes of like character. They said that he was humorous. The farmers
+liked to hear him speak. But it was rumored that he went to colleges,
+too. The dressmaker thought that the buying of so many books was
+'wicked.' 'He goes from New York to Beersheba, and from Chicago to
+Dan, buying books. Never reads 'em because he hardly ever comes here.'
+
+It became possible to identify the Bibliotaph of the country store
+with a certain mature youth who some time since 'gave his friends the
+slip, chose land-travel or seafaring,' and has not returned to build
+the town house with proper library. They who observed him closely
+thought that he resembled Heber in certain ways. Perhaps this fact
+alone would justify an attempt at a verbal portrait. But the
+additional circumstance that, in days when people with the slightest
+excuse therefor have themselves regularly photographed, this
+old-fashioned youth refused to allow his 'likeness' to be taken,--this
+circumstance must do what it can to extenuate minuteness of detail in
+the picture, as well as over-attention to points of which a photograph
+would have taken no account.
+
+You are to conceive of a man between thirty-eight and forty years of
+age, big-bodied, rapidly acquiring that rotund shape which is thought
+becoming to bishops, about six feet high though stooping a little,
+prodigiously active, walking with incredible rapidity, having large
+limbs, large feet, large though well-shaped and very white hands; in
+short, a huge fellow physically, as big of heart as of body, and, in
+the affectionate thought of those who knew him best, as big of
+intellect as of heart.
+
+His head might be described as leonine. It was a massive head, covered
+with a tremendous mane of brown hair. This was never worn long, but it
+was so thick and of such fine texture that it constituted a real
+beauty. He had no conceit of it, being innocent of that peculiar
+German type of vanity which runs to hair, yet he could not prevent
+people from commenting on his extraordinary hirsute adornment. Their
+occasional remarks excited his mirth. If they spoke of it again, he
+would protest. Once, among a small party of his closest friends, the
+conversation turned upon the subject of hair, and then upon the beauty
+of _his_ hair; whereupon he cried out, 'I am embarrassed by this
+unnecessary display of interest in my Samsonian assertiveness.'
+
+He loved to tease certain of his acquaintances who, though younger
+than himself, were rapidly losing their natural head-covering. He
+prodded them with ingeniously worded reflections upon their unhappy
+condition. He would take as a motto Erasmus's unkind salutation, 'Bene
+sit tibi cum tuo calvitio,' and multiply amusing variations upon it.
+He delighted in sending them prescriptions and advertisements clipped
+from newspapers and medical journals. He quoted at them the remark of
+a pale, bald, blond young literary aspirant, who, seeing him, the
+Bibliotaph, passing by, exclaimed audibly and almost passionately,
+'Oh, I perfectly adore _hair_!'
+
+Of his clothes it might be said that he did not wear them, but rather
+dwelt at large in them. They were made by high-priced tailors and were
+fashionably cut, but he lived in them so violently--that is, traveled
+so much, walked so much, sat so long and so hard, gestured so
+earnestly, and carried in his many pockets such an extraordinary
+collection of notebooks, indelible pencils, card-cases, stamp-boxes,
+penknives, gold toothpicks, thermometers, and what not--that within
+twenty-four hours after he had donned new clothes all the artistic
+merits of the garments were obliterated; they were, from every point
+of view, hopelessly degenerate.
+
+He was a scrupulously clean man, but there was a kind of civilized
+wildness in his appearance which astonished people; and in perverse
+moments he liked to terrify those who knew him but little by affirming
+that he was a near relative of Christopher Smart, and then explaining
+in mirth-provoking phrases that one of the arguments used for proving
+Smart's insanity was that he did not love clean linen.
+
+His appetite was large, as became a large and active person. He was a
+very valiant trencher-man; and yet he could not have been said to love
+eating for eating's sake. He ate when he was hungry, and found no
+difficulty in being hungry three times a day. He should have been an
+Englishman, for he enjoyed a late supper. In the proper season this
+consisted of a bountiful serving of tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, with
+a glass of lemonade. As a variant upon the beverage he took milk. He
+was the only man I have known, whether book-hunter or layman, who
+could sleep peacefully upon a supper of cucumbers and milk.
+
+There is probably no occult relation between first editions and
+onions. The Bibliotaph was mightily pleased with both: the one, he
+said, appealed to him æsthetically, the other dietetically. He
+remarked of some particularly large Spanish onions that there was 'a
+globular wholesomeness about them which was very gratifying;' and
+after eating one he observed expansively that he felt 'as if he had
+swallowed the earth and the fullness thereof.' His easy, good-humored
+exaggerations and his odd comments upon the viands made him a pleasant
+table companion: as when he described a Parker House Sultana Roll by
+saying that 'it looked like the sanguinary output of the whole Crimean
+war.'
+
+High-priced restaurants did not please him as well as humbler and less
+obtrusive places. But it was all one,--Delmonico's, the Bellevue, a
+stool in the Twelfth Street Market, or a German café on Van Buren
+Street. The humors of certain eating-houses gave him infinite delight.
+He went frequently to the Diner's Own Home, the proprietor of which,
+being both cook and Christian, had hit upon the novel plan of giving
+Scriptural advice and practical suggestions by placards on the walls.
+The Bibliotaph enjoyed this juxtaposition of signs: the first read,
+'The very God of peace sanctify you wholly;' the second, 'Look out for
+your Hat and Coat.'
+
+The Bibliotaph had no home, and was reputed to live in his post-office
+box. He contributed to the support of at least three clubs, but was
+very little seen at any one of them. He enjoyed the large cities, and
+was contented in whichever one he happened to find himself. He was
+emphatically a city man, but what city was of less import. He knew
+them all, and was happy in each. He had his favorite hotel, his
+favorite bath, his work, bushels of newspapers and periodicals,
+friends who rejoiced in his coming as children in the near advent of
+Christmas, and finally book-shops in which to browse at his pleasure.
+It was interesting to hear him talk about city life. One of his quaint
+mannerisms consisted in modifying a well-known quotation to suit his
+conversational needs. 'Why, sir,' he would remark, 'Fleet Street has a
+very animated appearance, but I think the full tide of human existence
+is at the corner of Madison and State.'
+
+His knowledge of cities was both extensive and peculiar. I have heard
+him name in order all the hotels on Broadway, beginning at the lower
+end and coming up as far as hotels exist, branching off upon the
+parallel and cross streets where there were noted caravansaries, and
+connecting every name with an event of importance, or with the life
+and fortunes of some noted man who had been guest at that particular
+inn. This was knowledge more becoming in a guide, perhaps, but it will
+illustrate the encyclopædic fullness of his miscellaneous information.
+
+As was natural and becoming in a man born within forty miles of the
+metropolis, he liked best the large cities of the East, and was least
+content in small Western cities. But this was the outcome of no
+illiberal prejudice, and there was a quizzical smile upon his lips and
+a teasing look in his eyes when he bantered a Westerner. 'A man,' he
+would sometimes say, 'may come by the mystery of childbirth into Omaha
+or Kansas City and be content, but he can't come by Boston, New York,
+or Philadelphia.' Then, a moment later, paraphrasing his remark, he
+would add, 'To go to Omaha or Kansas City by way of New York and
+Philadelphia is like being translated heavenward with such violence
+that one _passes through_--into a less comfortable region!'
+
+Strange to say, the conversation of this most omnivorous of
+book-collectors was less of books than of men. True, he was deeply
+versed in bibliographical details and dangerously accurate in his talk
+about them, but, after all, the personality back of the book was the
+supremely interesting thing. He abounded in anecdote, and could
+describe graphically the men he had met, the orators he had heard, the
+occasions of importance where he had been an interested spectator. His
+conversation was delightfully fresh and racy because of the vividness
+of the original impressions, the unusual force of the ideas which were
+the copies of these impressions, and the fine artistic sense which
+enabled him to determine at once what points should be omitted, and
+what words should be used most fittingly to express the ideas
+retained.
+
+He had no pride in his conversational power. He was always modest, but
+never diffident. I have seen him sit, a respectful listener,
+absolutely silent, while some ordinary chatterer held the company's
+attention for an hour. Many good talkers are unhappy unless they have
+the privilege of exercising their gifts. Not so he. Sometimes he had
+almost to be compelled to begin. On such occasions one of his
+intimates was wont to quote from Boswell: 'Leave him to me, sir; I'll
+make him rear.'
+
+The superficial parts of his talk were more easily retained. In mere
+banter, good-humored give-and-take, that froth and bubble of
+conversational intercourse, he was delightful. His hostess, the wife
+of a well-known comedian, apologized to him for having to move him out
+of the large guest-chamber into another one, smaller and higher
+up,--this because of an unexpected accession of visitors. He replied
+that it did not incommode him; and as for being up another flight of
+stairs, 'it was a comfort to him to know that when he was in a state
+of somnolent helplessness he was as near heaven as it was possible to
+get in an actor's house.' The same lady was taking him roundly to task
+on some minor point in which he had quite justly offended her;
+whereupon he turned to her husband and said, 'Jane worships but little
+at the shrine of politeness because so much of her time is mortgaged
+to the shrine of truth.'
+
+When asked to suggest an appropriate and brief cablegram to be sent to
+a gentleman who on the following day would become sixty years of age,
+and who had taken full measure of life's joys, he responded, 'Send him
+this: "_You don't look it, but you've lived like it._"'
+
+His skill in witty retort often expressed itself by accepting a verbal
+attack as justified, and elaborating it in a way to throw into shadow
+the assault of the critic. At a small and familiar supper of bookish
+men, when there was general dissatisfaction over an expensive but
+ill-made salad, he alone ate with apparent relish. The host, who was
+of like mind with his guests, said, 'The Bibliotaph doesn't care for
+the quality of his food, if it has filling power.' To which he at once
+responded, 'You merely imply that I am like a robin: I eat cherries
+when I may, and worms when I must.'
+
+His inscriptions in books given to his friends were often singularly
+happy. He presented a copy of _Lowell's Letters_ to a gentleman and
+his wife. The first volume was inscribed to the husband as follows:--
+
+'To Mr. ---- ----, who is to the owner of the second volume of these
+Letters what this volume is to that: so delightful as to make one glad
+that there's another equally as good, if not better.'
+
+In volume two was the inscription to the wife, worded in this
+manner:--
+
+'To Mrs. ---- ----, without whom the owner of the first volume of
+these Letters would be as that first volume without this one:
+interesting, but incomplete.'
+
+Perhaps this will illustrate his quickness to seize upon ever so minute
+an occasion for the exercise of his humor. A young woman whom he admired,
+being brought up among brothers, had received the nickname, half
+affectionately and half patronizingly bestowed, of 'the Kid.' Among
+her holiday gifts for a certain year was a book from the Bibliotaph, a
+copy of _Old-Fashioned Roses_, with this dedication: 'To a Kid, had
+Abraham possessed which, Isaac had been the burnt-offering.'
+
+It is as a buyer and burier of books that the subject of this paper
+showed himself in most interesting light. He said that the time to
+make a library was when one was young. He held the foolish notion that
+a man does not purchase books after he is fifty; I shall expect to see
+him ransacking the shops after he is seventy, if he shall survive his
+eccentricities of diet that long. He was an omnivorous buyer, picking
+up everything he could lay his hands upon. Yet he had a clearly
+defined motive for the acquisition of every volume. However absurd the
+purchase might seem to the bystander, he, at any rate, could have
+given six cogent reasons why he must have that particular book.
+
+He bought according to the condition of his purse at a given time. If
+he had plenty of money, it would be expensive publications, like those
+issued by the Grolier Club. If he was financially depressed, he would
+hunt in the out-of-door shelves of well-known Philadelphia bookshops.
+It was marvelous to see what things, new and old, he was able to
+extract from a ten-cent alcove. Part of the secret lay in this idea:
+to be a good book-hunter one must not be too dainty; one must not be
+afraid of soiling one's hands. He who observes the clouds shall not
+reap, and he who thinks of his cuffs is likely to lose many a bookish
+treasure. Our Bibliotaph generally parted company with his cuffs when
+he began hunting for books. How many times have I seen those cuffs
+with the patent fasteners sticking up in the air, as if reaching out
+helplessly for their owner; the owner in the mean time standing high
+upon a ladder which creaked under his weight, humming to himself as he
+industriously examined every volume within reach. This ability to live
+without cuffs made him prone to reject altogether that orthodox bit of
+finish to a toilet. I have known him to spend an entire day in New
+York between club, shops, and restaurant, with one cuff on, and the
+other cuff--its owner knew not where.
+
+He differed from Heber in that he was not 'a classical scholar of the
+old school,' but there were many points in which he resembled the
+famous English collector. Heber would have acknowledged him as a son
+if only for his energy, his unquenchable enthusiasm, and the exactness
+of his knowledge concerning the books which he pretended to know at
+all. For not alone is it necessary that a collector should know
+precisely what book he wants; it is even more important that he should
+be able to know a book _as_ the book he wants when he sees it. It is a
+lamentable thing to have fired in the dark, and then discover that you
+have shot a wandering mule, and not the noble game you were in pursuit
+of. One cannot take his reference library with him to the shops. The
+tests, the criteria, must be carried in the head. The last and most
+inappropriate moment for getting up bibliographical lore is that
+moment when the pressing question is, to buy or not to buy. Master
+Slender, in the play, learned the difficulties which beset a man whose
+knowledge is in a book, and whose book is at home upon a shelf. It is
+possible to sympathize with him when he exclaims, 'I had rather than
+forty shillings I had my Book of Songs and Sonnets here!' In making
+love there are other resources; all wooers are not as ill equipped as
+Slender was. But in hunting rare books the time will be sure to come
+when a man may well cry, 'I had rather than forty dollars I had my
+list of first editions with me!'
+
+The Bibliotaph carried much accurate information in his head, but he
+never traveled without a thesaurus in his valise. It was a small
+volume containing printed lists of the first editions of rare books.
+The volume was interleaved; the leaves were crowded with manuscript
+notes. An appendix contained a hundred and more autograph letters from
+living authors, correcting, supplementing, or approving the printed
+bibliographies. Even these authors' own lists were accurately
+corrected. They needed it in not a few instances. For it is a wise
+author who knows his own first edition. Men may write remarkable
+books, and understand but little the virtues of their books from the
+collector's point of view. Men are seldom clever in more ways than
+one. Z. Jackson was a practical printer, and his knowledge as a
+printer enabled him to correct sundry errors in the first folio of
+Shakespeare. But Z. Jackson, as the Rev. George Dawson observes,
+'ventured beyond the composing-case, and, having corrected blunders
+made by the printers, corrected excellencies made by the poet.'
+
+It was amusing to discover, by means of these autograph letters, how
+seldom a good author was an equally good bibliographer. And this is as
+it should be. The author's business is, not to take account of first
+editions, but to make books of such virtue that bibliomaniacs shall be
+eager to possess the first editions thereof. It is proverbial that a
+poet is able to show a farmer things new to him about his own farm.
+Turn a bibliographer loose upon a poet's works, and he will amaze the
+poet with an account of _his_ own doings. The poet will straightway
+discover that while he supposed himself to be making 'mere literature'
+he was in reality contributing to an elaborate and exact science.
+
+The Bibliotaph was not a blind enthusiast on the subject of first
+editions. He was one of the few men who understood the exceeding great
+virtues of second editions. He declared that a man who was so
+fortunate as to secure a second edition of Henry Crabb Robinson's
+_Diary_ was in better case than he who had bothered himself to obtain
+a first. When it fell in with his mood to argue against that which he
+himself most affected, he would quote the childish bit of doggerel
+beginning 'The first the worst, the second the same,' and then grow
+eloquent over the dainty Templeman Hazlitts which are chiefly third
+editions. He thought it absurd to worry over a first issue of
+Carlyle's _French Revolution_ if it were possible to buy at moderate
+price a copy of the third edition, which is a well-nigh perfect book,
+'good to the touch and grateful to the eye.' But this lover of books
+grew fierce in his special mania if you hinted that it was also
+foolish to spend a large sum on an _editio princeps_ of _Paradise
+Lost_ or of _Robinson Crusoe_. There are certain authors concerning
+the desirability of whose first editions it must not be disputed.
+
+The singular readiness with which bookish treasures fell into his way
+astonished less fortunate buyers. Rare Stevensons dropped into his
+hand like ripe fruit from a tree. The most inaccessible of pamphlets
+fawned upon him, begging to be purchased, just as the succulent little
+roast pigs in _The New Paul and Virginia_ run about with knives and
+forks in their sides pleading to be eaten. The Bibliotaph said he did
+not despair of buying Poe's _Tamerlane_ for twenty-five cents one of
+these days; and that a rarity he was sure to get sooner or later was a
+copy of that English newspaper which announced Shelley's death under
+the caption _Now he Knows whether there is a Hell or Not_.
+
+He unconsciously followed Heber in that he disliked large-paper
+copies. Heber would none of them because they took up too much room;
+their ample borders encroached upon the rights of other books. Heber
+objected to this as Prosper Mérimée objected to the gigantic English
+hoopskirts of 1865,--there was space on Regent Street for but one
+woman at a time.
+
+Original as the Bibliotaph was in appearance, manners, habits, he was
+less striking in what he did than in what he said. It is a pity that
+no record of his talk exists. It is not surprising that there is no
+such record, for his habits of wandering precluded the possibility of
+his making a permanent impression. By the time people had fully
+awakened to the significance of his presence among them he was gone.
+So there grew up a legend concerning him, but no true biography. He
+was like a comet, very shaggy and very brilliant, but he stayed so
+brief a time in a place that it was impossible for one man to give
+either the days or the thought to the reproduction of his more serious
+and considered words. A greater difficulty was involved in the fact
+that the Bibliotaph had many socii, but no fidus Achates. Moreover,
+Achates, in this instance, would have needed the reportorial powers of
+a James Boswell that he might properly interpret genius to the public.
+
+This particular genius illustrated the misfortune of having too great
+facility in establishing those relations which lie midway between
+acquaintance and friendship. To put the matter in the form of a
+paradox, he had so many _friends_ that he had no _friend_. Perhaps
+this is unjust, but friendship has a touch of jealousy and
+exclusiveness in it. He was too large-natured to say to one of his
+admirers, 'Thou shalt have no other gods save myself;' but there were
+those among the admirers who were quite prepared to say to him, 'We
+prefer that thou shalt have no other worshipers in addition to us.'
+
+People wondered that he seemed to have no care for a conventional home
+life. He was taxed with want of sympathy with what makes even a humble
+home a centre of light and happiness. He denied it, and said to his
+accusers, 'Can you not understand that after a stay in _your_ home I
+go away with much the feeling that must possess a lusty young calf
+when his well-equipped mother tells him that henceforth he must find
+means of sustenance elsewhere?'
+
+He professed to have been once in love, but no one believed it. He
+used to say that his most remarkable experience as a bachelor was in
+noting the uniformity with which eligible young women passed him by on
+the other side of the way. And when a married friend offered
+condolence, with that sleek complacency of manner noteworthy in men
+who are conscious of being mated for life better than they deserve,
+the Bibliotaph said, with an admiring glance at the wife, 'Your
+sympathy is supererogatory, sir, for I fully expect to become your
+residuary legatee.'
+
+It is most pleasing to think of this unique man 'buffeting his books'
+in one of those temporary libraries which formed about him whenever he
+stopped four or five weeks in a place. The shops were rifled of not a
+few of their choicest possessions, and the spoils carried off to his
+room. It was a joy to see him display his treasures, a delight to hear
+him talk of them. He would disarm criticism with respect to the more
+eccentric purchases by saying, 'You wouldn't approve of this, but _I_
+thought it was curious,'--and then a torrent of facts, criticisms,
+quotations, all bearing upon the particular volume which you were
+supposed not to like; and so on, hour after hour. There was no limit
+save that imposed by the receptive capacity of the guest. It reminded
+one of the word spoken concerning a 'hard sitter at books' of the last
+century, that he was a literary giant 'born to grapple with whole
+libraries.' But the fine flavor of those hours spent in hearing him
+discourse upon books and men is not to be recovered. It is evanescent,
+spectral, now. This talk was like the improvisation of a musician who
+is profoundly learned, but has in him a vein of poetry too. The talk
+and the music strongly appeal to robust minds, and at the same time do
+not repel the sentimentalist.
+
+It is not to be supposed that the Bibliotaph pleased every one with
+whom he came in contact. There were people whom his intellectual
+potency affected in a disagreeable way. They accused him of applying
+great mental force to inconsidered trifles. They said it was a
+misfortune that so much talent was going to waste. But there is no
+task so easy as criticising an able man's employment of his gifts.
+
+
+
+
+THE BIBLIOTAPH: HIS FRIENDS, SCRAP-BOOKS, AND 'BINS'
+
+
+To arrive at a high degree of pleasure in collecting a library, one
+must travel. The Bibliotaph regularly traveled in search of his
+volumes. His theory was that the collector must go to the book, not
+wait for the book to come to him. No reputable sportsman, he said,
+would wish the game brought alive to his back-yard for him to kill.
+Half the pleasure was in tracking the quarry to its hiding-place. He
+himself ordered but seldom from catalogues, and went regularly to and
+fro among the dealers in books, seeking the volume which his heart
+desired. He enjoyed those shops where the book-seller kept open house,
+where the stock was large and surprises were common, where the
+proprietor was prodigiously well-informed on some points and
+correspondingly ill-informed on others. He bought freely, never
+disputed a price, and laid down his cash with the air of a man who
+believes that unspent money is the root of all evil.
+
+These travels brought about three results: the making of friends, the
+compilation of scrap-books, and the establishment of 'bins.' Before
+speaking of any one of these points, a word on the satisfactions of
+bibliographical touring.
+
+In every town of considerable size, and in many towns of
+inconsiderable size, are bookshops. It is a poor shop which does not
+contain at least one good book. This book bides its time, and usually
+outstays its welcome. But its fate is about its neck. Somewhere there
+is a collector to whom that book is precious. They are made for one
+another, the collector and the book; and it is astonishing how
+infrequently they miss of realizing their mutual happiness. The
+book-seller is a marriage-broker for unwedded books. His business is
+to find them homes, and take a fee for so doing. Sugarman the Shadchan
+was not more zealous than is your vendor of rare books.
+
+Now, it is a curious fact that the most desirable of bookish treasures
+are often found where one would be least likely to seek them. Montana
+is a great State, nevertheless one does not think of going to Montana
+for early editions of Shakespeare. Let the book-hunter inwardly digest
+the following plain tale of a clergyman and a book of plays.
+
+There is a certain collector who is sometimes called 'The Bishop.' He
+is not a bishop, but he may be so designated; coming events have been
+known to cast conspicuous shadows in the likeness of mitre and
+crosier. The Bishop heard of a man in Montana who had an old book of
+plays with an autograph of William Shakespeare pasted in it. Being a
+wise ecclesiastic, he did not exclaim 'Tush' and 'Fie,' but proceeded
+at once to go book-hunting in Montana. He went by proxy, if not in
+person; the journey is long. In due time the owner of the volume was
+found and the book was placed in the Bishop's hands for inspection. He
+tore off the wrappers, and lo! it was a Fourth Folio of Shakespeare
+excellently well preserved, and with what appeared to be the great
+dramatist's signature written on a slip of paper and pasted inside the
+front cover. The problem of the genuineness of that autograph does not
+concern us. The great fact is that a Shakespeare folio turned up in
+Montana. Now when he hears some one express desire for a copy of
+Greene's _Groatsworth of Wit_, or any other rare book of Elizabeth's
+time, the Bishop's thoughts fly toward the setting sun. Then he smiles
+a notable kind of smile, and says, 'If I could get away I'd run out to
+Montana and try to pick up a copy for you.'
+
+There is a certain gentleman who loves the literature of Queen Anne's
+reign. He lives with Whigs and Tories, vibrates between coffee-house
+and tea-table. He annoys his daughter by sometimes calling her
+'Belinda,' and astonishes his wife with his mock-heroic apostrophes to
+her hood and patches. He reads his _Spectator_ at breakfast while
+other people batten upon newspapers only three hours old. He smiles
+over the love-letters of Richard Steele, and reverences the name and
+the writings of Joseph Addison. Indeed, his devotion to Addison is so
+radical that he has actually been guilty of reading _The Campaign_ and
+the _Dialogue on Medals_. This gentleman hunted books one day and was
+not successful. It seemed to him that on this particular afternoon the
+world was stuffed with Allison's histories of Europe, and Jeffrey's
+contributions to the _Edinburgh Review_. His heart was filled with
+bitterness and his nostrils with dust. Books which looked inviting
+turned out to be twenty-second editions. Of fifty things upon his list
+not one came to light. But it was predestined that he should not go
+sorrowing to his home. He pulled out from a bottom shelf two musty
+octavo volumes bound in dark brown leather, and each securely tied
+with a string; for the covers had been broken from the backs. The
+titles were invisible, the contents a mystery. The gentleman held the
+unpromising objects in his hand and meditated upon them. They might be
+a treatise on conic sections, or a Latin Grammar, and again they might
+be a Book. He untied the string and opened one of the volumes. Was it
+a breath of summer air from Isis that swept out of those pages, which
+were as white as snow in spite of the lapse of nearly two centuries?
+He read the title, MUSARUM ANGLICANARUM ANALECTA. The date was 1699.
+He turned to the table of contents, and his heart gave a contented
+throb. There was the name he wished to see, J. Addison, Magd. Coll:
+The name occurred eight times. The dejected collector had found a
+clean and uncut copy of those two volumes of contemporary Latin verse
+compiled by Joseph Addison, when he was a young man at Oxford, and
+printed at the Sheldonian Theatre. Addison contributed eight poems to
+the second volume. The bookseller was willing to take seventy-five
+cents for the set, and told the gentleman as he did up the package
+that he was a comfort to the trade.
+
+That night the gentleman read _The Battle of the Pigmies and the
+Cranes_, while his wife read the evening edition of the _Lurid
+Paragraph_. Now he says to his friends, 'Hunt books in the most
+unpromising places, but make a thorough search. You may not discover a
+Koh-i-noor, but you will be pretty sure to run upon some desirable
+little thing which gives you pleasure and costs but a trifle.'
+
+One effect of this adventure upon himself is that he cannot pass a
+volume which is tied with a string. He spends his days and Saturday
+nights in tying and untying books with broken covers. Even the
+evidence of a clearly-lettered title upon the back fails to satisfy
+him. He is restless until he has made a thorough search in the body of
+the volume.
+
+The Bibliotaph's own best strokes of fortune were made in
+out-of-the-way places. But some god was on his side. For at his
+approach the bibliographical desert blossomed like the rose. He used
+to hunt books in Texas at one period in his life; and out of Texas
+would he come, bringing, so it is said, first editions of George
+Borrow and Jane Austen. It was maddening to be with him at such times,
+especially if one had a gift for envy.
+
+Yet why should one envy him his money, or his unerring hand and eye?
+He paid for the book, but it was yours to read and to caress so long
+as you would. If he took it from you it was only that he might pass it
+on to some other friend. But if that volume once started in the
+direction of the great tomb of books in Westchester County, no power
+on earth could avail to restore it to the light of day.
+
+It is pleasant to meditate upon past journeys with the Bibliotaph. He
+was an incomparable traveling companion, buoyant, philosophic,
+incapable of fatigue, and never ill. Yet it is a tradition current,
+that he, the mighty, who called himself a friend to physicians,
+because he never robbed them of their time either in or out of
+office-hours, once succumbed to that irritating little malady known as
+car-sickness. He succumbed, but he met his fate bravely and with the
+colors of his wit flying. The circumstances are these:--
+
+There is a certain railway thoroughfare which justly prides itself
+upon the beauty of its scenery. This road passes through a
+hill-country, and what it gains in the picturesque it loses in that
+rectilinear directness most grateful to the traveler with a sensitive
+stomach. The Bibliotaph often patronized this thoroughfare, and one
+day it made him sick. As the train swept around a sharp curve, he
+announced his earliest symptom by saying: 'The conspicuous advantages
+of this road are that one gets views of the scenery and reviews of his
+meals.'
+
+A few minutes later he suggested that the road would do well to change
+its name, and hereafter be known as 'The Emetic G. and O.'
+
+They who were with him proffered sympathy, but he refused to be
+pitied. He thought he had a remedy. He discovered that by taking as
+nearly as possible a reclining posture, he got temporary relief. He
+kept settling more and more till at last he was nearly on his back.
+Then he said: 'If it be true that the lower down we get the more
+comfortable we are, the basements of Hell will have their
+compensations.'
+
+He was too ill to say much after this, but his last word, before the
+final and complete extinction of his manhood, was, 'The influence of
+this road is such that employees have been known involuntarily to
+throw up their jobs.'
+
+The Bibliotaph invariably excited comment and attention when he was
+upon his travels. I do not think he altogether liked it. Perhaps he
+neither liked it nor disliked it. He accepted the fact that he was not
+as other men quite as he would have accepted any indisputable fact. He
+used occasionally to express annoyance because of the discrepancy
+between his reputation and appearance; in other words, because he
+seemed a man of greater fame than he was. He suffered the petty
+discomforts of being a personage, and enjoyed none of the advantages.
+He declared that he was quite willing to be much more distinguished or
+much less conspicuous. What he objected to was the Laodicean character
+of his reputation as set over against the pronounced and even
+startling character of his looks and manner.
+
+He used also to note with amusement how indelible a mark certain early
+ambitions and tentative studies had made upon him. People invariably
+took him for a clergyman. They decided this at once and conducted
+themselves accordingly. He made no protest, but observed that their
+convictions as to how they should behave in his presence had
+corollaries in the shape of very definite convictions as to how he
+should carry himself before them. He thought that such people might be
+described as moral trainers. They do not profess virtue themselves,
+but they take a real pleasure in keeping you up to your profession.
+
+The Bibliotaph had no explanation to give why he was so immediately
+and invariably accounted as one in orders. He was quite sure that the
+clerical look was innate, and by no means dependent upon the wearing
+of a high vest or a Joseph Parker style of whisker; for once as he sat
+in the hot room of a Turkish bath and in the Adamitic simplicity of
+attire suitable to the temperature and the place, a gentleman who
+occupied the chair nearest introduced conversation by saying, 'I beg
+your pardon, sir, but are you not a clergyman?'
+
+'This incident,' said the Bibliotaph, 'gave me a vivid sense of the
+possibility of determining a man's profession by a cursory examination
+of his cuticle.' Lowell's conviction about N. P. Willis was
+well-founded: namely, that if it had been proper to do so, Willis
+could have worn his own plain bare skin in a way to suggest that it
+was a representative Broadway tailor's best work.
+
+I imagine that few boys escape an outburst of that savage instinct for
+personal adornment which expresses itself in the form of rude tattooing
+upon the arms. The Bibliotaph had had his attack in early days, and
+the result was a series of decorations of a highly patriotic character,
+and not at all in keeping with South Kensington standards. I said to
+him once, apropos of the pictures on his arms: 'You are a great
+surprise to your friends in this particular.' 'Yes,' he replied, 'few
+of them are aware that the volume of this Life is extra-illustrated.'
+
+But that which he of necessity tolerated in himself he would not
+tolerate in his books. They were not allowed to become pictorially
+amplified. He saw no objection to inserting a rare portrait in a good
+book. It did not necessarily injure the book, and it was one way of
+preserving the portrait. Yet the thing was questionable, and it was
+likely to prove the first step in a downward path. As to cramming a
+volume with a heterogeneous mass of pictures and letters gathered from
+all imaginable sources, he held the practice in abhorrence, and the
+bibliographical results as fit only for the libraries of the
+illiterate rich. He admitted the possibility of doing such a thing
+well or ill; but at its best it was an ill thing skillfully done.
+
+The Bibliotaph upon his travels was a noteworthy figure if only
+because of the immense parcel of books with which he burdened himself.
+That part of the journeying public which loves to see some new thing
+puzzled itself mightily over the gentleman of full habit, who in
+addition to his not inconsiderable encumbrance of flesh and luggage,
+chose to carry about a shawl-strap loaded to utmost capacity with a
+composite mass of books, magazines, and newspapers. It was enormously
+heavy, and the way in which its component parts adhered was but a
+degree short of the miraculous. He appeared hardly conscious of its
+weight, for he would pick the thing up and literally _trip_ with it on
+a toe certainly not light, but undeniably fantastic.
+
+He carried the books about with him partly because he had just
+purchased them and wished to study their salient points, and partly
+because he was taking them to a 'bin.' There is no mystery about these
+'bins.' They were merely places of temporary rest for the books before
+the grand moving to the main library. But if not mysterious they were
+certainly astonishing, because of their number and size. With respect
+to number, one in every large city was the rule. With respect to size,
+few people buy in a lifetime as many books as were sometimes heaped
+together in one of these places of deposit. He would begin by leaving
+a small bundle of books with some favorite dealer, then another, and
+then another. As the collection enlarged, the accommodations would be
+increased; for it was a satisfaction to do the Bibliotaph this favor,
+he purchased so liberally and tipped the juvenile clerks in so royal a
+manner. Nor was he always in haste to move out after he had once moved
+in. One bookseller, speaking of the splendid proportions which the
+'bin' was assuming, declared that he sometimes found it difficult to
+adjust himself mentally to the situation; he couldn't tell when he
+came to his place of business in the morning whether he was in his own
+shop or the Bibliotaph's library.
+
+The corner of the shop where the great collector's accumulations were
+piled up was a centre of mirth and conversation if he himself chanced
+to be in town. Men dropped in for a minute and stayed an hour. In some
+way time appeared to broaden and leisure to grow more ample. Life had
+an unusual richness, and warmth, and color, when the Bibliotaph was
+by. There was an Olympian largeness and serenity about him. He seemed
+almost pagan in the breadth of his hold upon existence. And when he
+departed he left behind him what can only be described as great
+unfilled mental spaces. I recall that a placard was hung up in his
+particular corner with the inscription, 'English spoken here.' This
+amused him. Later there was attached to it another strip upon which
+was crayoned, 'Sir, we had much good talk,' with the date of the talk.
+Still later a victim added the words, 'Yes, sir, on that day the
+Bibliotaph tossed and gored a number of people admirably.'
+
+It was difficult for the Bibliotaph not to emit intellectual sparks of
+one kind or another. His habit of dealing with every fact as if it
+deserved his entire mental force, was a secret of his originality.
+Everything was worth while. If the fact was a serious fact, all the
+strength of his mind would be applied to its exposition or defense. If
+it was a fact of less importance, humor would appear as a means to the
+conversational end. And he would grow more humorous as the topics grew
+less significant. When finally he rioted in mere word-play, banter,
+quizzing, it was a sign that he regarded the matter as worthy no
+higher species of notice.
+
+I like this theory of his wit so well that I am minded not to expose
+it to an over-rigid test. The following small fragments of his talk
+are illustrative of such measure of truth as the theory may contain.
+
+Among the Bibliotaph's companions was one towards whose mind he
+affected the benevolent and encouraging attitude of a father to a
+budding child. He was asked by this friend to describe a certain
+quaint and highly successful entertainer. This was the response: 'The
+gentleman of whom you speak has the habit of coming before his
+audience as an idiot and retiring as a genius. You and I, sir,
+couldn't do that; we should sustain the first character consistently
+throughout the entire performance.'
+
+It was his humor to insist that all the virtues and gifts of a
+distinguished collector were due for their expansion and development
+to association with himself and the writer of these memories. He would
+say in the presence of the distinguished collector: 'Henry will
+probably one day forget us, but on the Day of Judgment, in any just
+estimate of the causes of his success, the Lord won't.'
+
+I have forgotten what the victim's retort was; it is safe to assume
+that it was adequate.
+
+This same collector had the pleasing habit of honoring the men he
+loved, among whom the Bibliotaph was chief, with brightly written
+letters which filled ten and fifteen half-sheets. But the average
+number of words to a line was two, while a five-syllable word had
+trouble in accommodating itself to a line and a half, and the sheets
+were written only upon one side. The Bibliotaph's comment was: 'Henry
+has a small brain output, but unlimited influence at a paper-mill.'
+
+Of all the merry sayings in which the Bibliotaph indulged himself at
+the expense of his closest friend this was the most comforting. A
+gentleman present was complaining that Henry took liberties in
+correcting his pronunciation. 'I have no doubt of the occasional need
+of such correction, but it isn't often required, and not half so often
+as he seems to think. I, on the other hand, observe frequent minor
+slips in his use of language, but I do not feel at liberty to correct
+him.'
+
+The Bibliotaph began to apply salve to the bruised feelings of the
+gentleman present as follows: 'The animus of Henry's criticism is
+unquestionably envy. He probably feels how few flies there are in your
+ointment. While you are astonished that in his case there should be so
+little ointment for so many flies.'
+
+The Bibliotaph never used slang, and the united recollections of his
+associates can adduce but two or three instances in which he sunk
+verbally so low as even to _hint_ slang. He said that there was one
+town which in his capacity of public speaker he should like to visit.
+It was a remote village in Virginia where there was a girls' seminary,
+the catalogue of which set forth among advantages of location this:
+that the town was one to which the traveling lecturer and the circus
+never came. The Bibliotaph said, 'I should go there. For I am the one
+when I am on the platform, and by the unanimous testimony of all my
+friends I am the other when I am off.'
+
+The second instance not only illustrates his ingenuity in trifles, but
+also shows how he could occasionally answer a friend according to his
+folly. He had been describing a visit which he had made in the
+hero-worshiping days of boyhood to Chappaqua; how friendly and
+good-natured the great farmer-editor was; how he called the Bibliotaph
+'Bub,' and invited him to stay to dinner; how he stayed and talked
+politics with his host; how they went out to the barn afterwards to
+look at the stock; what Greeley said to him and what he said to
+Greeley,--it was a perfect bit of word-sketching, spontaneous,
+realistic, homely, unpretentious, irresistibly comic because of the
+quaintness of the dialogue as reported, and because of the mental
+image which we formed of this large-headed, round-bellied, precocious
+youth, who at the age of sixteen was able for three consecutive hours
+to keep the conversational shuttlecock in the air with no less a
+person than Horace Greeley. Amid the laughter and comment which
+followed the narration one mirthful genius who chose for the day to
+occupy the seat of the scorner, called out to the Bibliotaph:--
+
+'How old did you say you were at that time, "Bub"?'
+
+'Sixteen.'
+
+'And did you wear whiskers?'
+
+The query was insulting. But the Bibliotaph measured the flippancy of
+the remark with his eye and instantly fitted an answer to the mental
+needs of the questioner.
+
+'Even if I had,' he said, 'it would have availed me nothing, for in
+those days there was no wind.'
+
+The Bibliotaph was most at home in the book-shop, on the street, or at
+his hotel. He went to public libraries only in an emergency, for he
+was impatient of that needful discipline which compelled him to ask
+for each volume he wished to see. He had, however, two friends in
+whose libraries one might occasionally meet him in the days when he
+hunted books upon this wide continent. One was the gentleman to whom
+certain letters on literature have been openly addressed, and who has
+made a library by a process which involves wise selection and infinite
+self-restraint. This priceless little collection contains no volume
+which is imperfect, no volume which mars the fine sense of repose
+begotten in one at the sight of lovely books becomingly clothed, and
+no volume which is not worthy the name of literature. And there is
+matter for reflection in the thought that it is not the library of a
+rich man. Money cannot buy the wisdom which has made this collection
+what it is, and without self-denial it is hardly possible to give the
+touch of real elegance to a private library. When dollars are not
+counted the assemblage of books becomes promiscuous. How may we better
+describe this library than by the phrase Infinite riches in a little
+book-case!
+
+There was yet another friend, the Country Squire, who revels in
+wealth, buys large-paper copies, reads little but deeply, and raises
+chickens. His library (the room itself, I mean) is a gentleman's
+library, with much cornice, much plate-glass, and much carving;
+whereof a wit said, 'The Squire has such a beautiful library, and no
+place to put his books.'
+
+These books are of a sort to rejoice the heart, but their tenure of
+occupancy is uncertain. Hardly one of them but is liable to eviction
+without a moment's notice. They have a look in their attitude which
+indicates consciousness of being pilgrims and strangers. They seem to
+say, 'We can tarry, we can tarry but a night.' Some have tarried two
+nights, others a week, others a year, a few even longer. But aside
+from a dozen or so of volumes, not one of the remaining three thousand
+dares to affirm that it holds a permanent place in its owner's heart
+of hearts. It is indeed a noble procession of books which has passed
+in and out of those doors. A day will come in which the owner realizes
+that he has as good as the market can furnish, and then banishments
+will cease. One sighs not for the volumes which deserved exile, but
+for those which were sent away because their master ceased to love
+them.
+
+There was no friend with whom the Bibliotaph lived on easier terms
+than with the Country Squire. They were counterparts. They
+supplemented one another. The Bibliotaph, though he was born and bred
+on a farm, had fled for his salvation to the city. The Squire, a man
+of city birth and city education, had fled for his soul's health to
+the country; he had rendered existence almost perfect by setting up an
+urban home in rural surroundings. It was well said of that house that
+it was finely reticent in its proffers of hospitality, and regally
+magnificent in its kindness to those whom it delighted to honor.
+
+It was in the Country Squire's library that the Bibliotaph first met
+that actor with whom he became even more intimate than with the Squire
+himself. The closeness of their relation suggested the days of the old
+Miracle plays when the theatre and the Church were as hand in glove.
+The Bibliotaph signified his appreciation of his new friend by giving
+him a copy of a sixteenth-century book 'containing a pleasant
+invective against Poets, Pipers, Players, Jesters, and such like
+Caterpillars of a Commonwealth.' The Player in turn compiled for his
+friend of clerical appearance a scrap-book, intended to show how evil
+associations corrupt good actors.
+
+This actor professed that which for want of a better term might be
+called parlor agnosticism. The Bibliotaph was sturdily inclined
+towards orthodoxy, and there was from time to time collision between
+the two. It is my impression that the actor sometimes retired with
+four of his five wits halting. But he was brilliant even when he
+mentally staggered. Neither antagonist convinced the other, and after
+a while they grew wearied of traveling over one another's minds.
+
+It fell out on a day that the actor made a fine speech before a large
+gathering, and mindful of stage effect he introduced a telling
+allusion to an all-wise and omnipotent Providence. For this he was, to
+use his own phrase, 'soundly spanked' by all his friends; that is, he
+was mocked at, jeered, ridiculed. To what end, they said, was one an
+agnostic if he weakly yielded his position to the exigencies of an
+after-dinner speech. The Bibliotaph alone took pains to analyze his
+late antagonist's position. He wrote to the actor congratulating him
+upon his success. 'I wondered a little at this, remembering how
+inconsiderable has been your practice; and I infer that it has been
+inconsiderable, for I am aware how seldom an actor can be persuaded to
+make a speech. I, too, was at first shocked when I heard that you had
+made a respectful allusion to Deity; but I presently took comfort,
+_remembering that your gods, like your grease-paints, are purely
+professional_.'
+
+He was always capital in these teasing moods. To be sure, he buffeted
+one about tremendously, but his claws were sheathed, and there was a
+contagiousness in his frolicsome humor. Moreover one learned to look
+upon one's self in the light of a public benefactor. To submit to be
+knocked about by the Bibliotaph was in a modest way to contribute to
+the gayety of nations. If one was not absolutely happy one's self,
+there was a chastened comfort in beholding the happiness of the
+on-lookers.
+
+A small author wrote a small book, so small that it could be read in
+less time than it takes to cover an umbrella, that is, 'while you
+wait.' The Bibliotaph had Brobdingnagian joy of this book. He sat and
+read it to himself in the author's presence, and particularly
+diminutive that book appeared as its light cloth cover was outlined
+against the Bibliotaph's ample black waistcoat. From time to time he
+would vent 'a series of small private laughs,' especially if he was on
+the point of announcing some fresh illustration of the fallibility of
+inexperienced writers. Finally the uncomfortable author said, 'Don't
+sit there and pick out the mistakes.' To which the Bibliotaph
+triumphantly replied, 'What other motive is there for reading it at
+all?'
+
+He purchased every copy of this book which he could find, and when
+asked by the author why he did so, replied, 'In order to withdraw it
+from circulation.' A moment afterwards he added reflectively, 'But how
+may I hope to withdraw a book from that which it has never had?'
+
+He was apt to be severe in his judgment of books, as when he said of a
+very popular but very feeble literary performance that it was an
+argument for the existence of God. 'Such intensity of stupidity was
+not realized without Infinite assistance.'
+
+He could be equally emphatic in his comments upon men. Among his
+acquaintance was a church dignitary who blew alternately hot and cold
+upon him. When advised of some new illustration of the divine's
+uncertainty of attitude, the Bibliotaph merely said, 'He's more of a
+chameleon than he is a clergyman.'
+
+That Bostonian would be deficient in wit who failed to enjoy this
+remark. Speaking of the characteristics of American cities, the
+Bibliotaph said, 'It never occurs to the Hub that anything of
+importance can possibly happen at the periphery.'
+
+He greatly admired the genial and philanthropic editor of a well-known
+Philadelphia newspaper. Shortly after Mr. Childs's death some one
+wrote to the Bibliotaph that in a quiet Kentucky town he had noticed a
+sign over a shop-door which read, 'G. W. Childs, dealer in Tobacco and
+Cigars.' There was something graceful in the Bibliotaph's reply. He
+expressed surprise at Mr. Childs's new occupation, but declared that
+for his own part he was 'glad to know that the location of Heaven had
+at last been definitely ascertained.'
+
+The Bibliotaph habitually indulged himself in the practice of
+hero-worship. This propensity led him to make those glorified
+scrap-books which were so striking a feature in his collection. They
+were no commonplace affairs, the ugly result of a union of cheap
+leather, newspaper-clippings and paste, but sumptuous books
+resplendent in morocco and gilt tooling, the creations of an artist
+who was eminent among binders. These scrap-books were chiefly devoted
+to living men,--men who were famous, or who were believed to be on the
+high road to fame. There was a book for each man. In this way did the
+Bibliotaph burn incense before his Dii majores et minores.
+
+These books were enriched with everything that could illustrate the
+gifts and virtues of the men in whose honor they were made. They
+contained rare manuscripts, rare pictures, autograph comments and
+notes, a bewildering variety of records,--memorabilia which were above
+price. Poets wrote humorous verse, and artists who justly held their
+time as too precious to permit of their working for love decorated the
+pages of the Bibliotaph's scrap-books. One does not abuse the word
+'unique' when he applies it to these striking volumes.
+
+The Bibliotaph did not always follow contemporary judgment in his
+selection of men to be so canonized. He now and then honored a man
+whose sense of the relation of achievement to fame would not allow him
+to admit to himself that he deserved the distinction, and whose sense
+of humor could not but be strongly excited at the thought of
+deification by so unusual a process. It might be pleasant to consider
+that the Bibliotaph cared so much for one's letters as to wish not to
+destroy them, but it was awful to think of those letters as bound and
+annotated. This was to get a taste of posthumous fame before
+posthumous fame was due. The Bibliotaph added a new terror to life,
+for he compelled one to live up to one's scrap-book. He reversed the
+old Pagan formula, which was to the effect that 'So-and-So died and
+was made a god.' According to the Bibliotaph's prophetic method, a man
+was made a god first and allowed to die at his leisure afterward. Not
+every one of that little company which his wisdom and love have marked
+for great reputation will be able to achieve it. They are unanimously
+grateful that he cared enough for them to wish to drag their humble
+gifts into the broad light of publicity. But their gratitude is
+tempered by the thought that perhaps he was only elaborately humorous
+at their expense.
+
+The Bibliotaph's intellectual processes were so vigorous and his
+pleasure in mental activity for its own sake was so intense that he
+was quite capable of deciding after a topic of discussion had been
+introduced which side he would take. And this with a splendid disdain
+of the merits of the cause which he espoused. I remember that he once
+set out to maintain the thesis that a certain gentleman, as notable
+for his virtues as he was conspicuous for lack of beauty, was
+essentially a handsome man. The person who initiated the discussion by
+observing that 'Mr. Blank was unquestionably a plain man' expected
+from the Bibliotaph (if he expected any remark whatever) nothing
+beyond a Platonic 'That I do most firmly believe.' He was not a little
+astonished when the great book-collector began an elaborate and
+exhaustive defense of the gentleman whose claims to beauty had been
+questioned. At first it was dialogue, and the opponent had his share
+of talk; but when in an unlucky moment he hinted that such energy
+could only be the result of consciousness on the Bibliotaph's part
+that he was in a measure pleading his own cause, the dialogue changed
+to monologue. For the Bibliotaph girded up his loins and proceeded to
+smite his opponent hip and thigh. All in good humor, to be sure, and
+laughter reigned, but it was tremendous and it was logically
+convincing. It was clearly not safe to have a reputation for good
+looks while the Bibliotaph was in this temper. All the gentlemen were
+in terror lest something about their countenances might be construed
+as beauty, and men with good complexions longed for newspapers behind
+which to hide their disgrace.
+
+As for the disputant who had stirred up the monster, his situation was
+as unenviable as it was comic to the bystanders. He had never before
+dropped a stone into the great geyser. He was therefore unprepared for
+the result. One likened him to an unprotected traveler in a heavy
+rain-storm. For the Bibliotaph's unpremeditated speech was a very
+cloud-burst of eloquence. The unhappy gentleman looked despairingly in
+every direction as if beseeching us for the loan of a word-proof
+umbrella. There was none to be had. We who had known a like experience
+were not sorry to stand under cover and watch a fellow mortal undergo
+this verbal drenching. The situation recalled one described by
+Lockhart when a guest differed on a point of scholarship with the
+great Coleridge. Coleridge began to 'exert himself.' He burst into a
+steady stream of talk which broadened and deepened as the moments
+fled. When finally it ceased the bewildered auditor pulled himself
+together and exclaimed, 'Zounds, I was never so _be-thumped_ with
+words in my life!'
+
+People who had opportunity of observing the Bibliotaph were tempted to
+speculate on what he might have become if he had not chosen to be just
+what he was. His versatility led them to declare for this, that, and
+the other profession, largely in accordance with their own personal
+preferences. Lawyers were sure that he should have been an advocate;
+ministers that he would have done well to yield to the 'call' he had
+in his youth; teachers were positive that he would have made an
+inspiring teacher. No one, so far as I know, ever told him that in
+becoming a book-collector he had deprived the world of a great
+musician; for he was like Charles Lamb in that he was sentimentally
+inclined to harmony but organically incapable of a tune.
+
+Yet he was so broad-minded that it was not possible for him to hold
+even a neutral attitude in the presence of anything in which other
+people delighted. I have known him to sit through a long and heavy
+organ recital, not in a resigned manner but actively attentive,
+clearly determined that if the minutest portion of his soul was
+sensitive to the fugues of J. S. Bach he would allow that portion to
+bask in the sunshine of an unwonted experience. So that from one point
+of view he was the incarnation of tolerance as he certainly was the
+incarnation of good-humor and generosity. He envied no man his gifts
+from Nature or Fortune. He was not only glad to let live, but
+painstakingly energetic in making the living of people a pleasure to
+them, and he received with amused placidity adverse comments upon
+himself.
+
+Words which have been used to describe a famous man of this century I
+will venture to apply in part to the Bibliotaph. 'He was a kind of
+gigantic and Olympian school-boy, ... loving-hearted, bountiful,
+wholesome and sterling to the heart's core.'
+
+
+
+
+LAST WORDS ON THE BIBLIOTAPH
+
+
+The Bibliotaph's major passion was for collecting books; but he had a
+minor passion, the bare mention of which caused people to lift their
+eyebrows suspiciously. He was a shameless, a persistent, and a
+successful hunter of autographs. His desire was for the signatures of
+living men of letters, though an occasional dead author would be
+allowed a place in the collection, provided he had not been dead too
+long. As a rule, however, the Bibliotaph coveted the 'hand of write'
+of the man who was now more or less conspicuously in the public eye.
+This autograph must be written in a representative work of the author
+in question. The Bibliotaph would not have crossed the street to
+secure a line from Ben Jonson's pen, but he mourned because the
+autograph of the Rev. C. L. Dodgson was not forthcoming, nor likely to
+be. His conception of happiness was this: to own a copy of the first
+edition of _Alice in Wonderland_, upon the fly-leaf of which Lewis
+Carroll had written his name, together with the statement that he had
+done so at the Bibliotaph's request, and because that eminent
+collector could not be made happy in any other Way.
+
+The Bibliotaph liked the autograph of the modern man of letters
+because it _was_ modern, and because there was a reasonable hope of
+its being genuine. He loved genuineness. Everything about himself was
+exactly what it pretended to be. From his soul to his clothing he was
+honest. And his love for the genuine was only surpassed in degree by
+his contempt for the spurious. I remember that some one gave him a bit
+of silverware, a toilet article, perhaps, which he next day threw out
+of a car window, because he had discovered that it was not sterling.
+He scouted the suggestion that possibly the giver may not have known.
+Such ignorance was inexcusable, he said. 'The likelier interpretation
+was that the gift was symbolical of the giver.' The act seemed brutal,
+and the comment thereon even more so. But to realize the atmosphere,
+the setting of the incident, one must imagine the Bibliotaph's round
+and comfortable figure, his humorous look, and the air of genial
+placidity with which he would do and say a thing like this. It was as
+impossible to be angry with him in behalf of the unfortunate giver of
+cheap silver as to take offense at a tree or mountain. And it was
+useless to argue the matter--nay it was folly, for he would
+immediately become polysyllabic and talk one down.
+
+It was this desire for genuine things which made him entirely
+suspicious of autographs which had been bought and sold. He had no
+faith in them, and he would weaken your faith, supposing you were a
+collector of such things. Offer him an autograph of our first
+president and he would reply, 'I don't believe that it's genuine; and
+if it were I shouldn't care for it; I never had the honor of General
+Washington's acquaintance.' The inference was that one could have a
+personal relation with a living great man, and the chances were
+largely in favor of getting an autograph that was not an object of
+suspicion.
+
+Few collectors in this line have been as happy as the Bibliotaph. The
+problem was easily mastered with respect to the majority of authors.
+As a rule an author is not unwilling to give such additional pleasure
+to a reader of his book as may consist in writing his name in the
+reader's copy. It is conceivable that the author may be bored by too
+many requests of this nature, but he might be bored to an even greater
+degree if no one cared enough for him to ask for his autograph. Some
+writers resisted a little, and it was beautiful to see the Bibliotaph
+bring them to terms. He was a highwayman of the Tom Faggus type, just
+so adroit, and courteous, and daring. He was perhaps at his best in
+cases where he had actually to hold up his victim; one may imagine the
+scene,--the author resisting, the Bibliotaph determined and having the
+masterful air of an expert who had handled just such cases before.
+
+A humble satellite who disapproved of these proceedings read aloud to
+the Bibliotaph that scorching little essay entitled _Involuntary
+Bailees_, written by perhaps the wittiest living English essayist. An
+involuntary bailee--as the essayist explains--is a person to whom
+people (generally unknown to him) send things which he does not wish
+to receive, but which _they_ are anxious to have returned. If a man
+insists upon lending you a book, you become an involuntary bailee. You
+don't wish to read the book, but you have it in your possession. It
+has come to you by post, let us suppose, 'and to pack it up and send
+it back again requires a piece of string, energy, brown paper, and
+stamps enough to defray the postage.' And it is a question whether a
+casual acquaintance 'has any right thus to make demands on a man's
+energy, money, time, brown paper, string, and other capital and
+commodities.' There are other ways of making a man an involuntary
+bailee. You may ask him to pass judgment on your poetry, or to use his
+influence to get your tragedy produced, or to do any one of a half
+hundred things which he doesn't want to do and which you have no
+business to ask him to do. The essayist makes no mention of the
+particular form of sin which the Bibliotaph practiced, but he would
+probably admit that malediction was the only proper treatment for the
+idler who bothers respectable authors by asking them to write their
+names in his copies of their books. For to what greater extent could
+one trespass upon an author's patience, energy, brown paper, string,
+and commodities generally? It was amusing to watch the Bibliotaph as
+he listened to this arraignment of his favorite pursuit. The writer of
+the essay admits that there may be extenuating circumstances. If the
+autograph collector comes bearing gifts one may smile upon his suit.
+If for example he accompanies his request for an autograph with
+'several brace of grouse, or a salmon of noble proportions, or rare
+old books bound by Derome, or a service of Worcester china with the
+square mark,' he may hope for success. The essayist opines that such
+gifts 'will not be returned by a celebrity who respects himself.'
+'They bless him who gives and him who takes much more than tons of
+manuscript poetry, and thousands of entreaties for an autograph.'
+
+A superficial examination of the Bibliotaph's collection revealed the
+fact that he had either used necromancy or given many gifts. The
+reader may imagine some such conversation between the great collector
+and one of his dazzled visitors:--
+
+'Pray, how did you come by this?'
+
+'His lordship has always been very kind in such matters.'
+
+'And where did you get this?'
+
+'I am greatly indebted to the Prime Minister for his complaisance.'
+
+'But this poet is said to abhor Americans.'
+
+'You see that his antipathy has not prevented his writing a stanza in
+my copy of his most notable volume.'
+
+'And this?'
+
+'I have at divers times contributed the sum of five dollars to divers
+Fresh Air funds.'
+
+The Bibliotaph could not be convinced that his sin of autograph
+collecting was not venial. When authors denied his requests, on the
+ground that they were intrusions, he was inclined to believe that
+selfishness lay at the basis of their motives. Some men are quite
+willing to accept great fame, but they resent being obliged to pay the
+penalties. They wish to sit in the fierce light which beats on an
+intellectual throne, but they are indignant when the passers-by stop
+to stare at them. They imagine that they can successfully combine the
+glory of honorable publicity with the perfect retirement enjoyed only
+by aspiring mediocrity. The Bibliotaph believed that he was a
+missionary to these people. He awakened in them a sense of their
+obligations toward their admirers. The principle involved is akin to
+that enunciated by a certain American philosopher, who held that it is
+an act of generosity to borrow of a man once in a while; it gives that
+man a lively interest in the possible success or possible failure of
+your undertaking.
+
+He levied autographic toll on young writers. For mature men of letters
+with established reputations he would do extraordinary and difficult
+services. A famous Englishman, not a novelist by profession, albeit he
+wrote one of the most successful novels of his day, earnestly desired
+to own if possible a complete set of all the American pirated editions
+of his book. The Bibliotaph set himself to this task, and collected
+energetically for two years. The undertaking was considerable, for
+many of the pirated editions were in pamphlet, and dating from twenty
+years back. It was almost impossible to get the earliest in a spotless
+condition. Quantities of trash had to be overhauled, and weeks might
+elapse before a perfect copy of a given edition would come to light.
+Books are dirty, but pamphlets are dirtier. The Bibliotaph declared
+that had he rendered an itemized bill for services in this matter, the
+largest item would have been for Turkish baths.
+
+Here was a case in which the collector paid well for the privilege of
+having a signed copy of a well-loved author's novel. He begrudged no
+portion of his time or expenditure. If it pleased the great Englishman
+to have upon his shelves, in compact array and in spotless condition,
+these proofs of what he _didn't_ earn by the publication of his books
+in America, well and good. The Bibliotaph was delighted that so modest
+a service on his part could give so apparently great a pleasure. The
+Englishman must have had the collecting instinct, and he must have
+been philosophical, since he could contemplate with equanimity these
+illegitimate volumes.
+
+The conclusion of the story is this: The work of collecting the
+reprints was finished. The last installment reached the famous
+Englishman during an illness which subsequently proved fatal. They
+were spread upon the coverlid of the bed, and the invalid took a great
+and humorous satisfaction in looking them over. Said the Bibliotaph,
+recounting the incident in his succinct way, 'They reached him on his
+death-bed,--and made him willing to go.'
+
+The Bibliotaph was true to the traditions of the book-collecting
+brotherhood, in that he read but little. His knowledge of the world
+was fresh from life, not 'strained through books,' as Johnson said of
+a certain Irish painter whom he knew at Birmingham. But the Bibliotaph
+was a mighty devourer of book-catalogues. He got a more complete
+satisfaction, I used to think, in reading a catalogue than in reading
+any other kind of literature. To see him unwrapping the packages which
+his English mail had brought was to see a happy man. For in addition
+to books by post, there would be bundles of sale-catalogues. Then
+might you behold his eyes sparkle as he spread out the tempting lists;
+the humorous lines about the corners of his mouth deepened, and he
+would take on what a little girl who watched him called his 'pussy-cat
+look.' Then with an indelible pencil in his huge and pudgy left fist
+(for the Bibliotaph was a Benjaminite), he would go through the pages,
+checking off the items of interest, rolling with delight in his chair
+as he exclaimed from time to time, 'Good books! Such good books!' Say
+to him that you yourself liked to read a catalogue, and his response
+was pretty sure to be, 'Pleasant, isn't it?' This was expressive of a
+high state of happiness, and was an allusion. For the Bibliotaph was
+once with a newly-married man, and they two met another man, who, as
+the conversation proceeded, disclosed the fact that he also had but
+recently been wed. Whereupon the first bridegroom, marveling that
+there could be another in the world so exalted as himself, exclaimed
+with sympathetic delight, 'And _you_, too, are married.' 'Yes,' said
+the second, 'pleasant, isn't it?' with much the same air that he would
+have said, 'Nice afternoon.' This was one of the incidents which made
+the Bibliotaph skeptical about marriage. But he adopted the phrase as
+a useful one with which to express the state of highest mental and
+spiritual exaltation.
+
+People wondered at the extent of his knowledge of books. It was very
+great, but it was not incredible. If a man cannot touch pitch without
+being defiled, still less can he handle books without acquiring
+bibliographical information. I am not sure that the Bibliotaph ever
+heard of that professor of history who used to urge his pupils to
+handle books, even when they could not get time to read them. 'Go to
+the library, take down the volumes, turn over the leaves, read the
+title-pages and the tables of contents; information will stick to
+you'--this was the professor's advice. Information acquired in this
+way may not be profound, but so far as it goes it is definite and
+useful. For the collector it is indispensable. In this way the
+Bibliotaph had amassed his seemingly phenomenal knowledge of books. He
+had handled thousands and tens of thousands of volumes, and he never
+relinquished his hold upon a book until he had 'placed' it,--until he
+knew just what its rank was in the hierarchy of desirability.
+
+Between a diligent reading of catalogues and an equally diligent
+rummaging among the collections of third and fourth rate old
+book-shops, the Bibliotaph had his reward. He undoubtedly bought a
+deal of trash, but he also lighted upon nuggets. For example, in
+Leask's Life of Boswell is an account of that curious little romance
+entitled _Dorando_. This so-called _Spanish Tale_, printed for J.
+Wilkie at the Bible in St. Paul's Church-Yard, was the work of James
+Boswell. It was published anonymously in 1767, and he who would might
+then have bought it for 'one shilling.' It was to be 'sold also by J.
+Dodsley in Pall Mall, T. Davies in Russell-Street, Covent Garden, and
+by the Book-sellers of Scotland.' This T. Davies was the very man who
+introduced Boswell to Johnson. He was an actor as well as a
+bookseller. _Dorando_ was a story with a key. Under the names of Don
+Stocaccio, Don Tipponi, and Don Rodomontado real people were
+described, and the facts of the 'famous Douglas cause' were presented
+to the public. The little volume was suppressed in so far as that was
+possible. It is rare, so rare that Boswell's latest biographer speaks
+of it as the 'forlorn hope of the book-hunter,' though he doubts not
+that copies of it are lurking in some private collection. One copy at
+least is lurking in the Bibliotaph's library. He bought it, not for a
+song to be sure, but very reasonably. The Bibliotaph declares that
+this book is good for but one thing,--to shake in the faces of Boswell
+collectors who haven't it.
+
+The Bibliotaph had many literary heroes. Conspicuous among them were
+Professor Richard Porson and Benjamin Jowett, the late master of
+Balliol. The Bibliotaph collected everything that related to these two
+men, all the books with which they had had anything to do, every
+newspaper clipping and magazine article which threw light upon their
+manners, habits, modes of thought. He especially loved to tell
+anecdotes of Porson. He knew many. He had an interleaved copy of J.
+Selby Watson's Life of Porson into which were copied a multitude of
+facts not to be found in that amusing biography. The Bibliotaph used
+to say that he would rather have known Porson than any other man of
+his time. He used to quote this as one of the best illustrations of
+Porson's wit, and one of the finest examples of the retort satiric to
+be found in any language. One of Porson's works was assailed by
+Wakefield and by Hermann, scholars to be sure, but scholars whose
+scholarship Porson held in contempt. Being told of their attack Porson
+only said that 'whatever he wrote in the future should be written in
+such a way that those fellows wouldn't be able to reach it with their
+fore-paws if they stood on their hind-legs to get at it!'
+
+The Bibliotaph gave such an air of contemporaneity to his stories of
+the great Greek professor that it seemed at times as if they were the
+relations of one who had actually known Porson. So vividly did he
+portray the marvels of that compound of thirst and scholarship that no
+one had the heart to laugh when, after one of his narrations, a
+gentleman asked the Bibliotaph if he himself had studied under Porson.
+
+'Not _under_ him but _with_ him,' said the Bibliotaph. 'He was my
+coeval. Porson, Richard Bentley, Joseph Scaliger, and I were all
+students together.'
+
+Speaking of Jowett the Bibliotaph once said that it was wonderful to
+note how culture failed to counteract in an Englishman that
+disposition to heave stones at an American. Jowett, with his
+remarkable breadth of mind and temper, was quite capable of observing,
+with respect to a certain book, that it was American, 'yet in perfect
+taste.' 'This,' said the Bibliotaph, 'is as if one were to say, "The
+guests were Americans, but no one expectorated on the carpet."' The
+Bibliotaph thought that there was not so much reason for this
+attitude. The sins of Englishmen and Americans were identical, he
+believed, but the forms of their expression were different. 'Our sin
+is a voluble boastfulness; theirs is an irritating, unrestrainable,
+all-but-constantly manifested, satisfied self-consciousness. The same
+results are reached by different avenues. We praise ourselves; they
+belittle others.' Then he added with a smile: 'Thus even in these
+latter days are the Scriptures exemplified; the same spirit with
+varying manifestations.'
+
+He was once commenting upon Jowett's classification of humorists.
+Jowett divided humorists 'into three categories or classes; those who
+are not worth reading at all; those who are worth reading once, but
+once only; and those who are worth reading again and again and for
+ever.' This remark was made to Swinburne, who quotes it in his all too
+brief _Recollections of Professor Jowett_. Swinburne says that the
+starting-point of their discussion was the _Biglow Papers_, which
+'famous and admirable work of American humour' Jowett placed in the
+second class. Swinburne himself thought that the _Biglow Papers_ was
+too good for the second class and not quite good enough for the third.
+'I would suggest that a fourth might be provided, to include such
+examples as are worth, let us say, two or three readings in a
+life-time.'
+
+The Bibliotaph made a variety of comments on this, but I remember only
+the following; it is a reason for not including the _Biglow Papers_ in
+Jowett's third and crowning class. 'Humor to be popular permanently
+must be general rather than local, and have to do with a phase of
+character rather than a fact of history; that is, it must deal in a
+great way with what is always interesting to all men. Humor that does
+not meet this requirement is not likely, when its novelty has worn
+off, to be read even occasionally save by those who enjoy it as an
+intellectual performance or who are making a critical study of its
+author.' The observation, if not profound, is at least sensible, and
+it illustrates very well the Bibliotaph's love of alliteration and
+antithesis. But it is easier to remember and to report his caustic and
+humorous remarks.
+
+The Country Squire had a card-catalogue of the books in his library,
+and he delighted to make therein entries of his past and his new
+purchases. But it was not always possible to find upon the shelves
+books that were mentioned in the catalogue. The Bibliotaph took
+advantage of a few instances of this sort to prod his moneyed friend.
+He would ask the Squire if he had such-and-such a book. The Squire
+would say that he had, and appeal to his catalogue in proof of it.
+Then would follow a search for the volume. If, as sometimes happened,
+no book corresponding to the entry could be found, the Bibliotaph
+would be satirical and remark:--
+
+'I'll tell you what you ought to name your catalogue.'
+
+'What?'
+
+'Great expectations!'
+
+Another time he said, 'This is not a list of your books, this is a
+list of the things that you intend to buy;' or he would suggest that
+the Squire would do well to christen his catalogue _Vaulting
+Ambition_. Perhaps the variation might take this form. After a
+fruitless search for some book, which upon the testimony of the
+catalogue was certainly in the collection, the Bibliotaph would
+observe, 'This catalogue might not inappropriately be spoken of as the
+substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen.'
+Another time the Bibliotaph said to the Squire, calling to mind the
+well-known dictum as to the indispensableness of certain books,
+'Between what one sees on your shelves and what one reads in your
+card-catalogue one would have reason to believe that you were a
+gentleman.'
+
+Once the Bibliotaph said to me in the presence of the Squire: 'I think
+that our individual relation to books might be expressed in this way.
+You read books but you don't buy them. I buy books but I don't read
+them. The Squire neither reads them nor buys them,--only
+card-catalogues them!'
+
+To all this the Squire had a reply which was worldly, emphatic, and
+adequate, but the object of this study is not to exhibit the virtues
+of the Squire's speech, witty though it was.
+
+One of the Bibliotaph's friends began without sufficient provocation
+to write verse. The Bibliotaph thought that if the matter were taken
+promptly in hand the man could be saved. Accordingly, when next he
+gave this friend a book he wrote upon a fly-leaf: 'To a Poet who is
+nothing if not original--and who is not original!' And the injured
+rhymester exclaimed when he read the inscription: 'You deface every
+book you give me.'
+
+He could pay a compliment, as when he was dining with a married pair
+who were thought to be not yet disenchanted albeit in the tenth year
+of their married life. The lady was speaking to the Bibliotaph, but in
+the eagerness of conversation addressed him by her husband's first
+name. Whereupon he turned to the husband and said: 'Your wife implies
+that I am a repository of grace and a bundle of virtues, and calls me
+by your name.'
+
+He once sent this same lady, apropos of the return of the shirt-waist
+season, a dozen neckties. In the box was his card with these words
+penciled upon it: 'A contribution to the man-made dress of a God-made
+woman.'
+
+The Squire had great skill in imitating the cries of various domestic
+fowl, as well as dogs, cats, and children. Once, in a moment of social
+relaxation, he was giving an exhibition of his power to the vast
+amusement of his guests. When he had finished, the Bibliotaph said:
+'The theory of Henry Ward Beecher that every man has something of the
+animal in him is superabundantly exemplified in _your_ case. You, sir,
+have got the whole Ark.'
+
+There was a quaint humor in his most commonplace remarks. Of all the
+fruits of the earth he loved most a watermelon. And when a
+fellow-traveler remarked, 'That watermelon which we had at dinner was
+bad,' the Bibliotaph instantly replied: 'There is no such thing as a
+_bad_ watermelon. There are watermelons, and _better_ watermelons.'
+
+I expressed astonishment on learning that he stood six feet in his
+shoes. He replied: 'People are so preoccupied in the consideration of
+my thickness that they don't have time to observe my height.'
+
+Again, when he was walking through a private park which contained
+numerous monstrosities in the shape of painted metal deer on
+pedestals, pursued (also on pedestals) by hunters and dogs, the
+Bibliotaph pointed to one of the dogs and said, 'Cave cast-iron
+canem!'
+
+He once accompanied a party of friends and acquaintances to the summit
+of Mt. Tom. The ascent is made in these days by a very remarkable
+inclined plane. After looking at the extensive and exquisite view, the
+Bibliotaph fell to examining his return coupon, which read, 'Good for
+one Trip Down.' Then he said: 'Let us hope that in a post-terrestrial
+experience our tickets will not read in this way.'
+
+He was once ascending in the unusually commodious and luxurious
+elevator of a new ten-story hotel and remarked to his companion: 'If
+we can't be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease, we can at
+least start in that direction under not dissimilar conditions.' He
+also said that the advantage of stopping at this particular hotel was
+that you were able to get as far as possible from the city in which it
+was located.
+
+He studied the dictionary with great diligence and was unusually
+accurate in his pronunciation. He took an amused satisfaction in
+pronouncing exactly certain words which in common talk had shifted
+phonetically from their moorings. This led a gentleman who was
+intimate with the Bibliotaph to say to him, 'Why, if I were to
+pronounce that word among my kinsfolk as you do they'd think I was
+crazy.' 'What you mean,' said the Bibliotaph, 'is, that they would
+look upon it in the light of supererogatory supplementary evidence.'
+
+He himself indulged overmuch in alliteration, but it was with humorous
+intent; and critics forgave it in him when they would have reprehended
+it in another. He had no notion that it was fine. Taken, however, in
+connection with his emphatic manner and sonorous voice he produced a
+decided and original effect. Meeting the Squire's wife after a
+considerable interval, I asked whether her husband had been behaving
+well. She replied 'As usual.' Whereupon the Bibliotaph said, 'You mean
+that his conduct in these days is characterized by a plethora of
+intention and a paucity of performance.'
+
+He objected to enlarging the boundaries of words until they stood for
+too many things. Let a word be kept so far as was reasonable to its
+earlier and authorized meaning. Speaking of the word 'symposium,'
+which has been stretched to mean a collection of short articles on a
+given subject, the Bibliotaph said that he could fancy a honey-bee
+which had been feasting on pumice until it was unable to make the line
+characteristic of its kind, explaining to its queen that it had been
+to a symposium; but that he doubted if we ought to allow any other
+meaning.
+
+The Bibliotaph got much amusement from what he insisted were the
+ill-concealed anxieties of his friend the actor on the subject of a
+future state. 'He has acquired,' said the Bibliotaph, 'both a pathetic
+and a prophetic interest in that place which begins as heaven does,
+but stops off monosyllabically.'
+
+The two men were one day discussing the question of the permanency of
+fame, how ephemeral for example was that reputation which depended
+upon the living presence of the artist to make good its claim; how an
+actor, an orator, a singer, was bound to enjoy his glory while it
+lasted, since at the instant of his death all tangible evidence of
+greatness disappeared; he could not be proven great to one who had
+never seen and heard him. Having reached this point in his
+philosophizing the Bibliotaph's player-friend became sentimental and
+quoted a great comedian to the effect that 'a dead actor was a mighty
+useless thing.' 'Certainly,' said the Bibliotaph, 'having exhausted
+the life that now is, and having no hope of the life that is to come.'
+
+Sometimes it pleased the Bibliotaph to maintain that his friend of the
+footlights would be in the future state a mere homeless wanderer,
+having neither positive satisfaction nor positive discomfort. For the
+actor was wont to insist that even if there were an orthodox heaven
+its moral opposite were the desirable locality; all the clever and
+interesting fellows would be down below. 'Except yourself,' said the
+Bibliotaph. 'You, sir, will be eliminated by your own reasoning. You
+will be denied heaven because you are not good, and hell because you
+are not great.'
+
+On the whole it pleased the Bibliotaph to maintain that his friend's
+course was downward, and that the sooner he reconciled himself to his
+undoubted fate the better. 'Why speculate upon it?' he said paternally
+to the actor, 'your prospective comparisons will one day yield to
+reminiscent contrasts.'
+
+The actor was convinced that the Bibliotaph's own past life needed
+looking into, and he declared that when he got a chance he was going
+to examine the great records. To which the Bibliotaph promptly
+responded: 'The books of the recording angel will undoubtedly be open
+to your inspection if you can get an hour off to come up. The
+probability is that you will be overworked.'
+
+The Bibliotaph never lost an opportunity for teasing. He arrived late
+one evening at the house of a friend where he was always heartily
+welcome, and before answering the chorus of greetings, proceeded to
+kiss the lady of the mansion, a queenly and handsome woman. Being
+asked why he--who was a large man and very shy with respect to women,
+as large men always are--should have done this thing, he answered that
+the kiss had been sent by a common friend and that he had delivered it
+at once, 'for if there was anything he prided himself upon it was a
+courageous discharge of an unpleasant duty.'
+
+Once when he had been narrating this incident he was asked what reply
+the lady had made to so uncourteous a speech. 'I don't remember,' said
+the Bibliotaph, 'it was long ago; but my opinion is that she would
+have been justified in denominating me by a monosyllable beginning
+with the initial letter of the alphabet and followed by successive
+sibilants.'
+
+One of the Bibliotaph's fellow book-hunters owned a chair said to have
+been given by Sir Edwin Landseer to Sir Walter Scott. The chair was
+interesting to behold, but the Bibliotaph after attempting to sit in
+it immediately got up and declared that it was not a genuine relic:
+'Sir Edwin had reason to be grateful to rather than indignant at Sir
+Walter Scott.'
+
+He said of a highly critical person that if that man were to become a
+minister he would probably announce as the subject of his first
+sermon: 'The conditions that God must meet in order to be acceptable
+to me.' He said of a poor orator who had copyrighted one of his most
+indifferent speeches, that the man 'positively suffered from an excess
+of caution.' He remarked once that the great trouble with a certain
+lady was 'she labored under the delusion that she enjoyed occasional
+seasons of sanity.'
+
+The _nil admirari_ attitude was one which he never affected, and he
+had a contempt for men who denied to the great in literature and art
+that praise which was their due. This led him to say apropos of an
+obscure critic who had assailed one of the poetical masters: 'When the
+Lord makes a man a fool he injures him; but when He so constitutes him
+that the man is never happy unless he is making that fact public, He
+insults him.'
+
+He enjoyed speculating on the subject of marriage, especially in the
+presence of those friends who unlike himself knew something about it
+empirically. He delighted to tell his lady acquaintances that their
+husbands would undoubtedly marry a second time if they had the chance.
+It was inevitable. A man whose experience has been fortunate is bound
+to marry again, because he is like the man who broke the bank at Monte
+Carlo. A man who has been unhappily married marries again because like
+an unfortunate gamester he has reached the time when his luck has got
+to change. The Bibliotaph then added with a smile: 'I have the idea
+that many men who marry a second time do in effect what is often done
+by unsuccessful gamblers at Monte Carlo; they go out and commit
+suicide.'
+
+The Bibliotaph played but few games. There was one, however, in which
+he was skillful. I blush to speak of it in these days of much muscular
+activity. What have golfers, and tennis-players, and makers of century
+runs to do with croquet? Yet there was a time when croquet was spoken
+of as 'the coming game;' and had not Clintock's friend Jennings
+written an epic poem upon it in twelve books, which poem he offered to
+lend to a certain brilliant young lady? But Gwendolen despised boys
+and cared even less for their poetry than for themselves.
+
+At the house of the Country Squire the Bibliotaph was able to gratify
+his passion for croquet, and verily he was a master. He made a
+grotesque figure upon the court, with his big frame which must stoop
+mightily to take account of balls and short-handled mallets, with his
+agile manner, his uncovered head shaggy with its barbaric profusion of
+hair (whereby some one was led to nickname him Bibliotaph Indetonsus),
+with the scanty black alpaca coat in which he invariably played--a
+coat so short in the sleeves and so brief in the skirt that the figure
+cut by the wearer might almost have passed for that of Mynheer Ten
+Broek of many-trowsered memory. But it was vastly more amusing to
+watch him than to play with him. He had a devil 'most undoubted.' Only
+with the help of black art and by mortgaging one's soul would it have
+been possible to accomplish some of the things which he accomplished.
+For the materials of croquet are so imperfect at best that chance is
+an influential element. I've seen tennis-players in the intervals of
+_their_ game watch the Bibliotaph with that superior smile suggestive
+of contempt for the puerility of his favorite sport. They might even
+condescend to take a mallet for a while to amuse _him_; but presently
+discomfited they would retire to a game less capricious than croquet
+and one in which there was reasonable hope that a given cause would
+produce its wonted effect.
+
+The Bibliotaph played strictly for the purpose of winning, and took
+savage joy in his conquests. In playing with him one had to do two
+men's work; one must play, and then one must summon such philosophy as
+one might to suffer continuous defeat, and such wit as one possessed
+to beat back a steady onslaught of daring and witty criticisms. 'I
+play like a fool,' said a despairing opponent after fruitless effort
+to win a just share of the games. 'We all have our moments of
+unconsciousness,' purred the Bibliotaph blandly in response. This same
+despairing opponent, who was an expert in everything he played, said
+that there was but one solace after croquet with the Bibliotaph; he
+would go home and read Hazlitt's essay on the Indian Jugglers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Here ends the account of the Bibliotaph. From these inadequate notes
+it is possible to get some little idea of his habits and conversation.
+The library is said to be still growing. Packages of books come
+mysteriously from the corners of the earth and make their way to that
+remote and almost inaccessible village where the great collector hides
+his treasures. No one has ever penetrated that region, and no one, so
+far as I am aware, has ever seen the treasures. The books lie
+entombed, as it were, awaiting such day of resurrection as their owner
+shall appoint them. The day is likely to be long delayed. Of the
+collector's whereabouts now no one of his friends dares to speak
+positively; for at the time when knowledge of him was most exact THE
+BIBLIOTAPH was like a newly-discovered comet,--his course was
+problematical.
+
+
+
+
+THOMAS HARDY
+
+
+I
+
+'The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people
+that can write know anything.' So said a man who, during a busy
+career, found time to add several fine volumes to the scanty number of
+good books. And in a vivacious paragraph which follows this initial
+sentence he humorously anathematizes the literary life. He shows
+convincingly that 'secluded habits do not tend to eloquence.' He says
+that the 'indifferent apathy' so common among studious persons is by
+no means favorable to liveliness of narration. He proves that men who
+will not live cannot write; that people who shut themselves up in
+libraries have dry brains. He avows his confidence in the 'original
+way of writing books,' the way of the first author, who must have
+looked at things for himself, 'since there were no books for him to
+copy from;' and he challenges the reader to prove that this original
+way is not the best way. 'Where,' he asks, 'are the amusing books from
+voracious students and habitual writers?'
+
+This startling arraignment of authors has been made by other men than
+Walter Bagehot. Hazlitt in his essay on the 'Ignorance of the Learned'
+teaches much the same doctrine. Its general truth is indisputable,
+though Bagehot himself makes exception in favor of Sir Walter Scott.
+But the two famous critics are united in their conviction that learned
+people are generally dull, and that books which are the work of
+habitual writers are not amusing.
+
+There are as a matter of course more exceptions than one. Thomas Hardy
+is a distinguished exception. Thomas Hardy is an 'habitual writer,'
+but he is always amusing. The following paragraphs are intended to
+emphasize certain causes of this quality in his work, the quality by
+virtue of which he chains the attention and proves himself the most
+readable novelist now living. That he does attract and hold is clear
+to any one who has tried no more than a half-dozen pages from one of
+his best stories. He has the fatal habit of being interesting,--fatal
+because it robs you who read him of time which you might else have
+devoted to 'improving' literature, such as history, political economy,
+or light science. He destroys your peace of mind by compelling your
+sympathies in behalf of people who never existed. He undermines your
+will power and makes you his slave. You declare that you will read but
+one more chapter and you weakly consent to make it two chapters. As a
+special indulgence you spoil a working day in order to learn about the
+_Return of the Native_, perhaps agreeing with a supposititious 'better
+self' that you will waste no more time on novels for the next six
+months. But you are of ascetic fibre indeed if you do not follow up
+the book with a reading of _The Woodlanders_ and _The Mayor of
+Casterbridge_.
+
+There is a reason for this. If the practiced writer often fails to
+make a good book because he knows nothing, Mr. Hardy must succeed in
+large part because he knows so much. The more one reads him the more
+is one impressed with the extent of his knowledge. He has an intimate
+acquaintance with an immense number of interesting things.
+
+He knows men and women--if not all sorts and all conditions, at least
+a great many varieties of the human animal. Moreover, his men are men
+and his women are women. He does not use them as figures to accentuate
+a landscape, or as ventriloquist's puppets to draw away attention from
+the fact that he himself is doing all the talking. His people have
+individuality, power of speech, power of motion. He does not tell you
+that such a one is clever or witty; the character which he has created
+does that for himself by doing clever things and making witty remarks.
+In an excellent story by a celebrated modern master there is a young
+lady who is declared to be clever and brilliant. Out of forty or fifty
+observations which she makes, the most extraordinary concerns her
+father; she says, 'Isn't dear papa delightful?' At another time she
+inquires whether another gentleman is not also delightful. Hardy's
+resources are not so meagre as this. When his people talk we
+listen,--we do not endure.
+
+He knows other things besides men and women. He knows the soil, the
+trees, the sky, the sunsets, the infinite variations of the landscape
+under cloud and sunshine. He knows horses, sheep, cows, dogs, cats. He
+understands the interpretation of sounds,--a detail which few
+novelists comprehend or treat with accuracy; the pages of his books
+ring with the noises of house, street, and country. Moreover there is
+nothing conventional in his transcript of facts. There is no evidence
+that he has been in the least degree influenced by other men's minds.
+He takes the raw stuff of which novels are made and moulds it as he
+will. He has an absolutely fresh eye, as painters sometimes say. He
+looks on life as if he were the first literary man, 'and none had ever
+lived before him.' Paraphrasing Ruskin, one may say of Hardy that in
+place of studying the old masters he has studied what the old masters
+studied. But his point of view is his own. His pages are not
+reminiscent of other pages. He never makes you think of something you
+have read, but invariably of something you have seen or would like to
+see. He is an original writer, which means that he takes his material
+at first hand and eschews documents. There is considerable evidence
+that he has read books, but there is no reason for supposing that
+books have damaged him.
+
+Dr. Farmer proved that Shakespeare had no 'learning.' One might
+perhaps demonstrate that Thomas Hardy is equally fortunate. In that
+case he and Shakespeare may felicitate one another. Though when we
+remember that in our day it is hardly possible to avoid a tincture of
+scholarship, we may be doing the fairer thing by these two men if we
+say that the one had small Greek and the other has adroitly concealed
+the measure of Greek, whether great or small, which is in his
+possession. To put the matter in another form, though Hardy may have
+drunk in large quantity 'the spirit breathed from dead men to their
+kind,' he has not allowed his potations to intoxicate him.
+
+This paragraph is not likely to be misinterpreted unless by some
+honest soul who has yet to learn that 'literature is not sworn
+testimony.' Therefore it may be well to add that Mr. Hardy undoubtedly
+owns a collection of books, and has upon his shelves dictionaries and
+encyclopedias, together with a decent representation of those works
+which people call 'standard.' But it is of importance to remember
+this: That while he may be a well-read man, as the phrase goes, he is
+not and never has been of that class which Emerson describes with pale
+sarcasm as 'meek young men in libraries.' It is clear that Hardy has
+not 'weakened his eyesight over books,' and it is equally clear that
+he has 'sharpened his eyesight on men and women.' Let us consider a
+few of his virtues.
+
+
+II
+
+In the first place he tells a good story. No extravagant praise is due
+him for this; it is his business, his trade. He ought to do it, and
+therefore he does it. The 'first morality' of a novelist is to be able
+to tell a story, as the first morality of a painter is to be able to
+handle his brush skillfully and make it do his brain's intending.
+After all, telling stories in an admirable fashion is rather a
+familiar accomplishment nowadays. Many men, many women are able to
+make stories of considerable ingenuity as to plot, and of thrilling
+interest in the unrolling of a scheme of events. Numberless writers
+are shrewd and clever in constructing their 'fable,' but they are
+unable to do much beyond this. Walter Besant writes good stories;
+Robert Buchanan writes good stories; Grant Allen and David Christie
+Murray are acceptable to many readers. But unless I mistake greatly
+and do these men an injustice I should be sorry to do them, their
+ability ceases just at this point. They tell good stories and do
+nothing else. They write books and do not make literature. They are
+authors by their own will and not by grace of God. It may be said of
+them as Augustine Birrell said of Professor Freeman and the Bishop of
+Chester, that they are horny-handed sons of toil and worthy of their
+wage. But one would like to say a little more. Granting that this is
+praise, it is so faint as to be almost inaudible. If Hardy only wrote
+good stories he would be merely doing his duty, and therefore
+accounted an unprofitable servant. But he does much besides.
+
+He fulfills one great function of the literary artist, which is to
+mediate between nature and the reading public. Such a man is an eye
+specialist. Through his amiable offices people who have hitherto been
+blind are put into condition to see. Near-sighted persons have
+spectacles fitted to them--which they generally refuse to wear, not
+caring for literature which clears the mental vision.
+
+Hardy opens the eyes of the reader to the charm, the beauty, the
+mystery to be found in common life and in every-day objects. So alert
+and forceful an intelligence rarely applies its energy to fiction. The
+result is that he makes an almost hopelessly high standard. The
+exceptional man who comes after him may be a rival, but the majority
+of writing gentlemen can do little more than enviously admire. He
+seems to have established for himself such a rule as this, that he
+will write no page which shall not be interesting. He pours out the
+treasures of his observation in every chapter. He sees everything,
+feels everything, sympathizes with everything. To be sure he has an
+unusually rich field for work. In _The Mayor of Casterbridge_ is an
+account of the discovery of the remains of an old Roman soldier. One
+would expect Hardy to make something graphic of the episode. And so he
+does. You can almost see the warrior as he lies there 'in an oval
+scoop in the chalk, like a chicken in its shell; his knees drawn up to
+his chest; his spear against his arm; an urn at his knees, a jar at
+his throat, a bottle at his mouth; and mystified conjecture pouring
+down upon him from the eyes of Casterbridge street-boys and men.'
+
+The real virtue in this bit of description lies in the few words
+expressive of the mental attitude of the onlookers. And it is a nice
+distinction which Hardy makes when he says that 'imaginative
+inhabitants who would have felt an unpleasantness at the discovery of
+a comparatively modern skeleton in their gardens were quite unmoved by
+these hoary shapes. They had lived so long ago, their hopes and
+motives were so widely removed from ours, that between them and the
+living there seemed to stretch a gulf too wide for even a spirit to
+pass.'
+
+He takes note of that language which, though not articulate, is in
+common use among yeomen, dairymen, farmers, and the townsfolk of his
+little world. It is a language superimposed upon the ordinary
+language. 'To express satisfaction the Casterbridge market-man added
+to his utterance a broadening of the cheeks, a crevicing of the eyes,
+a throwing back of the shoulders.' 'If he wondered ... you knew it
+from perceiving the inside of his crimson mouth and the target-like
+circling of his eyes.' The language of deliberation expressed itself
+in the form of 'sundry attacks on the moss of adjoining walls with the
+end of his stick' or a 'change of his hat from the horizontal to the
+less so.'
+
+The novel called _The Woodlanders_ is filled with notable
+illustrations of an interest in minute things. The facts are
+introduced unobtrusively and no great emphasis is laid upon them. But
+they cling to the memory. Giles Winterbourne, a chief character in
+this story, 'had a marvelous power in making trees grow. Although he
+would seem to shovel in the earth quite carelessly there was a sort of
+sympathy between himself and the fir, oak, or beech that he was
+operating on; so that the roots took hold of the soil in a few days.'
+When any of the journeymen planted, one quarter of the trees died
+away. There is a graphic little scene where Winterbourne plants and
+Marty South holds the trees for him. 'Winterbourne's fingers were
+endowed with a gentle conjurer's touch in spreading the roots of each
+little tree, resulting in a sort of caress under which the delicate
+fibres all laid themselves out in their proper direction for growth.'
+Marty declared that the trees began to 'sigh' as soon as they were put
+upright, 'though when they are lying down they don't sigh at all.'
+Winterbourne had never noticed it. 'She erected one of the young pines
+into its hole, and held up her finger; the soft musical breathing
+instantly set in, which was not to cease night or day till the grown
+tree should be felled--probably long after the two planters had been
+felled themselves.'
+
+Later on in the story there is a description of this same Giles
+Winterbourne returning with his horses and his cider apparatus from a
+neighboring village. 'He looked and smelt like autumn's very brother,
+his face being sunburnt to wheat color, his eyes blue as corn flowers,
+his sleeves and leggings dyed with fruit stains, his hands clammy with
+the sweet juice of apples, his hat sprinkled with pips, and everywhere
+about him that atmosphere of cider which at its first return each
+season has such an indescribable fascination for those who have been
+born and bred among the orchards.'
+
+Hardy throws off little sketches of this sort with an air of
+unconsciousness which is fascinating.... It may be a sunset, or it may
+be only a flake of snow falling upon a young girl's hair, or the light
+from lanterns penetrating the shutters and flickering over the ceiling
+of a room in the early winter morning,--no matter what the
+circumstance or happening is, it is caught in the act, photographed in
+permanent colors, made indelible and beautiful.
+
+Hardy's art is tyrannical. It compels one to be interested in that
+which delights him. It imposes its own standards. There is a rude
+strength about the man which readers endure because they are not
+unwilling to be slaves to genius. You may dislike sheep, and care but
+little for the poetical aspect of cows, if indeed you are not inclined
+to question the existence of poetry in cows; but if you read _Far from
+the Madding Crowd_ you can never again pass a flock of sheep without
+being conscious of a multitude of new thoughts, new images, new
+matters for comparison. All that dormant section of your soul which
+for years was in a comatose condition on the subject of sheep is
+suddenly and broadly awake. Read _Tess_ and at once cows and a dairy
+have a new meaning to you. They are a conspicuous part of the setting
+of that stage upon which poor Tess Durbeyfield's life drama was
+played.
+
+But Hardy does not flaunt his knowledge in his reader's face. These
+things are distinctly means to an end, not ends in themselves. He has
+no theory to advance about keeping bees or making cider. He has taken
+no little journeys in the world. On the contrary, where he has
+traveled at all, he has traveled extensively. He is like a tourist who
+has been so many times abroad that his allusions are naturally and
+unaffectedly made. But the man just back from a first trip on the
+continent has astonishment stamped upon his face, and he speaks of
+Paris and of the Alps as if he had discovered both. Zola is one of
+those practitioners who, big with recently acquired knowledge, appear
+to labor under the idea that the chief end of a novel is to convey
+miscellaneous information. This is probably a mistake. Novels are not
+handbooks on floriculture, banking, railways, or the management of
+department stores. One may make a parade of minute details and
+endlessly wearisome learning and gain a certain credit thereby; but
+what if the details and the learning are chiefly of value in a
+dictionary of sciences and commerce? Wisdom of this sort is to be
+sparingly used in a work of art.
+
+In these matters I cannot but feel that Hardy has a reticence so
+commendable that praise of it is superfluous and impertinent. After
+all, men and women are better than sheep and cows, and had he been
+more explicit, he would have tempted one to inquire whether he
+proposed making a story or a volume which might bear the title _The
+Wessex Farmer's Own Hand-Book_, and containing wise advice as to pigs,
+poultry, and the useful art of making two heads of cabbage grow where
+only one had grown before.
+
+
+III
+
+Among the most engaging qualities of this writer is humor. Hardy is a
+humorous man himself and entirely appreciative of the humor that is in
+others. According to a distinguished philosopher, wit and humor
+produce love. Hardy must then be in daily receipt of large measures of
+this 'improving passion' from his innumerable readers on both sides of
+the Atlantic.
+
+His humor manifests itself in a variety of ways; by the use of witty
+epithet; by ingenious description of a thing which is not strikingly
+laughable in itself, but which becomes so from the closeness of his
+rendering; by a leisurely and ample account of a character with
+humorous traits,--traits which are brought artistically into
+prominence as an actor heightens the complexion in stage make-up; and
+finally by his lively reproductions of the talk of village and country
+people,--a class of society whose everyday speech has only to be heard
+to be enjoyed. I do not pretend that the sources of Hardy's humor are
+exhausted in this analysis, but the majority of illustrations can be
+assigned to some one of these divisions.
+
+He is usually thought to be at his best in descriptions of farmers,
+village mechanics, laborers, dairymen, men who kill pigs, tend sheep,
+furze-cutters, masons, hostlers, loafers who do nothing in particular,
+and while thus occupied rail on Lady Fortune in good set terms.
+Certainly he paints these people with affectionate fidelity. Their
+virile, racy talk delights him. His reproductions of that talk are
+often intensely realistic. Nearly every book has its chorus of human
+grotesques whose mere names are a source of mirth. William Worm,
+Grandfer Cantle, 'Corp'el' Tullidge, Christopher Coney, John Upjohn,
+Robert Creedle, Martin Cannister, Haymoss Fry, Robert Lickpan, and
+Sammy Blore,--men so denominated should stand for comic things, and
+these men do. William Worm, for example, was deaf. His deafness took
+an unusual form; he heard fish frying in his head, and he was not
+reticent upon the subject of his infirmity. He usually described
+himself by the epithet 'wambling,' and protested that he would never
+pay the Lord for his making,--a degree of self-knowledge which many
+have arrived at but few have the courage to confess. He was once
+observed in the act of making himself 'passing civil and friendly by
+overspreading his face with a large smile that seemed to have no
+connection with the humor he was in.' Sympathy because of his deafness
+elicited this response: 'Ay, I assure you that frying o' fish is going
+on for nights and days. And, you know, sometimes 'tisn't only fish,
+but rashers o' bacon and inions. Ay, I can hear the fat pop and fizz
+as nateral as life.'
+
+He was questioned as to what means of cure he had tried.
+
+'Oh, ay bless ye, I've tried everything. Ay, Providence is a merciful
+man, and I have hoped he'd have found it out by this time, living so
+many years in a parson's family, too, as I have; but 'a don't seem to
+relieve me. Ay, I be a poor wambling man, and life's a mint o'
+trouble.'
+
+One knows not which to admire the more, the appetizing realism in
+William Worm's account of his infirmity, or the primitive state of his
+theological views which allowed him to look for special divine favor
+by virtue of the ecclesiastical conspicuousness of his late residence.
+
+Hardy must have heard, with comfort in the thought of its literary
+possibilities, the following dialogue on the cleverness of women. It
+occurs in the last chapter of _The Woodlanders_. A man who is always
+spoken of as the 'hollow-turner,' a phrase obviously descriptive of
+his line of business, which related to wooden bowls, spigots,
+cheese-vats, and funnels, talks with John Upjohn.
+
+'What women do know nowadays!' he says. 'You can't deceive 'em as you
+could in my time.'
+
+'What they knowed then was not small,' said John Upjohn. 'Always a
+good deal more than the men! Why, when I went courting my wife that is
+now, the skillfulness that she would show in keeping me on her pretty
+side as she walked was beyond all belief. Perhaps you've noticed that
+she's got a pretty side to her face as well as a plain one?'
+
+'I can't say I've noticed it particular much,' said the hollow-turner
+blandly.
+
+'Well,' continued Upjohn, not disconcerted, 'she has. All women under
+the sun be prettier one side than t'other. And, as I was saying, the
+pains she would take to make me walk on the pretty side were unending.
+I warrent that whether we were going with the sun or against the sun,
+uphill or downhill, in wind or in lewth, that wart of hers was always
+toward the hedge, and that dimple toward me. There was I too simple to
+see her wheelings and turnings; and she so artful though two years
+younger, that she could lead me with a cotton thread like a blind ham;
+... no, I don't think the women have got cleverer, for they was never
+otherwise.'
+
+
+IV
+
+These men have sap and juice in their talk. When they think they think
+clearly. When they speak they express themselves with an energy and
+directness which mortify the thin speech of conventional persons. Here
+is Farfrae, the young Scotchman, in the tap-room of the Three Mariners
+Inn of Casterbridge, singing of his ain contree with a pathos quite
+unknown in that part of the world. The worthies who frequent the place
+are deeply moved. 'Danged if our country down here is worth singing
+about like that,' says Billy Wills, the glazier,--while the literal
+Christopher Coney inquires, 'What did ye come away from yer own
+country for, young maister, if ye be so wownded about it?' Then it
+occurs to him that it wasn't worth Farfrae's while to leave the fair
+face and the home of which he had been singing to come among such as
+they. 'We be bruckle folk here--the best o' us hardly honest
+sometimes, what with hard winters, and so many mouths to fill, and
+God-a'mighty sending his little taties so terrible small to fill 'em
+with. We don't think about flowers and fair faces, not we--except in
+the shape of cauliflowers and pigs' chaps.'
+
+I should like to see the man who sat to Artist Hardy for the portrait
+of Corporal Tullidge in _The Trumpet-Major_. This worthy, who was deaf
+and talked in an uncompromisingly loud voice, had been struck in the
+head by a piece of shell at Valenciennes in '93. His left arm had been
+smashed. Time and Nature had done what they could, and under their
+beneficent influences the arm had become a sort of anatomical
+rattle-box. People interested in Corp'el Tullidge were allowed to see
+his head and hear his arm. The corp'el gave these private views at any
+time, and was quite willing to show off, though the exhibition was apt
+to bore him a little. His fellows displayed him much as one would a
+'freak' in a dime museum.
+
+'You have got a silver plate let into yer head, haven't ye, corp'el?'
+said Anthony Cripplestraw. 'I have heard that the way they mortised
+yer skull was a beautiful piece of workmanship. Perhaps the young
+woman would like to see the place.'
+
+The young woman was Anne Garland, the sweet heroine of the story; and
+Anne didn't want to see the silver plate, the thought of which made
+her almost faint. Nor could she be tempted by being told that one
+couldn't see such a 'wownd' every day. Then Cripplestraw, earnest to
+please her, suggested that Tullidge rattle his arm, which Tullidge
+did, to Anne's great distress.
+
+'Oh, it don't hurt him, bless ye. Do it, corp'el?' said Cripplestraw.
+
+'Not a bit,' said the corporal, still working his arm with great
+energy. There was, however, a perfunctoriness in his manner 'as if the
+glory of exhibition had lost somewhat of its novelty, though he was
+still willing to oblige.' Anne resisted all entreaties to convince
+herself by feeling of the corporal's arm that the bones were 'as loose
+as a bag of ninepins,' and displayed an anxiety to escape. Whereupon
+the corporal, 'with a sense that his time was getting wasted,'
+inquired: 'Do she want to see or hear any more, or don't she?'
+
+This is but a single detail in the account of a party which Miller
+Loveday gave to soldier guests in honor of his son John,--a
+description the sustained vivacity of which can only be appreciated
+through a reading of those brilliant early chapters of the story.
+
+Half the mirth that is in these men comes from the frankness with
+which they confess their actual thoughts. Ask a man of average morals
+and average attainments why he doesn't go to church. You won't know
+any better after he has given you his answer. Ask Nat Chapman, of the
+novel entitled _Two on a Tower_, and you will not be troubled with
+ambiguities. He doesn't like to go because Mr. Torkingham's sermons
+make him think of soul-saving and other bewildering and uncomfortable
+topics. So when the son of Torkingham's predecessor asks Nat how it
+goes with him, that tiller of the soil answers promptly: 'Pa'son
+Tarkenham do tease a feller's conscience that much, that church is no
+holler-day at all to the limbs, as it was in yer reverent father's
+time!'
+
+The unswerving honesty with which they assign utilitarian motives for
+a particular line of conduct is delightful. Three men discuss a
+wedding, which took place not at the home of the bride but in a
+neighboring parish, and was therefore very private. The first doesn't
+blame the new married pair, because 'a wedding at home means five and
+six handed reels by the hour, and they do a man's legs no good when
+he's over forty.' A second corroborates the remark and says: 'True.
+Once at the woman's house you can hardly say nay to being one in a
+jig, knowing all the time that you be expected to make yourself worth
+your victuals.'
+
+The third puts the whole matter beyond the need of further discussion
+by adding: 'For my part, I like a good hearty funeral as well as
+anything. You've as splendid victuals and drink as at other parties,
+and even better. And it don't wear your legs to stumps in talking over
+a poor fellow's ways as it do to stand up in hornpipes.'
+
+Beings who talk like this know their minds,--a rather unwonted
+circumstance among the sons of men,--and knowing them, they do the
+next most natural thing in the world, which is to speak the minds they
+have.
+
+There is yet another phase of Hardy's humor to be noted: that humor,
+sometimes defiant, sometimes philosophic, which concerns death and its
+accompaniments. It cannot be thought morbid. Hardy is too fond of
+Nature ever to degenerate into mere morbidity. He has lived much in
+the open air, which always corrects a tendency to 'vapors.' He takes
+little pleasure in the gruesome, a statement in support of which one
+may cite all his works up to 1892, the date of the appearance of
+_Tess_. This paper includes no comment in detail upon the later books;
+but so far as _Tess_ is concerned it would be critical folly to speak
+of it as morbid. It is sad, it is terrible, as _Lear_ is terrible, or
+as any one of the great tragedies, written by men we call 'masters,'
+is terrible. _Jude_ is psychologically gruesome, no doubt; but not
+absolutely indefensible. Even if it were as black a book as some
+critics have painted it, the general truth of the statement as to the
+healthfulness of Hardy's work would not be impaired. This work judged
+as a whole is sound and invigorating. He cannot be accused of
+over-fondness for charnel-houses or ghosts. He does not discourse of
+graves and vaults in order to arouse that terror which the thought of
+death inspires. It is not for the purpose of making the reader
+uncomfortable. If the grave interests him, it is because of the
+reflections awakened. 'Man, proud man,' needs that jog to his memory
+which the pomp of interments and aspect of tombstones give. Hardy has
+keen perception of that humor which glows in the presence of death and
+on the edge of the grave. The living have such a tremendous advantage
+over the dead, that they can neither help feeling it nor avoid a
+display of the feeling. When the lion is buried the dogs crack jokes
+at the funeral. They do it in a subdued manner, no doubt, and with a
+sense of proprieties, but nevertheless they do it. Their immense
+superiority is never so apparent as at just this moment.
+
+This humor, which one notes in Hardy, is akin to the humor of the
+grave-diggers in _Hamlet_, but not so grim. I have heard a country
+undertaker describe the details of the least attractive branch of his
+uncomfortable business with a pride and self-satisfaction that would
+have been farcical had not the subject been so depressing. This would
+have been matter for Hardy's pen. There are few scenes in his books
+more telling than that which shows the operations in the family vault
+of the Luxellians, when John Smith, Martin Cannister, and old Simeon
+prepare the place for Lady Luxellian's coffin. It seems hardly wise to
+pronounce this episode as good as the grave-diggers' scene in
+_Hamlet_; that would shock some one and gain for the writer the
+reputation of being enthusiastic rather than critical. But I profess
+that I enjoy the talk of old Simeon and Martin Cannister quite as much
+as the talk of the first and second grave-diggers.
+
+Simeon, the shriveled mason, was 'a marvelously old man, whose skin
+seemed so much too large for his body that it would not stay in
+position.' He talked of the various great dead whose coffins filled
+the family vault. Here was the stately and irascible Lord George:--
+
+'Ah, poor Lord George,' said the mason, looking contemplatively at the
+huge coffin; 'he and I were as bitter enemies once as any could be
+when one is a lord and t'other only a mortal man. Poor fellow! He'd
+clap his hand upon my shoulder and cuss me as familiar and neighborly
+as if he'd been a common chap. Ay, 'a cussed me up hill and 'a cussed
+me down; and then 'a would rave out again and the goold clamps of his
+fine new teeth would glisten in the sun like fetters of brass, while
+I, being a small man and poor, was fain to say nothing at all. Such a
+strappen fine gentleman as he was too! Yes, I rather liken en
+sometimes. But once now and then, when I looked at his towering
+height, I'd think in my inside, "What a weight you'll be, my lord, for
+our arms to lower under the inside of Endelstow church some day!"'
+
+'And was he?' inquired a young laborer.
+
+'He was. He was five hundred weight if 'a were a pound. What with his
+lead, and his oak, and his handles, and his one thing and t'other'--here
+the ancient man slapped his hand upon the cover with a force that
+caused a rattle among the bones inside--'he half broke my back when I
+took his feet to lower en down the steps there. "Ah," saith I to John
+there--didn't I, John?--"that ever one man's glory should be such a
+weight upon another man!" But there, I liked my Lord George
+sometimes.'
+
+It may be observed that as Hardy grows older his humor becomes more
+subtle or quite dies away, as if serious matters pressed upon his
+mind, and there was no time for being jocular. Some day, perhaps, if
+he should rise to the dignity of an English classic, this will be
+spoken of as his third period, and critics will be wise in the
+elucidation thereof. But just at present this third period is
+characterized by the terms 'pessimistic' and 'unhealthy.'
+
+That he is a pessimist in the colloquial sense admits of little
+question. Nor is it surprising; it is rather difficult not to be. Not
+a few persons are pessimists and won't tell. They preserve a fair
+exterior, but secretly hold that all flesh is grass. Some people
+escape the disease by virtue of much philosophy or much religion or
+much work. Many who have not taken up permanent residence beneath the
+roof of Schopenhauer or Von Hartmann are occasional guests. Then there
+is that great mass of pessimism which is the result, not of thought,
+but of mere discomfort, physical and super-physical. One may have
+attacks of pessimism from a variety of small causes. A bad stomach
+will produce it. Financial difficulties will produce it. The
+light-minded get it from changes in the weather.
+
+That note of melancholy which we detect in many of Hardy's novels is
+as it should be. For no man can apprehend life aright and still look
+upon it as a carnival. He may attain serenity in respect to it, but he
+can never be jaunty and flippant. He can never slap life upon the back
+and call it by familiar names. He may hold that the world is
+indisputably growing better, but he will need to admit that the world
+is having a hard time in so doing.
+
+Hardy would be sure of a reputation for pessimism in some quarters if
+only because of his attitude, or what people think is his attitude,
+toward marriage. He has devoted many pages and not a little thought to
+the problems of the relations between men and women. He is
+considerably interested in questions of 'matrimonial divergence.' He
+recognizes that most obvious of all obvious truths, that marriage is
+not always a success; nay, more than this, that it is often a
+makeshift, an apology, a pretense. But he professes to undertake
+nothing beyond a statement of the facts. It rests with the public to
+lay his statement beside their experience and observation, and thus
+take measure of the fidelity of his art.
+
+He notes the variety of motives by which people are actuated in the
+choice of husbands and wives. In the novel called _The Woodlanders_,
+Grace Melbury, the daughter of a rich though humbly-born yeoman, has
+unusual opportunities for a girl of her class, and is educated to a
+point of physical and intellectual daintiness which make her seem
+superior to her home environment. Her father has hoped that she will
+marry her rustic lover, Giles Winterbourne, who, by the way, is a man
+in every fibre of his being. Grace is quite unspoiled by her life at a
+fashionable boarding school, but after her return her father feels
+(and Hardy makes the reader feel) that in marrying Giles she will
+sacrifice herself. She marries Dr. Fitzspiers, a brilliant young
+physician, recently come into the neighborhood, and in so doing she
+chooses for the worse. The character of Dr. Fitzspiers is summarized
+in a statement he once made (presumably to a male friend) that 'on one
+occasion he had noticed himself to be possessed by five distinct
+infatuations at the same time.'
+
+His flagrant infidelities bring about a temporary separation; Grace is
+not able to comprehend 'such double and treble-barreled hearts.' When
+finally they are reunited the life-problem of each still awaits an
+adequate solution. For the motive which brings the girl back to her
+husband is only a more complex phase of the same motive which chiefly
+prompted her to marry him. Hardy says that Fitzspiers as a lover acted
+upon Grace 'like a dram.' His presence 'threw her into an atmosphere
+which biased her doings until the influence was over.' Afterward she
+felt 'something of the nature of regret for the mood she had
+experienced.'
+
+But this same story contains two other characters who are unmatched in
+fiction as the incarnation of pure love and self-forgetfulness. Giles
+Winterbourne, whose devotion to Grace is without wish for happiness
+which shall not imply a greater happiness for her, dies that no breath
+of suspicion may fall upon her. He in turn is loved by Marty South
+with a completeness which destroys all thought of self. She enjoys no
+measure of reward while Winterbourne lives. He never knows of Marty's
+love. But in that last fine paragraph of this remarkable book, when
+the poor girl places the flowers upon his grave she utters a little
+lament which for beauty, pathos, and realistic simplicity is without
+parallel in modern fiction. Hardy was never more of an artist than
+when writing the last chapter of _The Woodlanders_.
+
+After all, a book in which unselfish love is described in terms at
+once just and noble cannot be dangerously pessimistic, even if it also
+takes cognizance of such hopeless cases as a man with a chronic
+tendency to fluctuations of the heart.
+
+The matter may be put briefly thus: In Hardy's novels one sees the
+artistic result of an effort to paint life as it is, with much of its
+joy and a deal of its sorrow, with its good people and its selfish
+people, its positive characters and its Laodiceans, its men and women
+who dominate circumstances, and its unhappy ones who are submerged.
+These books are the record of what a clear-eyed, sane, vigorous,
+sympathetic, humorous man knows about life; a man too conscious of
+things as they are to wish grossly to exaggerate or to disguise them;
+and at the same time so entirely aware how much poetry as well as
+irony God has mingled in the order of the world as to be incapable of
+concealing that fact either. He is of such ample intellectual frame
+that he makes the petty contentions of literary schools appear
+foolish. I find a measure of Hardy's mind in passages which set forth
+his conception of the preciousness of life, no matter what the form in
+which life expresses itself. He is peculiarly tender toward brute
+creation. In that paragraph which describes Tess discovering the
+wounded pheasants in the wood, Hardy suggests the thought, quite new
+to many people, that chivalry is not confined to the relations of man
+to man or of man to woman. There are still weaker fellow-creatures in
+Nature's teeming family. What if we are unmannerly or unchivalrous
+toward them?
+
+He abounds in all manner of pithy sayings, many of them wise, a few of
+them profound, and not one which is unworthy a second reading. It is
+to be hoped that he will escape the doubtful honor of being
+dispersedly set forth in a 'Wit and Wisdom of Thomas Hardy.' Such
+books are a depressing species of literature and seem chiefly designed
+to be given away at holiday time to acquaintances who are too
+important to be put off with Christmas cards, and not important enough
+to be supplied with gifts of a calculable value.
+
+One must praise the immense spirit and vivacity of scenes where
+something in the nature of a struggle, a moral duel, goes on. In such
+passages every power at the writer's command is needed; unerring
+directness of thought, and words which clothe this thought as an
+athlete's garments fit the body. Everything must count, and the
+movement of the narrative must be sustained to the utmost. The
+chess-playing scene between Elfride and Knight in _A Pair of Blue
+Eyes_ is an illustration. Sergeant Troy displaying his skill in
+handling the sword--weaving his spell about Bathsheba in true snake
+fashion, is another example. Still more brilliant is the gambling
+scene in _The Return of the Native_, where Wildeve and Diggory Venn,
+out on the heath in the night, throw dice by the light of a lantern
+for Thomasin's money. Venn, the reddleman, in the Mephistophelian garb
+of his profession, is the incarnation of a good spirit, and wins the
+guineas from the clutch of the spendthrift husband. The scene is
+immensely dramatic, with its accompaniments of blackness and silence,
+Wildeve's haggard face, the circle of ponies, known as heath-croppers,
+which are attracted by the light, the death's-head moth which
+extinguishes the candle, and the finish of the game by the light of
+glow-worms. It is a glorious bit of writing in true bravura style.
+
+His books have a quality which I shall venture to call 'spaciousness,'
+in the hope that the word conveys the meaning I try to express. It is
+obvious that there is a difference between books which are large and
+books which are merely long. The one epithet refers to atmosphere, the
+other to number of pages. Hardy writes large books. There is room in
+them for the reader to expand his mind. They are distinctly
+out-of-door books, 'not smacking of the cloister or the library.' In
+reading them one has a feeling that the vault of heaven is very high,
+and that the earth stretches away to interminable distances upon all
+sides. This quality of largeness is not dependent upon number of
+pages; nor is length absolute as applied to books. A book may contain
+one hundred pages and still be ninety-nine pages too long, for the
+reason that its truth, its lesson, its literary virtue, are not
+greater than might be expressed in a single page.
+
+Spaciousness is in even less degree dependent upon miles. The
+narrowness, geographically speaking, of Hardy's range of expression is
+notable. There is much contrast between him and Stevenson in this
+respect. The Scotchman has embodied in his fine books the experiences
+of life in a dozen different quarters of the globe. Hardy, with more
+robust health, has traveled from Portland to Bath, and from
+'Wintoncester' to 'Exonbury,'--journeys hardly more serious than from
+the blue bed to the brown. And it is better thus. No reader of _The
+Return of the Native_ would have been content that Eustacia Vye should
+persuade her husband back to Paris. Rather than the boulevards one
+prefers Egdon heath, as Hardy paints it, 'the great inviolate place,'
+the 'untamable Ishmaelitish thing' which its arch-enemy, Civilization,
+could not subdue.
+
+He is without question one of the best writers of our time, whether
+for comedy or for tragedy; and for extravaganza, too, as witness his
+lively farce called _The Hand of Ethelberta_. He can write dialogue or
+description. He is so excellent in either that either, as you read it,
+appears to make for your highest pleasure. If his characters talk, you
+would gladly have them talk to the end of the book. If he, the author,
+speaks, you would not wish to interrupt. More than most skillful
+writers, he preserves that just balance between narrative and
+colloquy.
+
+His best novels prior to the appearance of _Tess_, are _The
+Woodlanders_, _Far from the Madding Crowd_, _The Return of the
+Native_, and _The Mayor of Casterbridge_. These four are the bulwarks
+of his reputation, while a separate and great fame might be based
+alone on that powerful tragedy called by its author _Tess of the
+D'Urbervilles_.
+
+Criticism which glorifies any one book of a given author at the
+expense of all his other books is profitless, if not dangerous.
+Moreover, it is dangerous to have a favorite author as well as a
+favorite book of that favorite author. A man's choice of books, like
+his choice of friends, is usually inexplicable to everybody but
+himself. However, the chief object in recommending books is to make
+converts to the gospel of literature according to the writer of these
+books. For which legitimate purpose I would recommend to the reader
+who has hitherto denied himself the pleasure of an acquaintance with
+Thomas Hardy, the two volumes known as _The Woodlanders_ and _The
+Return of the Native_. The first of these is the more genial because
+it presents a more genial side of Nature. But the other is a noble
+piece of literary workmanship, a powerful book, ingeniously framed,
+with every detail strongly realized; a book which is dramatic,
+humorous, sincere in its pathos, rich in its word-coloring, eloquent
+in its descriptive passages; a book which embodies so much of life and
+poetry that one has a feeling of mental exaltation as he reads.
+
+Surely it is not wise in the critical Jeremiahs so despairingly to
+lift up their voices, and so strenuously to bewail the condition of
+the literature of the time. The literature of the time is very well,
+as they would see could they but turn their fascinated gaze from the
+meretricious and spectacular elements of that literature to the work
+of Thomas Hardy and George Meredith. With such men among the most
+influential in modern letters, and with Barrie and Stevenson among the
+idols of the reading world, it would seem that the office of public
+Jeremiah should be continued rather from courtesy than from an
+overwhelming sense of the needs of the hour.
+
+
+
+
+A READING IN THE LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS
+
+
+One would like to know whether a first reading in the letters of Keats
+does not generally produce something akin to a severe mental shock. It
+is a sensation which presently becomes agreeable, being in that
+respect like a plunge into cold water, but it is undeniably a shock.
+Most readers of Keats, knowing him, as he should be known, by his
+poetry, have not the remotest conception of him as he shows himself in
+his letters. Hence they are unprepared for this splendid exhibition of
+virile intellectual health. Not that they think of him as morbid,--his
+poetry surely could not make this impression,--but rather that the
+popular conception of him is, after all these years, a legendary
+Keats, the poet who was killed by reviewers, the Keats of Shelley's
+preface to the _Adonais_, the Keats whose story is written large in
+the world's book of Pity and of Death. When the readers are confronted
+with a fair portrait of the real man, it makes them rub their eyes.
+Nay, more, it embarrasses them. To find themselves guilty of having
+pitied one who stood in small need of pity is mortifying. In plain
+terms, they have systematically bestowed (or have attempted to bestow)
+alms on a man whose income at its least was bigger than any his
+patrons could boast. Small wonder that now and then you find a reader,
+with large capacity for the sentimental, who looks back with terror to
+his first dip into the letters.
+
+The legendary Keats dies hard; or perhaps we would better say that
+when he seems to be dying he is simply, in the good old fashion of
+legends, taking out a new lease of life. For it is as true now as when
+the sentence was first penned, that 'a mixture of a lie doth ever add
+pleasure.' Among the many readers of good books, there will always be
+some whose notions of the poetical proprieties suffer greatly by the
+facts of Keats's history. It is so much pleasanter to them to think
+that the poet's sensitive spirit was wounded to death by bitter words
+than to know that he was carried off by pulmonary disease. But when
+they are tired of reading _Endymion_, _Isabella_, and _The Eve of St.
+Agnes_ in the light of this incorrect conception, let them try a new
+reading in the light of the letters, and the masculinity of this very
+robust young maker of poetry will prove refreshing.
+
+The letters are in every respect good reading. Rather than deplore
+their frankness, as one critic has done, we ought to rejoice in their
+utter want of affectation, in their boyish honesty. At every turn
+there is something to amuse or to startle one into thinking. We are
+carried back in a vivid way to the period of their composition. Not a
+little of the pulsing life of that time throbs anew, and we catch
+glimpses of notable figures. Often, the feeling is that we have been
+called in haste to a window to look at some celebrity passing by, and
+have arrived just in time to see him turn the corner. What a touch of
+reality, for example, does one get in reading that 'Wordsworth went
+rather huff'd out of town'! One is not in the habit of thinking of
+Wordsworth as capable of being 'huffed,' but the writer of the letters
+feared that he was. All of Keats's petty anxieties and small doings,
+as well as his aspirations and his greatest dreams, are set down here
+in black on white. It is a complete and charming revelation of the
+man. One learns how he 'went to Hazlitt's lecture on Poetry, and got
+there just as they were coming out;' how he was insulted at the
+theatre, and wouldn't tell his brothers; how it vexed him because the
+Irish servant said that his picture of Shakespeare looked exactly like
+her father, only 'her father had more color than the engraving;' how
+he filled in the time while waiting for the stage to start by counting
+the buns and tarts in a pastry-cook's window, 'and had just begun on
+the jellies;' how indignant he was at being spoken of as 'quite the
+little poet;' how he sat in a hatter's shop in the Poultry while Mr.
+Abbey read him some extracts from Lord Byron's 'last flash poem,' _Don
+Juan_; how some beef was carved exactly to suit his appetite, as if he
+'had been measured for it;' how he dined with Horace Smith and his
+brothers and some other young gentlemen of fashion, and thought them
+all hopelessly affected; in a word, almost anything you want to know
+about John Keats can be found in these letters. They are of more value
+than all the 'recollections' of all his friends put together. In their
+breezy good-nature and cheerfulness they are a fine antidote to the
+impression one gets of him in Haydon's account, 'lying in a white bed
+with a book, hectic and on his back, irritable at his weakness and
+wounded at the way he had been used. He seemed to be going out of life
+with a contempt for this world, and no hopes of the other. I told him
+to be calm, but he muttered that if he did not soon get better he
+would destroy himself.' This is taking Keats at his worst. It is well
+enough to know that he seemed to Haydon as Haydon has described him,
+but few men appear to advantage when they are desperately ill. Turn to
+the letters written during his tour in Scotland, when he walked twenty
+miles a day, climbed Ben Nevis, so fatigued himself that, as he told
+Fanny Keats, 'when I am asleep you might sew my nose to my great toe
+and trundle me around the town, like a Hoop, without waking me. Then I
+get so hungry a Ham goes but a very little way, and fowls are like
+Larks to me.... I take a whole string of Pork Sausages down as easily
+as a Pen'orth of Lady's fingers.' And then he bewails the fact that
+when he arrives in the Highlands he will have to be contented 'with an
+acre or two of oaten cake, a hogshead of Milk, and a Cloaths basket of
+Eggs morning, noon, and night.' Here is the active Keats, of honest
+mundane tastes and an athletic disposition, who threatens' to cut all
+sick people if they do not make up their minds to cut Sickness.'
+
+Indeed, the letters are so pleasant and amusing in the way they
+exhibit minor traits, habits, prejudices, and the like, that it is a
+temptation to dwell upon these things. How we love a man's
+weaknesses--if we share them! I do not know that Keats would have
+given occasion for an anecdote like that told of a certain book-loving
+actor, whose best friend, when urged to join the chorus of praise that
+was quite universally sung to this actor's virtues, acquiesced by
+saying amiably, 'Mr. Blank undoubtedly has genius, but he can't
+spell;' yet there are comforting evidences that Keats was no servile
+follower of the 'monster Conventionality' even in his spelling, while
+in respect to the use of capitals he was a law unto himself. He
+sprinkled them through his correspondence with a lavish hand, though
+at times he grew so economical that, as one of his editors remarks, he
+would spell Romeo with a small _r_, Irishman with a small _i_, and God
+with a small _g_.
+
+It is also a pleasure to find that, with his other failings, he had a
+touch of book-madness. There was in him the making of a first-class
+bibliophile. He speaks with rapture of his black-letter Chaucer, which
+he proposes to have bound 'in Gothique,' so as to unmodernize as much
+as possible its outward appearance. But to Keats books were literature
+or they were not literature, and one cannot think that his affections
+would twine about ever so bookish a volume which was merely 'curious.'
+
+One reads with sympathetic amusement of Keats's genuine and natural
+horror of paying the same bill twice, 'there not being a more
+unpleasant thing in the world (saving a thousand and one others).' The
+necessity of preserving adequate evidence that a bill had been paid
+was uppermost in his thought quite frequently; and once when, at Leigh
+Hunt's instance, sundry packages of papers belonging to that eminently
+methodical and businesslike man of letters were to be sorted out and
+in part destroyed, Keats refused to burn any, 'for fear of demolishing
+receipts.'
+
+But the reader will chance upon few more humorous passages than that
+in which the poet tells his brother George how he cures himself of the
+blues, and at the same time spurs his flagging powers of invention:
+'Whenever I find myself growing vaporish I rouse myself, wash and put
+on a clean shirt, brush my hair and clothes, tie my shoe-strings
+neatly, and, in fact, adonize, as if I were going out--then all clean
+and comfortable, I sit down to write. This I find the greatest
+relief.' The virtues of a clean shirt have often been sung, but it
+remained for Keats to show what a change of linen and a general
+_adonizing_ could do in the way of furnishing poetic stimulus. This is
+better than coffee, brandy, absinthe, or falling in love; and it
+prompts one to think anew that the English poets, taking them as a
+whole, were a marvelously healthy and sensible breed of men.
+
+It is, however, in respect to the light they throw upon the poet's
+literary life that the letters are of highest significance. They
+gratify to a reasonable extent that natural desire we all have to see
+authorship in the act. The processes by which genius brings things to
+pass are so mysterious that our curiosity is continually piqued; and
+our failure to get at the real thing prompts us to be more or less
+content with mere externals. If we may not hope to see the actual
+process of making poetry, we may at least study the poet's manuscript.
+By knowing of his habits of work we flatter ourselves that we are a
+little nearer the secret of his power.
+
+We must bear in mind that Keats was a boy, always a boy, and that he
+died before he quite got out of boyhood. To be sure, most boys of
+twenty-six would resent being described by so juvenile a term. But one
+must have successfully passed twenty-six without doing anything in
+particular to understand how exceedingly young twenty-six is. And to
+have wrought so well in so short a time, Keats must have had from the
+first a clear and noble conception of the nature of his work, as he
+must also have displayed extraordinary diligence in the doing of it.
+Perhaps these points are too obvious, and of a sort which would
+naturally occur to any one; but it will be none the less interesting
+to see how the letters bear witness to their truth.
+
+In the first place, Keats was anything but a loafer at literature. He
+seems never to have dawdled. A fine healthiness is apparent in all
+allusions to his processes of work. 'I read and write about eight
+hours a day,' he remarks in a letter to Haydon. Bailey, Keats's Oxford
+friend, says that the fellow would go to his writing-desk soon after
+breakfast, and stay there until two or three o'clock in the afternoon.
+He was then writing _Endymion_. His stint was about 'fifty lines a
+day, ... and he wrote with as much regularity, and apparently with as
+much ease, as he wrote his letters.... Sometimes he fell short of his
+allotted task, but not often, and he would make it up another day. But
+he never forced himself.' Bailey quotes, in connection with this,
+Keats's own remark to the effect that poetry would better not come at
+all than not to come 'as naturally as the leaves of a tree.' Whether
+this spontaneity of production was as great as that of some other
+poets of his time may be questioned; but he would never have deserved
+Tom Nash's sneer at those writers who can only produce by 'sleeping
+betwixt every sentence.' Keats had in no small degree the 'fine
+extemporal vein' with 'invention quicker than his eye.'
+
+We uncritically feel that it could hardly have been otherwise in the
+case of one with whom poetry was a passion. Keats had an infinite
+hunger and thirst for good poetry. His poetical life, both in the
+receptive and productive phases of it, was intense. Poetry was meat
+and drink to him. He could even urge his friend Reynolds to talk about
+it to him, much as one might beg a trusted friend to talk about one's
+lady-love, and with the confidence that only the fitting thing would
+be spoken. 'Whenever you write, say a word or two on some passage in
+Shakespeare which may have come rather new to you,'--a sentence which
+shows his faith in the many-sidedness of the great poetry. Shakespeare
+was forever 'coming new' to _him_, and he was 'haunted' by particular
+passages. He loved to fill the cup of his imagination with the
+splendors of the best poets until the cup overflowed. 'I find I cannot
+exist without Poetry,--without eternal Poetry; half the day will not
+do,--the whole of it; I began with a little, but habit has made me a
+leviathan.' He tells Leigh Hunt, in a letter written from Margate,
+that he thought so much about poetry, and 'so long together,' that he
+could not get to sleep at night. Whether this meant in working out
+ideas of his own, or living over the thoughts of other poets, is of
+little importance; the remark shows how deeply the roots of his life
+were imbedded in poetical soil. He loved a debauch in the verse of
+masters of his art. He could intoxicate himself with Shakespeare's
+sonnets. He rioted in 'all their fine things said unconsciously.' We
+are tempted to say, by just so much as he had large reverence for
+these men, by just so much he was of them.
+
+Undoubtedly, this ability to be moved by strong imaginative work may
+be abused until it becomes a maudlin and quite disordered sentiment.
+Keats was too well balanced to be carried into appreciative excesses.
+He knew that mere yearning could not make a poet of one any more than
+mere ambition could. He understood the limits of ambition as a force
+in literature. Keats's ambition trembled in the presence of Keats's
+conception of the magnitude of the poetic office. 'I have asked myself
+so often why I should be a poet more than other men, seeing how great
+a thing it is.' Yet he had honest confidence. One cannot help liking
+him for the fine audacity with which he pronounces his own work
+good,--better even than that of a certain other great name in English
+literature; one cannot help loving him for the sweet humility with
+which he accepts the view that, after all, success or failure lies
+entirely without the range of self-choosing. There is a point of view
+from which it is folly to hold a poet responsible even for his own
+poetry, and when _Endymion_ was spoken of as 'slipshod' Keats could
+reply, 'That it is so is no fault of mine.... The Genius of Poetry
+must work out its own salvation in a man.... That which is creative
+must create itself. In _Endymion_ I leaped headlong into the sea, and
+thereby have become better acquainted with the soundings, the
+quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore,
+and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice. I was
+never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the
+greatest.'
+
+Well might a man who could write that last sentence look upon poetry
+not only as a responsible, but as a dangerous pursuit. Men who aspire
+to be poets are gamblers. In all the lotteries of the literary life
+none is so uncertain as this. A million chances that you don't win the
+prize to one chance that you do. It is a curious thing that ever so
+thoughtful and conscientious an author may not know whether he is
+making literature or merely writing verse. He conforms to all the
+canons of taste in his own day; he is devout and reverent; he shuns
+excesses of diction, and he courts originality; his verse seems to
+himself and to his unflattering friends instinct with the spirit of
+his time, but twenty years later it is old-fashioned. Keats, with all
+his feeling of certainty, stood with head uncovered before that power
+which gives poetical gifts to one, and withholds them from another.
+Above all would he avoid self-delusion in these things. 'There is no
+greater Sin after the seven deadly than to flatter one's self into an
+idea of being a great Poet.'
+
+Keats, if one may judge from a letter written to John Taylor in
+February, 1818, had little expectation that his _Endymion_ was going
+to be met with universal plaudits. He doubtless looked for fair
+treatment. He probably had no thought of being sneeringly addressed as
+'Johnny,' or of getting recommendations to return to his 'plasters,
+pills, and ointment boxes.' In fact, he looked upon the issue as
+entirely problematical. He seemed willing to take it for granted that
+in _Endymion_ he had but moved into the go-cart from the
+leading-strings. 'If _Endymion_ serves me for a pioneer, perhaps I
+ought to be content, for thank God I can read and perhaps understand
+Shakespeare to his depths; and I have, I am sure, many friends who if
+I fail will attribute any change in my life to humbleness rather than
+pride,--to a cowering under the wings of great poets rather than to
+bitterness that I am not appreciated.' And for evidence of any
+especial bitterness because of the lashing he received one will search
+the letters in vain. Keats was manly and good-humored, most of his
+morbidity being referred directly to his ill health. The trouncing he
+had at the hands of the reviewers was no more violent than the one
+administered to Tennyson by Professor Wilson. Critics, good and bad,
+can do much harm. They may terrorize a timid spirit. But a greater
+terror than the fear of the reviewers hung over the head of John
+Keats. He stood in awe of his own artistic and poetic sense. He could
+say with truth that his own domestic criticism had given him pain
+without comparison beyond what _Blackwood_ or the _Quarterly_ could
+possibly inflict. If he had had any terrible heart-burning over their
+malignancy, if he had felt that his life was poisoned, he could hardly
+have forborne some allusion to it in his letters to his brother,
+George Keats. But he is almost imperturbable. He talks of the episode
+freely, says that he has been urged to publish his _Pot of Basil_ as a
+reply to the reviewers, has no idea that he can be made ridiculous by
+abuse, notes the futility of attacks of this kind, and then, with a
+serene conviction that is irresistible, adds, 'I think I shall be
+among the English Poets after my death!'
+
+Such egoism of genius is magnificent; the more so as it appears in
+Keats because it runs parallel with deep humility in the presence of
+the masters of his art. Naturally, the masters who were in their
+graves were the ones he reverenced the most and read without stint.
+But it was by no means essential that a poet be a dead poet before
+Keats did him homage. It is impossible to think that Keats's attitude
+towards Wordsworth was other than finely appreciative, in spite of the
+fact that he applauded Reynolds's _Peter Bell_, and inquired almost
+petulantly why one should be teased with Wordsworth's 'Matthew with a
+bough of wilding in his hand.' But it is also impossible that his
+sense of humor should not have been aroused by much that he found in
+Wordsworth. It was Wordsworth he meant when he said, 'Every man has
+his speculations, but every man does not brood and peacock over them
+till he makes a false coinage and deceives himself,'--a sentence, by
+the way, quite as unconsciously funny as some of the things he laughed
+at in the works of his great contemporary.
+
+It will be pertinent to quote here two or three of the good critical
+words which Keats scattered through his letters. Emphasizing the use
+of simple means in his art, he says, 'I think that poetry should
+surprise by a fine excess, and not by singularity; it should strike
+the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost
+a remembrance.'
+
+'We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us.... Poetry should
+be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and
+does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.' Or
+as Ruskin has put the thing with respect to painting, 'Entirely
+first-rate work is so quiet and natural that there can be no dispute
+over it.'
+
+Keats appears to have been in no sense a hermit. With the exception of
+Byron, he was perhaps less of a recluse than any of his poetical
+contemporaries. With respect to society he frequently practiced total
+abstinence; but the world was amusing, and he liked it. He was fond of
+the theatre, fond of whist, fond of visiting the studios, fond of
+going to the houses of his friends. But he would run no risks; he was
+shy and he was proud. He dreaded contact with the ultra-fashionables.
+Naturally, his opportunities for such intercourse were limited, but he
+cheerfully neglected his opportunities. I doubt if he ever bewailed
+his humble origin; nevertheless, the constitution of English society
+would hardly admit of his forgetting it. He had that pardonable pride
+which will not allow a man to place himself among those who, though
+outwardly fair-spoken, offer the insult of a hostile and patronizing
+mental attitude.
+
+Most of his friendships were with men, and this is to his credit. The
+man is spiritually warped who is incapable of a deep and abiding
+friendship with one of his own sex; and to go a step farther, that man
+is utterly to be distrusted whose only friends are among women. We may
+not be prepared to accept the radical position of a certain young
+thinker, who proclaims, in season, but defiantly, that 'men are the
+idealists, after all;' yet it is easy to comprehend how one may take
+this point of view. The friendships of men are a vastly more
+interesting and poetic study than the friendships of men and women.
+This is in the nature of the case. It is the usual victory of the
+normal over the abnormal. As a rule, it is impossible for a friendship
+to exist between a man and woman, unless the man and woman in question
+be husband and wife. Then it is as rare as it is beautiful. And with
+men, the most admirable spectacle is not always that where attendant
+circumstances prompt to heroic display of friendship, for it is often
+so much easier to die than to live. But you may see young men pledging
+their mutual love and support in this difficult and adventurous quest
+of what is noblest in the art of living. Such love will not urge to a
+theatrical posing, and it can hardly find expression in words. Words
+seem to profane it. I do not say that Keats stood in such an ideal
+relation to any one of his many friends whose names appear in the
+letters. He gave of himself to them all, and he received much from
+each. No man of taste and genius could have been other than flattered
+by the way in which Keats approached him. He was charming in his
+attitude toward Haydon; and when Haydon proposed sending Keats's
+sonnet to Wordsworth, the young poet wrote, 'The Idea of your sending
+it to Wordsworth put me out of breath--you know with what Reverence I
+would send my well wishes to him.'
+
+But interesting as a chapter on Keats's friendships with men would be,
+we are bound to confess that in dramatic intensity it would grow pale
+when laid beside that fiery love passage of his life, his acquaintance
+with Fanny Brawne. The thirty-nine letters given in the fourth volume
+of Buxton Forman's edition of _Keats's Works_ tell the story of this
+affair of a poet's heart. These are the letters which Mr. William
+Watson says he has never read, and at which no consideration shall
+ever induce him to look. But Mr. Watson reflects upon people who have
+been human enough to read them when he compares such a proceeding on
+his own part (were he able to be guilty of it) to the indelicacy of
+'listening at a keyhole or spying over a wall.' This is not a just
+illustration. The man who takes upon himself the responsibility of
+being the first to open such intimate letters, and adds thereto the
+infinitely greater responsibility of publishing them in so attractive
+a form that he who runs will stop running in order to read,--such an
+editor will need to satisfy Mr. Watson that in so doing he was not
+listening at a keyhole or spying over a wall. For the general public,
+the wall is down, and the door containing the keyhole thrown open.
+Perhaps our duty is not to look. I, for one, wish that great men would
+not leave their love letters around. Nay, I wish you a better wish
+than that: it is that the perfect taste of the gentleman and scholar
+who gave us in its present form the correspondence of Carlyle and
+Emerson, the early and later letters of Carlyle, and the letters of
+Lowell might have control of the private papers of every man of genius
+whose teachings the world holds dear. He would need for this an
+indefinite lease upon life; but since I am wishing, let me wish
+largely. There is need of such wishing. Many editors have been called,
+and only two or three chosen.
+
+But why one who reads the letters of Keats to Fanny Brawne should have
+any other feeling than that of pity for a poor fellow who was so
+desperately in love as to be wretched because of it I do not see. Even
+a cynic will grant that Keats was not disgraced, since it is very
+clear that he did not yield readily to what Dr. Holmes calls the great
+passion. He had a complacent boyish superiority of attitude with
+respect to all those who are weak enough to love women. 'Nothing,' he
+says, 'strikes me so forcibly with a sense of the ridiculous as love.
+A man in love I do think cuts the sorryest figure in the world. Even
+when I know a poor fool to be really in pain about it I could burst
+out laughing in his face. His pathetic visage becomes irresistible.'
+Then he speaks of that dinner party of stutterers and squinters
+described in the _Spectator_, and says that it would please him more
+'to scrape together a party of lovers.' If this letter be genuine and
+the date of it correctly given, it was written three months after he
+had succumbed to the attractions of Fanny Brawne. Perhaps he was
+trying to brave it out, as one may laugh to conceal embarrassment.
+
+In a much earlier letter than this he hopes he shall never marry, but
+nevertheless has a good deal to say about a young lady with fine eyes
+and fine manners and a 'rich Eastern look.' He discovers that he can
+talk to her without being uncomfortable or ill at ease. 'I am too much
+occupied in admiring to be awkward or in a tremble.... She kept me
+awake one night as a tune of Mozart's might do.... I don't cry to take
+the moon home with me in my pocket, nor do I fret to leave her behind
+me.' But he was not a little touched, and found it easy to fill two
+pages on the subject of this dark beauty. She was a friend of the
+Reynolds family. She crosses the stage of the Keats drama in a very
+impressive manner, and then disappears.
+
+The most extraordinary passage to be met with in relation to the
+poet's attitude towards women is in a letter written to Benjamin
+Bailey in July, 1818. As a partial hint towards its full meaning I
+would take two phrases in _Daniel Deronda_. George Eliot says of
+Gwendolen Harleth that there was 'a certain fierceness of maidenhood
+in her,' which expression is quoted here only to emphasize the girl's
+feeling towards men as described a little later, when Rex Gascoigne
+attempted to tell her his love. Gwendolen repulsed him with a sort of
+fury that was surprising to herself. The author's interpretative
+comment is, '_The life of passion had begun negatively in her._'
+
+So one might say of Keats that the life of passion began negatively in
+him. He was conscious of a hostility of temper towards women. 'I am
+certain I have not a right feeling toward women--at this moment I am
+striving to be just to them, but I cannot.' He certainly started with
+a preposterously high ideal, for he says that when a schoolboy he
+thought a fair woman a pure goddess. And now he is disappointed at
+finding women only the equals of men. This disappointment helps to
+give rise to that antagonism which is almost inexplicable save as
+George Eliot's phrase throws light upon it. He thinks that he insults
+women by these perverse feelings of unprovoked hostility. 'Is it not
+extraordinary,' he exclaims, 'when among men I have no evil thoughts,
+no malice, no spleen; I feel free to speak or to be silent; ... I am
+free from all suspicion, and comfortable. When I am among women, I
+have evil thoughts, malice, spleen; I cannot speak or be silent; I am
+full of suspicions, and therefore listen to nothing; I am in a hurry
+to be gone.' He wonders how this trouble is to be cured. He speaks of
+it as a prejudice produced from 'a gordian complication of feelings,
+which must take time to unravel.' And then, with a good-humored,
+characteristic touch, he drops the subject, saying, 'After all, I do
+think better of women than to suppose they care whether Mister John
+Keats, five feet high, likes them or not.'
+
+Three or four months after writing these words he must have begun his
+friendly relations with the Brawne family. This would be in October or
+November, 1818. Keats's description of Fanny is hardly flattering, and
+not even vivid. What is one to make of the colorless expression 'a
+fine style of countenance of the lengthened sort'? But she was fair to
+him, and any beauty beyond that would have been superfluous. We look
+at the silhouette and sigh in vain for trace of the loveliness which
+ensnared Keats. But if our daguerreotypes of forty years ago can so
+entirely fail of giving one line of that which in its day passed for
+dazzling beauty, let us not be unreasonable in our demands upon the
+artistic capabilities of a silhouette. Not infrequently is it true
+that the style of dress seems to disfigure. But we have learned, in
+course of experience, that pretty women manage to be pretty, however
+much fashion, with their cordial help, disguises them.
+
+It is easy to see from the letters that Keats was a difficult lover.
+Hard to please at the best, his two sicknesses, one of body and one of
+heart, made him whimsical. Nothing less than a woman of genius could
+possibly have managed him. He was jealous, perhaps quite unreasonably
+so. Fanny Brawne was young, a bit coquettish, buoyant, and he
+misinterpreted her vivacity. She liked what is commonly called 'the
+world,' and so did he when he was well; but looking through the
+discolored glass of ill health, all nature was out of harmony. For
+these reasons it happens that the letters at times come very near to
+being documents in love-madness. Many a line in them gives sharp pain,
+as a record of heart-suffering must always do. You may read Richard
+Steele's love letters for pleasure, and have it. The love letters of
+Keats scorch and sting; and the worst of it is that you cannot avoid
+reflecting upon the transitory character of such a passion. Withering
+young love like this does not last. It may burn itself out, or, what
+is quite as likely, it may become sober and rational. But in its
+earlier maddened state it cannot possibly last; a man would die under
+it. Men as a rule do not so die, for the race of the Azra is nearly
+extinct.
+
+These Brawne letters, however, are not without their bright side; and
+it is wonderful to see how Keats's elastic nature would rebound the
+instant that the pressure of the disease relaxed. He is at times
+almost gay. The singing of a thrush prompts him to talk in his natural
+epistolary voice: 'There's the Thrush again--I can't afford it--he'll
+run me up a pretty Bill for Music--besides he ought to know I deal at
+Clementi's.' And in the letter which he wrote to Mrs. Brawne from
+Naples is a touch of the old bantering Keats when he says that 'it's
+misery to have an intellect in splints.' He was never strong enough to
+write again to Fanny, or even to read her letters.
+
+I should like to close this reading with a few sentences from a letter
+written to Reynolds in February, 1818. Keats says: 'I had an idea that
+a man might pass a very pleasant life in this manner--let him on a
+certain day read a certain Page of full Poesy or distilled Prose, and
+let him wander with it, and muse upon it, ... and prophesy upon it,
+and dream upon it, until it becomes stale--but when will it do so?
+Never! When Man has arrived at a certain ripeness in intellect any one
+grand and spiritual passage serves him as a starting post towards all
+the "two-and-thirty Palaces." How happy is such a voyage of
+conception, what delicious diligent Indolence!... Nor will this
+sparing touch of noble Books be any irreverence to their Writers--for
+perhaps the honors paid by Man to Man are trifles in comparison to the
+Benefit done by great Works to the Spirit and pulse of good by their
+mere passive existence.'
+
+May we not say that the final test of great literature is that it be
+able to be read in the manner here indicated? As Keats read, so did he
+write. His own work was
+
+              'accomplished in repose
+    Too great for haste, too high for rivalry.'
+
+
+
+
+AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST
+
+
+The fathers in English literature were not a little given to writing
+books which they called 'anatomies.' Thomas Nash, for example, wrote
+an _Anatomy of Absurdities_, and Stubbes an _Anatomy of Abuses_.
+Greene, the novelist, entitled one of his romances _Arbasto, the
+Anatomy of Fortune_. The most famous book which bears a title of this
+kind is the _Anatomy of Melancholy_, by Robert Burton. It is notable,
+first, for its inordinate length; second, for its readableness,
+considering the length and the depth of it; third, for its prodigal
+and barbaric display of learning; and last, because it is said to have
+had the effect of making the most indolent man of letters of the
+eighteenth century get up betimes in the morning. Why Dr. Johnson
+needed to get up in order to read the _Anatomy of Melancholy_ will
+always be an enigma to some. Perhaps he did not get up. Perhaps he
+merely sat up and reached for the book, which would have been placed
+conveniently near the bed. For the virtue of the act resided in the
+circumstance of his being awake and reading a good book two hours
+ahead of his wonted time for beginning his day. If he colored his
+remark so as to make us think he got up and dressed before reading, he
+may be forgiven. It was innocently spoken. Just as a man who lives in
+one room will somehow involuntarily fall into the habit of speaking of
+that one room in the plural, so the doctor added a touch which would
+render him heroic in the eyes of those who knew him. I should like a
+pictorial book-plate representing Dr. Johnson, in gown and nightcap,
+sitting up in bed reading the _Anatomy of Melancholy_, with Hodge, the
+cat, curled up contentedly at his feet.
+
+It would be interesting to know whether Johnson ever read, in bed or
+out, a book called _Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit_. It was published in
+the spring of 1579 by Gabriel Cawood, 'dwelling in Paules Churchyard,'
+and was followed one year later by a second part, _Euphues and his
+England_. These books were the work of John Lyly, a young Oxford
+Master of Arts. According to the easy orthography of that time (if the
+word orthography may be applied to a practice by virtue of which every
+man spelled as seemed right in his own eyes), Lyly's name is found in
+at least six forms: Lilye, Lylie, Lilly, Lyllie, Lyly, and Lylly.
+Remembering the willingness of _i_ and _y_ to bear one another's
+burdens, we may still exclaim, with Dr. Ingleby, 'Great is the mystery
+of archaic spelling!' Great indeed when a man sometimes had more suits
+of letters to his name than suits of clothes to his back. That the
+name of this young author was pronounced as was the name of the
+flower, lily, seems the obvious inference from Henry Upchear's verses,
+which contain punning allusions to Lyly and Robert Greene:--
+
+    'Of all the flowers a Lillie once I lov'd
+    Whose laboring beautie brancht itself abroad,' etc.
+
+Original editions of the _Anatomy of Wit_ and its fellow are very
+rare. Probably there is not a copy of either book in the United
+States. This statement is ventured in good faith, and may have the
+effect of bringing to light a hitherto neglected copy.[1] Strange it
+is that princely collectors of yore appear not to have cared for
+_Euphues_. Surely one would not venture to affirm that John, Duke of
+Roxburghe, might not have had it if he had wanted it. The book is not
+to be found in his sale catalogue; he had Lyly's plays in quarto,
+seven of them each marked 'rare,' and he had two copies of a
+well-known book called _Euphues Golden Legacie_, written by Thomas
+Nash. The Perkins Sale catalogue shows neither of Lyly's novels. List
+after list of the spoils of mighty book-hunters has only a blank where
+the _Anatomy of Wit_ ought to be. From this we may argue great
+scarcity, or great indifference, or both. In the compact little
+reprint made by Professor Arber one may read this moral tale, which
+was fashionable when Shakespeare was a youth of sixteen. For
+convenience it will be advisable to speak of it as a single work in
+two parts, for such it practically is.
+
+
+    [1] The writer of this paper once sent to that fine scholar
+        and gracious gentleman, Professor Edward Arber, to inquire
+        whether in his opinion one might hope to buy at a modest
+        price a copy of either the first or the second part of
+        _Euphues_. Professor Arber's reply was amusingly emphatic:
+        'You might as well try to purchase one of Mahomet's old
+        slippers.' But in July of 1896 there were four copies of
+        this old novel on sale at one New York bookstore. One of
+        the copies was of great beauty, consisting of the two
+        parts of the story bound up together in a really sumptuous
+        fashion. The price was not large as prices of such books
+        go, but on the other hand ''a was not small.'
+
+To pronounce upon this romance is not easy. We read a dozen or two of
+pages, and say, 'This is very fantastical humours.' We read further,
+and are tempted to follow Sir Hugh to the extent of declaring, 'This
+is lunatics.' One may venture the not profound remark that it takes
+all sorts of books to make a literature. _Euphues_ is one of the books
+that would prompt to that very remark. For he who first said that it
+takes all sorts of people to make a world was markedly impressed with
+the differences between those people and himself. He had in mind
+eccentric folk, types which deviate from the normal and the sane. So
+_Euphues_ is a very Malvolio among books, cross-gartered and wreathed
+as to its countenance with set smiles. The curious in literary history
+will always enjoy such a production. The verdict of that part of the
+reading world which keeps a book alive by calling for fresh copies of
+it after the old copies are worn out is against _Euphues_. It had a
+vivacious existence between 1579 and 1636, and then went into a
+literary retirement lasting two hundred and thirty-six years. When it
+again came before the public it was introduced as 'a great
+bibliographical rarity.' Its fatal old-fashionedness hangs like a
+millstone about its neck. In the poems of Chaucer and the dramas of
+Shakespeare are a thousand touches which make the reader feel that
+Chaucer and Shakespeare are his contemporaries, that they have written
+in his own time, and published but yesterday. Read _Euphues_, and you
+will say to yourself, 'That book must have been written three hundred
+years ago, and it looks its age.' Yet it has its virtues. One may not
+say of it, as Johnson said of the _Rehearsal_, that it 'has not wit
+enough to keep it sweet.' Neither may he, upon second thought,
+conclude that 'it has not vitality enough to preserve it from
+putrefaction.' It has, indeed, a bottom of good sense; and so had
+Malvolio. It is filled from end to beginning with wit, or with what
+passed for wit among many readers of that day. Often the wit is of a
+tawdry and spectacular sort,--mere verbal wit, the use of a given word
+not because it is the best word, the most fitting word, but because
+the author wants a word beginning with the letter G, or the letter M,
+or the letter F, as the case may be. On the second page of Greene's
+_Arbasto_ is this sentence: 'He did not so much as vouchsafe to give
+an _eare_ to my _parle_, or an _eye_ to my _person_.' Greene learned
+this trick from Lyly, who was a master of the art. The sentence
+represents one of the common forms in _Euphues_, such as this: 'To the
+stomach _quatted_ with _dainties_ all _delicates_ seem _queasie_.'
+Sometimes the balance is preserved by three words on a side. For
+example, the companions whom Euphues found in Naples practiced arts
+'whereby they might either _soake_ his _purse_ to reape _commodotie_,
+or _sooth_ his _person_ to winne _credite_.' Other illustrations are
+these: I can neither '_remember_ our _miseries_ without _griefe_, nor
+_redresse_ our _mishaps_ without _grones_.' 'If the _wasting_ of our
+_money_ might not _dehort_ us, yet the _wounding_ of our _mindes_
+should _deterre_ us.' This next sentence, with its combination of K
+sounds, clatters like a pair of castanets: 'Though Curio bee as hot as
+a toast, yet Euphues is as cold as a clocke, though hee bee a cocke of
+the game, yet Euphues is content to bee craven and crye creake.'
+
+Excess of alliteration is the most obvious feature of Lyly's style.
+That style has been carefully analyzed by those who are learned in
+such things. The study is interesting, with its talk of alliteration
+and transverse alliteration, antithesis, climax, and assonance. In
+truth, one does not know which to admire the more, the ingenuity of
+the man who constructed the book, or the ingenuity of the scholars who
+have explained how he did it. Between Lyly on the one hand, and the
+grammarians on the other, the reader is almost tempted to ask if this
+be literature or mathematics. Whether Lyly got his style from Pettie
+or Guevara is an important question, but he made it emphatically his
+own, and it will never be called by any other name than Euphuism. The
+making of a book on this plan is largely the result of astonishing
+mental gymnastics. It commands respect in no small degree, because
+Lyly was able to keep it up so long. To walk from New York to Albany,
+as did the venerable Weston not so very long since, is a great test of
+human endurance. But walking is the employment of one's legs and body
+in God's appointed way of getting over the ground. Suppose a man were
+to undertake to hop on one leg from New York to Albany, the utility or
+the æsthetic value of the performance would be less obvious. The most
+successful artist in hopping could hardly expect applause from the
+right-minded. He would excite attention because he was able to hop so
+far, and not because he was the exponent of a praiseworthy method of
+locomotion. Lyly gained eminence by doing to a greater extent than any
+man a thing that was not worth doing at all. One is more astonished at
+Lyly's power of endurance as author than at his own power of endurance
+as reader. For the volume is actually readable even at this day. Did
+Lyly not grow wearied of perpetually riding these alliterative
+trick-ponies? Apparently not. The book is 'executed' with a vivacity,
+a dash, a 'go,' that will captivate any reader who is willing to meet
+the author halfway. _Euphues_ became the rage, and its literary style
+the fashion. How or why must be left to him to explain who can tell
+why sleeves grow small and then grow big, why skirts are at one time
+only two and a half yards around and at another time five and a half
+or eight yards around. An Elizabethan gentleman might be too poor to
+dress well, but he would squander his last penny in getting his ruff
+starched. Lyly's style bristles with extravagances of the starched
+ruff sort, which only serve to call attention to the intellectual
+deficiencies in the matter of doublet and hose.
+
+Of plot or story there is but little. The hero, Euphues, who gives the
+title to the romance, is a young, clever, and rich Athenian. He visits
+Naples, where his money and wit attract many to his side. By his
+careless, pleasure-seeking mode of life he wakens the fatherly
+interest of a wise old gentleman, Eubulus, who calls upon him to warn
+him of his danger. The conversation between the two is the first and
+not the least amusing illustration of the courtly verbal fencing with
+which the book is filled. The advice of the old man only provokes
+Euphues into making the sophistical plea that his style of living is
+right because nature prompts him to it; and he leaves Eubulus 'in a
+great quandary' and in tears. Nevertheless, the old gentleman has the
+righteous energy which prompts him to say to the departing Euphues,
+already out of hearing, 'Seeing thou wilt not buy counsel at the first
+hand good cheap, thou shalt buy repentance at the second hand, at such
+unreasonable rate, that thou wilt curse thy hard pennyworth, and ban
+thy hard heart.' Euphues takes to himself a new sworn brother, one
+Philautus, who carries him to visit his lady-love, Lucilla. Lucilla is
+rude at first, but becomes enamored of Euphues's conversational power,
+and finally of himself. In fact, she unceremoniously throws over her
+former lover, and tells her father that she will either marry Euphues
+or else lead apes in hell. This causes a break in the friendship
+between Euphues and Philautus, and there is an exchange of formidably
+worded letters, in which Philautus reminds Euphues that all Greeks are
+liars, and Euphues quotes Euripides to the effect that all is lawful
+in love. Lucilla, who is fickle, suddenly dismisses her new cavalier
+for yet a third, while Euphues and Philautus, in the light of their
+common misfortune, fall upon each other's necks and are reconciled.
+Both profess themselves to have been fools, while Euphues, as the
+greater and more recent fool, composes a pamphlet against love. This
+he calls a 'cooling-card.' It is addressed primarily to Philautus, but
+contains general advice for 'all fond lovers.' Euphues's own cure was
+radical, for he says, 'Now do I give a farewell to the world, meaning
+rather to macerate myself with melancholy, than pine in folly, rather
+choosing to die in my study amidst my books than to court it in Italy
+in the company of ladies.' He returns to Athens, applies himself to
+the study of philosophy, becomes public reader in the University, and,
+as crowning evidence that he has finished sowing his wild oats,
+produces three volumes of lectures. Realizing how much of his own
+youth has been wasted, he writes a pamphlet on the education of the
+young, a dialogue with an atheist, and these, with a bundle of
+letters, make up the first part of the _Anatomy of Wit_. From one of
+the letters we learn that Lucilla was as frail as she was beautiful,
+and that she died in evil report. The story, including the diatribe
+against love, is about as long as _The Vicar of Wakefield_. It begins
+as a romance and ends as a sermon.
+
+The continuation of the novel, _Euphues and his England_, is a little
+over a third longer than Part One. The two friends carry out their
+project of visiting England. After a wearisome voyage they reach
+Dover, view the cliffs and the castle, and then proceed to Canterbury.
+Between Canterbury and London they stop for a while with a 'comely
+olde gentleman,' Fidus, who keeps bees and tells good stories. He also
+gives sound advice as to the way in which strangers should conduct
+themselves. A lively bit of writing is the account which Fidus gives
+of his commonwealth of bees. It is not according to Lubbock, but is
+none the less amusing. In London the two travelers become favorites at
+the court. Philautus falls in love, to the great annoyance of Euphues,
+who argues mightily with him against such folly. The two gentlemen
+expend vast resources of stationery and language upon the subject.
+They quarrel violently, and Euphues becomes so irritated that he must
+needs go and rent new lodgings, 'which by good friends he quickly got,
+and there fell to his _Pater noster_, where awhile,' says Lyly
+innocently, 'I will not trouble him in his prayers.' They are
+reconciled later, and Philautus obtains permission to love; but he has
+discovered in the mean time that the lady will not have him. The
+account of his passion, how it 'boiled and bubbled,' of his visit to
+the soothsayer to purchase love charms, his stately declamations to
+Camilla and her elaborate replies to him, of his love letter concealed
+in a pomegranate, and her answer stitched into a copy of Petrarch,--is
+all very lively reading, much more so than that dreary love-making
+between Pyrocles and Philoclea, or between any other pair of the many
+exceedingly tiresome folk in Sidney's _Arcadia_. Grant that it is
+deliciously absurd. It is not to be supposed that a clever
+eighteen-year-old girl, replying to a declaration of love, will talk
+in the language of a trained nurse, and say: 'Green sores are to be
+dressed roughly lest they fester, tettars are to be drawn in the
+beginning lest they spread, Ringworms to be anointed when they first
+appear lest they compass the whole body, and the assaults of love to
+be beaten back at the first siege lest they undermine at the second.'
+Was ever suitor in this fashion rejected! It makes one think of some
+of the passages in the _History of John Buncle_, where the hero pours
+out a torrent of passionate phrases, and the 'glorious' Miss Noel, in
+reply, begs that they may take up some rational topic of conversation;
+for example, what is _his_ view of that opinion which ascribes
+'primævity and sacred prerogatives' to the Hebrew language.
+
+But Philautus does not break his heart over Camilla's rejection. He is
+consoled with the love of another fair maiden, marries her, and
+settles in England. Euphues goes back to Athens, and presently retires
+to the country, where he follows the calling of one whose profession
+is melancholy. Like most hermits of culture, he leaves his address
+with his banker. We assume this, for he was very rich; it is not
+difficult to be a hermit on a large income. The book closes with a
+section called 'Euphues Glasse for Europe,' a thirty-page panegyric on
+England and the Queen.
+
+They say that this novel was very popular, and certain causes of its
+popularity are not difficult to come at. A large measure of the
+success that _Euphues_ had is due to the commonplaceness of its
+observations. It abounds in proverbs and copy-book wisdom. In this
+respect it is as homely as an almanac. John Lyly had a great store of
+'miscellany thoughts,' and he cheerfully parted with them. His book
+succeeded as Tupper's _Proverbial Philosophy_ and Watts' _On the Mind_
+succeeded. People believed that they were getting ideas, and people
+like what they suppose to be ideas if no great effort is required in
+the getting of them. It is astonishing how often the world needs to be
+advised of the brevity of time. Yet every person who can wade in the
+shallows of his own mind and not wet his shoe-tops finds a sweet
+melancholy and a stimulating freshness in the thought that time is
+short. John Lyly said, 'There is nothing more swifter than time,
+nothing more sweeter,'--and countless Elizabethan gentlemen and ladies
+underscored that sentence, or transferred it to their commonplace
+books,--if they had such painful aids to culture,--and were comforted
+and edified by the discovery that brilliant John Lyly had made. This
+glib command of the matter-of-course, with a ready use of the proverb
+and the 'old said saw,' is a marked characteristic of the work. It
+emphasizes the youth of its author. We learn what could not have been
+new even in 1579, that 'in misery it is a great comfort to have a
+companion;' that 'a new broom sweepeth clean;' that 'delays breed
+dangers;' that 'nothing is so perilous as procrastination;' that 'a
+burnt child dreadeth the fire;' that it is well not to make
+comparisons 'lest comparisons should seem odious;' that 'it is too
+late to shut the stable door when the steed is stolen;' that 'many
+things fall between the cup and the lip;' and that 'marriages are made
+in heaven, though consummated on earth.' With these old friends come
+others, not altogether familiar of countenance, and quaintly archaic
+in their dress: 'It must be a wily mouse that shall breed in the cat's
+ear;' 'It is a mad hare that will be caught with a tabor, and a
+foolish bird that stayeth the laying salt on her tail, and a blind
+goose that cometh to the fox's sermon.' Lyly would sometimes translate
+a proverb; he does not tell us that fine words butter no parsnips, but
+says, 'Fair words fat few,'--which is delightfully alliterative, but
+hardly to be accounted an improvement. Expressions that are
+surprisingly modern turn up now and then. One American street urchin
+taunts another by telling him that he doesn't know enough to come in
+when it rains. The saying is at least three hundred years old, for
+Lyly says, in a dyspeptic moment, 'So much wit is sufficient for a
+woman as when she is in the rain can warn her to come out of it.'
+
+Another cause of the popularity of _Euphues_ is its sermonizing. The
+world loves to hear good advice. The world is not nervously anxious to
+follow the advice, but it understands the edification that comes by
+preaching. With many persons, to have heard a sermon is almost
+equivalent to having practiced the virtues taught in the sermon.
+Churches are generally accepted as evidences of civilization. A man
+who is exploiting the interests of a new Western town will invariably
+tell you that it has so many churches. Also, an opera-house. The
+English world above all other worlds loves to hear good advice.
+England is the natural home of the sermon. Jusserand notes, almost
+with wonder, that in the annual statistics of the London publishers
+the highest numbers indicate the output of sermons and theological
+works. Then come novels. John Lyly was ingenious; he combined good
+advice and storytelling. Not skillfully, hiding the sermon amid lively
+talk and adventure, but blazoning the fact that he was going to
+moralize as long as he would. He shows no timidity, even declares upon
+one of his title-pages that in this volume 'there is small offense by
+lightness given to the wise, and less occasion of looseness proffered
+to the wanton.' Such courage in this day would be apt seriously to
+injure the sale of a novel. Did not Ruskin declare that Miss Edgeworth
+had made virtue so obnoxious that since her time one hardly dared
+express the slightest bias in favor of the Ten Commandments? Lyly knew
+the public for which he acted as literary caterer. They liked sermons,
+and sermons they should have. Nearly every character in the book
+preaches, and Euphues is the most gifted of them all. Even that old
+gentleman of Naples who came first to Euphues because his heart bled
+to see so noble a youth given to loose living has the tables turned
+upon him, for Euphues preaches to the preacher upon the sovereign duty
+of resignation to the will of God.
+
+A noteworthy characteristic is the frequency of Lyly's classical
+allusions. If the only definition of pedantry be 'vain and
+ostentatious display of learning,' I question if we may dismiss Lyly's
+wealth of classical lore with the word 'pedantry.' He was fresh from
+his university life. If he studied at all when he was at Oxford, he
+must have studied Latin and Greek, for after these literatures little
+else was studied. Young men and their staid tutors were compelled to
+know ancient history and mythology. Like Heine, they may have taken a
+'real delight in the mob of gods and goddesses who ran so jolly naked
+about the world.' In the first three pages of the _Anatomy of Wit_
+there are twenty classical names, ten of them coupled each with an
+allusion. Nobody begins a speech without a reference of this nature
+within calling distance. Euphues and Philautus fill their talk with
+evidences of a classical training. The ladies are provided with apt
+remarks drawn from the experiences of Helen, of Cornelia, of Venus, of
+Diana, and Vesta. Even the master of the ship which conveyed Euphues
+from Naples to England declaims about Ulysses and Julius Cæsar. This
+naturally destroys all dramatic effect. Everybody speaks Euphuism,
+though classical allusion alone is not essentially Euphuistic. John
+Lyly would be the last man to merit any portion of that fine praise
+bestowed by Hazlitt upon Shakespeare when he said that Shakespeare's
+genius 'consisted in the faculty of transforming himself at will into
+whatever he chose.' Lyly's genius was the opposite of this; it
+consisted in the faculty of transforming everybody into a
+reduplication of himself. There is no change in style when the
+narrative parts end and the dialogue begins. All the persons of the
+drama utter one strange tongue. They are no better than the characters
+in a Punch and Judy show, where one concealed manipulator furnishes
+voice for each of the figures. But in Lyly's novel there is not even
+an attempt at the most rudimentary ventriloquism.
+
+What makes the book still less a reflection of life is that the
+speakers indulge in interminably long harangues. No man (unless he
+were a Coleridge) would be tolerated who talked in society at such
+inordinate length. When the characters can't talk to one another they
+retire to their chambers and declaim to themselves. They polish their
+language with the same care, open the classical dictionary, and have
+at themselves in good set terms. Philautus, inflamed with love of
+Camilla, goes to his room and pronounces a ten-minute discourse on the
+pangs of love, having only himself for auditor. They are amazingly
+patient under the verbal inflictions of one another. Euphues, angry
+with Philautus for having allowed himself to fall in love, takes him
+to task in a single speech containing four thousand words. If Lyly had
+set out with the end in view of constructing a story by putting into
+it alone 'what is not life,' his product would have been what we find
+it now. One could easily believe the whole affair to have been
+intended for a tremendous joke were it not that the tone is so
+serious. We are accustomed to think of youth as light-hearted: but
+look at a serious child,--there is nothing more serious in the world.
+Lyly was twenty-six years when he first published. Much of the
+seriousness in his romance is the burden of twenty-six years'
+experience of life, a burden greater perhaps than he ever afterward
+carried.
+
+Being, as we take it, an unmarried man, Lyly gives directions for
+managing a wife. He believes in the wholesome doctrine that a man
+should select his own wife. 'Made marriages by friends' are dangerous.
+'I had as lief another should take measure by his back of my apparel
+as appoint what wife I shall have by his mind.' He prefers in a wife
+'beauty before riches, and virtue before blood.' He holds to the
+radical English doctrine of wifely submission; there is no swerving
+from the position that the man is the woman's 'earthly master,'[2] but
+in taming a wife no violence is to be employed. Wives are to be
+subdued with kindness. 'If their husbands with great threatenings,
+with jars, with brawls, seek to make them tractable, or bend their
+knees, the more stiff they make them in the joints, the oftener they
+go about by force to rule them, the more froward they find them; but
+using mild words, gentle persuasions, familiar counsel, entreaty,
+submission, they shall not only make them to bow their knees, but to
+hold up their hands, not only cause them to honor them, but to stand
+in awe of them.' By such methods will that supremest good of an
+English home be brought about, namely, that the wife shall stand in
+awe of her husband.
+
+    [2] Lady Burton's Dedication of her husband's
+        biography,--'To my earthly master,' etc.
+
+The young author admits that some wives have the domineering instinct,
+and that way danger lies. A man must look out for himself. If he is
+not to make a slave of his wife, he is also not to be too submissive;
+'that will cause her to disdain thee.' Moreover, he must have an eye
+to the expenditure. She may keep the keys, but he will control the
+pocket-book. The model wife in Ecclesiastes had greater privileges;
+she could not only consider a piece of ground, but she could buy it if
+she liked it. Not so this well-trained wife of Lyly's novel. 'Let all
+the keys hang at her girdle, but the purse at thine, so shalt thou
+know what thou dost spend, and how she can spare.' But in setting
+forth his theory for being happy though married, Lyly, methinks,
+preaches a dangerous doctrine in this respect: he hints at the
+possibility of a man's wanting, in vulgar parlance, to go on a spree,
+expresses no question as to the propriety of his so doing, but says
+that if a man does let himself loose in this fashion his wife must not
+know it. 'Imitate the kings of Persia, who when they were given to
+riot kept no company with their wives, but when they used good order
+had their queens even at the table.' In short, the wife was to
+duplicate the moods of her husband. 'Thou must be a glass to thy wife,
+for in thy face must she see her own; for if when thou laughest she
+weep, when thou mournest she giggle, the one is a manifest sign she
+delighteth in others, the other a token she despiseth thee.' John Lyly
+was a wise youth. He struck the keynote of the mode in which most
+incompatible marriages are played when he said that it was a bad sign
+if one's wife giggled when one was disposed to be melancholy.
+
+An interesting study is the author's attitude toward foreign travel.
+It would appear to have been the fashion of the time to indulge in
+much invective against foreign travel, but nevertheless--to travel.
+Many men believed with young Valentine that 'home keeping youth have
+ever homely wits,' while others were rather of Ascham's mind when he
+said, 'I was once in Italy, but I thank God my stay there was only
+nine days.' Lyly came of a nation of travelers. Then as now it was
+true that there was no accessible spot of the globe upon which the
+Englishman had not set his foot. Nomadic England went abroad;
+sedentary England stayed at home to rail at him for so doing. Aside
+from that prejudice which declared that all foreigners were fools,
+there was a well-founded objection to the sort of traveling usually
+described as seeing the world. Young men went upon the continent to
+see questionable forms of pleasure, perhaps to practice them. Whether
+justly or not, common report named Italy as the higher school of
+pleasurable vices, and Naples as the city where one's doctorate was to
+be obtained. Gluttony and licentiousness are the sins of Naples.
+Eubulus tells Euphues that in that city are those who 'sleep with meat
+in their mouths, with sin in their hearts, and with shame in their
+houses.' There is no limit to the inconveniences of traveling. 'Thou
+must have the back of an ass to bear all, and the snout of a swine to
+say nothing.... Travelers must sleep with their eyes open lest they be
+slain in their beds, and wake with their eyes shut lest they be
+suspected by their looks.' Journeys by the fireside are better. 'If
+thou covet to travel strange countries, search the maps, there shalt
+thou see much with great pleasure and small pains, if to be conversant
+in all courts, read histories, where thou shalt understand both what
+the men have been and what their manners are, and methinketh there
+must be much delight where there is no danger.' Perhaps Lyly intended
+to condemn traveling with character unformed. A boy returned with more
+vices than he went forth with pence, and was able to sin both by
+experience and authority. Lest he should be thought to speak with
+uncertain voice upon this matter Lyly gives Euphues a story to tell in
+which the chief character describes the effect of traveling upon
+himself. 'There was no crime so barbarous, no murder so bloody, no
+oath so blasphemous, no vice so execrable, but that I could readily
+recite where I learned it, and by rote repeat the peculiar crime of
+every particular country, city, town, village, house, or chamber.'
+Here, indeed, is no lack of plain speech.
+
+In the section called 'Euphues and his Ephoebus' twenty-nine pages are
+devoted to the question of the education of youth. It is largely taken
+from Plutarch. Some of the points are these: that a mother shall
+herself nurse her child, that the child shall be early framed to
+manners, 'for as the steele is imprinted in the soft waxe, so learning
+is engraven in ye minde of an young Impe.' He is not to hear 'fonde
+fables or filthy tales.' He is to learn to pronounce distinctly and to
+be kept from 'barbarous talk,' that is, no dialect and no slang. He is
+to become expert in martial affairs, in shooting and darting, and he
+must hunt and hawk for his 'honest recreation.' If he will not study,
+he is not to be 'scourged with stripes, but threatened with words, not
+_dulled with blows_, like servants, the which, the more they are
+beaten the better they bear it, and the less they care for it.' In
+taking this position Lyly is said to be only following Ascham. Ascham
+was not the first in his own time to preach such doctrine. Forty years
+before the publication of _The Schoolmaster_, Sir Thomas Elyot, in his
+book called _The Governour_, raised his voice against the barbarity of
+teachers 'by whom the wits of children be dulled,'--almost the very
+words of John Lyly.
+
+_Euphues_, besides being a treatise on love and education, is a sort
+of Tudor tract upon animated nature. It should be a source of joy
+unspeakable to the general reader if only for what it teaches him in
+the way of natural history. How much of what is most gravely stated
+here did John Lyly actually believe? It is easy to grant so orthodox a
+statement of physical fact as that 'the Sunne doth harden the durte,
+and melte the waxe;' but ere the sentence be finished, the author
+calls upon us to believe that 'Perfumes doth refresh the Dove and kill
+the Betill.' The same reckless extravagance of remark is to be noted
+whenever bird, beast, or reptile is mentioned. The crocodile of
+Shakespeare's time must have been a very contortionist among beasts,
+for, says Lyly, 'when one approacheth neere unto him, [he] gathereth
+up himselfe into the roundnesse of a ball, but running from him,
+stretcheth himselfe into the length of a tree.' Perhaps the fame of
+this creature's powers grew in the transmission of the narrative from
+the banks of the Nile to the banks of the Thames. The ostrich was
+human in its vanity according to Lyly; men and women sometimes pull
+out their white hairs, but 'the Estritch, that taketh the greatest
+pride in her feathers, picketh some of the worst out and burneth
+them.' Nay, more than that, being in 'great haste she pricketh none
+but hirselfe which causeth hir to runne when she would rest.' We shall
+presently expect to hear that ostriches wear boots by the straps of
+which they lift themselves over ten-foot woven-wire fences. But Lyly
+used the conventional natural history that was at hand, and troubled
+himself in no respect to inquire about its truth or falsity.
+
+There is yet another cause of the popularity of this book in its own
+time, which has been too little emphasized. It is that trumpet blast
+of patriotism with which the volume ends. We feel, as we read the
+thirty pages devoted to the praise of England and the Queen, that this
+is right, fitting, artistic, and we hope that it is tolerably sincere.
+Flattery came easily to men in those days, and there was small hope of
+advancement for one who did not master the art. But there is a glow of
+earnestness in these paragraphs rather convincing to the skeptic. Nor
+would the book be complete without this eulogy. We have had everything
+else; a story for who wanted a story, theories upon the education of
+children, a body of mythological divinity, a discussion of methods of
+public speaking, advice for men who are about to marry, a theological
+sparring match, in which a man of straw is set up to be knocked down,
+and _is_ knocked down, a thousand illustrations of wit and curious
+reading, and now, as a thing that all men could understand, the author
+tells Englishmen of their own good fortune in being Englishmen, and is
+finely outspoken in praise of what he calls 'the blessed Island.'
+
+This is an old-fashioned vein, to be sure,--the _ad captandum_ trick
+of a popular orator bent upon making a success. It is not looked upon
+in all places with approval. 'Our unrivaled prosperity' was a phrase
+which greatly irritated Matthew Arnold. Here in America, are we not
+taught by a highly fastidious journal that we may be patriotic if we
+choose, but we must be careful how we let people know it? We mustn't
+make a fuss about it. We mustn't be blatant. The star-spangled banner
+on the public schools is at best a cheap and vulgar expression of
+patriotism. But somehow even this sort of patriotism goes with the
+people, and perhaps these instincts of the common folk are not
+entirely to be despised. Many a reader of _Euphues_, who cared but
+little for its elaborated style, who was not moved by its orthodoxy,
+who didn't read books simply because they were fashionable, must have
+felt his pulse stirred by Lyly's chant of England's greatness. For
+Euphues is John Lyly, and John Lyly's creed was substantially that of
+the well-known hero of a now forgotten comic opera, 'I am an
+Englishman.'
+
+In the thin disguise of the chief character of his story the author
+describes the happy island, its brave gentlemen and rich merchants,
+its fair ladies and its noble Queen. The glories of London, which he
+calls the storehouse and mart of all Europe, and the excellence of
+English universities, 'out of which do daily proceed men of great
+wisdom,' are alike celebrated. England's material wealth in mines and
+quarries is amply set forth, also the fine qualities of the breed of
+cattle, and the virtues of English spaniels, hounds, and mastiffs; for
+these constitute a sort of good that all could appreciate. He is
+satirical at the expense of his countrymen's dress,--'there is nothing
+in England more constant than the inconstancie of attire,'--but
+praises their silence and gravity at their meals. They have wise
+ministers in the court, and devout guardians of the true religion and
+of the church. 'O thrice happy England, where such councilors are,
+where such people live, where such virtue springeth.'
+
+In the paragraphs relating to the queen, Lyly grows positively
+eloquent. He praises her matchless beauty, her mercy, patience, and
+moderation, and emphasizes the fact of her virginity to a degree that
+would have satisfied the imperial votaress herself if but once she had
+considered her admirer's words: 'O fortunate England that hath such a
+Queen; ungratefull, if thou pray not for her; wicked, if thou do not
+love her; miserable, if thou lose her.' He calls down Heaven's
+blessings upon her that she may be 'triumphant in victories like the
+Palm tree, fruitful in her age like the Vine, in all ages prosperous,
+to all men gracious, in all places glorious: so that there be no end
+of her praise, until the end of all flesh.'
+
+With passages such as these, this interesting book draws to a
+conclusion. A most singular and original book, worthy to be read,
+unless, indeed, the reading of these out-of-the-way volumes were found
+to encroach upon time belonging by right of eminent intellectual
+domain to Chaucer and to Shakespeare, to Spenser and to Milton. That
+_Euphues_ is in no exact sense a novel admits of little question. It
+is also a brilliant illustration of how not to write English.
+Nevertheless it is very amusing, and its disappearance would be a
+misfortune, since it would eclipse the innocent gayety of many a man
+who loves to bask in that golden sunshine which streams from the pages
+of old English books.
+
+
+
+
+THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FAIR-MINDED MAN
+
+
+It is by no means necessary that one be a man of letters in order to
+write a good book. Some very admirable books have been written by men
+who gave no especial thought to literature as an art. They wrote
+because they were so fortunate as to find themselves in possession of
+ideas, and not because they had determined to become authors.
+Literature as such implies sophistication, and people who devote
+themselves to literature do so from a variety of motives. But these
+writers of whom I now speak have a less complex thought back of their
+work. They do not, for example, propose pleasure to the reader as an
+object in writing. Their aim is single. They recount an experience, or
+plead a cause. Literature with them is always a means to an end. They
+are like pedestrians who never look upon walking as other than a
+rational process for reaching a given place. It does not occur to them
+that walking makes for health and pleasure, and that it is also an
+exercise for displaying a graceful carriage, the set of the shoulders,
+the poise of the head.
+
+To be sure one runs the risk of being deceived in this matter. The
+actress who plays the part of an unaffected young girl, for aught that
+the spectator knows to the contrary may be a pronounced woman of the
+world. Not every author who says to the public 'excuse my untaught
+manner' is on this account to be regarded as a literary ingénu. His
+simplicity awakens distrust. The fact that he professes to be a layman
+is a reason for suspecting him. He is probably an adept, a master of
+the wiles by which readers are snared.
+
+But aside from the cases in which deception is practiced, or at least
+attempted, there is in the world a respectable body of literature
+which is not the work of literary men. Its chief characteristic is
+sincerity. The writers of these books are so busy in telling the truth
+that they have no time to think of literature.
+
+Among the more readable of these pieces is that unpretentious volume
+in which Dr. Joseph Priestley relates the story of his life. For in
+classing this book with the writings of authors who are not men of
+letters one surely does not go wide of the mark. There is a sense in
+which it is entirely proper to say that Priestley was not a literary
+man. He produced twenty-five volumes of 'works,' but they were for use
+rather than for art. He wrote on science, on grammar, on theology, on
+law. He published controversial tracts: 'Did So-and-So believe
+so-and-so or something quite different?' and then a discussion of the
+'grounds' of this belief. He made 'rejoinders,' 'defenses,'
+'animadversions,' and printed the details of his _Experiments on
+Different Kinds of Air_. This is distinctly uninviting. Let me propose
+an off-hand test by which to determine whether or no a given book is
+literature. _Can you imagine Charles Lamb in the act of reading that
+book?_ If you can; it's literature; if you can't, it isn't. I find it
+difficult to conceive of Charles Lamb as mentally immersed in the
+_Letter to an Anti-pædobaptist_ or the _Doctrine of Phlogiston
+Established_, but it is natural to think of him turning the pages of
+Priestley's Memoir, reading each page with honest satisfaction and
+pronouncing the volume to be worthy the title of A BOOK.
+
+It is a plain unvarnished tale and entirely innocent of those arts by
+the practice of which authors please their public. There is no
+eloquence, no rhetoric, no fine writing of any sort. The two or three
+really dramatic events in Priestley's career are not handled with a
+view to producing dramatic effect. There are places where the author
+might easily have become impassioned. But he did not become
+impassioned. Not a few paragraphs contain unwritten poems. The
+simple-hearted Priestley was unconscious of this, or if conscious,
+then too modest to make capital of it. He had never aspired to the
+reputation of a clever writer, but rather of a useful one. His aim was
+quite as simple when he wrote the Memoir as when he wrote his various
+philosophical reports. He never deviated into brilliancy. He set down
+plain statements about events which had happened to him, and people
+whom he had known. Nevertheless the narrative is charming, and the
+reasons of its charm are in part these:--
+
+In the first place the book belongs to that department of literature
+known as autobiography. Autobiography has peculiar virtues. The
+poorest of it is not without some flavor of life, and at its best it
+is transcendent. A notable value lies in its power to stimulate. This
+power is very marked in Priestley's case, where the self-delineated
+portrait is of a man who met and overcame enormous difficulties. He
+knew poverty and calumny, both brutal things. He had a thorn in the
+flesh,--for so he himself characterized that impediment in his speech
+which he tried more or less unsuccessfully all his life to cure. He
+found his scientific usefulness impaired by religious and political
+antagonisms. He tasted the bitterness of mob violence; his house was
+sacked, his philosophical instruments destroyed, his manuscripts and
+books scattered along the highway. But as he looked back upon these
+things he was not moved to impatience. There is a high serenity in his
+narrative as becomes a man who has learned to distinguish between the
+ephemeral and the permanent elements of life.
+
+Yet it is not impossible that autobiography of this sort has an effect
+the reverse of stimulating upon some people. It is pleasanter to read
+of heroes than to be a hero oneself. The story of conquest is
+inspiring, but the actual process is apt to be tedious. One's nerves
+are tuned to a fine energy in reading of Priestley's efforts to
+accomplish a given task. 'I spent the latter part of every week with
+Mr. Thomas, a Baptist minister, ... who had no liberal education. Him
+I instructed in Hebrew, and by that means made myself a considerable
+proficient in that language. At the same time I learned Chaldee and
+Syriac and just began to read Arabic' This seems easy in the telling,
+but in reality it was a long, a monotonous, an exhausting process.
+Think of the expenditure of hours and eyesight over barbarous
+alphabets and horrid grammatical details. One must needs have had a
+mind of leather to endure such philological and linguistic wear and
+tear. Priestley's mind not only cheerfully endured it but actually
+toughened under it. The man was never afraid of work. Take as an
+illustration his experience in keeping school.
+
+He had pronounced objections to this business, and he registered his
+protest. But suppose the alternative is to teach school or to starve.
+A man will then teach school. I don't know that this was quite the
+situation in which Priestley found himself, though he needed money. He
+may have hesitated to enter a profession which in his time required a
+more extensive muscular equipment than he was able to furnish. The old
+English schoolmasters were 'bruisers.' They had thick skins, hard
+heads, and solid fists. The symbols of their office were a Greek
+grammar and a flexible rod. They were skillful either with the book or
+the birch. It has taken many years to convince the world that the
+short road to the moods and tenses does not necessarily lie through
+the valley of the shadow of flogging. Perhaps Priestley objected to
+school-mastering because it was laborious. It was indeed laborious as
+he practiced it. One marvels at his endurance. His school consisted of
+about thirty boys, and he had a separate room for about half-a-dozen
+young ladies. 'Thus I was employed from seven in the morning until
+four in the afternoon, without any interval except one hour for
+dinner; and I never gave a holiday on any consideration, the red
+letter days excepted. Immediately after this employment in my own
+school-rooms I went to teach in the family of Mr. Tomkinson, an
+eminent attorney, ... and here I continued until seven in the
+evening.' Twelve consecutive hours of teaching, less one hour for
+dinner! It was hardly necessary for Priestley to add that he had 'but
+little leisure for reading.'
+
+He laid up no money from teaching, but like a true man of genius spent
+it upon books, a small air-pump, an electrical machine. By training
+his advanced pupils to manipulate these he 'extended the reputation'
+of his school. This was playing at science. Several years were yet to
+elapse before he should acquire fame as an original investigator.
+
+This autobiography is valuable because it illustrates the events of a
+remarkable time. He who cares about the history of theological
+opinion, the history of chemical science, the history of liberty, will
+read these pages with keen interest. Priestley was active in each of
+these fields. Men famous for their connection with the great movements
+of the period were among his friends and acquaintance. He knew
+Franklin and Richard Price. John Canton, who was the first man in
+England to verify Franklin's experiments, was a friend of Priestley.
+So too were Smeaton the engineer, James Watt, Boulton, Josiah
+Wedgewood, and Erasmus Darwin. He knew Kippis, Lardner, Parr, and had
+met Porson and Dr. Johnson. His closest friend for many years was
+Theophilus Lindsey. One might also mention the great Lavoisier,
+Magellan the Jesuit philosopher, and a dozen other scientific,
+ecclesiastical, and political celebrities. The Memoir, however, is
+almost as remarkable for what it does not tell concerning these people
+as for what it does. Priestley was not anecdotal. And he is only a
+little less reticent about himself than he is about others. He does
+indeed describe his early struggles as a dissenting minister, but the
+reader would like a little more expansiveness in the account of his
+friendships and his chemical discoveries. These discoveries were made
+during the time that he was minister at the Mill-hill Chapel, Leeds.
+Here he began the serious study of chemistry. And that without
+training in the science as it was then understood. At Warrington he
+had heard a series of chemical lectures by Dr. Turner of Liverpool, a
+gentleman whom Americans ought to regard with amused interest, for he
+was the man who congratulated his fellows in a Liverpool debating
+society that while they had just lost the _terra firma_ of thirteen
+colonies in America, they had gained, under the generalship of Dr.
+Herschel, a _terra incognita_ of much greater extent _in nubibus_.
+Priestley not only began his experiments without any great store of
+knowledge, but also without apparatus save what he devised for himself
+of the cheapest materials. In 1772 he published his first important
+scientific tract, 'a small pamphlet on the method of impregnating
+water with fixed air.' For this he received the Copley medal from the
+Royal Society. On the first of August, 1774, he discovered oxygen.
+Nobody in Leeds troubled particularly to inquire what this dissenting
+minister was about with his vials and tubes, his mice and his plants.
+Priestley says that the only person who took 'much interest' was Mr.
+Hey, a surgeon. Mr. Hey was a 'zealous Methodist' and wrote answers to
+Priestley's theological papers. Arminian and Socinian were at peace if
+science was the theme. When Priestley departed from Leeds, Hey begged
+of him the 'earthen trough' in which all his experiments had been
+made. This earthen trough was nothing more nor less than a washtub of
+the sort in common local use. So independent is genius of the
+elaborate appliances with which talent must produce results.
+
+The discoveries brought fame, especially upon the Continent, and led
+Lord Shelburne to invite Priestley to become his 'literary companion.'
+Dr. Price was the intermediary in effecting this arrangement.
+Priestley's nominal post was that of 'librarian,' and he now and then
+officiated as experimentalist extraordinary before Lord Shelburne's
+guests. The compensation was not illiberal, and the relation seems to
+have been as free from degrading elements as such relations can be.
+Priestley was not a sycophant even in the day when men of genius
+thought it no great sin to give flattery in exchange for dinners. It
+was never his habit to burn incense before the great simply because
+the great liked the smell of incense and were accustomed to it. On the
+other hand, Shelburne appears to have treated the philosopher with
+kindness and delicacy, and the situation was not without difficulties
+for his lordship.
+
+Among obvious advantages which Priestley derived from this residence
+were freedom from financial worry, time for writing and experimenting,
+a tour on the Continent, and the privilege of spending the winter
+season of each year in London.
+
+It was during these London visits that he renewed his acquaintance
+with Dr. Franklin. They were members of a club of 'philosophical
+gentlemen' which met at stated times at the London Coffee House,
+Ludgate Hill. There were few days upon which the Father of Pneumatic
+Chemistry and the Father of Electrical Science did not meet. When
+their talk was not of dephlogisticated air and like matters it was
+pretty certain to be political. The war between England and America
+was imminent. Franklin dreaded it. He often said to Priestley that 'if
+the difference should come to an open rupture, it would be a war of
+_ten years_, and he should not live to see the end of it.' He had no
+doubt as to the issue. 'The English may take all our great towns, but
+that will not give them possession of the country,' he used to say.
+Franklin's last day in England was given to Priestley. The two friends
+spent much of the time in reading American newspapers, especially
+accounts of the reception which the Boston Port Bill met with in
+America, and as Franklin read the addresses to the inhabitants of
+Boston, from the places in the neighborhood, 'the tears trickled down
+his cheeks.' He wrote to Priestley from Philadelphia just a month
+after the battle of Lexington, briefly describing that lively episode,
+and mentioning his pleasant six weeks voyage with weather 'so moderate
+that a London wherry might have accompanied us all the way.' At the
+close of his letter he says: 'In coming over I made a valuable
+philosophical discovery, which I shall communicate to you when I can
+get a little time. At present I am extremely hurried.' In October of
+that year, 1775, Franklin wrote to Priestley about the state of
+affairs in America. His letter contains one passage which can hardly
+be hackneyed from over-quotation. Franklin wants Priestley to tell
+'our dear good friend,' Dr. Price, that America is 'determined and
+unanimous.' 'Britain at the expense of three millions has killed 150
+yankees this campaign, which is 20,000 l. a head; and at Bunker's
+Hill, she gained a mile of ground, all of which she lost again, by our
+taking post on Ploughed Hill. During the same time 60,000 children
+have been born in America.' From these data Dr. Price is to calculate
+'the time and expense necessary to kill us all, and conquer the whole
+of our territory.' Then the letter closes with greetings 'to the club
+of honest whigs at the London Coffee House.'
+
+Seven years later Franklin's heart was still faithful to the club. He
+writes to Priestley from France: 'I love you as much as ever, and I
+love all the honest souls that meet at the London Coffee House.... I
+labor for peace with more earnestness that I may again be happy in
+your sweet society.' Franklin thought that war was folly. In a letter
+to Dr. Price, he speaks of the great improvements in natural
+philosophy, and then says: 'There is one improvement in moral
+philosophy which I wish to see: the discovery of a plan that would
+induce and oblige nations to settle their disputes without first
+cutting one another's throats.'
+
+Priestley lamented that a man of Franklin's character and influence
+'should have been an unbeliever in Christianity, and also have done as
+much as he did to make others unbelievers.' Franklin acknowledged that
+he had not given much attention to the evidences of Christianity, and
+asked Priestley to recommend some 'treatises' on the subject 'but not
+of great length.' Priestley suggested certain chapters of Hartley's
+_Observations on Man_, and also what he himself had written on the
+subject in his _Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion_. Franklin
+had promised to read whatever books his friend might advise and give
+his 'sentiments on them.' 'But the American war breaking out soon
+after, I do not believe,' says Priestley, 'that he ever found himself
+sufficiently at leisure for the discussion.'
+
+Priestley valued his own scientific reputation not a little for the
+weight it gave, among skeptics, to his arguments in support of his
+religious belief. He found that all the philosophers in Paris were
+unbelievers. They looked at him with mild astonishment when they
+learned that he was not of the same mind. They may even have thought
+him a phenomenon which required scientific investigation. 'As I chose
+on all occasions to appear as a Christian, I was told by some of them
+that I was the only person they had ever met with, of whose
+understanding they had any opinion, who professed to believe
+Christianity.' Priestley began to question them as to what they
+supposed Christianity was, and with the usual result,--they were not
+posted on the subject.
+
+In 1780 Priestley went to Birmingham. In the summer of 1791 occurred
+that remarkable riot, perhaps the most dramatic event in the
+philosopher's not unpicturesque career. This storm had long been
+gathering, and when it broke, the principal victim of its anger was, I
+verily believe, more astonished than frightened. The Dissenters were
+making unusual efforts to have some of their civil disabilities
+removed. Feeling against them was especially bitter. In Birmingham
+this hostility was intensified by the public discourses of Mr. Madan,
+'the most respectable clergyman of the town,' says Priestley. He
+published 'a very inflammatory sermon ... inveighing against the
+Dissenters in general, and myself in particular.' Priestley made a
+defense under the title of _Familiar Letters to the Inhabitants of
+Birmingham_. This produced a 'reply' from Madan, and 'other letters'
+from his opponent. Being a conspicuous representative of that body
+which was most 'obnoxious to the court' it is not surprising that
+Priestley should have been singled out for unwelcome honors. The
+feeling of intolerance was unusually strong. It was said--I don't know
+how truly--that at a confirmation in Birmingham tracts were
+distributed against Socinianism in general and Priestley in
+particular. Very reputable men thought they did God service in
+inflaming the minds of the rabble against this liberal-minded
+gentleman. Priestley's account of the riot in the Memoir is singularly
+temperate. It might even be called tame. He was quite incapable of
+posing, or of playing martyr to an audience of which a goodly part was
+sympathetic and ready to believe his sufferings as great as he chose
+to make them appear. One could forgive a slight outburst of
+indignation had the doctor chosen so to relieve himself. 'On occasion
+of the celebration of the anniversary of the French revolution, on
+July 14, 1791, by several of my friends, but with which I had little
+to do, a mob, encouraged by some persons in power, first burned the
+meeting-house in which I preached, then another meeting-house in the
+town, and then my dwelling-house, demolishing my library, apparatus,
+and as far as they could everything belonging to me.... Being in some
+personal danger on this occasion I went to London.'
+
+A much livelier account from Priestley's own hand and written the next
+day after the riot is found in a letter to Theophilus Lindsay. 'The
+company were hardly gone from the inn before a drunken mob rushed into
+the house and broke all the windows. They then set fire to our
+meeting-house and it is burned to the ground. After that they gutted,
+and some say burned the old meeting. In the mean time some friends
+came to tell me that I and my house were threatened, and another
+brought a chaise to convey me and my wife away. I had not presence of
+mind to take even my MSS.; and after we were gone the mob came and
+demolished everything, household goods, library, and apparatus.' The
+letter differs from the Memoir in saying that 'happily no fire could
+be got.' Priestley afterwards heard that 'much pains was taken, but
+without effect, to get fire from my large electrical machine which
+stood in the Library.'
+
+It is rather a curious fact that Priestley was not at the inn where
+the anniversary was celebrating. While the company there were chanting
+the praises of liberty he was at home playing backgammon with his
+wife, a remarkably innocent and untreasonable occupation. Mr. Arthur
+Young visited the scene of the riot a few days later and had thoughts
+upon it. 'Seeing, as I passed, a house in ruins, on inquiry I found
+that it was Dr. Priestley's. I alighted from my horse, and walked over
+the ruins of that laboratory which I had left home with the
+expectation of reaping instruction in; of that laboratory, the labours
+of which have not only illuminated mankind but enlarged the sphere of
+science itself; which has carried its master's fame to the remotest
+corner of the civilized world; and will now with equal celerity convey
+the infamy of its destruction to the disgrace of the age and the
+scandal of the British name.' It is not necessary to supplement Arthur
+Young's burst of indignation with private bursts of our own. We can
+afford to be as philosophic over the matter as Priestley was. That
+feeling was hot against him even in London is manifest from the fact
+that the day after his arrival a hand-bill was distributed beginning
+with the words: 'Dr. Priestley is a damned rascal, an enemy both to
+the religious and political constitution of this country, a fellow of
+a treasonable mind, consequently a bad Christian.' The 'bad Christian'
+thought it showed 'no small degree of courage' in Mr. William Vaughan
+to receive him into his house. 'But it showed more in Dr. Price's
+congregation at Hackney to invite me to succeed him.' The invitation
+was not unanimous, as Priestley with his characteristic passion for
+exactness is at pains to tell the reader. Some of the members
+withdrew, 'which was not undesirable.'
+
+People generally looked askance at him. If he was upon one side of the
+street the respectable part of the world made it convenient to pass by
+on the other side. He even found his relations with his philosophical
+acquaintance 'much restricted.' 'Most of the members of the Royal
+Society shunned him,' he says. This seems amusing and unfortunate.
+Apparently one's qualifications as a scientist were of little avail if
+one happened to hold heterodox views on the Trinity, or were of
+opinion that more liberty than Englishmen then had would be good for
+them. Priestley resigned his fellowship in the Royal Society.
+
+One does not need even mildly to anathematize the instigators of that
+historic riot. They were unquestionably zealous for what they believed
+to be the truth. Moreover, as William Hutton observed at the time,
+'It's the right of every Englishman to walk in darkness if he
+chooses.' The method employed defeated its own end. Persecution is an
+unsafe investment and at best pays a low rate of interest. No
+dignified person can afford to indulge in it. There's the danger of
+being held up to the laughter of posterity. It has happened so many
+times that the unpopular cause has become popular. This ought to teach
+zealots to be cautious. What would Madan have thought if he could have
+been told that within thirty years one of his own coadjutors in this
+affair would have publicly expressed regret for the share he had in
+it? Madan has his reward, three quarters of a column in the
+_Dictionary of National Biography_. But to-day Priestley's statue
+stands in a public square of Birmingham opposite the Council House.
+Thus do matters get themselves readjusted in this very interesting
+world.
+
+Rutt's Life of Priestley (that remarkable illustration of how to make
+a very poor book out of the best materials) contains a selection of
+the addresses and letters of condolence which were forthcoming at this
+time. Some of them are stilted and dull, but they are actual
+'documents,' and the words in them are alive with the passion of that
+day. They make the transaction very real and close at hand.
+
+Priestley was comparatively at ease in his new home. Yet he could not
+entirely escape punishment. There were 'a few personal insults from
+the lowest of the rabble.' Anxiety was felt lest he might again
+receive the attentions of a mob. He humorously remarked: 'On the 14th
+of July, 1792, it was taken for granted by many of my neighbors that
+my house was to come down just as at Birmingham the year before.' The
+house did not come down, but its occupant grew ill at ease, and within
+another two years he had found a new home in the new nation across the
+sea.
+
+It is hardly exact to say that he was 'driven' from England, as some
+accounts of his life have it. Mere personal unpopularity would not
+have sufficed for this. But at sixty-one a man hasn't as much fight in
+him as at forty-five. He is not averse to quiet. Priestley's three
+sons were going to America because their father thought that they
+could not be 'placed' to advantage in a country so 'bigoted' as their
+native land was then. 'My own situation, if not hazardous, was become
+unpleasant, so that I thought my removal would be of more service to
+the cause of truth than my longer stay in England.'
+
+The sons went first and laid the foundations of the home in
+Northumberland, Pennsylvania. The word 'Susquehanna' had a magic sound
+to Englishmen. On March 30, 1794, Priestley delivered his farewell
+discourse. April 6 he passed with his friends the Lindsays in Essex
+Street, and a day later went to Gravesend. For the details of the
+journey one must go to his correspondence.
+
+His last letters were written from Deal and Falmouth, April 9 and 11.
+The vessel was six weeks in making the passage. The weather was bad
+and the travelers experienced everything 'but shipwreck and famine.'
+There was no lack of entertainment, for the ocean was fantastic and
+spectacular. Not alone were there the usual exhibitions of
+flying-fish, whales, porpoises, and sharks, but also 'mountains of ice
+larger than the captain had ever seen before,'--for thus early had
+transatlantic captains learned the art of pronouncing upon the
+exceptional character of a particular voyage for the benefit of the
+traveler who is making that voyage. They saw water-spouts, 'four at
+one time.' The billows were 'mountain-high, and at night appeared to
+be all on fire.' They had infinite leisure, and scarcely knew how to
+use it. Mrs. Priestley wrote 'thirty-two large pages of paper.' The
+doctor read 'the whole of the Greek Testament and the Hebrew Bible as
+far as the first book of Samuel.' He also read through Hartley's
+second volume, and 'for amusement several books of voyages and Ovid's
+Metamorphoses.' 'If I had [had] a Virgil I should have read him
+through, too. I read a great deal of Buchanan's poems, and some of
+Petrarch's _de remediis_, and Erasmus's Dialogues; also Peter Pindar's
+poems, ... which pleased me much more than I expected. He is Paine in
+verse.'
+
+On June 1 the ship reached Sandy Hook. Three days later Dr. and Mrs.
+Priestley 'landed at the Battery in as private a manner as possible,
+and went immediately to Mrs. Loring's lodging-house close by.' The
+next morning the principal inhabitants of New York came to pay their
+respects and congratulations; among others Governor Clinton, Dr.
+Prevoost, bishop of New York; Mr. Osgood, late envoy to Great Britain;
+the heads of the college; most of the principal merchants, and many
+others; for an account of which amenities one must read Henry Wansey's
+_Excursion to the United States in the Summer of 1794_, published by
+Salisbury in 1796, a most amusing and delectable volume.
+
+Priestley missed seeing Vice-president John Adams by one day. Adams
+had sailed for Boston on the third. But he left word that Boston was
+'better calculated' for Priestley than any other part of America, and
+that 'he would find himself very well received if he should be
+inclined to settle there.'
+
+Mrs. Priestley in a letter home says: 'Dr. P. is wonderfully pleased
+with everything, and indeed I think he has great reason from the
+attentions paid him.' The good people became almost frivolous with
+their dinner-parties, receptions, calls, and so forth. Then there were
+the usual addresses from the various organizations,--one from the
+Tammany Society, who described themselves as 'a numerous body of
+freemen, who associate to cultivate among them the love of liberty,
+and the enjoyment of the happy republican government under which they
+live.' There was an address from the 'Democratic Society,' one from
+the 'Associated Teachers in the City of New York,' one from the
+'Republican Natives of Great Britain and Ireland,' one from the
+'Medical Society.'
+
+The pleasure was not unmixed. Dr. Priestley the theologian had a less
+cordial reception than Dr. Priestley the philosopher and martyr. The
+orthodox were considerably disturbed by his coming. 'Nobody asks me to
+preach, and I hear there is much jealousy and dread of me.' In
+Philadelphia at a Baptist meeting the minister bade his people beware,
+for 'a Priestley had entered the land.' But the heretic was very
+patient and earnest to do what he might for the cause of 'rational'
+Christianity. The widespread infidelity distressed him. He mentioned
+it as a thing to be wondered at that in America the lawyers were
+almost universally unbelievers. He lost no time in getting to work. On
+August 27, when he had been settled in Northumberland only a month, he
+wrote to a friend that he had just got Paine's _Age of Reason_, and
+thought to answer it. By September 14 he had done so. 'I have
+transcribed for the press my answer to Mr. Paine, whose work is the
+weakest and most absurd as well as most arrogant of anything I have
+yet seen.'
+
+Priestley was fully conscious of the humor of his situation. He was
+trying to save the public, including lawyers, from the mentally
+debilitating effects of reading Paine's _Age of Reason_, while at the
+same time all the orthodox divines were warning their flocks of the
+danger consequent upon having anything to do with _him_.
+
+Honors and rumors of honors came to him. He was talked of for the
+presidency of colleges yet to be founded, and was invited to
+professorships in colleges that actually were. He went occasionally to
+Philadelphia, a frightful journey from Northumberland in those days.
+Through his influence a Unitarian society was established. He gave
+public discourses, and there was considerable curiosity to see and
+hear so famous a man. 'I have the use of Mr. Winchester's pulpit every
+morning ... and yesterday preached my first sermon.' He was told that
+'a great proportion of the members of Congress were present,' and we
+know that 'Mr. Vice-President Adams was a regular attendant.'
+
+In company with his friend Mr. Russell, Priestley went to take tea
+with President Washington. They stayed two hours 'as in any private
+family,' and at leavetaking were invited 'to come at any time without
+ceremony.'
+
+About a year later Priestley saw again Washington, who had finished
+his second term of office. 'I went to take leave of the late
+president. He seemed not to be in very good spirits. He invited me to
+Mt. Vernon, and said he thought he should hardly go from home twenty
+miles as long as he lived.'
+
+Priestley was not to have the full measure of the rest which he
+coveted. He had left England to escape persecution, and persecution
+followed him. Cobbett, who had assailed him in a scurrilous pamphlet
+at the time of his emigration, continued his attacks. Priestley was
+objectionable because he was a friend of France. Moreover he had
+opinions about things, some of which he freely expressed,--a habit he
+had contracted so early in life as to render it hopeless that he
+should ever break himself of it. Cobbett's virulence was so great as
+to excite the astonishment of Mr. Adams, who said to Priestley, 'I
+wonder why the man abuses you;' when a hint from Adams, Priestley
+thought, would have prevented it all. But it was not easy to control
+William Cobbett. Adams may have thought that Cobbett was a being
+created for the express purpose of being let alone. There are such
+beings. Every one knows, or can guess, to what sort of animal Churton
+Collins compared Dean Swift, when the Dean was in certain moods.
+William Cobbett, too, had his moods.
+
+Yet it is impossible to read Priestley's letters between 1798 and 1801
+without indignation against those who preyed upon his peace of mind.
+He writes to Lindsay: 'It is nothing but a firm faith in a good
+Providence that is my support at present: but it is an effectual one.'
+His 'never failing resource' was the 'daily study of the Scriptures.'
+In moments of depression he loved to read the introduction to
+Hartley's second volume, those noble passages beginning: 'Whatever be
+our doubts, fears, or anxieties, whether selfish or social, whether
+for time or eternity, our only hope and refuge must be in the infinite
+power, knowledge and goodness of God.'
+
+Priestley was indeed a remarkable man. His services to science were
+very great. He laid the foundations of notable structures which,
+however, other men were to rear. He might have been a greater man had
+he been less versatile. And yet his versatility was one source of his
+greatness. He clung to old-fashioned notions, defending the doctrine
+of 'philogiston' after it had been abandoned by nearly every other
+chemist of repute. For this he has been ridiculed. But he was not
+ridiculous, he was singularly open-minded. He knew that his reputation
+as a philosopher was under a cloud. 'Though all the world is at
+present against me, I see no reason to despair of the old system; and
+yet, _if I should see reason to change my opinion, I think I should
+rather feel a pride in making the most public acknowledgment of it_.'
+These are words which Professor Huxley might well have quoted in his
+beautiful address on Priestley delivered at Birmingham, for they are
+the perfect expression and symbol of the fair-minded man.
+
+He was as modest as he was fair-minded. When it was proposed that he
+should accompany Captain Cook's expedition to the South Seas, and the
+arrangements were really completed, he was objected to because of his
+political and religious opinions. Dr. Reinhold Foster was appointed in
+his stead. He was a person 'far better qualified,' said Priestley.
+Again when he was invited to take the chair of Chemistry at
+Philadelphia he refused. This for several reasons, the chief of which
+was that he did not believe himself fitted for it. One would naturally
+suppose that the inventor of soda-water and the discoverer of oxygen
+would have been able to give lectures to young men on chemistry. But
+Priestley believed that he 'could not have acquitted himself in it to
+proper advantage.' 'Though I have made discoveries in some branches of
+chemistry, I never gave much attention to the common routine of it,
+and know but little of the common processes.'
+
+Priestley still awaits a biographer. The two thick volumes compiled by
+Rutt more than sixty-three years ago have not been reprinted, nor are
+they likely to be. But a life so precious in its lessons should be
+recorded in just terms. It would be an inspiring book, and its title
+might well be 'The Story of a Man of Character.' Not the least of its
+virtues would consist in ample recognition of Joseph Priestley's
+unwavering confidence that all things were ordered for the best; and
+then of his piety, which prompted him to say, as he looked back upon
+his life: 'I am thankful to that good Providence which always took
+more care of me than ever I took of myself.'
+
+
+
+
+CONCERNING A RED WAISTCOAT
+
+
+Hero-worship is appropriate only to youth. With age one becomes cynical,
+or indifferent, or perhaps too busy. Either the sense of the marvelous
+is dulled, or one's boys are just entering college and life is agreeably
+practical. Marriage and family cares are good if only for the reason
+that they keep a man from getting bored. But they also stifle his
+yearnings after the ideal. They make hero-worship appear foolish. How
+can a man go mooning about when he has just had a good cup of coffee
+and a snatch of what purports to be the news, while an attractive and
+well-dressed woman sits opposite him at breakfast-table, and by her
+mere presence, to say nothing of her wit, compels him to be respectable
+and to carry a level head? The father of a family and husband of a
+federated club woman has no business with hero-worship. Let him leave
+such folly to beardless youth.
+
+But if a man has never outgrown the boy that was in him, or has never
+married, then may he do this thing. He will be happy himself, and
+others will be happy as they consider him. Indeed, there is something
+altogether charming about the personality of him who proves faithful
+to his early loves in literature and art; who continues a graceful
+hero-worship through all the caprices of literary fortune; and who,
+even though his idol may have been dethroned, sets up a private shrine
+at which he pays his devotions, unmindful of the crowd which hurries
+by on its way to do homage to strange gods.
+
+Some men are born to be hero-worshipers. Théophile Gautier is an
+example. If one did not love Gautier for his wit and his good-nature,
+one would certainly love him because he dared to be sentimental. He
+displayed an almost comic excess of emotion at his first meeting with
+Victor Hugo. Gautier smiles as he tells the story; but he tells it
+exactly, not being afraid of ridicule. He went to call upon Hugo with
+his friends Gérard de Nerval and Pétrus Borel. Twice he mounted the
+staircase leading to the poet's door. His feet dragged as if they had
+been shod with lead instead of leather. His heart throbbed; cold sweat
+moistened his brow. As he was on the point of ringing the bell, an
+idiotic terror seized him, and he fled down the stairs, four steps at
+a time, Gérard and Pétrus after him, shouting with laughter. But the
+third attempt was successful. Gautier saw Victor Hugo--and lived. The
+author of _Odes et Ballades_ was just twenty-eight years old. Youth
+worshiped youth in those great days.
+
+Gautier said little during that visit, but he stared at the poet with
+all his might. He explained afterwards that one may look at gods,
+kings, pretty women, and great poets rather more scrutinizingly than
+at other persons, and this too without annoying them. 'We gazed at
+Hugo with admiring intensity, but he did not appear to be
+inconvenienced.'
+
+What brings Gautier especially to mind is the appearance within a few
+weeks of an amusing little volume entitled _Le Romantisme et l'éditeur
+Renduel_. Its chief value consists, no doubt, in what the author, M.
+Adolphe Jullien, has to say about Renduel. That noted publisher must
+have been a man of unusual gifts and unusual fortune. He was a
+fortunate man because he had the luck to publish some of the best
+works of Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, Théophile Gautier, Alfred de
+Musset, Gérard de Nerval, Charles Nodier, and Paul Lacroix; and he was
+a gifted man because he was able successfully to manage his troop of
+geniuses, neither quarreling with them himself nor allowing them to
+quarrel overmuch with one another. Renduel's portrait faces the
+title-page of the volume, and there are two portraits of him besides.
+There are fac-similes of agreements between the great publisher and
+his geniuses. There is a famous caricature of Victor Hugo with a brow
+truly monumental. There is a caricature of Alfred de Musset with a
+figure like a Regency dandy,--a figure which could have been acquired
+only by much patience and unremitted tight-lacing; also one of Balzac,
+which shows that that great novelist's waist-line had long since
+disappeared, and that he had long since ceased to care. What was a
+figure to him in comparison with the flesh-pots of Paris!
+
+One of the best of these pictorial satires is Roubaud's sketch of
+Gautier. It has a teasing quality, it is diabolically fascinating. It
+shows how great an art caricature is in the hands of a master.
+
+But the highest virtue of a good new book is that it usually sends the
+reader back to a good old book. One can hardly spend much time upon
+Renduel; he will remember that Gautier has described that period when
+hero-worship was in the air, when the sap of a new life circulated
+everywhere, and when he himself was one of many loyal and enthusiastic
+youths who bowed the head at mention of Victor Hugo's name. The reader
+will remember, too, that Gautier was conspicuous in that band of
+Romanticists who helped to make _Hernani_ a success the night of its
+first presentation. Gautier believed that to be the great event of his
+life. He loved to talk about it, dream about it, write of it.
+
+There was a world of good fellowship among the young artists,
+sculptors, and poets of that day. They took real pleasure in shouting
+Hosanna to Victor Hugo and to one another. Even Zola, the
+Unsentimental, speaks of _ma tristesse_ as he reviews that delightful
+past. He cannot remember it, to be sure, but he has read about it. He
+thinks ill of the present as he compares the present with 'those dead
+years.' Writers then belonged to a sort of heroic brotherhood. They
+went out like soldiers to conquer their literary liberties. They were
+kings of the Paris streets. 'But we,' says Zola in a pensive strain,
+'we live like wolves each in his hole.' I do not know how true a
+description this is of modern French literary society, but it is not
+difficult to make one's self think that those other days were the days
+of magnificent friendships between young men of genius. It certainly
+was a more brilliant time than ours. It was flamboyant, to use one of
+Gautier's favorite words.
+
+Youth was responsible for much of the enthusiasm which obtained among
+the champions of artistic liberty. These young men who did honor to
+the name of Hugo were actually young. They rejoiced in their youth.
+They flaunted it, so to speak, in the faces of those who were without
+it. Gautier says that young men of that day differed in one respect
+from young men of this day; modern young men are generally in the
+neighborhood of fifty years of age.
+
+Gautier has described his friends and comrades most felicitously. All
+were boys, and all were clever. They were poor and they were happy.
+They swore by Scott and Shakespeare, and they planned great futures
+for themselves.
+
+Take for an example Jules Vabre, who owed his reputation to a certain
+Essay on the Inconvenience of Conveniences. You will search the
+libraries in vain for this treatise. The author did not finish it. He
+did not even commence it,--only talked about it. Jules Vabre had a
+passion for Shakespeare, and wanted to translate him. He thought of
+Shakespeare by day and dreamed of Shakespeare by night. He stopped
+people in the street to ask them if they had read Shakespeare.
+
+He had a curious theory concerning language. Jules Vabre would not
+have said, As a man thinks so is he, but, As a man drinks so is he.
+According to Gautier's statement, Vabre maintained the paradox that
+the Latin languages needed to be 'watered' (_arroser_) with wine, and
+the Anglo-Saxon languages with beer. Vabre found that he made
+extraordinary progress in English upon stout and extra stout. He went
+over to England to get the very atmosphere of Shakespeare. There he
+continued for some time regularly 'watering' his language with English
+ale, and nourishing his body with English beef. He would not look at a
+French newspaper, nor would he even read a letter from home. Finally
+he came back to Paris, anglicized to his very galoshes. Gautier says
+that when they met, Vabre gave him a 'shake hand' almost energetic
+enough to pull the arm from the shoulder. He spoke with so strong an
+English accent that it was difficult to understand him; Vabre had
+almost forgotten his mother tongue. Gautier congratulated the exile
+upon his return, and said, 'My dear Jules Vabre, in order to translate
+Shakespeare it is now only necessary for you to learn French.'
+
+Gautier laid the foundations of his great fame by wearing a red
+waistcoat the first night of _Hernani_. All the young men were
+fantastic in those days, and the spirit of carnival was in the whole
+romantic movement. Gautier was more courageously fantastic than other
+young men. His costume was effective, and the public never forgot him.
+He says with humorous resignation: 'If you pronounce the name of
+Théophile Gautier before a Philistine who has never read a line of our
+works, the Philistine knows us, and remarks with a satisfied air, "Oh
+yes, the young man with the red waistcoat and the long hair." ... Our
+poems are forgotten, but our red waistcoat is remembered.' Gautier
+cheerfully grants that when everything about him has faded into
+oblivion this gleam of light will remain, to distinguish him from
+literary contemporaries whose waistcoats were of soberer hue.
+
+The chapter in his _Histoire du Romantisme_ in which Gautier tells how
+he went to the tailor to arrange for the most spectacular feature of
+his costume is lively and amusing. He spread out the magnificent piece
+of cherry-colored satin, and then unfolded his design for a
+'pour-point,' like a 'Milan cuirass.' Says Gautier, using always his
+quaint editorial _we_, 'It has been said that we know a great many
+words, but we don't know words enough to express the astonishment of
+our tailor when we lay before him our plan for a waistcoat.' The man
+of shears had doubts as to his customer's sanity.
+
+'Monsieur,' he exclaimed, 'this is not the fashion!'
+
+'It will be the fashion when we have worn the waistcoat once,' was
+Gautier's reply. And he declares that he delivered the answer with a
+self-possession worthy of a Brummel or 'any other celebrity of
+dandyism.'
+
+It is no part of this paper to describe the innocently absurd and
+good-naturedly extravagant things which Gautier and his companions
+did, not alone the first night of _Hernani_, but at all times and in
+all places. They unquestionably saw to it that Victor Hugo had fair
+play the evening of February 25, 1830. The occasion was an historic
+one, and they with their Merovingian hair, their beards, their
+waistcoats, and their enthusiasm helped to make it an unusually lively
+and picturesque occasion.
+
+I have quoted a very few of the good things which one may read in
+Gautier's _Histoire du Romantisme_. The narrative is one of much
+sweetness and humor. It ought to be translated for the benefit of
+readers who know Gautier chiefly by _Mademoiselle de Maupin_ and that
+for reasons among which love of literature is perhaps the least
+influential.
+
+It is pleasant to find that Renduel confirms the popular view of
+Gautier's character. M. Jullien says that Renduel never spoke of
+Gautier but in praise. 'Quel bon garçon!' he used to say. 'Quel brave
+coeur!' M. Jullien has naturally no large number of new facts to give
+concerning Gautier. But there are eight or nine letters from Gautier
+to Renduel which will be read with pleasure, especially the one in
+which the poet says to the publisher, 'Heaven preserve you from
+historical novels, and your eldest child from the smallpox.'
+
+Gautier must have been both generous and modest. No mere egoist could
+have been so faithful in his hero-worship or so unpretentious in his
+allusions to himself. One has only to read the most superficial
+accounts of French literature to learn how universally it is granted
+that Gautier had skillful command of that language to which he was
+born. Yet he himself was by no means sure that he deserved a master's
+degree. He quotes one of Goethe's sayings,--a saying in which the
+great German poet declares that after the practice of many arts there
+was but one art in which he could be said to excel, namely, the art of
+writing in German; in that he was almost a master. Then Gautier
+exclaims, 'Would that _we_, after so many years of labor, had become
+almost a master of the art of writing in French! But such ambitions
+are not for us!'
+
+Yet they were for him; and it is a satisfaction to note how invariably
+he is accounted, by the artists in literature, an eminent man among
+many eminent men in whose touch language was plastic.
+
+
+
+
+STEVENSON: THE VAGABOND AND THE PHILOSOPHER
+
+
+A certain critic said of Stevenson that he was 'incurably literary;'
+the phrase is a good one, being both humorous and true. There is
+comfort in the thought that such efforts as may have been made to keep
+him in the path of virtuous respectability failed. Rather than _do_
+anything Stevenson preferred to loaf and to write books. And he early
+learned that considerable loafing is necessary if one expects to
+become a writer. There is a sense in which it is true that only lazy
+people are fit for literature. Nothing is so fruitful as a fine gift
+for idleness. The most prolific writers have been people who seemed to
+have nothing to do. Every one has read that description of George Sand
+in her latter years, 'an old lady who came out into the garden at
+mid-day in a broad-brimmed hat and sat down on a bench or wandered
+slowly about. So she remained for hours looking about her, musing,
+contemplating. She was gathering impressions, absorbing the universe,
+steeping herself in Nature; and at night she would give all this forth
+as a sort of emanation.' One shudders to think what the result might
+have been if instead of absorbing the universe George Sand had done
+something practical during those hours. But the Scotchman was not like
+George Sand in any particular that I know of save in his perfect
+willingness to bask in the sunshine and steep himself in Nature. His
+books did not 'emanate.' The one way in which he certainly did not
+produce literature was by improvisation. George Sand never revised her
+work; it might almost be said that Robert Louis Stevenson never did
+anything else.
+
+Of his method we know this much. He himself has said that when he went
+for a walk he usually carried two books in his pocket, one a book to
+read, the other a note-book in which to put down the ideas that came
+to him. This remark has undoubtedly been seized upon and treasured in
+the memory as embodying a secret of his success. Trusting young souls
+have begun to walk about with note-books: only to learn that the
+note-book was a detail, not an essential, in the process.
+
+He who writes while he walks cannot write very much, but he may, if he
+chooses, write very well. He may turn over the rubbish of his
+vocabulary until he finds some exquisite and perfect word with which
+to bring out his meaning. This word need not be unusual; and if it is
+'exquisite' then exquisite only in the sense of being fitted with rare
+exactness to the idea. Stevenson wrote so well in part because he
+wrote so deliberately. He knew the vulgarity of haste, especially in
+the making of literature. He knew that finish counted for much,
+perhaps for half. Has he not been reported as saying that it wasn't
+worth a man's while to attempt to be a writer unless he was quite
+willing to spend a day if the need were, on the turn of a single
+sentence? In general this means the sacrifice of earthly reward; it
+means that a man must work for love and let the ravens feed him. That
+scriptural source has been distinctly unfruitful in these latter days,
+and few authors are willing to take a prophet's chances. But Stevenson
+was one of the few.
+
+He laid the foundations of his reputation with two little volumes of
+travel. _An Inland Voyage_ appeared in 1878; _Travels with a Donkey in
+the Cevennes_, in 1879. These books are not dry chronicles of drier
+facts. They bear much the same relation to conventional accounts of
+travel that flowers growing in a garden bear to dried plants in a
+herbarium. They are the most friendly and urbane things in modern
+English literature. They have been likened to Sterne's _Sentimental
+Journey_. The criticism would be better if one were able to imagine
+Stevenson writing the adventure of the _fille de chambre_, or could
+conceive of Lawrence Sterne writing the account of the meeting with
+the Plymouth Brother. 'And if ever at length, out of our separate and
+sad ways, we should all come together into one common-house, I have a
+hope to which I cling dearly, that my mountain Plymouth Brother will
+hasten to shake hands with me again.' That was written twenty years
+ago and the Brother was an old man then. And now Stevenson is gone.
+How impossible it is not to wonder whether they have yet met in that
+'one common-house.' 'He feared to intrude, but he would not willingly
+forego one moment of my society; and he seemed never weary of shaking
+me by the hand.'
+
+The _Inland Voyage_ contains passages hardly to be matched for beauty.
+Let him who would be convinced read the description of the forest
+Mormal, that forest whose breath was perfumed with nothing less
+delicate than sweet brier. 'I wish our way had always lain among
+woods,' says Stevenson. 'Trees are the most civil society.'
+
+Stevenson's traveling companion was a young English baronet. The two
+adventurers paddled in canoes through the pleasant rivers and canals
+of Belgium and North France. They had plenty of rain and a variety of
+small misadventures; but they also had sunshine, fresh air, and
+experiences among the people of the country such as they could have
+got in no other way. They excited not a little wonder, and the common
+opinion was that they were doing the journey for a wager; there seemed
+to be no other reason why two respectable gentlemen, not poor, should
+work so hard and get so wet.
+
+This was conceived in a more adventurous vein than appears at first
+sight. In an unsubdued country one contends with beasts and men who
+are openly hostile. But when one is a stranger in the midst of
+civilization and meets civilization at its back door, he is astonished
+to find how little removed civilization is from downright savagery.
+Stevenson and his companion learned as they could not have learned
+otherwise how great deference the world pays to clothes. Whether your
+heart is all right turns out a matter of minor importance; but--_are
+your clothes all right_? If so, smiles, and good beds at respectable
+inns; if not, a lodging in a cow-shed or beneath any poor roof which
+suffices to keep off the rain. The voyagers had constantly to meet the
+accusation of being peddlers. They denied it and were suspected afresh
+while the denial was on their lips. The public mind was singularly
+alert and critical on the subject of peddlers.
+
+At La Fere, 'of Cursed Memory,' they had a rebuff which nearly spoiled
+their tempers. They arrived in a rain. It was the finest kind of a
+night to be indoors 'and hear the rain upon the windows.' They were
+told of a famous inn. When they reached the carriage entry 'the rattle
+of many dishes fell upon their ears.' They sighted a great field of
+snowy table-cloth, the kitchen glowed like a forge. They made their
+triumphal entry, 'a pair of damp rag-and-bone men, each with a limp
+India-rubber bag upon his arm.' Stevenson declares that he never had a
+sound view of that kitchen. It seemed to him a culinary paradise
+'crowded with the snowy caps of cookmen, who all turned round from
+their sauce-pans and looked at us with surprise.' But the landlady--a
+flushed, angry woman full of affairs--there was no mistaking her. They
+asked for beds and were told to find beds in the suburbs: 'We are too
+busy for the like of you!' They said they would dine then, and were
+for putting down their luggage. The landlady made a run at them and
+stamped her foot: 'Out with you--out of the door,' she screeched.
+
+I once heard a young Englishman who had been drawn into some
+altercation at a continental hotel explain a discreet movement on his
+own part by saying: 'Now a French cook running amuck with a carving
+knife in his hand would have bean a nahsty thing to meet, you know.'
+There were no knives in this case, only a woman's tongue. Stevenson
+says that he doesn't know how it happened, 'but next moment we were
+out in the rain, and I was cursing before the carriage entry like a
+disappointed mendicant.'
+
+'It's all very fine to talk about tramps and morality. Six hours of
+police surveillance (such as I have had) or one brutal rejection from
+an inn door change your views upon the subject, like a course of
+lectures. As long as you keep in the upper regions, with all the world
+bowing to you as you go, social arrangements have a very handsome air;
+but once get under the wheels and you wish society were at the devil.
+I will give most respectable men a fortnight of such a life, and then
+I will offer them twopence for what remains of their morality.'
+
+Stevenson declares that he could have set the temple of Diana on fire
+that night if it had been handy. 'There was no crime complete enough
+to express my disapproval of human institutions.' As for the baronet,
+he was horrified to learn that he had been taken for a peddler again;
+and he registered a vow before Heaven never to be uncivil to a
+peddler. But before making that vow he particularized a complaint for
+every joint in the landlady's body.
+
+To read _An Inland Voyage_ is to be impressed anew with the thought
+that some men are born with a taste for vagabondage. They are
+instinctively for being on the move. Like the author of that book they
+travel 'not to go any where but to go.' If they behold a stage-coach
+or a railway train in motion they heartily wish themselves aboard.
+They are homesick when they stop at home, and are only at home when
+they are on the move. Talk to them of foreign lands and they are
+seized with unspeakable heart-ache and longing. Stevenson met an
+omnibus driver in a Belgian village who looked at him with thirsty
+eyes because he was able to travel. How that omnibus driver 'longed to
+be somewhere else and see the round world before he died.' 'Here I
+am,' said he. 'I drive to the station. Well. And then I drive back
+again to the hotel. And so on every day and all the week round. My
+God, is that life?' Stevenson opined that this man had in him the
+making of a traveler of the right sort; he might have gone to Africa
+or to the Indies after Drake. 'But it is an evil age for the gipsily
+inclined among men. He who can sit squarest on a three-legged stool,
+he it is who has the wealth and glory.'
+
+In his _Travels with a Donkey_ the author had no companionship but
+such as the donkey afforded; and to tell the truth this companionship
+was almost human at times. He learned to love the quaint little beast
+which shared his food and his trials. 'My lady-friend' he calls her.
+Modestine was her name; 'she was patient, elegant in form, the color
+of an ideal mouse and inimitably small.' She gave him trouble, and at
+times he felt hurt and was distant in manner towards her. Modestine
+carried the luggage. She may not have known that R. L. Stevenson wrote
+books, but she knew as by instinct that R. L. Stevenson had never
+driven a donkey. She wrought her will with him, that is, she took her
+own gait. 'What that pace was there is no word mean enough to
+describe; it was something as much slower than a walk as a walk is
+slower than a run.' He must belabor her incessantly. It was an ignoble
+toil, and he felt ashamed of himself besides, for he remembered her
+sex. 'The sound of my own blows sickened me. Once when I looked at her
+she had a faint resemblance to a lady of my acquaintance who had
+formerly loaded me with kindness; and this increased my horror of my
+cruelty.'
+
+From time to time Modestine's load would topple off. The villagers
+were delighted with this exhibition and laughed appreciatively. 'Judge
+if I was hot!' says Stevenson. 'I remembered having laughed myself
+when I had seen good men struggling with adversity in the person of a
+jack-ass, and the recollection filled me with penitence. That was in
+my old light days before this trouble came upon me.'
+
+He had a sleeping-bag, waterproof without, blue sheep's wool within,
+and in this portable house he passed his nights afield. Not always by
+choice, as witness his chapter entitled 'A Camp in the Dark.' There
+are two or three pages in that chapter which come pretty near to
+perfection,--if there be such a thing as perfection in literature. I
+don't know who could wish for anything better than the paragraphs in
+which Stevenson describes falling asleep in the tempest, and awaking
+next morning to see the 'world flooded with a blue light, the mother
+of dawn.' He had been in search of an adventure all his life, 'a pure
+dispassionate adventure, such as befell early and heroic voyagers,'
+and he thinks that he realized a fraction of his daydreams when that
+morning found him, an inland castaway, 'as strange to his surroundings
+as the first man upon the earth.'
+
+Passages like these indicate Stevenson's quality. He was no
+carpet-knight; he had the true adventurer's blood in his veins. He and
+Drake and the Belgian omnibus-driver should have gone to the Indies
+together. Better still, the omnibus driver should have gone with
+Drake, and Stevenson should have gone with Amyas Leigh. They say that
+Stevenson traveled in search of health. Without doubt; but think how
+he _would_ have traveled if he had had good health. And one has
+strange mental experiences alone with the stars. That came of sleeping
+in the fields 'where God keeps an open house.' 'I thought I had
+rediscovered one of those truths which are revealed to savages and hid
+from political economists.'
+
+Much as he gloried in his solitude he 'became aware of a strange
+lack;' for he was human. And he gave it as his opinion that 'to live
+out of doors with the woman a man loves is of all lives the most
+complete and free.' It may be so. Such a woman would need to be of
+heroic physical mould, and there is danger that she would turn out of
+masculine mould as well. Isopel Berners was of such sort. Isopel could
+handle her clenched fists like a prizefighter. She was magnificent in
+the forest, and never so perfectly in place as when she backed up
+George Borrow in his fight with the Flaming Tinman. Having been in the
+habit of taking her own part, she was able to give pertinent advice at
+a critical moment. 'It's of no use flipping at the Flaming Tinman with
+your left hand,' she said, 'why don't you use your right?' Isopel
+called Borrow's right arm 'Long Melford.' And when the Flaming Tinman
+got his knock-down blow from Borrow's right, Isopel exclaimed, 'Hurrah
+for Long Melford; there is nothing like Long Melford for shortness all
+the world over!'
+
+But what an embarrassing personage Miss Berners would have been
+transferred from the dingle to the drawing-room; nay, how impossible
+it is to think of that athletic young goddess as _Miss_ Berners! The
+distinctions and titles of conventional society refuse to cling even
+to her name. I wonder how Stevenson would have liked Isopel Berners.
+
+And now his philosophy. Yet somehow 'philosophy' seems a big word for
+so unpretentious a theory of life as his. Stevenson didn't
+philosophize much; he was content to live and to enjoy. He was
+deliberate, and in general he would not suffer himself to be driven.
+He resembled an admirable lady of my acquaintance who, when urged to
+get something done by a given time, usually replied that 'time was
+made for slaves.' Stevenson had the same feeling. He says: 'Hurry is
+the resource of the faithless. When a man can trust his own heart and
+those of his friends to-morrow is as good as to-day. And if he die in
+the mean while, why, then, there he dies, and the question is solved.'
+
+You think this a poor philosophy? But there must be all kinds of
+philosophy; the people in the world are not run into one mould like so
+much candle-grease. And because of this, his doctrine of Inaction and
+Postponement, stern men and practical women have frowned upon
+Stevenson. In their opinion instead of being up and doing he
+consecrated too many hours to the idleness of literature. They feel
+towards him as Hawthorne fancied his ancestor the great witch judge
+would have felt towards _him_. Hawthorne imagines that ghostly and
+terrible ancestor looking down upon him and exclaiming with infinite
+scorn, 'A writer of storybooks. What kind of employment is that for an
+immortal soul?'
+
+To many people nothing is more hateful than this willingness to hold
+aloof and let things drift. That any human being should acquiesce with
+the present order of the world appears monstrous to these earnest
+souls. An Indian critic once called Stevenson 'a faddling Hedonist.'
+Stevenson quotes the phrase with obvious amusement and without
+attempting to gainsay its accuracy.
+
+But if he allowed the world to take its course he expected the same
+privilege. He wished neither to interfere nor to be interfered with.
+And he was a most cheerful nonconformist withal. He says: 'To know
+what you prefer instead of humbly saying amen to what the world tells
+you you ought to prefer is to have kept your soul alive.' Independence
+and optimism are vital parts of his unformulated creed. He hated
+cynicism and sourness. He believed in praise of one's own good estate.
+He thought it was an inspiriting thing to hear a man boast, 'so long
+as he boasts of what he really has.' If people but knew this they
+would boast 'more freely and with a better grace.'
+
+Stevenson was humorously alive to the old-fashioned quality of his
+doctrine of happiness and content. He says in the preface to an
+_Inland Voyage_ that although the book 'runs to considerably over a
+hundred pages, it contains not a single reference to the imbecility of
+God's universe, nor so much as a single hint that I could have made a
+better one myself--I really do not know where my head can have been.'
+But while this omission will, he fears, render his book
+'philosophically unimportant' he hopes that 'the eccentricity may
+please in frivolous circles.'
+
+Stevenson could be militant. His letter on Father Damien shows that.
+But there was nothing of the professional reformer about him. He had
+no hobby, and he was the artist first and then the philanthropist.
+This is right; it was the law of his being. Other men are better
+equipped to do the work of humanity's city missionaries than was he.
+Let their more rugged health and less sensitive nerves bear the
+burden; his poet's mission was not the less important.
+
+The remaining point I have to note, among a number which might be
+noted, is his firm grasp of this idea: that whether he is his
+brother's keeper or not he is at all events his brother's brother. It
+is 'philosophy' of a very good sort to have mastered this conception
+and to have made the life square with the theory. This doctrine is
+fashionable just now, and thick books have been written on the
+subject, filled with wise terms and arguments. I don't know whether
+Stevenson bothered his head with these matters from a scientific point
+of view or not, but there are many illustrations of his interest. Was
+it this that made him so gentle in his unaffected manly way? He
+certainly understood how difficult it is for the well-to-do member of
+society to get any idea not wholly distorted of the feelings and
+motives of the lower classes. He believed that certain virtues resided
+more conspicuously among the poor than among the rich. He declared
+that the poor were more charitably disposed than their superiors in
+wealth. 'A workman or a peddler cannot shutter himself off from his
+less comfortable neighbors. If he treats himself to a luxury he must
+do it in the face of a dozen who cannot. And what should more directly
+lead to charitable thoughts?' But with the advent of prosperity a man
+becomes incapable of understanding how the less fortunate live.
+Stevenson likens that happy individual to a man going up in a balloon.
+'He presently passes through a zone of clouds and after that merely
+earthly things are hidden from his gaze. He sees nothing but the
+heavenly bodies, all in admirable order and positively as good as new.
+He finds himself surrounded in the most touching manner by the
+attentions of Providence, and compares himself involuntarily with the
+lilies and the sky-larks. He does not precisely sing, of course; but
+then he looks so unassuming in his open landau! If all the world dined
+at one table this philosophy would meet with some rude knocks.'
+
+In the three years since Stevenson's death many additions have been
+made to the body of literature by him and about him. There are
+letters, finished and unfinished novels, and recollections by the
+heaping handful. Critics are considerably exercised over the question
+whether any, or all, or only two or three of his books are to last.
+The matter has, I believe, been definitely decided so that posterity,
+whatever other responsibilities it has, will at least not have that
+one; and anything that we can do to relieve the future of its burdens
+is altruism worthy the name.
+
+Stevenson was one of the best tempered men that ever lived. He never
+prated about goodness, but was unaffectedly good and sunny-hearted as
+long as he lived. Of how many men can it be said, as it _can_ be said
+of him, that he was sick all his days and never uttered a whimper?
+What rare health of mind was this which went with such poor health of
+body! I've known men to complain more over toothache than Stevenson
+thought it worth while to do with death staring him in the face. He
+did not, like Will o' the Mill, live until the snow began to thicken
+on his head. He never knew that which we call middle age.
+
+He worked harder than a man in his condition should have done. At
+times he felt the need to write for money; and this was hostile to his
+theory of literature. He wrote to his friend Colvin: 'I sometimes sit
+and yearn for anything in the nature of an income that would come
+in--mine has all got to be gone and fished for with the immortal mind
+of man. What I want is an income that really comes in of itself while
+all you have to do is just to blossom and exist and sit on chairs.'
+
+I wish he might have had it; I can think of no other man whose
+indolence would have been so profitable to the world.
+
+
+
+
+STEVENSON'S ST. IVES
+
+
+With the publication of _St. Ives_ the catalogue of Stevenson's
+important writings has closed. In truth it closed several years
+ago,--in 1891, to be exact,--when _Catriona_ was published. Nothing
+which has appeared since that date can modify to any great extent the
+best critical estimate of his novels. Neither _Weir of Hermiston_ nor
+_St. Ives_ affects the matter. You may throw them into the scales with
+his other works, and then you may take them out; beyond a mere
+trembling the balance is not disturbed. But suppose you were to take
+out _Kidnapped_, or _Treasure Island_, or _The Master of Ballantrae_,
+the loss would be felt at once and seriously. And unless he has left
+behind him, hidden away among his loose papers, some rare and perfect
+sketch, some letter to posterity which shall be to his reputation what
+Neil Paraday's lost novel in _The Death of the Lion_ might have been
+to his, _St. Ives_ may be regarded as the epilogue.
+
+Stevenson's death and the publication of this last effort of his fine
+genius may tend to draw away a measure of public interest from that
+type of novel which he, his imitators, and his rivals have so
+abundantly produced. This may be the close of a 'period' such as we
+read about in histories of literature.
+
+If the truth be told, has not our generation had enough of duels,
+hair-breadth escapes, post-chaises, and highwaymen, mysterious
+strangers muffled in great-coats, and pistols which always miss fire
+when they shouldn't? To say positively that we _have_ done with all
+this might appear extravagant in the light of the popularity of
+certain modern heroic novels. But it might not be too radical a view
+if one were to maintain that these books are the expression of
+something temporary and accidental, that they sustain a chronological
+relation to modern literature rather than an essential one.
+
+Matthew Arnold spoke of Heine as a sardonic smile on the face of the
+Zeitgeist. Let us say that these modern stories in the heroic vein are
+a mere heightening of color on the cheeks of that interesting young
+lady, the Genius of the modern novel--a heightening of color _on_ the
+cheeks, for the color comes from without and not from within. It is a
+matter of no moment. Artificial red does no harm for once, and looks
+well under gaslight.
+
+These novels of adventure which we buy so cheerfully, read with such
+pleasure, and make such a good-natured fuss over, are for the greater
+part an expression of something altogether foreign to the deeper
+spirit of modern fiction. Surely the true modern novel is the one
+which reflects the life of to-day. And life to-day is easy, familiar,
+rich in material comforts, and on the whole without painfully striking
+contrasts and thrilling episodes. People have enough to eat,
+reasonable liberty, and a degree of patience with one another which
+suggests indifference. A man may shout aloud in the market-place the
+most revolutionary opinions, and hardly be taken to task for it; and
+then on the other hand we have got our rulers pretty well under
+control. This paragraph, however, is not the peroration of a eulogy
+upon 'our unrivaled happiness.' It attempts merely to lay stress on
+such facts as these, that it is not now possible to hang a clergyman
+of the Church of England for forgery, as was done in 1777; that a man
+may not be deprived of the custody of his own children because he
+holds heterodox religious opinions, as happened in 1816. There is
+widespread toleration; and civilization in the sense in which Ruskin
+uses the word has much increased. Now it is possible for a Jew to
+become Prime Minister, and for a Roman Catholic to become England's
+Poet Laureate.
+
+If, then, life is familiar, comfortable, unrestrained, and easy, as it
+certainly seems to be, how are we to account for the rise of this
+semihistoric, heroic literature? It is almost grotesque, the contrast
+between the books themselves and the manner in which they are
+produced. One may picture the incongruous elements of the
+situation,--a young society man going up to his suite in a handsome
+modern apartment house, and dictating romance to a type-writer. In the
+evening he dines at his club, and the day after the happy launching of
+his novel he is interviewed by the representative of a newspaper
+syndicate, to whom he explains his literary method, while the
+interviewer makes a note of his dress and a comment on the decoration
+of his mantelpiece.
+
+Surely romance written in this way--and we have not grossly
+exaggerated the way--bears no relation to modern literature other than
+a chronological one. _The Prisoner of Zenda_ and _A Gentleman of
+France_, to mention two happy and pleasing examples of this type of
+novel, are not modern in the sense that they express any deep feeling
+or any vital characteristic of to-day. They are not instinct with the
+spirit of the times. One might say that these stories represent the
+novel in its theatrical mood. It is the novel masquerading. Just as a
+respectable bookkeeper likes to go into private theatricals, wear a
+wig with curls, a slouch hat with ostrich feathers, a sword and
+ruffles, and play a part to tear a cat in, so does the novel like to
+do the same. The day after the performance the whole artificial
+equipment drops away and disappears. The bookkeeper becomes a
+bookkeeper once more and a natural man. The hour before the footlights
+has done him no harm. True, he forgot his lines at one place, but what
+is a prompter for if not to act in such an emergency? Now that it is
+over the affair may be pronounced a success,--particularly in the
+light of the gratifying statement that a clear profit has been
+realized towards paying for the new organ.
+
+This is a not unfair comparison of the part played by these books in
+modern fiction. The public likes them, buys them, reads them; and
+there is no reason why the public should not. In proportion to the
+demand for color, action, posturing, and excessive gesticulation,
+these books have a financial success; in proportion to the
+conscientiousness of the artist who creates them they have a literary
+vitality. But they bear to the actual modern novel a relation not
+unlike that which _The Castle of Otranto_ bears to _Tom
+Jones_,--making allowance of course for the chronological discrepancy.
+
+From one point the heroic novel is a protest against the commonplace
+and stupid elements of modern life. According to Mr. Frederic Harrison
+there is no romance left in us. Life is stale and flat; yet even Mr.
+Harrison would hardly go to the length of declaring that it is also
+commercially unprofitable. The artificial apartment-house romance is
+one expression of the revolt against the duller elements in our
+civilization; and as has often been pointed out, the novel of
+psychological horrors is another expression.
+
+There are a few men, however, whose work is not accounted for by
+saying that they love theatrical pomp and glitter for its own sake, or
+that they write fiction as a protest against the times in which they
+live. Stevenson was of this number. He was an adventurer by
+inheritance and by practice. He came of a race of adventurers,
+adventurers who built lighthouses and fought with that bold outlaw,
+the Sea. He himself honestly loved, and in a measure lived, a wild
+life. There is no truer touch of nature than in the scene where St.
+Ives tells the boy Rowley that he is a hunted fugitive with a price
+set upon his head, and then enjoys the tragic astonishment depicted in
+the lad's face.
+
+Rowley 'had a high sense of romance and a secret cultus for all
+soldiers and criminals. His traveling library consisted of a chap-book
+life of Wallace, and some sixpenny parts of the Old Bailey Sessions
+Papers; ... and the choice depicts his character to a hair. You can
+imagine how his new prospects brightened on a boy of this disposition.
+To be the servant and companion of a fugitive, a soldier, and a
+murderer rolled in one--to live by stratagems, disguises, and false
+names, in an atmosphere of midnight and mystery so thick that you
+could cut it with a knife--was really, I believe, more dear to him
+than his meals, though he was a great trencher-man and something of a
+glutton besides. For myself, as the peg by which all this romantic
+business hung, I was simply idolized from that moment; and he would
+rather have sacrificed his hand than surrendered the privilege of
+serving me.'
+
+One can believe that Stevenson was a boy with tastes and ambitions
+like Rowley. But for that matter Rowley stands for universal
+boy-nature.
+
+Criticism of _St. Ives_ becomes both easy and difficult by reason of
+the fact that we know so much about the book from the author's point
+of view. He wrote it in trying circumstances, and never completed it;
+the last six chapters are from the pen of a practiced story-teller,
+who follows the author's known scheme of events. Stevenson was almost
+too severe in his comment upon his book. He says of _St. Ives_:--
+
+'It is a mere tissue of adventures; the central figure not very well
+or very sharply drawn; no philosophy, no destiny, to it; some of the
+happenings very good in themselves, I believe, but none of them
+_bildende_, none of them constructive, except in so far perhaps as
+they make up a kind of sham picture of the time, all in italics, and
+all out of drawing. Here and there, I think, it is well written; and
+here and there it's not.... If it has a merit to it, I should say it
+was a sort of deliberation and swing to the style, which seems to me
+to suit the mail-coaches and post-chaises with which it sounds all
+through. 'Tis my most prosaic book.'
+
+One must remember that this is epistolary self-criticism, and that it
+is hardly to be looked upon in the nature of an 'advance notice.'
+Still more confidential and epistolary is the humorous and reckless
+affirmation that _St. Ives_ is 'a rudderless hulk.' 'It's a pagoda,'
+says Stevenson in a letter dated September, 1894, 'and you can just
+feel--or I can feel--that it might have been a pleasant story if it
+had only been blessed at baptism.'
+
+He had to rewrite portions of it in consequence of having received
+what Dr. Johnson would have called 'a large accession of new ideas.'
+The ideas were historical. The first five chapters describe the
+experiences of French prisoners of war in Edinburgh Castle. St. Ives
+was the only 'gentleman' among them, the only man with ancestors and a
+right to the 'particle.' He suffered less from ill treatment than from
+the sense of being made ridiculous. The prisoners were dressed in
+uniform,--'jacket, waistcoat, and trousers of a sulphur or mustard
+yellow, and a shirt of blue-and-white striped cotton.' St. Ives
+thought that 'some malignant genius had found his masterpiece of irony
+in that dress.' So much is made of this point that one reads with
+unusual interest the letter in which Stevenson bewails his 'miserable
+luck' with _St. Ives_; for he was halfway through it when a book,
+which he had ordered six months before, arrived, upsetting all his
+previous notions of how the prisoners were cared for. Now he must
+change the thing from top to bottom. 'How could I have dreamed the
+French prisoners were watched over like a female charity school, kept
+in a grotesque livery, and shaved twice a week?' All his points had
+been made on the idea that they were 'unshaved and clothed anyhow.' He
+welcomes the new matter, however, in spite of the labor it entails.
+And it is easy to see how he has enriched the earlier chapters by
+accentuating St. Ives's disgust and mortification over his hideous
+dress and stubby chin.
+
+The book has a light-hearted note, as a romance of the road should
+have. The events take place in 1813; they might have occurred fifty or
+seventy-five years earlier. For the book lacks that convincing
+something which fastens a story immovably within certain chronological
+limits. It is the effect which Thomas Hardy has so wonderfully
+produced in that little tale describing Napoleon's night-time visit to
+the coast of England; the effect which Stevenson himself was equally
+happy in making when he wrote the piece called _A Lodging for a
+Night_.
+
+_St. Ives_ has plenty of good romantic stuff in it, though on the
+whole it is romance of the conventional sort. It is too well bred, let
+us say too observant of the forms and customs which one has learned to
+expect in a novel of the road. There is an escape from the castle in
+the sixth chapter, a flight in the darkness towards the cottage of the
+lady-love in the seventh chapter, an appeal to the generosity of the
+lady-love's aunt, a dragon with gold-rimmed eyeglasses, in the ninth
+chapter. And so on. We would not imply that all this is lacking in
+distinction, but it seems to want that high distinction which
+Stevenson could give to his work. Ought one to look for it in a book
+confessedly unsatisfactory to its author, and a book which was left
+incomplete?
+
+There is a pretty account of the first meeting between St. Ives and
+Flora. One naturally compares it with the scene in which David Balfour
+describes his sensations and emotions when the spell of Catriona's
+beauty came upon him. Says David:--
+
+'There is no greater wonder than the way the face of a young woman
+fits in a man's mind and stays there, and he could never tell you why;
+it just seems it was the thing he wanted.'
+
+This is quite perfect, and in admirable keeping with the genuine
+simplicity of David's character:--
+
+'She had wonderful bright eyes like stars; ... and whatever was the
+cause, I stood there staring like a fool.'
+
+This is more concise than St. Ives's description of Flora; but St.
+Ives was a man of the world who had read books, and knew how to
+compare the young Scotch beauty to Diana:--
+
+'As I saw her standing, her lips parted, a divine trouble in her eyes,
+I could have clapped my hands in applause, and was ready to acclaim
+her a genuine daughter of the winds.'
+
+The account of the meeting with Walter Scott and his daughter on the
+moors does not have the touch of reality in it that one would like.
+Here was an opportunity, however, of the author's own making.
+
+There are flashes of humor, as when St. Ives found himself locked in
+the poultry-house 'alone with half a dozen sitting hens. In the
+twilight of the place all fixed their eyes on me severely, and seemed
+to upbraid me with some crying impropriety.'
+
+There are sentences in which, after Stevenson's own manner, real
+insight is combined with felicitous expression. St. Ives is commenting
+upon the fact that he has done a thing which most men learned in the
+wisdom of this world would have pronounced absurd; he has 'made a
+confidant of a boy in his teens and positively smelling of the
+nursery.' But he has no cause to repent it. 'There is none so apt as a
+boy to be the adviser of any man in difficulties like mine. To the
+beginnings of virile common sense he adds the last lights of the
+child's imagination.'
+
+Men have been known to thank God when certain authors died,--not
+because they bore the slightest personal ill-will, but because they
+knew that as long as the authors lived nothing could prevent them from
+writing. In thinking of Stevenson, however, one cannot tell whether he
+experiences the more a feeling of personal or of literary loss,
+whether he laments chiefly the man or the author. It is not possible
+to separate the various cords of love, admiration, and gratitude which
+bind us to this man. He had a multitude of friends. He appealed to a
+wider audience than he knew. He himself said that he was read by
+journalists, by his fellow novelists, and by boys. Envious admiration
+might prompt a less successful writer to exclaim, 'Well, isn't that
+enough?' No, for to be truly blest one must have women among one's
+readers. And there are elect ladies not a few who know Stevenson's
+novels; yet it is a question whether he has reached the great mass of
+female novel-readers. Certainly he is not well known in that circle of
+fashionable maidens and young matrons which justly prides itself upon
+an acquaintance with Van Bibber. And we can hardly think he is a
+familiar name to that vast and not fashionable constituency which
+battens upon the romances of Marie Corelli under the impression that
+it is perusing literature, while he offers no comfort whatever to that
+type of reader who prefers that a novel shall be filled with hard
+thinking, with social riddles, theological problems, and 'sexual
+theorems.' Stevenson was happy with his journalists and boys. Among
+all modern British men of letters he was in many ways the most highly
+blest; and his career was entirely picturesque and interesting. Other
+men have been more talked about, but the one thing which he did not
+lack was discriminating praise from those who sit in high critical
+places.
+
+He was prosperous, too, though not grossly prosperous. It is no new
+fact that the sales of his books were small in proportion to the
+magnitude of his contemporary fame. People praised him tremendously,
+but paid their dollars for entertainment of another quality than that
+supplied by his fine gifts. _An Inland Voyage_ has never been as
+popular as _Three Men in a Boat_, nor _Treasure Island_ and
+_Kidnapped_ as _King Solomon's Mines_; while _The Black Arrow_, which
+Mr. Lang does not like, and Professor Saintsbury insists is 'a
+wonderfully good story,' has not met a wide public favor at all.
+_Travels with a Donkey_, which came out in 1879, had only reached its
+sixth English edition in 1887. Perhaps that is good for a book so
+entirely virtuous in a literary way, but it was not a success to keep
+a man awake nights.
+
+We have been told that it is wrong to admire _Jekyll and Hyde_, that
+the story is 'coarse,' an 'outrage upon the grand allegories of the
+same motive,' and several other things; nay, it is even hinted that
+this popular tale is evidence of a morbid strain in the author's
+nature. Rather than dispute the point it is a temptation to urge upon
+the critic that he is not radical enough, for in Stevenson's opinion
+all literature might be only a 'morbid secretion.'
+
+The critics, however, agree in allowing us to admire without stint
+those smaller works in which his characteristic gifts displayed
+themselves at the best. _Thrawn Janet_ is one of these, and the story
+of Tod Lapraik, told by Andie Dale in _Catriona_, is another.
+Stevenson himself declared that if he had never written anything
+except these two stories he would still have been a writer. We hope
+that there would be votes cast for _Will o' the Mill_, which is a
+lovely bit of literary workmanship. And there are a dozen besides
+these.
+
+He was an artist of undoubted gifts, but he was an artist in small
+literary forms. His longest good novels are after all little books.
+When he attempted a large canvas he seemed not perfectly in command of
+his materials, though he could use those materials as they could have
+been used by no other artist. There is nothing in his books akin to
+that broad and massive treatment which may be felt in a novel like
+_Rhoda Fleming_ or in a tragedy like _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_.
+
+Andrew Lang was right when he said of Stevenson: He is a 'Little
+Master,' but of the Little Masters the most perfect and delightful.
+
+
+
+
+The Riverside Press
+
+CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, U. S. A.
+ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY
+H. O. HOUGHTON AND CO.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Bibliotaph, by Leon H. Vincent
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+	<title>The Bibliotaph and Other People, by Leon H. Vincent.</title>
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+
+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Bibliotaph, by Leon H. Vincent
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Bibliotaph
+       and Other People
+
+Author: Leon H. Vincent
+
+Release Date: May 2, 2007 [EBook #21272]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BIBLIOTAPH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
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+</pre>
+
+	<div id="the_beginning">
+		&nbsp;
+	</div>
+	<div id="title_page">
+		<h1 id="title">THE BIBLIOTAPH</h1>
+		<p id="book_subtitle">And Other People</p>
+		<p>BY</p>
+		<p class="author">LEON H. VINCENT</p>
+		<img src="images/device.png" width="154" height="202" alt="" id="device"/>
+		<p id="publish_info"><span class="publisher_city">BOSTON AND NEW YORK</span><br />
+			<span class="publisher">HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY</span><br />
+			<span class="press">The Riverside Press, Cambridge</span><br />
+			<span class="published_date">1899</span>
+		</p>
+	</div>
+	<div id="copyright_page" class="section">
+		<p id="copyright_statement">COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY LEON H. VINCENT</p>
+		<p id="rights_statement">ALL RIGHTS RESERVED</p>
+	</div>
+	<div id="dedication" class="section">
+		<p>TO MY FATHER<br />
+		<span class="dedicatee">THE REV. B. T. VINCENT, D.D.</span><br />
+		THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS<br />
+		<span class="dedication_emphasis">Dedicated</span><br />
+		WITH LOVE AND ADMIRATION</p>
+	</div>
+	<div id="authors_note" class="section">
+		<p><span class="first_word">Four</span> of these papers&#8212;the first Bibliotaph, and
+		the notes on Keats, Gautier, and Stevenson&#8217;s <i class="title">St.
+		Ives</i>&#8212;are reprinted from the <i class="title">Atlantic Monthly</i> by
+		the kind permission of the editor.</p>
+
+		<p>I am also indebted to the literary editor of the
+		<i class="title">Springfield Republican</i> and to the editors of <i class="title">Poet-Lore</i>,
+		respectively, for allowing me to reprint the
+		paper on <i class="title">Thomas Hardy</i> and the lecture on <i class="title">An
+		Elizabethan Novelist</i>.</p>
+	</div>
+	<div id="contents" class="section">
+		<h2 class="section_title">CONTENTS</h2>
+		<ul id="contents_list">
+			<li><a href="#bibliotaph_1">THE BIBLIOTAPH: A PORTRAIT NOT WHOLLY IMAGINARY</a></li>
+			<li><a href="#bibliotaph_2">THE BIBLIOTAPH: HIS FRIENDS, SCRAP-BOOKS, AND &#8216;BINS&#8217;</a></li>
+			<li><a href="#bibliotaph_3">LAST WORDS ON THE BIBLIOTAPH</a></li>
+			<li><a href="#hardy">THOMAS HARDY</a></li>
+			<li><a href="#keats">A READING IN THE LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS</a></li>
+			<li><a href="#novelist">AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST</a></li>
+			<li><a href="#autobiography">THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FAIR-MINDED MAN</a></li>
+			<li><a href="#waistcoat">CONCERNING A RED WAISTCOAT</a></li>
+			<li><a href="#vagabond">STEVENSON: THE VAGABOND AND THE PHILOSOPHER</a></li>
+			<li><a href="#st_ives">STEVENSON&#8217;S ST. IVES</a></li>
+		</ul>
+	</div>
+	<p class="book_internal_title"><a class="pagenum" id="page_1" title="1"></a>THE BIBLIOTAPH AND OTHER PEOPLE</p>
+	<div id="bibliotaph_1" class="essay">
+		<h2 id="the_bibliotaph_a_portrait_not_wholly_imaginary">THE BIBLIOTAPH: A PORTRAIT NOT WHOLLY IMAGINARY</h2>
+		<p class="return_toc"><a href="#contents">Return to Contents</a></p>
+		<p><span class="first_word">A popular</span> and fairly orthodox opinion concerning
+		book-collectors is that their vices are
+		many, their virtues of a negative sort, and their
+		ways altogether past finding out. Yet the most
+		hostile critic is bound to admit that the fraternity
+		of bibliophiles is eminently picturesque. If
+		their doings are inscrutable, they are also romantic;
+		if their vices are numerous, the heinousness
+		of those vices is mitigated by the fact that
+		it is possible to sin humorously. Regard him
+		how you will, the sayings and doings of the collector
+		give life and color to the pages of those
+		books which treat of books. He is amusing
+		when he is purely an imaginary creature. For
+		example, there was one Thomas Blinton. Every
+		one who has ever read the volume called <i class="title">Books
+		and Bookmen</i> knows about Thomas Blinton.
+		He was a man who wickedly adorned his volumes
+		with morocco bindings, while his wife
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_2" title="2"></a>&#8216;sighed in vain for some old <i  lang="fr">point d&#8217;Alençon
+		lace</i>.&#8217; He was a man who was capable of bidding
+		fifteen pounds for a Foppens edition of
+		the essays of Montaigne, though fifteen pounds
+		happened to be &#8216;exactly the amount which
+		he owed his plumber and gas-fitter, a worthy
+		man with a large family.&#8217; From this fictitious
+		Thomas Blinton all the way back to Richard
+		Heber, who was very real, and who piled up
+		books as other men heap together vulgar riches,
+		book-collectors have been a picturesque folk.</p>
+
+		<p>The name of Heber suggests the thought
+		that all men who buy books are not bibliophiles.
+		He alone is worthy the title who acquires his
+		volumes with something like passion. One may
+		buy books like a gentleman, and that is very
+		well. One may buy books like a gentleman and
+		a scholar, which counts for something more.
+		But to be truly of the elect one must resemble
+		Richard Heber, and buy books like a gentleman,
+		a scholar, and a madman.</p>
+
+		<p>You may find an account of Heber in an old
+		file of <i class="title">The Gentleman&#8217;s Magazine</i>. He began
+		in his youth by making a library of the classics.
+		Then he became interested in rare English
+		books, and collected them <i  lang="it">con amore</i> for thirty
+		years. He was very rich, and he had never
+		given hostages to fortune; it was therefore possible
+		for him to indulge his fine passion without
+		stint. He bought only the best books, and he
+		bought them by thousands and by tens of thousands.
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_3" title="3"></a>He would have held as foolishness that
+		saying from the Greek which exhorts one to
+		do nothing too much. According to Heber&#8217;s
+		theory, it is impossible to have too many good
+		books. Usually one library is supposed to be
+		enough for one man. Heber was satisfied only
+		with eight libraries, and then he was hardly
+		satisfied. He had a library in his house at
+		Hodnet. &#8216;His residence in Pimlico, where he
+		died, was filled, like Magliabecchi&#8217;s at Florence,
+		with books from the top to the bottom; every
+		chair, every table, every passage containing
+		piles of erudition.&#8217; He had a house in York
+		Street which was crowded with books. He had
+		a library in Oxford, one at Paris, one at Antwerp,
+		one at Brussels, and one at Ghent. The
+		most accurate estimate of his collections places
+		the number at 146,827 volumes. Heber is believed
+		to have spent half a million dollars for
+		books. After his death the collections were dispersed.
+		The catalogue was published in twelve
+		parts, and the sales lasted over three years.</p>
+
+		<p>Heber had a witty way of explaining why he
+		possessed so many copies of the same book.
+		When taxed with the sin of buying duplicates
+		he replied in this manner: &#8216;Why, you see, sir,
+		no man can comfortably do without <em>three</em> copies
+		of a book. One he must have for his show
+		copy, and he will probably keep it at his country
+		house; another he will require for his own
+		use and reference; and unless he is inclined to
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_4" title="4"></a>part with this, which is very inconvenient, or
+		risk the injury of his best copy, he must needs
+		have a third at the service of his friends.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>In the pursuit of a coveted volume Heber
+		was indefatigable. He was not of those Sybaritic
+		buyers who sit in their offices while
+		agents and dealers do the work. &#8216;On hearing
+		of a curious book he has been known to put
+		himself into the mail-coach, and travel three,
+		four, or five hundred miles to obtain it, fearful
+		to trust his commission to a letter.&#8217; He knew
+		the solid comfort to be had in reading a book
+		catalogue. Dealers were in the habit of sending
+		him the advance sheets of their lists. He
+		ordered books from his death-bed, and for anything
+		we know to the contrary died with a catalogue
+		in his fingers.</p>
+
+		<p>A life devoted to such a passion is a stumbling-block
+		to the practical man, and to the
+		Philistine foolishness. Yet you may hear men
+		praised because up to the day of death they
+		were diligent in business,&#8212;business which
+		added to life nothing more significant than that
+		useful thing called money. Thoreau used to
+		say that if a man spent half his time in the
+		woods for the love of the woods he was in danger
+		of being looked upon as a loafer; but if he
+		spent all his time as a speculator, shearing off
+		those woods and making Earth bald before her
+		time, he was regarded as an upright and industrious
+		citizen.</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_5" title="5"></a>Heber had a genius for friendship as well as
+		for gathering together choice books. Sir Walter
+		Scott addressed verses to him. Professor Porson
+		wrote emendations for him in his favorite
+		copy of <i class="title">Athen&aelig;us</i>. To him was inscribed Dr.
+		Ferrier&#8217;s poetical epistle on Bibliomania. His
+		virtues were celebrated by Dibdin and by Burton.
+		In brief, the sketch of Heber in The<i class="title">
+		Gentleman&#8217;s Magazine</i> for January, 1834, contains
+		a list of forty-six names,&#8212;all men of distinction
+		by birth, learning, or genius, and all
+		men who were proud to call Richard Heber
+		friend. He was a mighty hunter of books. He
+		was genial, scholarly, generous. Out-of-door
+		men will be pleased to know that he was active
+		physically. He was a tremendous walker,
+		and enjoyed tiring out his bailiff by an all-day
+		tramp.</p>
+
+		<p>Of many good things said of him this is one
+		of the best: &#8216;The learned and curious, whether
+		rich or poor, have always free access to his
+		library.&#8217; Thus was it possible for Scott very
+		truthfully to say to Heber, &#8216;Thy volumes open
+		as thy heart.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>No life of this Prince of Book-Hunters has
+		been written, I believe. Some one with access
+		to the material, and a sympathy with the love
+		of books as books, should write a memoir of
+		Heber the Magnificent. It ought not to be a
+		large volume, but it might well be about the
+		size of Henry Stevens&#8217;s <i class="title">Recollections of James</i>
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_6" title="6"></a><i class="title">Lenox</i>. And if it were equally readable it were
+		a readable book indeed.</p>
+
+		<p>Dibdin thought that Heber&#8217;s tastes were so
+		catholic as to make it difficult to classify him
+		among hunters of books. The implication is
+		that most men can be classified. They have
+		their specialties. What pleases one collector
+		much pleases another but little or not at all.
+		Collectors differ radically in the attitude they
+		take with respect to their volumes. One man
+		buys books to read, another buys them to gloat
+		over, a third that he may fortify them behind
+		glass doors and keep the key in his pocket.
+		Therefore have learned words been devised to
+		make apparent the varieties of motive and taste.
+		These words begin with <em>biblio</em>; you may have
+		a <em>biblio</em> almost anything.</p>
+
+		<p>Two interesting types of maniac are known
+		respectively as the bibliotaph and the biblioclast.
+		A biblioclast is one who indulges himself
+		in the questionable pleasure of mutilating
+		books in order more sumptuously to fit out a
+		particular volume. The disease is English in
+		origin, though some of the worst cases have
+		been observed in America. Clergymen and
+		presidents of colleges have been known to be
+		seized with it. The victim becomes more or
+		less irresponsible, and presently runs mad.
+		Such an one was John Bagford, of diabolical
+		memory, who mutilated not less than ten thousand
+		volumes to form his vast collection of title-pages.
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_7" title="7"></a>John Bagford died an unrepentant sinner,
+		lamenting with one of his later breaths
+		that he could not live long enough to get hold
+		of a genuine Caxton and rip the initial page out
+		of that.</p>
+
+		<p>The bibliotaph buries books; not literally,
+		but sometimes with as much effect as if he had
+		put his books underground. There are several
+		varieties of him. The dog-in-the-manger bibliotaph
+		is the worst; he uses his books but little
+		himself, and allows others to use them not at
+		all. On the other hand, a man may be a
+		bibliotaph simply from inability to get at his
+		books. He may be homeless, a bachelor, a
+		denizen of boarding-houses, a wanderer upon
+		the face of the earth. He may keep his books
+		in storage or accumulate them in the country,
+		against the day when he shall have a town
+		house with proper library.</p>
+
+		<p>The most genial lover of books who has
+		walked city streets for many a day was a bibliotaph.
+		He accumulated books for years in
+		the huge garret of a farmhouse standing upon
+		the outskirts of a Westchester County village.
+		A good relative &#8216;mothered&#8217; the books for him
+		in his absence. When the collection outgrew
+		the garret it was moved into a big village store.
+		It was the wonder of the place. The country
+		folk flattened their noses against the panes and
+		tried to peer into the gloom beyond the half-drawn
+		shades. The neighboring stores were
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_8" title="8"></a>in comparison miracles of business activity. On
+		one side was a harness-shop; on the other a
+		nondescript establishment at which one might
+		buy anything, from sunbonnets and corsets to
+		canned salmon and fresh eggs. Between these
+		centres of village life stood the silent tomb for
+		books. The stranger within the gates had this
+		curiosity pointed out to him along with the new
+		High School and the Soldiers&#8217; Monument.</p>
+
+		<p>By shading one&#8217;s eyes to keep away the glare
+		of the light, it was possible to make out tall
+		carved oaken cases with glass doors, which
+		lined the walls. They gave distinction to the
+		place. It was not difficult to understand the
+		point of view of the dressmaker from across
+		the way who stepped over to satisfy her curiosity
+		concerning the stranger, and his concerning
+		the books, and who said in a friendly manner as
+		she peered through a rent in the adjoining
+		shade, &#8216;It&#8217;s almost like a cathedral, ain&#8217;t it?&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>To an inquiry about the owner of the books
+		she replied that he was brought up in that
+		county; that there were people around there
+		who said that he had been an exhorter years
+		ago; her impression was that now he was a
+		&#8216;political revivalist,&#8217; if I knew what that was.</p>
+
+		<p>The phrase seemed hopeless, but light was
+		thrown upon it when, later, I learned that this
+		man of many buried books gave addresses upon
+		the responsibilities of citizenship, upon the
+		higher politics, and upon themes of like character.
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_9" title="9"></a>They said that he was humorous. The
+		farmers liked to hear him speak. But it was
+		rumored that he went to colleges, too. The
+		dressmaker thought that the buying of so many
+		books was &#8216;wicked.&#8217; &#8216;He goes from New York
+		to Beersheba, and from Chicago to Dan, buying
+		books. Never reads &#8217;em because he hardly
+		ever comes here.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>It became possible to identify the Bibliotaph
+		of the country store with a certain mature
+		youth who some time since &#8216;gave his friends
+		the slip, chose land-travel or seafaring,&#8217; and has
+		not returned to build the town house with
+		proper library. They who observed him closely
+		thought that he resembled Heber in certain
+		ways. Perhaps this fact alone would justify an
+		attempt at a verbal portrait. But the additional
+		circumstance that, in days when people with
+		the slightest excuse therefor have themselves
+		regularly photographed, this old-fashioned youth
+		refused to allow his &#8216;likeness&#8217; to be taken,&#8212;this
+		circumstance must do what it can to extenuate
+		minuteness of detail in the picture, as
+		well as over-attention to points of which a
+		photograph would have taken no account.</p>
+
+		<p>You are to conceive of a man between thirty-eight
+		and forty years of age, big-bodied, rapidly
+		acquiring that rotund shape which is thought
+		becoming to bishops, about six feet high though
+		stooping a little, prodigiously active, walking
+		with incredible rapidity, having large limbs,
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_10" title="10"></a>large feet, large though well-shaped and very
+		white hands; in short, a huge fellow physically,
+		as big of heart as of body, and, in the affectionate
+		thought of those who knew him best, as big
+		of intellect as of heart.</p>
+
+		<p>His head might be described as leonine. It
+		was a massive head, covered with a tremendous
+		mane of brown hair. This was never worn
+		long, but it was so thick and of such fine texture
+		that it constituted a real beauty. He had
+		no conceit of it, being innocent of that peculiar
+		German type of vanity which runs to hair, yet
+		he could not prevent people from commenting
+		on his extraordinary hirsute adornment. Their
+		occasional remarks excited his mirth. If they
+		spoke of it again, he would protest. Once,
+		among a small party of his closest friends, the
+		conversation turned upon the subject of hair,
+		and then upon the beauty of <em>his</em> hair; whereupon
+		he cried out, &#8216;I am embarrassed by this
+		unnecessary display of interest in my Samsonian
+		assertiveness.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>He loved to tease certain of his acquaintances
+		who, though younger than himself, were rapidly
+		losing their natural head-covering. He prodded
+		them with ingeniously worded reflections
+		upon their unhappy condition. He would take
+		as a motto Erasmus&#8217;s unkind salutation, &#8216;Bene
+		sit tibi cum tuo calvitio,&#8217; and multiply amusing
+		variations upon it. He delighted in sending
+		them prescriptions and advertisements clipped
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_11" title="11"></a>from newspapers and medical journals. He
+		quoted at them the remark of a pale, bald,
+		blond young literary aspirant, who, seeing him,
+		the Bibliotaph, passing by, exclaimed audibly
+		and almost passionately, &#8216;Oh, I perfectly adore
+		<em>hair</em>!&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Of his clothes it might be said that he did
+		not wear them, but rather dwelt at large in
+		them. They were made by high-priced tailors
+		and were fashionably cut, but he lived in them
+		so violently&#8212;that is, traveled so much, walked
+		so much, sat so long and so hard, gestured so
+		earnestly, and carried in his many pockets such
+		an extraordinary collection of notebooks, indelible
+		pencils, card-cases, stamp-boxes, penknives,
+		gold toothpicks, thermometers, and what not&#8212;that
+		within twenty-four hours after he had
+		donned new clothes all the artistic merits of the
+		garments were obliterated; they were, from
+		every point of view, hopelessly degenerate.</p>
+
+		<p>He was a scrupulously clean man, but there
+		was a kind of civilized wildness in his appearance
+		which astonished people; and in perverse
+		moments he liked to terrify those who knew
+		him but little by affirming that he was a near
+		relative of Christopher Smart, and then explaining
+		in mirth-provoking phrases that one of
+		the arguments used for proving Smart&#8217;s insanity
+		was that he did not love clean linen.</p>
+
+		<p>His appetite was large, as became a large and
+		active person. He was a very valiant trencher-man;
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_12" title="12"></a>and yet he could not have been said to
+		love eating for eating&#8217;s sake. He ate when he
+		was hungry, and found no difficulty in being
+		hungry three times a day. He should have
+		been an Englishman, for he enjoyed a late supper.
+		In the proper season this consisted of
+		a bountiful serving of tomatoes, cucumbers,
+		onions, with a glass of lemonade. As a variant
+		upon the beverage he took milk. He was the
+		only man I have known, whether book-hunter
+		or layman, who could sleep peacefully upon a
+		supper of cucumbers and milk.</p>
+
+		<p>There is probably no occult relation between
+		first editions and onions. The Bibliotaph was
+		mightily pleased with both: the one, he said,
+		appealed to him &aelig;sthetically, the other dietetically.
+		He remarked of some particularly large
+		Spanish onions that there was &#8216;a globular
+		wholesomeness about them which was very
+		gratifying;&#8217; and after eating one he observed
+		expansively that he felt &#8216;as if he had swallowed
+		the earth and the fullness thereof.&#8217; His easy,
+		good-humored exaggerations and his odd comments
+		upon the viands made him a pleasant
+		table companion: as when he described a Parker
+		House Sultana Roll by saying that &#8216;it
+		looked like the sanguinary output of the whole
+		Crimean war.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>High-priced restaurants did not please him
+		as well as humbler and less obtrusive places.
+		But it was all one,&#8212;Delmonico&#8217;s, the Bellevue,
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_13" title="13"></a>a stool in the Twelfth Street Market, or a
+		German café on Van Buren Street. The humors
+		of certain eating-houses gave him infinite
+		delight. He went frequently to the Diner&#8217;s
+		Own Home, the proprietor of which, being
+		both cook and Christian, had hit upon the
+		novel plan of giving Scriptural advice and practical
+		suggestions by placards on the walls. The
+		Bibliotaph enjoyed this juxtaposition of signs:
+		the first read, &#8216;The very God of peace sanctify
+		you wholly;&#8217; the second, &#8216;Look out for your
+		Hat and Coat.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The Bibliotaph had no home, and was reputed
+		to live in his post-office box. He contributed
+		to the support of at least three clubs,
+		but was very little seen at any one of them.
+		He enjoyed the large cities, and was contented
+		in whichever one he happened to find himself.
+		He was emphatically a city man, but what city
+		was of less import. He knew them all, and
+		was happy in each. He had his favorite hotel,
+		his favorite bath, his work, bushels of newspapers
+		and periodicals, friends who rejoiced in
+		his coming as children in the near advent of
+		Christmas, and finally book-shops in which to
+		browse at his pleasure. It was interesting to
+		hear him talk about city life. One of his quaint
+		mannerisms consisted in modifying a well-known
+		quotation to suit his conversational
+		needs. &#8216;Why, sir,&#8217; he would remark, &#8216;Fleet
+		Street has a very animated appearance, but I
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_14" title="14"></a>think the full tide of human existence is at the
+		corner of Madison and State.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>His knowledge of cities was both extensive
+		and peculiar. I have heard him name in order
+		all the hotels on Broadway, beginning at the
+		lower end and coming up as far as hotels exist,
+		branching off upon the parallel and cross
+		streets where there were noted caravansaries,
+		and connecting every name with an event of
+		importance, or with the life and fortunes of
+		some noted man who had been guest at that
+		particular inn. This was knowledge more becoming
+		in a guide, perhaps, but it will illustrate
+		the encyclop&aelig;dic fullness of his miscellaneous
+		information.</p>
+
+		<p>As was natural and becoming in a man born
+		within forty miles of the metropolis, he liked
+		best the large cities of the East, and was least
+		content in small Western cities. But this was
+		the outcome of no illiberal prejudice, and there
+		was a quizzical smile upon his lips and a teasing
+		look in his eyes when he bantered a Westerner.
+		&#8216;A man,&#8217; he would sometimes say,
+		&#8216;may come by the mystery of childbirth into
+		Omaha or Kansas City and be content, but he
+		can&#8217;t come by Boston, New York, or Philadelphia.&#8217;
+		Then, a moment later, paraphrasing his
+		remark, he would add, &#8216;To go to Omaha or
+		Kansas City by way of New York and Philadelphia
+		is like being translated heavenward
+		with such violence that one <em>passes through</em>&#8212;into
+		a less comfortable region!&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_15" title="15"></a>Strange to say, the conversation of this most
+		omnivorous of book-collectors was less of books
+		than of men. True, he was deeply versed in
+		bibliographical details and dangerously accurate
+		in his talk about them, but, after all, the personality
+		back of the book was the supremely
+		interesting thing. He abounded in anecdote,
+		and could describe graphically the men he had
+		met, the orators he had heard, the occasions of
+		importance where he had been an interested
+		spectator. His conversation was delightfully
+		fresh and racy because of the vividness of the
+		original impressions, the unusual force of the
+		ideas which were the copies of these impressions,
+		and the fine artistic sense which enabled
+		him to determine at once what points should
+		be omitted, and what words should be used
+		most fittingly to express the ideas retained.</p>
+
+		<p>He had no pride in his conversational power.
+		He was always modest, but never diffident. I
+		have seen him sit, a respectful listener, absolutely
+		silent, while some ordinary chatterer held
+		the company&#8217;s attention for an hour. Many
+		good talkers are unhappy unless they have the
+		privilege of exercising their gifts. Not so he.
+		Sometimes he had almost to be compelled to
+		begin. On such occasions one of his intimates
+		was wont to quote from Boswell: &#8216;Leave him
+		to me, sir; I&#8217;ll make him rear.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The superficial parts of his talk were more
+		easily retained. In mere banter, good-humored
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_16" title="16"></a>give-and-take, that froth and bubble of conversational
+		intercourse, he was delightful. His
+		hostess, the wife of a well-known comedian,
+		apologized to him for having to move him out
+		of the large guest-chamber into another one,
+		smaller and higher up,&#8212;this because of an
+		unexpected accession of visitors. He replied
+		that it did not incommode him; and as for
+		being up another flight of stairs, &#8216;it was a comfort
+		to him to know that when he was in a
+		state of somnolent helplessness he was as near
+		heaven as it was possible to get in an actor&#8217;s
+		house.&#8217; The same lady was taking him roundly
+		to task on some minor point in which he had
+		quite justly offended her; whereupon he turned
+		to her husband and said, &#8216;Jane worships but
+		little at the shrine of politeness because so
+		much of her time is mortgaged to the shrine of
+		truth.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>When asked to suggest an appropriate and
+		brief cablegram to be sent to a gentleman who
+		on the following day would become sixty years
+		of age, and who had taken full measure of life&#8217;s
+		joys, he responded, &#8216;Send him this: &#8220;<em>You
+		don&#8217;t look it, but you&#8217;ve lived like it.</em>&#8221;&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>His skill in witty retort often expressed itself
+		by accepting a verbal attack as justified, and
+		elaborating it in a way to throw into shadow
+		the assault of the critic. At a small and familiar
+		supper of bookish men, when there was
+		general dissatisfaction over an expensive but
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_17" title="17"></a>ill-made salad, he alone ate with apparent relish.
+		The host, who was of like mind with his guests,
+		said, &#8216;The Bibliotaph doesn&#8217;t care for the quality
+		of his food, if it has filling power.&#8217; To
+		which he at once responded, &#8216;You merely
+		imply that I am like a robin: I eat cherries
+		when I may, and worms when I must.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>His inscriptions in books given to his friends
+		were often singularly happy. He presented a
+		copy of <i class="title">Lowell&#8217;s Letters</i> to a gentleman and
+		his wife. The first volume was inscribed to
+		the husband as follows:&#8212;</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;To Mr. &#8212;&#8212; &#8212;&#8212;, who is to the owner of
+		the second volume of these Letters what this
+		volume is to that: so delightful as to make one
+		glad that there&#8217;s another equally as good, if not
+		better.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>In volume two was the inscription to the
+		wife, worded in this manner:&#8212;</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;To Mrs. &#8212;&#8212; &#8212;&#8212;, without whom the owner
+		of the first volume of these Letters would be as
+		that first volume without this one: interesting,
+		but incomplete.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Perhaps this will illustrate his quickness to
+		seize upon ever so minute an occasion for the
+		exercise of his humor. A young woman whom
+		he admired, being brought up among brothers,
+		had received the nickname, half affectionately
+		and half patronizingly bestowed, of &#8216;the Kid.&#8217;
+		Among her holiday gifts for a certain year was
+		a book from the Bibliotaph, a copy of <i class="title">Old-Fashioned
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_18" title="18"></a>Roses</i>, with this dedication: &#8216;To a
+		Kid, had Abraham possessed which, Isaac had
+		been the burnt-offering.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>It is as a buyer and burier of books that the
+		subject of this paper showed himself in most
+		interesting light. He said that the time to
+		make a library was when one was young. He
+		held the foolish notion that a man does not
+		purchase books after he is fifty; I shall expect
+		to see him ransacking the shops after he is
+		seventy, if he shall survive his eccentricities of
+		diet that long. He was an omnivorous buyer,
+		picking up everything he could lay his hands
+		upon. Yet he had a clearly defined motive for
+		the acquisition of every volume. However
+		absurd the purchase might seem to the bystander,
+		he, at any rate, could have given six
+		cogent reasons why he must have that particular
+		book.</p>
+
+		<p>He bought according to the condition of his
+		purse at a given time. If he had plenty of
+		money, it would be expensive publications, like
+		those issued by the Grolier Club. If he was
+		financially depressed, he would hunt in the out-of-door
+		shelves of well-known Philadelphia bookshops.
+		It was marvelous to see what things,
+		new and old, he was able to extract from a ten-cent
+		alcove. Part of the secret lay in this idea:
+		to be a good book-hunter one must not be too
+		dainty; one must not be afraid of soiling one&#8217;s
+		hands. He who observes the clouds shall not
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_19" title="19"></a>reap, and he who thinks of his cuffs is likely to
+		lose many a bookish treasure. Our Bibliotaph
+		generally parted company with his cuffs when
+		he began hunting for books. How many times
+		have I seen those cuffs with the patent fasteners
+		sticking up in the air, as if reaching out
+		helplessly for their owner; the owner in the
+		mean time standing high upon a ladder which
+		creaked under his weight, humming to himself
+		as he industriously examined every volume
+		within reach. This ability to live without cuffs
+		made him prone to reject altogether that orthodox
+		bit of finish to a toilet. I have known him
+		to spend an entire day in New York between
+		club, shops, and restaurant, with one cuff on,
+		and the other cuff&#8212;its owner knew not where.</p>
+
+		<p>He differed from Heber in that he was not
+		&#8216;a classical scholar of the old school,&#8217; but there
+		were many points in which he resembled the
+		famous English collector. Heber would have
+		acknowledged him as a son if only for his
+		energy, his unquenchable enthusiasm, and the
+		exactness of his knowledge concerning the
+		books which he pretended to know at all. For
+		not alone is it necessary that a collector should
+		know precisely what book he wants; it is even
+		more important that he should be able to know
+		a book <em>as</em> the book he wants when he sees it.
+		It is a lamentable thing to have fired in the
+		dark, and then discover that you have shot a
+		wandering mule, and not the noble game you
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_20" title="20"></a>were in pursuit of. One cannot take his reference
+		library with him to the shops. The
+		tests, the criteria, must be carried in the head.
+		The last and most inappropriate moment for
+		getting up bibliographical lore is that moment
+		when the pressing question is, to buy or not to
+		buy. Master Slender, in the play, learned the
+		difficulties which beset a man whose knowledge
+		is in a book, and whose book is at home upon a
+		shelf. It is possible to sympathize with him
+		when he exclaims, &#8216;I had rather than forty
+		shillings I had my Book of Songs and Sonnets
+		here!&#8217; In making love there are other resources;
+		all wooers are not as ill equipped as
+		Slender was. But in hunting rare books the
+		time will be sure to come when a man may
+		well cry, &#8216;I had rather than forty dollars I had
+		my list of first editions with me!&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The Bibliotaph carried much accurate information
+		in his head, but he never traveled without
+		a thesaurus in his valise. It was a small
+		volume containing printed lists of the first
+		editions of rare books. The volume was interleaved;
+		the leaves were crowded with manuscript
+		notes. An appendix contained a hundred
+		and more autograph letters from living authors,
+		correcting, supplementing, or approving the
+		printed bibliographies. Even these authors&#8217;
+		own lists were accurately corrected. They
+		needed it in not a few instances. For it is a
+		wise author who knows his own first edition.
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_21" title="21"></a>Men may write remarkable books, and understand
+		but little the virtues of their books from
+		the collector&#8217;s point of view. Men are seldom
+		clever in more ways than one. Z. Jackson was
+		a practical printer, and his knowledge as a
+		printer enabled him to correct sundry errors in
+		the first folio of Shakespeare. But Z. Jackson,
+		as the Rev. George Dawson observes, &#8216;ventured
+		beyond the composing-case, and, having
+		corrected blunders made by the printers, corrected
+		excellencies made by the poet.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>It was amusing to discover, by means of
+		these autograph letters, how seldom a good
+		author was an equally good bibliographer. And
+		this is as it should be. The author&#8217;s business
+		is, not to take account of first editions, but to
+		make books of such virtue that bibliomaniacs
+		shall be eager to possess the first editions
+		thereof. It is proverbial that a poet is able to
+		show a farmer things new to him about his own
+		farm. Turn a bibliographer loose upon a poet&#8217;s
+		works, and he will amaze the poet with an
+		account of <em>his</em> own doings. The poet will
+		straightway discover that while he supposed
+		himself to be making &#8216;mere literature&#8217; he was
+		in reality contributing to an elaborate and exact
+		science.</p>
+
+		<p>The Bibliotaph was not a blind enthusiast on
+		the subject of first editions. He was one of
+		the few men who understood the exceeding
+		great virtues of second editions. He declared
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_22" title="22"></a>that a man who was so fortunate as to secure
+		a second edition of Henry Crabb Robinson&#8217;s
+		<i class="title">Diary</i> was in better case than he who had
+		bothered himself to obtain a first. When it
+		fell in with his mood to argue against that
+		which he himself most affected, he would quote
+		the childish bit of doggerel beginning &#8216;The
+		first the worst, the second the same,&#8217; and then
+		grow eloquent over the dainty Templeman Hazlitts
+		which are chiefly third editions. He
+		thought it absurd to worry over a first issue of
+		Carlyle&#8217;s <i class="title">French Revolution</i> if it were possible
+		to buy at moderate price a copy of the third
+		edition, which is a well-nigh perfect book,
+		&#8216;good to the touch and grateful to the eye.&#8217;
+		But this lover of books grew fierce in his special
+		mania if you hinted that it was also foolish
+		to spend a large sum on an <i  lang="la">editio princeps</i> of
+		<i class="title">Paradise Lost</i> or of <i class="title">Robinson Crusoe</i>. There
+		are certain authors concerning the desirability
+		of whose first editions it must not be disputed.</p>
+
+		<p>The singular readiness with which bookish
+		treasures fell into his way astonished less fortunate
+		buyers. Rare Stevensons dropped into
+		his hand like ripe fruit from a tree. The most
+		inaccessible of pamphlets fawned upon him,
+		begging to be purchased, just as the succulent
+		little roast pigs in <i class="title">The New Paul and Virginia</i>
+		run about with knives and forks in their sides
+		pleading to be eaten. The Bibliotaph said he
+		did not despair of buying Poe&#8217;s <i class="title">Tamerlane</i> for
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_23" title="23"></a>twenty-five cents one of these days; and that
+		a rarity he was sure to get sooner or later was
+		a copy of that English newspaper which announced
+		Shelley&#8217;s death under the caption <em>Now
+		he Knows whether there is a Hell or Not</em>.</p>
+
+		<p>He unconsciously followed Heber in that he
+		disliked large-paper copies. Heber would none
+		of them because they took up too much room;
+		their ample borders encroached upon the rights
+		of other books. Heber objected to this as
+		Prosper Mérimée objected to the gigantic English
+		hoopskirts of 1865,&#8212;there was space on
+		Regent Street for but one woman at a time.</p>
+
+		<p>Original as the Bibliotaph was in appearance,
+		manners, habits, he was less striking in what
+		he did than in what he said. It is a pity that
+		no record of his talk exists. It is not surprising
+		that there is no such record, for his habits
+		of wandering precluded the possibility of his
+		making a permanent impression. By the time
+		people had fully awakened to the significance
+		of his presence among them he was gone. So
+		there grew up a legend concerning him, but no
+		true biography. He was like a comet, very
+		shaggy and very brilliant, but he stayed so
+		brief a time in a place that it was impossible
+		for one man to give either the days or the
+		thought to the reproduction of his more serious
+		and considered words. A greater difficulty was
+		involved in the fact that the Bibliotaph had
+		many socii, but no fidus Achates. Moreover,
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_24" title="24"></a>Achates, in this instance, would have needed
+		the reportorial powers of a James Boswell that
+		he might properly interpret genius to the public.</p>
+
+		<p>This particular genius illustrated the misfortune
+		of having too great facility in establishing
+		those relations which lie midway between
+		acquaintance and friendship. To put the matter
+		in the form of a paradox, he had so many
+		<em>friends</em> that he had no <em>friend</em>. Perhaps this is
+		unjust, but friendship has a touch of jealousy
+		and exclusiveness in it. He was too large-natured
+		to say to one of his admirers, &#8216;Thou
+		shalt have no other gods save myself;&#8217; but
+		there were those among the admirers who were
+		quite prepared to say to him, &#8216;We prefer that
+		thou shalt have no other worshipers in addition
+		to us.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>People wondered that he seemed to have no
+		care for a conventional home life. He was
+		taxed with want of sympathy with what makes
+		even a humble home a centre of light and happiness.
+		He denied it, and said to his accusers,
+		&#8216;Can you not understand that after a stay in
+		<em>your</em> home I go away with much the feeling
+		that must possess a lusty young calf when his
+		well-equipped mother tells him that henceforth
+		he must find means of sustenance elsewhere?&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>He professed to have been once in love, but
+		no one believed it. He used to say that his
+		most remarkable experience as a bachelor was
+		in noting the uniformity with which eligible
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_25" title="25"></a>young women passed him by on the other side
+		of the way. And when a married friend offered
+		condolence, with that sleek complacency of
+		manner noteworthy in men who are conscious
+		of being mated for life better than they deserve,
+		the Bibliotaph said, with an admiring glance at
+		the wife, &#8216;Your sympathy is supererogatory,
+		sir, for I fully expect to become your residuary
+		legatee.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>It is most pleasing to think of this unique
+		man &#8216;buffeting his books&#8217; in one of those temporary
+		libraries which formed about him whenever
+		he stopped four or five weeks in a place.
+		The shops were rifled of not a few of their
+		choicest possessions, and the spoils carried off
+		to his room. It was a joy to see him display
+		his treasures, a delight to hear him talk of
+		them. He would disarm criticism with respect
+		to the more eccentric purchases by saying,
+		&#8216;You wouldn&#8217;t approve of this, but <em>I</em> thought
+		it was curious,&#8217;&#8212;and then a torrent of facts,
+		criticisms, quotations, all bearing upon the particular
+		volume which you were supposed not to
+		like; and so on, hour after hour. There was
+		no limit save that imposed by the receptive
+		capacity of the guest. It reminded one of the
+		word spoken concerning a &#8216;hard sitter at books&#8217;
+		of the last century, that he was a literary giant
+		&#8216;born to grapple with whole libraries.&#8217; But the
+		fine flavor of those hours spent in hearing him
+		discourse upon books and men is not to be
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_26" title="26"></a>recovered. It is evanescent, spectral, now. This
+		talk was like the improvisation of a musician
+		who is profoundly learned, but has in him a
+		vein of poetry too. The talk and the music
+		strongly appeal to robust minds, and at the same
+		time do not repel the sentimentalist.</p>
+
+		<p>It is not to be supposed that the Bibliotaph
+		pleased every one with whom he came in contact.
+		There were people whom his intellectual
+		potency affected in a disagreeable way. They
+		accused him of applying great mental force to
+		inconsidered trifles. They said it was a misfortune
+		that so much talent was going to waste.
+		But there is no task so easy as criticising an
+		able man&#8217;s employment of his gifts.</p>
+	</div>
+	<div id="bibliotaph_2" class="essay">
+		<h2 id="the_bibliotaph_his_friends_scrap_books_and_8216bins8217"><a class="pagenum" id="page_27" title="27"></a>THE BIBLIOTAPH: HIS FRIENDS, SCRAP-BOOKS, AND &#8216;BINS&#8217;</h2>
+		<p class="return_toc"><a href="#contents">Return to Contents</a></p>
+		<p><span class="first_word">To</span> arrive at a high degree of pleasure in
+		collecting a library, one must travel. The Bibliotaph
+		regularly traveled in search of his volumes.
+		His theory was that the collector must
+		go to the book, not wait for the book to come
+		to him. No reputable sportsman, he said, would
+		wish the game brought alive to his back-yard
+		for him to kill. Half the pleasure was in tracking
+		the quarry to its hiding-place. He himself
+		ordered but seldom from catalogues, and went
+		regularly to and fro among the dealers in books,
+		seeking the volume which his heart desired.
+		He enjoyed those shops where the book-seller
+		kept open house, where the stock was large and
+		surprises were common, where the proprietor
+		was prodigiously well-informed on some points
+		and correspondingly ill-informed on others. He
+		bought freely, never disputed a price, and laid
+		down his cash with the air of a man who believes
+		that unspent money is the root of all
+		evil.</p>
+
+		<p>These travels brought about three results:
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_28" title="28"></a>the making of friends, the compilation of scrap-books,
+		and the establishment of &#8216;bins.&#8217; Before
+		speaking of any one of these points, a word on
+		the satisfactions of bibliographical touring.</p>
+
+		<p>In every town of considerable size, and in
+		many towns of inconsiderable size, are bookshops.
+		It is a poor shop which does not contain
+		at least one good book. This book bides
+		its time, and usually outstays its welcome. But
+		its fate is about its neck. Somewhere there is
+		a collector to whom that book is precious. They
+		are made for one another, the collector and the
+		book; and it is astonishing how infrequently
+		they miss of realizing their mutual happiness.
+		The book-seller is a marriage-broker for unwedded
+		books. His business is to find them
+		homes, and take a fee for so doing. Sugarman
+		the Shadchan was not more zealous than is
+		your vendor of rare books.</p>
+
+		<p>Now, it is a curious fact that the most desirable
+		of bookish treasures are often found
+		where one would be least likely to seek them.
+		Montana is a great State, nevertheless one does
+		not think of going to Montana for early editions
+		of Shakespeare. Let the book-hunter inwardly
+		digest the following plain tale of a clergyman
+		and a book of plays.</p>
+
+		<p>There is a certain collector who is sometimes
+		called &#8216;The Bishop.&#8217; He is not a bishop, but
+		he may be so designated; coming events have
+		been known to cast conspicuous shadows in
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_29" title="29"></a>the likeness of mitre and crosier. The Bishop
+		heard of a man in Montana who had an old
+		book of plays with an autograph of William
+		Shakespeare pasted in it. Being a wise ecclesiastic,
+		he did not exclaim &#8216;Tush&#8217; and &#8216;Fie,&#8217; but
+		proceeded at once to go book-hunting in Montana.
+		He went by proxy, if not in person; the
+		journey is long. In due time the owner of the
+		volume was found and the book was placed in
+		the Bishop&#8217;s hands for inspection. He tore off
+		the wrappers, and lo! it was a Fourth Folio
+		of Shakespeare excellently well preserved, and
+		with what appeared to be the great dramatist&#8217;s
+		signature written on a slip of paper and pasted
+		inside the front cover. The problem of the
+		genuineness of that autograph does not concern
+		us. The great fact is that a Shakespeare
+		folio turned up in Montana. Now when he
+		hears some one express desire for a copy of
+		Greene&#8217;s <i class="title">Groatsworth of Wit</i>, or any other rare
+		book of Elizabeth&#8217;s time, the Bishop&#8217;s thoughts
+		fly toward the setting sun. Then he smiles a
+		notable kind of smile, and says, &#8216;If I could get
+		away I&#8217;d run out to Montana and try to pick
+		up a copy for you.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>There is a certain gentleman who loves the
+		literature of Queen Anne&#8217;s reign. He lives
+		with Whigs and Tories, vibrates between coffee-house
+		and tea-table. He annoys his daughter
+		by sometimes calling her &#8216;Belinda,&#8217; and
+		astonishes his wife with his mock-heroic apostrophes
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_30" title="30"></a>to her hood and patches. He reads his
+		<i class="title">Spectator</i> at breakfast while other people batten
+		upon newspapers only three hours old. He
+		smiles over the love-letters of Richard Steele,
+		and reverences the name and the writings of
+		Joseph Addison. Indeed, his devotion to Addison
+		is so radical that he has actually been guilty
+		of reading <i class="title">The Campaign</i> and the <i class="title">Dialogue on
+		Medals</i>. This gentleman hunted books one day
+		and was not successful. It seemed to him that
+		on this particular afternoon the world was
+		stuffed with Allison&#8217;s histories of Europe, and
+		Jeffrey&#8217;s contributions to the <i class="title">Edinburgh Review</i>.
+		His heart was filled with bitterness and
+		his nostrils with dust. Books which looked inviting
+		turned out to be twenty-second editions.
+		Of fifty things upon his list not one came to
+		light. But it was predestined that he should
+		not go sorrowing to his home. He pulled out
+		from a bottom shelf two musty octavo volumes
+		bound in dark brown leather, and each securely
+		tied with a string; for the covers had been
+		broken from the backs. The titles were invisible,
+		the contents a mystery. The gentleman
+		held the unpromising objects in his hand and
+		meditated upon them. They might be a treatise
+		on conic sections, or a Latin Grammar, and
+		again they might be a Book. He untied the
+		string and opened one of the volumes. Was it
+		a breath of summer air from Isis that swept
+		out of those pages, which were as white as snow
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_31" title="31"></a>in spite of the lapse of nearly two centuries?
+		He read the title, <i class="title emphasis">Musarum Anglicanarum
+		Analecta</i>. The date was 1699. He turned
+		to the table of contents, and his heart gave
+		a contented throb. There was the name he
+		wished to see, J. Addison, Magd. Coll: The
+		name occurred eight times. The dejected collector
+		had found a clean and uncut copy of
+		those two volumes of contemporary Latin verse
+		compiled by Joseph Addison, when he was a
+		young man at Oxford, and printed at the Sheldonian
+		Theatre. Addison contributed eight
+		poems to the second volume. The bookseller
+		was willing to take seventy-five cents for the
+		set, and told the gentleman as he did up the
+		package that he was a comfort to the trade.</p>
+
+		<p>That night the gentleman read <i class="title">The Battle of
+		the Pigmies and the Cranes</i>, while his wife read
+		the evening edition of the <i class="title">Lurid Paragraph</i>.
+		Now he says to his friends, &#8216;Hunt books in
+		the most unpromising places, but make a thorough
+		search. You may not discover a Koh-i-noor,
+		but you will be pretty sure to run upon
+		some desirable little thing which gives you
+		pleasure and costs but a trifle.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>One effect of this adventure upon himself is
+		that he cannot pass a volume which is tied with
+		a string. He spends his days and Saturday
+		nights in tying and untying books with broken
+		covers. Even the evidence of a clearly-lettered
+		title upon the back fails to satisfy him. He is
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_32" title="32"></a>restless until he has made a thorough search
+		in the body of the volume.</p>
+
+		<p>The Bibliotaph&#8217;s own best strokes of fortune
+		were made in out-of-the-way places. But some
+		god was on his side. For at his approach the
+		bibliographical desert blossomed like the rose.
+		He used to hunt books in Texas at one period
+		in his life; and out of Texas would he come,
+		bringing, so it is said, first editions of George
+		Borrow and Jane Austen. It was maddening
+		to be with him at such times, especially if one
+		had a gift for envy.</p>
+
+		<p>Yet why should one envy him his money, or
+		his unerring hand and eye? He paid for the
+		book, but it was yours to read and to caress so
+		long as you would. If he took it from you it
+		was only that he might pass it on to some other
+		friend. But if that volume once started in the
+		direction of the great tomb of books in Westchester
+		County, no power on earth could avail
+		to restore it to the light of day.</p>
+
+		<p>It is pleasant to meditate upon past journeys
+		with the Bibliotaph. He was an incomparable
+		traveling companion, buoyant, philosophic, incapable
+		of fatigue, and never ill. Yet it is a
+		tradition current, that he, the mighty, who
+		called himself a friend to physicians, because
+		he never robbed them of their time either in
+		or out of office-hours, once succumbed to that
+		irritating little malady known as car-sickness.
+		He succumbed, but he met his fate bravely and
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_33" title="33"></a>with the colors of his wit flying. The circumstances
+		are these:&#8212;</p>
+
+		<p>There is a certain railway thoroughfare which
+		justly prides itself upon the beauty of its scenery.
+		This road passes through a hill-country,
+		and what it gains in the picturesque it loses in
+		that rectilinear directness most grateful to the
+		traveler with a sensitive stomach. The Bibliotaph
+		often patronized this thoroughfare, and
+		one day it made him sick. As the train swept
+		around a sharp curve, he announced his earliest
+		symptom by saying: &#8216;The conspicuous advantages
+		of this road are that one gets views of
+		the scenery and reviews of his meals.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>A few minutes later he suggested that the
+		road would do well to change its name, and
+		hereafter be known as &#8216;The Emetic G. and O.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>They who were with him proffered sympathy,
+		but he refused to be pitied. He thought
+		he had a remedy. He discovered that by taking
+		as nearly as possible a reclining posture, he
+		got temporary relief. He kept settling more
+		and more till at last he was nearly on his back.
+		Then he said: &#8216;If it be true that the lower
+		down we get the more comfortable we are, the
+		basements of Hell will have their compensations.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>He was too ill to say much after this, but his
+		last word, before the final and complete extinction
+		of his manhood, was, &#8216;The influence of
+		this road is such that employees have been
+		known involuntarily to throw up their jobs.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_34" title="34"></a>The Bibliotaph invariably excited comment
+		and attention when he was upon his travels. I
+		do not think he altogether liked it. Perhaps
+		he neither liked it nor disliked it. He accepted
+		the fact that he was not as other men quite as
+		he would have accepted any indisputable fact.
+		He used occasionally to express annoyance because
+		of the discrepancy between his reputation
+		and appearance; in other words, because he
+		seemed a man of greater fame than he was.
+		He suffered the petty discomforts of being a
+		personage, and enjoyed none of the advantages.
+		He declared that he was quite willing to be
+		much more distinguished or much less conspicuous.
+		What he objected to was the Laodicean
+		character of his reputation as set over against
+		the pronounced and even startling character of
+		his looks and manner.</p>
+
+		<p>He used also to note with amusement how
+		indelible a mark certain early ambitions and
+		tentative studies had made upon him. People
+		invariably took him for a clergyman. They
+		decided this at once and conducted themselves
+		accordingly. He made no protest, but observed
+		that their convictions as to how they should
+		behave in his presence had corollaries in the
+		shape of very definite convictions as to how he
+		should carry himself before them. He thought
+		that such people might be described as moral
+		trainers. They do not profess virtue themselves,
+		but they take a real pleasure in keeping
+		you up to your profession.</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_35" title="35"></a>The Bibliotaph had no explanation to give
+		why he was so immediately and invariably accounted
+		as one in orders. He was quite sure
+		that the clerical look was innate, and by no
+		means dependent upon the wearing of a high
+		vest or a Joseph Parker style of whisker; for
+		once as he sat in the hot room of a Turkish
+		bath and in the Adamitic simplicity of attire
+		suitable to the temperature and the place, a
+		gentleman who occupied the chair nearest introduced
+		conversation by saying, &#8216;I beg your
+		pardon, sir, but are you not a clergyman?&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;This incident,&#8217; said the Bibliotaph, &#8216;gave me
+		a vivid sense of the possibility of determining
+		a man&#8217;s profession by a cursory examination of
+		his cuticle.&#8217; Lowell&#8217;s conviction about N. P.
+		Willis was well-founded: namely, that if it had
+		been proper to do so, Willis could have worn
+		his own plain bare skin in a way to suggest
+		that it was a representative Broadway tailor&#8217;s
+		best work.</p>
+
+		<p>I imagine that few boys escape an outburst
+		of that savage instinct for personal adornment
+		which expresses itself in the form of rude tattooing
+		upon the arms. The Bibliotaph had had
+		his attack in early days, and the result was a
+		series of decorations of a highly patriotic character,
+		and not at all in keeping with South
+		Kensington standards. I said to him once,
+		apropos of the pictures on his arms: &#8216;You are
+		a great surprise to your friends in this particular.&#8217;
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_36" title="36"></a>&#8216;Yes,&#8217; he replied, &#8216;few of them are aware
+		that the volume of this Life is extra-illustrated.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>But that which he of necessity tolerated in
+		himself he would not tolerate in his books.
+		They were not allowed to become pictorially
+		amplified. He saw no objection to inserting a
+		rare portrait in a good book. It did not necessarily
+		injure the book, and it was one way of
+		preserving the portrait. Yet the thing was
+		questionable, and it was likely to prove the first
+		step in a downward path. As to cramming a
+		volume with a heterogeneous mass of pictures
+		and letters gathered from all imaginable sources,
+		he held the practice in abhorrence, and the bibliographical
+		results as fit only for the libraries
+		of the illiterate rich. He admitted the possibility
+		of doing such a thing well or ill; but at
+		its best it was an ill thing skillfully done.</p>
+
+		<p>The Bibliotaph upon his travels was a noteworthy
+		figure if only because of the immense
+		parcel of books with which he burdened himself.
+		That part of the journeying public which
+		loves to see some new thing puzzled itself
+		mightily over the gentleman of full habit, who
+		in addition to his not inconsiderable encumbrance
+		of flesh and luggage, chose to carry
+		about a shawl-strap loaded to utmost capacity
+		with a composite mass of books, magazines,
+		and newspapers. It was enormously heavy, and
+		the way in which its component parts adhered
+		was but a degree short of the miraculous. He
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_37" title="37"></a>appeared hardly conscious of its weight, for he
+		would pick the thing up and literally <em>trip</em> with
+		it on a toe certainly not light, but undeniably
+		fantastic.</p>
+
+		<p>He carried the books about with him partly
+		because he had just purchased them and wished
+		to study their salient points, and partly because
+		he was taking them to a &#8216;bin.&#8217; There is no
+		mystery about these &#8216;bins.&#8217; They were merely
+		places of temporary rest for the books before
+		the grand moving to the main library. But if
+		not mysterious they were certainly astonishing,
+		because of their number and size. With respect
+		to number, one in every large city was
+		the rule. With respect to size, few people buy
+		in a lifetime as many books as were sometimes
+		heaped together in one of these places of deposit.
+		He would begin by leaving a small bundle
+		of books with some favorite dealer, then
+		another, and then another. As the collection
+		enlarged, the accommodations would be increased;
+		for it was a satisfaction to do the Bibliotaph
+		this favor, he purchased so liberally and
+		tipped the juvenile clerks in so royal a manner.
+		Nor was he always in haste to move out after
+		he had once moved in. One bookseller, speaking
+		of the splendid proportions which the
+		&#8216;bin&#8217; was assuming, declared that he sometimes
+		found it difficult to adjust himself mentally
+		to the situation; he couldn&#8217;t tell when he
+		came to his place of business in the morning
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_38" title="38"></a>whether he was in his own shop or the Bibliotaph&#8217;s
+		library.</p>
+
+		<p>The corner of the shop where the great collector&#8217;s
+		accumulations were piled up was a
+		centre of mirth and conversation if he himself
+		chanced to be in town. Men dropped in for a
+		minute and stayed an hour. In some way time
+		appeared to broaden and leisure to grow more
+		ample. Life had an unusual richness, and
+		warmth, and color, when the Bibliotaph was
+		by. There was an Olympian largeness and
+		serenity about him. He seemed almost pagan
+		in the breadth of his hold upon existence. And
+		when he departed he left behind him what
+		can only be described as great unfilled mental
+		spaces. I recall that a placard was hung up
+		in his particular corner with the inscription,
+		&#8216;English spoken here.&#8217; This amused him.
+		Later there was attached to it another strip
+		upon which was crayoned, &#8216;Sir, we had much
+		good talk,&#8217; with the date of the talk. Still
+		later a victim added the words, &#8216;Yes, sir, on
+		that day the Bibliotaph tossed and gored a
+		number of people admirably.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>It was difficult for the Bibliotaph not to emit
+		intellectual sparks of one kind or another. His
+		habit of dealing with every fact as if it deserved
+		his entire mental force, was a secret of
+		his originality. Everything was worth while.
+		If the fact was a serious fact, all the strength
+		of his mind would be applied to its exposition
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_39" title="39"></a>or defense. If it was a fact of less importance,
+		humor would appear as a means to the conversational
+		end. And he would grow more humorous
+		as the topics grew less significant. When
+		finally he rioted in mere word-play, banter,
+		quizzing, it was a sign that he regarded the
+		matter as worthy no higher species of notice.</p>
+
+		<p>I like this theory of his wit so well that I am
+		minded not to expose it to an over-rigid test.
+		The following small fragments of his talk are
+		illustrative of such measure of truth as the
+		theory may contain.</p>
+
+		<p>Among the Bibliotaph&#8217;s companions was one
+		towards whose mind he affected the benevolent
+		and encouraging attitude of a father to a budding
+		child. He was asked by this friend to
+		describe a certain quaint and highly successful
+		entertainer. This was the response: &#8216;The
+		gentleman of whom you speak has the habit of
+		coming before his audience as an idiot and retiring
+		as a genius. You and I, sir, couldn&#8217;t do
+		that; we should sustain the first character consistently
+		throughout the entire performance.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>It was his humor to insist that all the virtues
+		and gifts of a distinguished collector were due
+		for their expansion and development to association
+		with himself and the writer of these
+		memories. He would say in the presence of
+		the distinguished collector: &#8216;Henry will probably
+		one day forget us, but on the Day of Judgment,
+		in any just estimate of the causes of his
+		success, the Lord won&#8217;t.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_40" title="40"></a>I have forgotten what the victim&#8217;s retort
+		was; it is safe to assume that it was adequate.</p>
+
+		<p>This same collector had the pleasing habit of
+		honoring the men he loved, among whom the
+		Bibliotaph was chief, with brightly written
+		letters which filled ten and fifteen half-sheets.
+		But the average number of words to a line was
+		two, while a five-syllable word had trouble in
+		accommodating itself to a line and a half, and
+		the sheets were written only upon one side.
+		The Bibliotaph&#8217;s comment was: &#8216;Henry has a
+		small brain output, but unlimited influence at a
+		paper-mill.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Of all the merry sayings in which the Bibliotaph
+		indulged himself at the expense of his
+		closest friend this was the most comforting. A
+		gentleman present was complaining that Henry
+		took liberties in correcting his pronunciation.
+		&#8216;I have no doubt of the occasional need of such
+		correction, but it isn&#8217;t often required, and not
+		half so often as he seems to think. I, on the
+		other hand, observe frequent minor slips in his
+		use of language, but I do not feel at liberty to
+		correct him.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The Bibliotaph began to apply salve to the
+		bruised feelings of the gentleman present as
+		follows: &#8216;The animus of Henry&#8217;s criticism is
+		unquestionably envy. He probably feels how
+		few flies there are in your ointment. While
+		you are astonished that in his case there should
+		be so little ointment for so many flies.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_41" title="41"></a>The Bibliotaph never used slang, and the
+		united recollections of his associates can adduce
+		but two or three instances in which he sunk
+		verbally so low as even to <em>hint</em> slang. He said
+		that there was one town which in his capacity
+		of public speaker he should like to visit. It was
+		a remote village in Virginia where there was a
+		girls&#8217; seminary, the catalogue of which set forth
+		among advantages of location this: that the
+		town was one to which the traveling lecturer
+		and the circus never came. The Bibliotaph
+		said, &#8216;I should go there. For I am the one
+		when I am on the platform, and by the unanimous
+		testimony of all my friends I am the
+		other when I am off.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The second instance not only illustrates his
+		ingenuity in trifles, but also shows how he could
+		occasionally answer a friend according to his
+		folly. He had been describing a visit which he
+		had made in the hero-worshiping days of boyhood
+		to Chappaqua; how friendly and good-natured
+		the great farmer-editor was; how he
+		called the Bibliotaph &#8216;Bub,&#8217; and invited him to
+		stay to dinner; how he stayed and talked politics
+		with his host; how they went out to the
+		barn afterwards to look at the stock; what
+		Greeley said to him and what he said to Greeley,&#8212;it
+		was a perfect bit of word-sketching,
+		spontaneous, realistic, homely, unpretentious,
+		irresistibly comic because of the quaintness of
+		the dialogue as reported, and because of the
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_42" title="42"></a>mental image which we formed of this large-headed,
+		round-bellied, precocious youth, who at
+		the age of sixteen was able for three consecutive
+		hours to keep the conversational shuttlecock
+		in the air with no less a person than
+		Horace Greeley. Amid the laughter and comment
+		which followed the narration one mirthful
+		genius who chose for the day to occupy the
+		seat of the scorner, called out to the Bibliotaph:&#8212;</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;How old did you say you were at that time,
+		&#8220;Bub&#8221;?&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;Sixteen.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;And did you wear whiskers?&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The query was insulting. But the Bibliotaph
+		measured the flippancy of the remark with his
+		eye and instantly fitted an answer to the mental
+		needs of the questioner.</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;Even if I had,&#8217; he said, &#8216;it would have
+		availed me nothing, for in those days there was
+		no wind.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The Bibliotaph was most at home in the
+		book-shop, on the street, or at his hotel. He
+		went to public libraries only in an emergency,
+		for he was impatient of that needful discipline
+		which compelled him to ask for each volume he
+		wished to see. He had, however, two friends
+		in whose libraries one might occasionally meet
+		him in the days when he hunted books upon
+		this wide continent. One was the gentleman
+		to whom certain letters on literature have
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_43" title="43"></a>been openly addressed, and who has made a
+		library by a process which involves wise selection
+		and infinite self-restraint. This priceless
+		little collection contains no volume which is
+		imperfect, no volume which mars the fine sense
+		of repose begotten in one at the sight of lovely
+		books becomingly clothed, and no volume which
+		is not worthy the name of literature. And
+		there is matter for reflection in the thought
+		that it is not the library of a rich man. Money
+		cannot buy the wisdom which has made this
+		collection what it is, and without self-denial it
+		is hardly possible to give the touch of real elegance
+		to a private library. When dollars are
+		not counted the assemblage of books becomes
+		promiscuous. How may we better describe
+		this library than by the phrase Infinite riches
+		in a little book-case!</p>
+
+		<p>There was yet another friend, the Country
+		Squire, who revels in wealth, buys large-paper
+		copies, reads little but deeply, and raises chickens.
+		His library (the room itself, I mean) is
+		a gentleman&#8217;s library, with much cornice, much
+		plate-glass, and much carving; whereof a wit
+		said, &#8216;The Squire has such a beautiful library,
+		and no place to put his books.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>These books are of a sort to rejoice the heart,
+		but their tenure of occupancy is uncertain.
+		Hardly one of them but is liable to eviction
+		without a moment&#8217;s notice. They have a look
+		in their attitude which indicates consciousness
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_44" title="44"></a>of being pilgrims and strangers. They
+		seem to say, &#8216;We can tarry, we can tarry but
+		a night.&#8217; Some have tarried two nights, others
+		a week, others a year, a few even longer. But
+		aside from a dozen or so of volumes, not one of
+		the remaining three thousand dares to affirm
+		that it holds a permanent place in its owner&#8217;s
+		heart of hearts. It is indeed a noble procession
+		of books which has passed in and out of those
+		doors. A day will come in which the owner
+		realizes that he has as good as the market can
+		furnish, and then banishments will cease. One
+		sighs not for the volumes which deserved exile,
+		but for those which were sent away because
+		their master ceased to love them.</p>
+
+		<p>There was no friend with whom the Bibliotaph
+		lived on easier terms than with the Country
+		Squire. They were counterparts. They supplemented
+		one another. The Bibliotaph, though
+		he was born and bred on a farm, had fled for
+		his salvation to the city. The Squire, a man
+		of city birth and city education, had fled for
+		his soul&#8217;s health to the country; he had rendered
+		existence almost perfect by setting up an
+		urban home in rural surroundings. It was well
+		said of that house that it was finely reticent in
+		its proffers of hospitality, and regally magnificent
+		in its kindness to those whom it delighted
+		to honor.</p>
+
+		<p>It was in the Country Squire&#8217;s library that
+		the Bibliotaph first met that actor with whom
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_45" title="45"></a>he became even more intimate than with the
+		Squire himself. The closeness of their relation
+		suggested the days of the old Miracle plays
+		when the theatre and the Church were as hand
+		in glove. The Bibliotaph signified his appreciation
+		of his new friend by giving him a copy of
+		a sixteenth-century book &#8216;containing a pleasant
+		invective against Poets, Pipers, Players,
+		Jesters, and such like Caterpillars of a Commonwealth.&#8217;
+		The Player in turn compiled for
+		his friend of clerical appearance a scrap-book,
+		intended to show how evil associations corrupt
+		good actors.</p>
+
+		<p>This actor professed that which for want of
+		a better term might be called parlor agnosticism.
+		The Bibliotaph was sturdily inclined
+		towards orthodoxy, and there was from time to
+		time collision between the two. It is my impression
+		that the actor sometimes retired with
+		four of his five wits halting. But he was
+		brilliant even when he mentally staggered.
+		Neither antagonist convinced the other, and
+		after a while they grew wearied of traveling
+		over one another&#8217;s minds.</p>
+
+		<p>It fell out on a day that the actor made a
+		fine speech before a large gathering, and mindful
+		of stage effect he introduced a telling allusion
+		to an all-wise and omnipotent Providence.
+		For this he was, to use his own phrase, &#8216;soundly
+		spanked&#8217; by all his friends; that is, he was
+		mocked at, jeered, ridiculed. To what end,
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_46" title="46"></a>they said, was one an agnostic if he weakly
+		yielded his position to the exigencies of an
+		after-dinner speech. The Bibliotaph alone took
+		pains to analyze his late antagonist&#8217;s position.
+		He wrote to the actor congratulating him upon
+		his success. &#8216;I wondered a little at this, remembering
+		how inconsiderable has been your
+		practice; and I infer that it has been inconsiderable,
+		for I am aware how seldom an actor can
+		be persuaded to make a speech. I, too, was at
+		first shocked when I heard that you had made
+		a respectful allusion to Deity; but I presently
+		took comfort, <em>remembering that your gods, like
+		your grease-paints, are purely professional</em>.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>He was always capital in these teasing moods.
+		To be sure, he buffeted one about tremendously,
+		but his claws were sheathed, and there
+		was a contagiousness in his frolicsome humor.
+		Moreover one learned to look upon one&#8217;s self
+		in the light of a public benefactor. To submit
+		to be knocked about by the Bibliotaph was in
+		a modest way to contribute to the gayety of nations.
+		If one was not absolutely happy one&#8217;s
+		self, there was a chastened comfort in beholding
+		the happiness of the on-lookers.</p>
+
+		<p>A small author wrote a small book, so small
+		that it could be read in less time than it takes
+		to cover an umbrella, that is, &#8216;while you wait.&#8217;
+		The Bibliotaph had Brobdingnagian joy of this
+		book. He sat and read it to himself in the
+		author&#8217;s presence, and particularly diminutive
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_47" title="47"></a>that book appeared as its light cloth cover was
+		outlined against the Bibliotaph&#8217;s ample black
+		waistcoat. From time to time he would vent
+		&#8216;a series of small private laughs,&#8217; especially if
+		he was on the point of announcing some fresh
+		illustration of the fallibility of inexperienced
+		writers. Finally the uncomfortable author said,
+		&#8216;Don&#8217;t sit there and pick out the mistakes.&#8217;
+		To which the Bibliotaph triumphantly replied,
+		&#8216;What other motive is there for reading it at
+		all?&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>He purchased every copy of this book which
+		he could find, and when asked by the author
+		why he did so, replied, &#8216;In order to withdraw
+		it from circulation.&#8217; A moment afterwards he
+		added reflectively, &#8216;But how may I hope to
+		withdraw a book from that which it has never
+		had?&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>He was apt to be severe in his judgment of
+		books, as when he said of a very popular but
+		very feeble literary performance that it was an
+		argument for the existence of God. &#8216;Such intensity
+		of stupidity was not realized without
+		Infinite assistance.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>He could be equally emphatic in his comments
+		upon men. Among his acquaintance
+		was a church dignitary who blew alternately
+		hot and cold upon him. When advised of some
+		new illustration of the divine&#8217;s uncertainty of
+		attitude, the Bibliotaph merely said, &#8216;He&#8217;s
+		more of a chameleon than he is a clergyman.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_48" title="48"></a>That Bostonian would be deficient in wit who
+		failed to enjoy this remark. Speaking of the
+		characteristics of American cities, the Bibliotaph
+		said, &#8216;It never occurs to the Hub that
+		anything of importance can possibly happen at
+		the periphery.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>He greatly admired the genial and philanthropic
+		editor of a well-known Philadelphia
+		newspaper. Shortly after Mr. Childs&#8217;s death
+		some one wrote to the Bibliotaph that in a
+		quiet Kentucky town he had noticed a sign
+		over a shop-door which read, &#8216;G. W. Childs,
+		dealer in Tobacco and Cigars.&#8217; There was
+		something graceful in the Bibliotaph&#8217;s reply.
+		He expressed surprise at Mr. Childs&#8217;s new occupation,
+		but declared that for his own part he
+		was &#8216;glad to know that the location of Heaven
+		had at last been definitely ascertained.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The Bibliotaph habitually indulged himself
+		in the practice of hero-worship. This propensity
+		led him to make those glorified scrap-books
+		which were so striking a feature in his collection.
+		They were no commonplace affairs, the
+		ugly result of a union of cheap leather, newspaper-clippings
+		and paste, but sumptuous books
+		resplendent in morocco and gilt tooling, the
+		creations of an artist who was eminent among
+		binders. These scrap-books were chiefly devoted
+		to living men,&#8212;men who were famous,
+		or who were believed to be on the high road to
+		fame. There was a book for each man. In this
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_49" title="49"></a>way did the Bibliotaph burn incense before his
+		Dii majores et minores.</p>
+
+		<p>These books were enriched with everything
+		that could illustrate the gifts and virtues of the
+		men in whose honor they were made. They
+		contained rare manuscripts, rare pictures, autograph
+		comments and notes, a bewildering variety
+		of records,&#8212;memorabilia which were
+		above price. Poets wrote humorous verse, and
+		artists who justly held their time as too precious
+		to permit of their working for love decorated
+		the pages of the Bibliotaph&#8217;s scrap-books.
+		One does not abuse the word &#8216;unique&#8217; when
+		he applies it to these striking volumes.</p>
+
+		<p>The Bibliotaph did not always follow contemporary
+		judgment in his selection of men to be
+		so canonized. He now and then honored a
+		man whose sense of the relation of achievement
+		to fame would not allow him to admit to himself
+		that he deserved the distinction, and whose
+		sense of humor could not but be strongly excited
+		at the thought of deification by so unusual
+		a process. It might be pleasant to consider
+		that the Bibliotaph cared so much for
+		one&#8217;s letters as to wish not to destroy them,
+		but it was awful to think of those letters as
+		bound and annotated. This was to get a taste
+		of posthumous fame before posthumous fame
+		was due. The Bibliotaph added a new terror
+		to life, for he compelled one to live up to one&#8217;s
+		scrap-book. He reversed the old Pagan formula,
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_50" title="50"></a>which was to the effect that &#8216;So-and-So
+		died and was made a god.&#8217; According to the
+		Bibliotaph&#8217;s prophetic method, a man was made
+		a god first and allowed to die at his leisure
+		afterward. Not every one of that little company
+		which his wisdom and love have marked
+		for great reputation will be able to achieve it.
+		They are unanimously grateful that he cared
+		enough for them to wish to drag their humble
+		gifts into the broad light of publicity. But
+		their gratitude is tempered by the thought that
+		perhaps he was only elaborately humorous at
+		their expense.</p>
+
+		<p>The Bibliotaph&#8217;s intellectual processes were
+		so vigorous and his pleasure in mental activity
+		for its own sake was so intense that he was quite
+		capable of deciding after a topic of discussion
+		had been introduced which side he would take.
+		And this with a splendid disdain of the merits
+		of the cause which he espoused. I remember
+		that he once set out to maintain the thesis that
+		a certain gentleman, as notable for his virtues
+		as he was conspicuous for lack of beauty, was
+		essentially a handsome man. The person who
+		initiated the discussion by observing that &#8216;Mr.
+		Blank was unquestionably a plain man&#8217; expected
+		from the Bibliotaph (if he expected any
+		remark whatever) nothing beyond a Platonic
+		&#8216;That I do most firmly believe.&#8217; He was not a
+		little astonished when the great book-collector
+		began an elaborate and exhaustive defense of
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_51" title="51"></a>the gentleman whose claims to beauty had
+		been questioned. At first it was dialogue, and
+		the opponent had his share of talk; but when
+		in an unlucky moment he hinted that such
+		energy could only be the result of consciousness
+		on the Bibliotaph&#8217;s part that he was in a
+		measure pleading his own cause, the dialogue
+		changed to monologue. For the Bibliotaph
+		girded up his loins and proceeded to smite his
+		opponent hip and thigh. All in good humor, to
+		be sure, and laughter reigned, but it was tremendous
+		and it was logically convincing. It
+		was clearly not safe to have a reputation for
+		good looks while the Bibliotaph was in this
+		temper. All the gentlemen were in terror lest
+		something about their countenances might be
+		construed as beauty, and men with good complexions
+		longed for newspapers behind which
+		to hide their disgrace.</p>
+
+		<p>As for the disputant who had stirred up the
+		monster, his situation was as unenviable as it
+		was comic to the bystanders. He had never
+		before dropped a stone into the great geyser.
+		He was therefore unprepared for the result.
+		One likened him to an unprotected traveler in
+		a heavy rain-storm. For the Bibliotaph&#8217;s unpremeditated
+		speech was a very cloud-burst of
+		eloquence. The unhappy gentleman looked despairingly
+		in every direction as if beseeching
+		us for the loan of a word-proof umbrella. There
+		was none to be had. We who had known a
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_52" title="52"></a>like experience were not sorry to stand under
+		cover and watch a fellow mortal undergo this
+		verbal drenching. The situation recalled one
+		described by Lockhart when a guest differed
+		on a point of scholarship with the great Coleridge.
+		Coleridge began to &#8216;exert himself.&#8217; He
+		burst into a steady stream of talk which broadened
+		and deepened as the moments fled. When
+		finally it ceased the bewildered auditor pulled
+		himself together and exclaimed, &#8216;Zounds, I
+		was never so <em>be-thumped</em> with words in my
+		life!&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>People who had opportunity of observing the
+		Bibliotaph were tempted to speculate on what
+		he might have become if he had not chosen to
+		be just what he was. His versatility led them
+		to declare for this, that, and the other profession,
+		largely in accordance with their own personal
+		preferences. Lawyers were sure that he
+		should have been an advocate; ministers that
+		he would have done well to yield to the &#8216;call&#8217;
+		he had in his youth; teachers were positive
+		that he would have made an inspiring teacher.
+		No one, so far as I know, ever told him that in
+		becoming a book-collector he had deprived the
+		world of a great musician; for he was like
+		Charles Lamb in that he was sentimentally
+		inclined to harmony but organically incapable
+		of a tune.</p>
+
+		<p>Yet he was so broad-minded that it was not
+		possible for him to hold even a neutral attitude
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_53" title="53"></a>in the presence of anything in which other people
+		delighted. I have known him to sit through
+		a long and heavy organ recital, not in a resigned
+		manner but actively attentive, clearly
+		determined that if the minutest portion of his
+		soul was sensitive to the fugues of J. S. Bach
+		he would allow that portion to bask in the sunshine
+		of an unwonted experience. So that
+		from one point of view he was the incarnation
+		of tolerance as he certainly was the incarnation
+		of good-humor and generosity. He envied no
+		man his gifts from Nature or Fortune. He was
+		not only glad to let live, but painstakingly
+		energetic in making the living of people a pleasure
+		to them, and he received with amused
+		placidity adverse comments upon himself.</p>
+
+		<p>Words which have been used to describe a
+		famous man of this century I will venture to
+		apply in part to the Bibliotaph. &#8216;He was a
+		kind of gigantic and Olympian school-boy, &#8230;
+		loving-hearted, bountiful, wholesome and sterling
+		to the heart&#8217;s core.&#8217;</p>
+
+	</div>
+	<div id="bibliotaph_3" class="essay">
+		<h2 class="essay_title"><a class="pagenum" id="page_54" title="54"></a>LAST WORDS ON THE BIBLIOTAPH</h2>
+		<p class="return_toc"><a href="#contents">Return to Contents</a></p>
+		<p><span class="first_word">The</span> Bibliotaph&#8217;s major passion was for collecting
+		books; but he had a minor passion, the
+		bare mention of which caused people to lift
+		their eyebrows suspiciously. He was a shameless,
+		a persistent, and a successful hunter of
+		autographs. His desire was for the signatures
+		of living men of letters, though an occasional
+		dead author would be allowed a place in the
+		collection, provided he had not been dead too
+		long. As a rule, however, the Bibliotaph coveted
+		the &#8216;hand of write&#8217; of the man who was
+		now more or less conspicuously in the public
+		eye. This autograph must be written in a
+		representative work of the author in question.
+		The Bibliotaph would not have crossed the
+		street to secure a line from Ben Jonson&#8217;s pen,
+		but he mourned because the autograph of the
+		Rev. C. L. Dodgson was not forthcoming, nor
+		likely to be. His conception of happiness was
+		this: to own a copy of the first edition of
+		<i class="title">Alice in Wonderland</i>, upon the fly-leaf of which
+		Lewis Carroll had written his name, together
+		with the statement that he had done so at the
+		Bibliotaph&#8217;s request, and because that eminent
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_55" title="55"></a>collector could not be made happy in any other
+		Way.</p>
+
+		<p>The Bibliotaph liked the autograph of the
+		modern man of letters because it <em>was</em> modern,
+		and because there was a reasonable hope of its
+		being genuine. He loved genuineness. Everything
+		about himself was exactly what it pretended
+		to be. From his soul to his clothing he
+		was honest. And his love for the genuine
+		was only surpassed in degree by his contempt
+		for the spurious. I remember that some one
+		gave him a bit of silverware, a toilet article,
+		perhaps, which he next day threw out of a car
+		window, because he had discovered that it was
+		not sterling. He scouted the suggestion that
+		possibly the giver may not have known. Such
+		ignorance was inexcusable, he said. &#8216;The likelier
+		interpretation was that the gift was symbolical
+		of the giver.&#8217; The act seemed brutal, and the
+		comment thereon even more so. But to realize
+		the atmosphere, the setting of the incident, one
+		must imagine the Bibliotaph&#8217;s round and comfortable
+		figure, his humorous look, and the air
+		of genial placidity with which he would do and
+		say a thing like this. It was as impossible to
+		be angry with him in behalf of the unfortunate
+		giver of cheap silver as to take offense at a tree
+		or mountain. And it was useless to argue the
+		matter&#8212;nay it was folly, for he would immediately
+		become polysyllabic and talk one down.</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_56" title="56"></a>It was this desire for genuine things which
+		made him entirely suspicious of autographs
+		which had been bought and sold. He had no
+		faith in them, and he would weaken your faith,
+		supposing you were a collector of such things.
+		Offer him an autograph of our first president
+		and he would reply, &#8216;I don&#8217;t believe that it&#8217;s
+		genuine; and if it were I shouldn&#8217;t care for it;
+		I never had the honor of General Washington&#8217;s
+		acquaintance.&#8217; The inference was that one
+		could have a personal relation with a living
+		great man, and the chances were largely in
+		favor of getting an autograph that was not an
+		object of suspicion.</p>
+
+		<p>Few collectors in this line have been as happy
+		as the Bibliotaph. The problem was easily mastered
+		with respect to the majority of authors.
+		As a rule an author is not unwilling to give
+		such additional pleasure to a reader of his
+		book as may consist in writing his name in the
+		reader&#8217;s copy. It is conceivable that the author
+		may be bored by too many requests of this
+		nature, but he might be bored to an even
+		greater degree if no one cared enough for him
+		to ask for his autograph. Some writers resisted
+		a little, and it was beautiful to see the
+		Bibliotaph bring them to terms. He was a
+		highwayman of the Tom Faggus type, just so
+		adroit, and courteous, and daring. He was
+		perhaps at his best in cases where he had
+		actually to hold up his victim; one may imagine
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_57" title="57"></a>the scene,&#8212;the author resisting, the Bibliotaph
+		determined and having the masterful air
+		of an expert who had handled just such cases
+		before.</p>
+
+		<p>A humble satellite who disapproved of these
+		proceedings read aloud to the Bibliotaph that
+		scorching little essay entitled <i class="title">Involuntary Bailees</i>,
+		written by perhaps the wittiest living English
+		essayist. An involuntary bailee&#8212;as the
+		essayist explains&#8212;is a person to whom people
+		(generally unknown to him) send things which
+		he does not wish to receive, but which <em>they</em> are
+		anxious to have returned. If a man insists
+		upon lending you a book, you become an involuntary
+		bailee. You don&#8217;t wish to read the
+		book, but you have it in your possession. It
+		has come to you by post, let us suppose, &#8216;and
+		to pack it up and send it back again requires
+		a piece of string, energy, brown paper, and
+		stamps enough to defray the postage.&#8217; And it
+		is a question whether a casual acquaintance
+		&#8216;has any right thus to make demands on a
+		man&#8217;s energy, money, time, brown paper, string,
+		and other capital and commodities.&#8217; There are
+		other ways of making a man an involuntary
+		bailee. You may ask him to pass judgment on
+		your poetry, or to use his influence to get your
+		tragedy produced, or to do any one of a half
+		hundred things which he doesn&#8217;t want to do
+		and which you have no business to ask him to
+		do. The essayist makes no mention of the
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_58" title="58"></a>particular form of sin which the Bibliotaph
+		practiced, but he would probably admit that
+		malediction was the only proper treatment for
+		the idler who bothers respectable authors by
+		asking them to write their names in his copies
+		of their books. For to what greater extent
+		could one trespass upon an author&#8217;s patience,
+		energy, brown paper, string, and commodities
+		generally? It was amusing to watch the Bibliotaph
+		as he listened to this arraignment of his
+		favorite pursuit. The writer of the essay admits
+		that there may be extenuating circumstances.
+		If the autograph collector comes bearing gifts
+		one may smile upon his suit. If for example
+		he accompanies his request for an autograph
+		with &#8216;several brace of grouse, or a salmon of
+		noble proportions, or rare old books bound by
+		Derome, or a service of Worcester china with
+		the square mark,&#8217; he may hope for success.
+		The essayist opines that such gifts &#8216;will not be
+		returned by a celebrity who respects himself.&#8217;
+		&#8216;They bless him who gives and him who takes
+		much more than tons of manuscript poetry,
+		and thousands of entreaties for an autograph.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>A superficial examination of the Bibliotaph&#8217;s
+		collection revealed the fact that he had either
+		used necromancy or given many gifts. The
+		reader may imagine some such conversation
+		between the great collector and one of his dazzled
+		visitors:&#8212;</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;Pray, how did you come by this?&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_59" title="59"></a>&#8216;His lordship has always been very kind in
+		such matters.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;And where did you get this?&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;I am greatly indebted to the Prime Minister
+		for his complaisance.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;But this poet is said to abhor Americans.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;You see that his antipathy has not prevented
+		his writing a stanza in my copy of his
+		most notable volume.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;And this?&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;I have at divers times contributed the sum
+		of five dollars to divers Fresh Air funds.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The Bibliotaph could not be convinced that
+		his sin of autograph collecting was not venial.
+		When authors denied his requests, on the
+		ground that they were intrusions, he was inclined
+		to believe that selfishness lay at the
+		basis of their motives. Some men are quite
+		willing to accept great fame, but they resent
+		being obliged to pay the penalties. They wish
+		to sit in the fierce light which beats on an intellectual
+		throne, but they are indignant when
+		the passers-by stop to stare at them. They
+		imagine that they can successfully combine the
+		glory of honorable publicity with the perfect
+		retirement enjoyed only by aspiring mediocrity.
+		The Bibliotaph believed that he was a missionary
+		to these people. He awakened in them a
+		sense of their obligations toward their admirers.
+		The principle involved is akin to that enunciated
+		by a certain American philosopher, who
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_60" title="60"></a>held that it is an act of generosity to borrow
+		of a man once in a while; it gives that man a
+		lively interest in the possible success or possible
+		failure of your undertaking.</p>
+
+		<p>He levied autographic toll on young writers.
+		For mature men of letters with established reputations
+		he would do extraordinary and difficult
+		services. A famous Englishman, not a
+		novelist by profession, albeit he wrote one of
+		the most successful novels of his day, earnestly
+		desired to own if possible a complete set of
+		all the American pirated editions of his book.
+		The Bibliotaph set himself to this task, and
+		collected energetically for two years. The undertaking
+		was considerable, for many of the
+		pirated editions were in pamphlet, and dating
+		from twenty years back. It was almost impossible
+		to get the earliest in a spotless condition.
+		Quantities of trash had to be overhauled, and
+		weeks might elapse before a perfect copy of a
+		given edition would come to light. Books are
+		dirty, but pamphlets are dirtier. The Bibliotaph
+		declared that had he rendered an itemized
+		bill for services in this matter, the largest item
+		would have been for Turkish baths.</p>
+
+		<p>Here was a case in which the collector paid
+		well for the privilege of having a signed copy
+		of a well-loved author&#8217;s novel. He begrudged
+		no portion of his time or expenditure. If it
+		pleased the great Englishman to have upon his
+		shelves, in compact array and in spotless condition,
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_61" title="61"></a>these proofs of what he <em>didn&#8217;t</em> earn by
+		the publication of his books in America, well
+		and good. The Bibliotaph was delighted that
+		so modest a service on his part could give so
+		apparently great a pleasure. The Englishman
+		must have had the collecting instinct, and he
+		must have been philosophical, since he could
+		contemplate with equanimity these illegitimate
+		volumes.</p>
+
+		<p>The conclusion of the story is this: The
+		work of collecting the reprints was finished.
+		The last installment reached the famous Englishman
+		during an illness which subsequently
+		proved fatal. They were spread upon the coverlid
+		of the bed, and the invalid took a great and
+		humorous satisfaction in looking them over.
+		Said the Bibliotaph, recounting the incident in
+		his succinct way, &#8216;They reached him on his
+		death-bed,&#8212;and made him willing to go.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The Bibliotaph was true to the traditions of
+		the book-collecting brotherhood, in that he read
+		but little. His knowledge of the world was
+		fresh from life, not &#8216;strained through books,&#8217;
+		as Johnson said of a certain Irish painter whom
+		he knew at Birmingham. But the Bibliotaph
+		was a mighty devourer of book-catalogues. He
+		got a more complete satisfaction, I used to
+		think, in reading a catalogue than in reading
+		any other kind of literature. To see him unwrapping
+		the packages which his English mail
+		had brought was to see a happy man. For in
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_62" title="62"></a>addition to books by post, there would be bundles
+		of sale-catalogues. Then might you behold
+		his eyes sparkle as he spread out the
+		tempting lists; the humorous lines about the
+		corners of his mouth deepened, and he would
+		take on what a little girl who watched him
+		called his &#8216;pussy-cat look.&#8217; Then with an indelible
+		pencil in his huge and pudgy left fist
+		(for the Bibliotaph was a Benjaminite), he would
+		go through the pages, checking off the items
+		of interest, rolling with delight in his chair as
+		he exclaimed from time to time, &#8216;Good books!
+		Such good books!&#8217; Say to him that you yourself
+		liked to read a catalogue, and his response
+		was pretty sure to be, &#8216;Pleasant, isn&#8217;t it?&#8217; This
+		was expressive of a high state of happiness,
+		and was an allusion. For the Bibliotaph was
+		once with a newly-married man, and they two
+		met another man, who, as the conversation
+		proceeded, disclosed the fact that he also had
+		but recently been wed. Whereupon the first
+		bridegroom, marveling that there could be another
+		in the world so exalted as himself, exclaimed
+		with sympathetic delight, &#8216;And <em>you</em>,
+		too, are married.&#8217; &#8216;Yes,&#8217; said the second,
+		&#8216;pleasant, isn&#8217;t it?&#8217; with much the same air
+		that he would have said, &#8216;Nice afternoon.&#8217; This
+		was one of the incidents which made the
+		Bibliotaph skeptical about marriage. But he
+		adopted the phrase as a useful one with which
+		to express the state of highest mental and
+		spiritual exaltation.</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_63" title="63"></a>People wondered at the extent of his knowledge
+		of books. It was very great, but it was
+		not incredible. If a man cannot touch pitch
+		without being defiled, still less can he handle
+		books without acquiring bibliographical information.
+		I am not sure that the Bibliotaph
+		ever heard of that professor of history who
+		used to urge his pupils to handle books, even
+		when they could not get time to read them.
+		&#8216;Go to the library, take down the volumes,
+		turn over the leaves, read the title-pages and
+		the tables of contents; information will stick
+		to you&#8217;&#8212;this was the professor&#8217;s advice. Information
+		acquired in this way may not be profound,
+		but so far as it goes it is definite and
+		useful. For the collector it is indispensable.
+		In this way the Bibliotaph had amassed his
+		seemingly phenomenal knowledge of books.
+		He had handled thousands and tens of thousands
+		of volumes, and he never relinquished
+		his hold upon a book until he had &#8216;placed&#8217; it,&#8212;until
+		he knew just what its rank was in the
+		hierarchy of desirability.</p>
+
+		<p>Between a diligent reading of catalogues and
+		an equally diligent rummaging among the collections
+		of third and fourth rate old book-shops,
+		the Bibliotaph had his reward. He undoubtedly
+		bought a deal of trash, but he also lighted
+		upon nuggets. For example, in Leask&#8217;s Life
+		of Boswell is an account of that curious little
+		romance entitled <i class="title">Dorando</i>. This so-called
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_64" title="64"></a><i class="title">Spanish Tale</i>, printed for J. Wilkie at the Bible
+		in St. Paul&#8217;s Church-Yard, was the work of
+		James Boswell. It was published anonymously
+		in 1767, and he who would might then have
+		bought it for &#8216;one shilling.&#8217; It was to be &#8216;sold
+		also by J. Dodsley in Pall Mall, T. Davies in
+		Russell-Street, Covent Garden, and by the
+		Book-sellers of Scotland.&#8217; This T. Davies was
+		the very man who introduced Boswell to Johnson.
+		He was an actor as well as a bookseller.
+		<i class="title">Dorando</i> was a story with a key. Under the
+		names of Don Stocaccio, Don Tipponi, and
+		Don Rodomontado real people were described,
+		and the facts of the &#8216;famous Douglas cause&#8217;
+		were presented to the public. The little volume
+		was suppressed in so far as that was possible.
+		It is rare, so rare that Boswell&#8217;s latest
+		biographer speaks of it as the &#8216;forlorn hope of
+		the book-hunter,&#8217; though he doubts not that
+		copies of it are lurking in some private collection.
+		One copy at least is lurking in the Bibliotaph&#8217;s
+		library. He bought it, not for a song
+		to be sure, but very reasonably. The Bibliotaph
+		declares that this book is good for but one
+		thing,&#8212;to shake in the faces of Boswell collectors
+		who haven&#8217;t it.</p>
+
+		<p>The Bibliotaph had many literary heroes.
+		Conspicuous among them were Professor Richard
+		Porson and Benjamin Jowett, the late master
+		of Balliol. The Bibliotaph collected everything
+		that related to these two men, all the
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_65" title="65"></a>books with which they had had anything to do,
+		every newspaper clipping and magazine article
+		which threw light upon their manners, habits,
+		modes of thought. He especially loved to tell
+		anecdotes of Porson. He knew many. He had
+		an interleaved copy of J. Selby Watson&#8217;s Life
+		of Porson into which were copied a multitude
+		of facts not to be found in that amusing biography.
+		The Bibliotaph used to say that he
+		would rather have known Porson than any other
+		man of his time. He used to quote this as one
+		of the best illustrations of Porson&#8217;s wit, and
+		one of the finest examples of the retort satiric
+		to be found in any language. One of Porson&#8217;s
+		works was assailed by Wakefield and by Hermann,
+		scholars to be sure, but scholars whose
+		scholarship Porson held in contempt. Being
+		told of their attack Porson only said that &#8216;whatever
+		he wrote in the future should be written
+		in such a way that those fellows wouldn&#8217;t be
+		able to reach it with their fore-paws if they
+		stood on their hind-legs to get at it!&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The Bibliotaph gave such an air of contemporaneity
+		to his stories of the great Greek professor
+		that it seemed at times as if they were
+		the relations of one who had actually known
+		Porson. So vividly did he portray the marvels
+		of that compound of thirst and scholarship that
+		no one had the heart to laugh when, after one
+		of his narrations, a gentleman asked the Bibliotaph
+		if he himself had studied under Porson.</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_66" title="66"></a>&#8216;Not <em>under</em> him but <em>with</em> him,&#8217; said the Bibliotaph.
+		&#8216;He was my coeval. Porson, Richard
+		Bentley, Joseph Scaliger, and I were all students
+		together.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Speaking of Jowett the Bibliotaph once said
+		that it was wonderful to note how culture failed
+		to counteract in an Englishman that disposition
+		to heave stones at an American. Jowett, with
+		his remarkable breadth of mind and temper,
+		was quite capable of observing, with respect to
+		a certain book, that it was American, &#8216;yet in
+		perfect taste.&#8217; &#8216;This,&#8217; said the Bibliotaph, &#8216;is
+		as if one were to say, &#8220;The guests were Americans,
+		but no one expectorated on the carpet.&#8221;&#8217;
+		The Bibliotaph thought that there was not so
+		much reason for this attitude. The sins of
+		Englishmen and Americans were identical, he
+		believed, but the forms of their expression were
+		different. &#8216;Our sin is a voluble boastfulness;
+		theirs is an irritating, unrestrainable, all-but-constantly
+		manifested, satisfied self-consciousness.
+		The same results are reached by different
+		avenues. We praise ourselves; they
+		belittle others.&#8217; Then he added with a smile:
+		&#8216;Thus even in these latter days are the Scriptures
+		exemplified; the same spirit with varying
+		manifestations.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>He was once commenting upon Jowett&#8217;s
+		classification of humorists. Jowett divided humorists
+		&#8216;into three categories or classes; those
+		who are not worth reading at all; those who
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_67" title="67"></a>are worth reading once, but once only; and
+		those who are worth reading again and again
+		and for ever.&#8217; This remark was made to Swinburne,
+		who quotes it in his all too brief <i class="title">Recollections
+		of Professor Jowett</i>. Swinburne says
+		that the starting-point of their discussion was
+		the <i class="title">Biglow Papers</i>, which &#8216;famous and admirable
+		work of American humour&#8217; Jowett placed
+		in the second class. Swinburne himself thought
+		that the <i class="title">Biglow Papers</i> was too good for the
+		second class and not quite good enough for the
+		third. &#8216;I would suggest that a fourth might
+		be provided, to include such examples as are
+		worth, let us say, two or three readings in a
+		life-time.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The Bibliotaph made a variety of comments
+		on this, but I remember only the following; it
+		is a reason for not including the <i class="title">Biglow Papers</i>
+		in Jowett&#8217;s third and crowning class. &#8216;Humor
+		to be popular permanently must be general
+		rather than local, and have to do with a phase
+		of character rather than a fact of history; that
+		is, it must deal in a great way with what is always
+		interesting to all men. Humor that does
+		not meet this requirement is not likely, when
+		its novelty has worn off, to be read even occasionally
+		save by those who enjoy it as an intellectual
+		performance or who are making a
+		critical study of its author.&#8217; The observation,
+		if not profound, is at least sensible, and it illustrates
+		very well the Bibliotaph&#8217;s love of alliteration
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_68" title="68"></a>and antithesis. But it is easier to remember
+		and to report his caustic and humorous
+		remarks.</p>
+
+		<p>The Country Squire had a card-catalogue of
+		the books in his library, and he delighted to
+		make therein entries of his past and his new
+		purchases. But it was not always possible to
+		find upon the shelves books that were mentioned
+		in the catalogue. The Bibliotaph took
+		advantage of a few instances of this sort to
+		prod his moneyed friend. He would ask the
+		Squire if he had such-and-such a book. The
+		Squire would say that he had, and appeal to his
+		catalogue in proof of it. Then would follow a
+		search for the volume. If, as sometimes happened,
+		no book corresponding to the entry could
+		be found, the Bibliotaph would be satirical and
+		remark:&#8212;</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;I&#8217;ll tell you what you ought to name your
+		catalogue.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;What?&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;Great expectations!&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Another time he said, &#8216;This is not a list of
+		your books, this is a list of the things that you
+		intend to buy;&#8217; or he would suggest that the
+		Squire would do well to christen his catalogue
+		<i class="title">Vaulting Ambition</i>. Perhaps the variation
+		might take this form. After a fruitless search
+		for some book, which upon the testimony of
+		the catalogue was certainly in the collection,
+		the Bibliotaph would observe, &#8216;This catalogue
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_69" title="69"></a>might not inappropriately be spoken of as the
+		substance of things hoped for, and the evidence
+		of things not seen.&#8217; Another time the Bibliotaph
+		said to the Squire, calling to mind the
+		well-known dictum as to the indispensableness
+		of certain books, &#8216;Between what one sees on
+		your shelves and what one reads in your card-catalogue
+		one would have reason to believe that
+		you were a gentleman.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Once the Bibliotaph said to me in the presence
+		of the Squire: &#8216;I think that our individual
+		relation to books might be expressed in this
+		way. You read books but you don&#8217;t buy them.
+		I buy books but I don&#8217;t read them. The
+		Squire neither reads them nor buys them,&#8212;only
+		card-catalogues them!&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>To all this the Squire had a reply which was
+		worldly, emphatic, and adequate, but the object
+		of this study is not to exhibit the virtues of the
+		Squire&#8217;s speech, witty though it was.</p>
+
+		<p>One of the Bibliotaph&#8217;s friends began without
+		sufficient provocation to write verse. The
+		Bibliotaph thought that if the matter were taken
+		promptly in hand the man could be saved. Accordingly,
+		when next he gave this friend a book
+		he wrote upon a fly-leaf: &#8216;To a Poet who is
+		nothing if not original&#8212;and who is not original!&#8217;
+		And the injured rhymester exclaimed
+		when he read the inscription: &#8216;You deface
+		every book you give me.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>He could pay a compliment, as when he was
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_70" title="70"></a>dining with a married pair who were thought
+		to be not yet disenchanted albeit in the tenth
+		year of their married life. The lady was speaking
+		to the Bibliotaph, but in the eagerness of
+		conversation addressed him by her husband&#8217;s
+		first name. Whereupon he turned to the husband
+		and said: &#8216;Your wife implies that I am a
+		repository of grace and a bundle of virtues, and
+		calls me by your name.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>He once sent this same lady, apropos of the
+		return of the shirt-waist season, a dozen neckties.
+		In the box was his card with these words
+		penciled upon it: &#8216;A contribution to the man-made
+		dress of a God-made woman.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The Squire had great skill in imitating the
+		cries of various domestic fowl, as well as dogs,
+		cats, and children. Once, in a moment of social
+		relaxation, he was giving an exhibition of his
+		power to the vast amusement of his guests.
+		When he had finished, the Bibliotaph said:
+		&#8216;The theory of Henry Ward Beecher that
+		every man has something of the animal in him
+		is superabundantly exemplified in <em>your</em> case.
+		You, sir, have got the whole Ark.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>There was a quaint humor in his most commonplace
+		remarks. Of all the fruits of the
+		earth he loved most a watermelon. And when
+		a fellow-traveler remarked, &#8216;That watermelon
+		which we had at dinner was bad,&#8217; the Bibliotaph
+		instantly replied: &#8216;There is no such thing
+		as a <em>bad</em> watermelon. There are watermelons,
+		and <em>better</em> watermelons.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_71" title="71"></a>I expressed astonishment on learning that he
+		stood six feet in his shoes. He replied: &#8216;People
+		are so preoccupied in the consideration of
+		my thickness that they don&#8217;t have time to observe
+		my height.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Again, when he was walking through a private
+		park which contained numerous monstrosities
+		in the shape of painted metal deer on
+		pedestals, pursued (also on pedestals) by hunters
+		and dogs, the Bibliotaph pointed to one of
+		the dogs and said, &#8216;Cave cast-iron canem!&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>He once accompanied a party of friends and
+		acquaintances to the summit of Mt. Tom. The
+		ascent is made in these days by a very remarkable
+		inclined plane. After looking at the extensive
+		and exquisite view, the Bibliotaph fell
+		to examining his return coupon, which read,
+		&#8216;Good for one Trip Down.&#8217; Then he said:
+		&#8216;Let us hope that in a post-terrestrial experience
+		our tickets will not read in this way.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>He was once ascending in the unusually
+		commodious and luxurious elevator of a new
+		ten-story hotel and remarked to his companion:
+		&#8216;If we can&#8217;t be carried to the skies on flowery
+		beds of ease, we can at least start in that direction
+		under not dissimilar conditions.&#8217; He also
+		said that the advantage of stopping at this particular
+		hotel was that you were able to get as
+		far as possible from the city in which it was
+		located.</p>
+
+		<p>He studied the dictionary with great diligence
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_72" title="72"></a>and was unusually accurate in his pronunciation.
+		He took an amused satisfaction in
+		pronouncing exactly certain words which in
+		common talk had shifted phonetically from
+		their moorings. This led a gentleman who
+		was intimate with the Bibliotaph to say to him,
+		&#8216;Why, if I were to pronounce that word among
+		my kinsfolk as you do they&#8217;d think I was
+		crazy.&#8217; &#8216;What you mean,&#8217; said the Bibliotaph,
+		&#8216;is, that they would look upon it in the light of
+		supererogatory supplementary evidence.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>He himself indulged overmuch in alliteration,
+		but it was with humorous intent; and
+		critics forgave it in him when they would have
+		reprehended it in another. He had no notion
+		that it was fine. Taken, however, in connection
+		with his emphatic manner and sonorous
+		voice he produced a decided and original effect.
+		Meeting the Squire&#8217;s wife after a considerable
+		interval, I asked whether her husband had been
+		behaving well. She replied &#8216;As usual.&#8217; Whereupon
+		the Bibliotaph said, &#8216;You mean that his
+		conduct in these days is characterized by a plethora
+		of intention and a paucity of performance.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>He objected to enlarging the boundaries of
+		words until they stood for too many things.
+		Let a word be kept so far as was reasonable to
+		its earlier and authorized meaning. Speaking
+		of the word &#8216;symposium,&#8217; which has been
+		stretched to mean a collection of short articles
+		on a given subject, the Bibliotaph said that he
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_73" title="73"></a>could fancy a honey-bee which had been feasting
+		on pumice until it was unable to make the
+		line characteristic of its kind, explaining to its
+		queen that it had been to a symposium; but
+		that he doubted if we ought to allow any other
+		meaning.</p>
+
+		<p>The Bibliotaph got much amusement from
+		what he insisted were the ill-concealed anxieties
+		of his friend the actor on the subject of a future
+		state. &#8216;He has acquired,&#8217; said the Bibliotaph,
+		&#8216;both a pathetic and a prophetic interest in
+		that place which begins as heaven does, but
+		stops off monosyllabically.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The two men were one day discussing the
+		question of the permanency of fame, how ephemeral
+		for example was that reputation which
+		depended upon the living presence of the artist
+		to make good its claim; how an actor, an orator,
+		a singer, was bound to enjoy his glory while it
+		lasted, since at the instant of his death all tangible
+		evidence of greatness disappeared; he
+		could not be proven great to one who had never
+		seen and heard him. Having reached this
+		point in his philosophizing the Bibliotaph&#8217;s
+		player-friend became sentimental and quoted a
+		great comedian to the effect that &#8216;a dead actor
+		was a mighty useless thing.&#8217; &#8216;Certainly,&#8217; said
+		the Bibliotaph, &#8216;having exhausted the life that
+		now is, and having no hope of the life that is to
+		come.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Sometimes it pleased the Bibliotaph to maintain
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_74" title="74"></a>that his friend of the footlights would be
+		in the future state a mere homeless wanderer,
+		having neither positive satisfaction nor positive
+		discomfort. For the actor was wont to insist
+		that even if there were an orthodox heaven its
+		moral opposite were the desirable locality; all
+		the clever and interesting fellows would be
+		down below. &#8216;Except yourself,&#8217; said the Bibliotaph.
+		&#8216;You, sir, will be eliminated by your
+		own reasoning. You will be denied heaven
+		because you are not good, and hell because you
+		are not great.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>On the whole it pleased the Bibliotaph to
+		maintain that his friend&#8217;s course was downward,
+		and that the sooner he reconciled himself
+		to his undoubted fate the better. &#8216;Why
+		speculate upon it?&#8217; he said paternally to the
+		actor, &#8216;your prospective comparisons will one
+		day yield to reminiscent contrasts.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The actor was convinced that the Bibliotaph&#8217;s
+		own past life needed looking into, and he
+		declared that when he got a chance he was
+		going to examine the great records. To which
+		the Bibliotaph promptly responded: &#8216;The
+		books of the recording angel will undoubtedly
+		be open to your inspection if you can get an
+		hour off to come up. The probability is that
+		you will be overworked.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The Bibliotaph never lost an opportunity for
+		teasing. He arrived late one evening at the
+		house of a friend where he was always heartily
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_75" title="75"></a>welcome, and before answering the chorus of
+		greetings, proceeded to kiss the lady of the
+		mansion, a queenly and handsome woman. Being
+		asked why he&#8212;who was a large man and
+		very shy with respect to women, as large men
+		always are&#8212;should have done this thing, he
+		answered that the kiss had been sent by a common
+		friend and that he had delivered it at once,
+		&#8216;for if there was anything he prided himself
+		upon it was a courageous discharge of an
+		unpleasant duty.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Once when he had been narrating this incident
+		he was asked what reply the lady had
+		made to so uncourteous a speech. &#8216;I don&#8217;t
+		remember,&#8217; said the Bibliotaph, &#8216;it was long
+		ago; but my opinion is that she would have
+		been justified in denominating me by a monosyllable
+		beginning with the initial letter of the
+		alphabet and followed by successive sibilants.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>One of the Bibliotaph&#8217;s fellow book-hunters
+		owned a chair said to have been given by Sir
+		Edwin Landseer to Sir Walter Scott. The
+		chair was interesting to behold, but the Bibliotaph
+		after attempting to sit in it immediately
+		got up and declared that it was not a genuine
+		relic: &#8216;Sir Edwin had reason to be grateful to
+		rather than indignant at Sir Walter Scott.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>He said of a highly critical person that if
+		that man were to become a minister he would
+		probably announce as the subject of his first
+		sermon: &#8216;The conditions that God must meet
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_76" title="76"></a>in order to be acceptable to me.&#8217; He said of a
+		poor orator who had copyrighted one of his
+		most indifferent speeches, that the man &#8216;positively
+		suffered from an excess of caution.&#8217; He
+		remarked once that the great trouble with a
+		certain lady was &#8216;she labored under the delusion
+		that she enjoyed occasional seasons of sanity.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The <i  lang="la">nil admirari</i> attitude was one which he
+		never affected, and he had a contempt for men
+		who denied to the great in literature and art
+		that praise which was their due. This led him
+		to say apropos of an obscure critic who had
+		assailed one of the poetical masters: &#8216;When
+		the Lord makes a man a fool he injures him;
+		but when He so constitutes him that the man
+		is never happy unless he is making that fact
+		public, He insults him.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>He enjoyed speculating on the subject of
+		marriage, especially in the presence of those
+		friends who unlike himself knew something
+		about it empirically. He delighted to tell his
+		lady acquaintances that their husbands would
+		undoubtedly marry a second time if they had
+		the chance. It was inevitable. A man whose
+		experience has been fortunate is bound to
+		marry again, because he is like the man who
+		broke the bank at Monte Carlo. A man who
+		has been unhappily married marries again because
+		like an unfortunate gamester he has
+		reached the time when his luck has got to
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_77" title="77"></a>change. The Bibliotaph then added with a
+		smile: &#8216;I have the idea that many men who
+		marry a second time do in effect what is often
+		done by unsuccessful gamblers at Monte Carlo;
+		they go out and commit suicide.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The Bibliotaph played but few games. There
+		was one, however, in which he was skillful. I
+		blush to speak of it in these days of much muscular
+		activity. What have golfers, and tennis-players,
+		and makers of century runs to do with
+		croquet? Yet there was a time when croquet
+		was spoken of as &#8216;the coming game;&#8217; and had
+		not Clintock&#8217;s friend Jennings written an epic
+		poem upon it in twelve books, which poem he
+		offered to lend to a certain brilliant young lady?
+		But Gwendolen despised boys and cared even
+		less for their poetry than for themselves.</p>
+
+		<p>At the house of the Country Squire the Bibliotaph
+		was able to gratify his passion for croquet,
+		and verily he was a master. He made a
+		grotesque figure upon the court, with his big
+		frame which must stoop mightily to take account
+		of balls and short-handled mallets, with
+		his agile manner, his uncovered head shaggy
+		with its barbaric profusion of hair (whereby
+		some one was led to nickname him Bibliotaph
+		Indetonsus), with the scanty black alpaca coat
+		in which he invariably played&#8212;a coat so short
+		in the sleeves and so brief in the skirt that the
+		figure cut by the wearer might almost have
+		passed for that of Mynheer Ten Broek of many-trowsered
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_78" title="78"></a>memory. But it was vastly more
+		amusing to watch him than to play with him.
+		He had a devil &#8216;most undoubted.&#8217; Only with
+		the help of black art and by mortgaging one&#8217;s
+		soul would it have been possible to accomplish
+		some of the things which he accomplished.
+		For the materials of croquet are so imperfect
+		at best that chance is an influential element.
+		I&#8217;ve seen tennis-players in the intervals of
+		<em>their</em> game watch the Bibliotaph with that
+		superior smile suggestive of contempt for the
+		puerility of his favorite sport. They might
+		even condescend to take a mallet for a while
+		to amuse <em>him</em>; but presently discomfited they
+		would retire to a game less capricious than croquet
+		and one in which there was reasonable
+		hope that a given cause would produce its
+		wonted effect.</p>
+
+		<p>The Bibliotaph played strictly for the purpose
+		of winning, and took savage joy in his
+		conquests. In playing with him one had to do
+		two men&#8217;s work; one must play, and then one
+		must summon such philosophy as one might to
+		suffer continuous defeat, and such wit as one
+		possessed to beat back a steady onslaught of
+		daring and witty criticisms. &#8216;I play like a
+		fool,&#8217; said a despairing opponent after fruitless
+		effort to win a just share of the games. &#8216;We
+		all have our moments of unconsciousness,&#8217;
+		purred the Bibliotaph blandly in response.
+		This same despairing opponent, who was an
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_79" title="79"></a>expert in everything he played, said that there
+		was but one solace after croquet with the Bibliotaph;
+		he would go home and read Hazlitt&#8217;s
+		essay on the Indian Jugglers.</p>
+
+		<p class="post_thoughtbreak">Here ends the account of the Bibliotaph.
+		From these inadequate notes it is possible to
+		get some little idea of his habits and conversation.
+		The library is said to be still growing.
+		Packages of books come mysteriously from the
+		corners of the earth and make their way to
+		that remote and almost inaccessible village
+		where the great collector hides his treasures.
+		No one has ever penetrated that region, and no
+		one, so far as I am aware, has ever seen the
+		treasures. The books lie entombed, as it were,
+		awaiting such day of resurrection as their
+		owner shall appoint them. The day is likely to
+		be long delayed. Of the collector&#8217;s whereabouts
+		now no one of his friends dares to speak
+		positively; for at the time when knowledge of
+		him was most exact THE BIBLIOTAPH was
+		like a newly-discovered comet,&#8212;his course was
+		problematical.</p>
+
+	</div>
+	<div id="hardy" class="essay">
+		<h2 class="essay_title"><a class="pagenum" id="page_80" title="80"></a>THOMAS HARDY</h2>
+		<p class="return_toc"><a href="#contents">Return to Contents</a></p>
+
+		<h3 class="essay_subtitle">I</h3>
+
+		<p>&#8216;<span class="first_word">The</span> reason why so few good books are
+		written is that so few people that can write
+		know anything.&#8217; So said a man who, during a
+		busy career, found time to add several fine volumes
+		to the scanty number of good books.
+		And in a vivacious paragraph which follows
+		this initial sentence he humorously anathematizes
+		the literary life. He shows convincingly
+		that &#8216;secluded habits do not tend to eloquence.&#8217;
+		He says that the &#8216;indifferent apathy&#8217; so common
+		among studious persons is by no means
+		favorable to liveliness of narration. He proves
+		that men who will not live cannot write; that
+		people who shut themselves up in libraries have
+		dry brains. He avows his confidence in the
+		&#8216;original way of writing books,&#8217; the way of the
+		first author, who must have looked at things
+		for himself, &#8216;since there were no books for him
+		to copy from;&#8217; and he challenges the reader to
+		prove that this original way is not the best
+		way. &#8216;Where,&#8217; he asks, &#8216;are the amusing
+		books from voracious students and habitual
+		writers?&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_81" title="81"></a>This startling arraignment of authors has
+		been made by other men than Walter Bagehot.
+		Hazlitt in his essay on the &#8216;Ignorance of the
+		Learned&#8217; teaches much the same doctrine.
+		Its general truth is indisputable, though Bagehot
+		himself makes exception in favor of Sir
+		Walter Scott. But the two famous critics are
+		united in their conviction that learned people
+		are generally dull, and that books which are
+		the work of habitual writers are not amusing.</p>
+
+		<p>There are as a matter of course more exceptions
+		than one. Thomas Hardy is a distinguished
+		exception. Thomas Hardy is an &#8216;habitual
+		writer,&#8217; but he is always amusing. The
+		following paragraphs are intended to emphasize
+		certain causes of this quality in his work, the
+		quality by virtue of which he chains the attention
+		and proves himself the most readable
+		novelist now living. That he does attract and
+		hold is clear to any one who has tried no more
+		than a half-dozen pages from one of his best
+		stories. He has the fatal habit of being interesting,&#8212;fatal
+		because it robs you who read
+		him of time which you might else have devoted
+		to &#8216;improving&#8217; literature, such as history, political
+		economy, or light science. He destroys
+		your peace of mind by compelling your sympathies
+		in behalf of people who never existed.
+		He undermines your will power and makes you
+		his slave. You declare that you will read but
+		one more chapter and you weakly consent to
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_82" title="82"></a>make it two chapters. As a special indulgence
+		you spoil a working day in order to learn about
+		the <i class="title">Return of the Native</i>, perhaps agreeing with
+		a supposititious &#8216;better self&#8217; that you will waste
+		no more time on novels for the next six months.
+		But you are of ascetic fibre indeed if you do
+		not follow up the book with a reading of <i class="title">The
+		Woodlanders</i> and <i class="title">The Mayor of Casterbridge</i>.</p>
+
+		<p>There is a reason for this. If the practiced
+		writer often fails to make a good book because
+		he knows nothing, Mr. Hardy must succeed in
+		large part because he knows so much. The
+		more one reads him the more is one impressed
+		with the extent of his knowledge. He has an
+		intimate acquaintance with an immense number
+		of interesting things.</p>
+
+		<p>He knows men and women&#8212;if not all sorts
+		and all conditions, at least a great many varieties
+		of the human animal. Moreover, his men
+		are men and his women are women. He does
+		not use them as figures to accentuate a landscape,
+		or as ventriloquist&#8217;s puppets to draw
+		away attention from the fact that he himself is
+		doing all the talking. His people have individuality,
+		power of speech, power of motion. He
+		does not tell you that such a one is clever or
+		witty; the character which he has created does
+		that for himself by doing clever things and
+		making witty remarks. In an excellent story
+		by a celebrated modern master there is a young
+		lady who is declared to be clever and brilliant.
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_83" title="83"></a>Out of forty or fifty observations which she
+		makes, the most extraordinary concerns her
+		father; she says, &#8216;Isn&#8217;t dear papa delightful?&#8217;
+		At another time she inquires whether another
+		gentleman is not also delightful. Hardy&#8217;s resources
+		are not so meagre as this. When his
+		people talk we listen,&#8212;we do not endure.</p>
+
+		<p>He knows other things besides men and
+		women. He knows the soil, the trees, the sky,
+		the sunsets, the infinite variations of the landscape
+		under cloud and sunshine. He knows
+		horses, sheep, cows, dogs, cats. He understands
+		the interpretation of sounds,&#8212;a detail
+		which few novelists comprehend or treat with
+		accuracy; the pages of his books ring with the
+		noises of house, street, and country. Moreover
+		there is nothing conventional in his transcript
+		of facts. There is no evidence that he has
+		been in the least degree influenced by other
+		men&#8217;s minds. He takes the raw stuff of which
+		novels are made and moulds it as he will. He
+		has an absolutely fresh eye, as painters sometimes
+		say. He looks on life as if he were the
+		first literary man, &#8216;and none had ever lived
+		before him.&#8217; Paraphrasing Ruskin, one may
+		say of Hardy that in place of studying the old
+		masters he has studied what the old masters
+		studied. But his point of view is his own. His
+		pages are not reminiscent of other pages. He
+		never makes you think of something you have
+		read, but invariably of something you have
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_84" title="84"></a>seen or would like to see. He is an original
+		writer, which means that he takes his material
+		at first hand and eschews documents. There
+		is considerable evidence that he has read books,
+		but there is no reason for supposing that books
+		have damaged him.</p>
+
+		<p>Dr. Farmer proved that Shakespeare had no
+		&#8216;learning.&#8217; One might perhaps demonstrate
+		that Thomas Hardy is equally fortunate. In
+		that case he and Shakespeare may felicitate
+		one another. Though when we remember that
+		in our day it is hardly possible to avoid a tincture
+		of scholarship, we may be doing the fairer
+		thing by these two men if we say that the one
+		had small Greek and the other has adroitly concealed
+		the measure of Greek, whether great or
+		small, which is in his possession. To put the
+		matter in another form, though Hardy may
+		have drunk in large quantity &#8216;the spirit breathed
+		from dead men to their kind,&#8217; he has not allowed
+		his potations to intoxicate him.</p>
+
+		<p>This paragraph is not likely to be misinterpreted
+		unless by some honest soul who has yet
+		to learn that &#8216;literature is not sworn testimony.&#8217;
+		Therefore it may be well to add that Mr. Hardy
+		undoubtedly owns a collection of books, and
+		has upon his shelves dictionaries and encyclopedias,
+		together with a decent representation of
+		those works which people call &#8216;standard.&#8217; But
+		it is of importance to remember this: That
+		while he may be a well-read man, as the phrase
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_85" title="85"></a>goes, he is not and never has been of that class
+		which Emerson describes with pale sarcasm as
+		&#8216;meek young men in libraries.&#8217; It is clear that
+		Hardy has not &#8216;weakened his eyesight over
+		books,&#8217; and it is equally clear that he has
+		&#8216;sharpened his eyesight on men and women.&#8217;
+		Let us consider a few of his virtues.</p>
+
+		<h3 class="essay_subtitle">II</h3>
+
+		<p>In the first place he tells a good story. No
+		extravagant praise is due him for this; it is his
+		business, his trade. He ought to do it, and
+		therefore he does it. The &#8216;first morality&#8217; of a
+		novelist is to be able to tell a story, as the first
+		morality of a painter is to be able to handle his
+		brush skillfully and make it do his brain&#8217;s intending.
+		After all, telling stories in an admirable
+		fashion is rather a familiar accomplishment
+		nowadays. Many men, many women are
+		able to make stories of considerable ingenuity
+		as to plot, and of thrilling interest in the unrolling
+		of a scheme of events. Numberless writers
+		are shrewd and clever in constructing their
+		&#8216;fable,&#8217; but they are unable to do much beyond
+		this. Walter Besant writes good stories; Robert
+		Buchanan writes good stories; Grant Allen
+		and David Christie Murray are acceptable to
+		many readers. But unless I mistake greatly
+		and do these men an injustice I should be sorry
+		to do them, their ability ceases just at this
+		point. They tell good stories and do nothing
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_86" title="86"></a>else. They write books and do not make literature.
+		They are authors by their own will and
+		not by grace of God. It may be said of them
+		as Augustine Birrell said of Professor Freeman
+		and the Bishop of Chester, that they are horny-handed
+		sons of toil and worthy of their wage.
+		But one would like to say a little more. Granting
+		that this is praise, it is so faint as to be
+		almost inaudible. If Hardy only wrote good
+		stories he would be merely doing his duty, and
+		therefore accounted an unprofitable servant.
+		But he does much besides.</p>
+
+		<p>He fulfills one great function of the literary
+		artist, which is to mediate between nature and
+		the reading public. Such a man is an eye
+		specialist. Through his amiable offices people
+		who have hitherto been blind are put into condition
+		to see. Near-sighted persons have spectacles
+		fitted to them&#8212;which they generally
+		refuse to wear, not caring for literature which
+		clears the mental vision.</p>
+
+		<p>Hardy opens the eyes of the reader to the
+		charm, the beauty, the mystery to be found in
+		common life and in every-day objects. So alert
+		and forceful an intelligence rarely applies its
+		energy to fiction. The result is that he makes
+		an almost hopelessly high standard. The exceptional
+		man who comes after him may be a
+		rival, but the majority of writing gentlemen
+		can do little more than enviously admire. He
+		seems to have established for himself such a
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_87" title="87"></a>rule as this, that he will write no page which
+		shall not be interesting. He pours out the
+		treasures of his observation in every chapter.
+		He sees everything, feels everything, sympathizes
+		with everything. To be sure he has an
+		unusually rich field for work. In <i class="title">The Mayor
+		of Casterbridge</i> is an account of the discovery
+		of the remains of an old Roman soldier. One
+		would expect Hardy to make something graphic
+		of the episode. And so he does. You can
+		almost see the warrior as he lies there &#8216;in an
+		oval scoop in the chalk, like a chicken in its
+		shell; his knees drawn up to his chest; his
+		spear against his arm; an urn at his knees, a
+		jar at his throat, a bottle at his mouth; and
+		mystified conjecture pouring down upon him
+		from the eyes of Casterbridge street-boys and
+		men.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The real virtue in this bit of description lies
+		in the few words expressive of the mental attitude
+		of the onlookers. And it is a nice distinction
+		which Hardy makes when he says that
+		&#8216;imaginative inhabitants who would have felt
+		an unpleasantness at the discovery of a comparatively
+		modern skeleton in their gardens were
+		quite unmoved by these hoary shapes. They
+		had lived so long ago, their hopes and motives
+		were so widely removed from ours, that between
+		them and the living there seemed to
+		stretch a gulf too wide for even a spirit to
+		pass.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_88" title="88"></a>He takes note of that language which, though
+		not articulate, is in common use among yeomen,
+		dairymen, farmers, and the townsfolk of
+		his little world. It is a language superimposed
+		upon the ordinary language. &#8216;To express satisfaction
+		the Casterbridge market-man added to
+		his utterance a broadening of the cheeks, a
+		crevicing of the eyes, a throwing back of the
+		shoulders.&#8217; &#8216;If he wondered &#8230; you knew it
+		from perceiving the inside of his crimson mouth
+		and the target-like circling of his eyes.&#8217; The
+		language of deliberation expressed itself in the
+		form of &#8216;sundry attacks on the moss of adjoining
+		walls with the end of his stick&#8217; or a &#8216;change
+		of his hat from the horizontal to the less so.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The novel called <i class="title">The Woodlanders</i> is filled
+		with notable illustrations of an interest in minute
+		things. The facts are introduced unobtrusively
+		and no great emphasis is laid upon
+		them. But they cling to the memory. Giles
+		Winterbourne, a chief character in this story,
+		&#8216;had a marvelous power in making trees grow.
+		Although he would seem to shovel in the earth
+		quite carelessly there was a sort of sympathy
+		between himself and the fir, oak, or beech that
+		he was operating on; so that the roots took
+		hold of the soil in a few days.&#8217; When any of
+		the journeymen planted, one quarter of the
+		trees died away. There is a graphic little
+		scene where Winterbourne plants and Marty
+		South holds the trees for him. &#8216;Winterbourne&#8217;s
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_89" title="89"></a>fingers were endowed with a gentle
+		conjurer&#8217;s touch in spreading the roots of each
+		little tree, resulting in a sort of caress under
+		which the delicate fibres all laid themselves out
+		in their proper direction for growth.&#8217; Marty
+		declared that the trees began to &#8216;sigh&#8217; as soon
+		as they were put upright, &#8216;though when they
+		are lying down they don&#8217;t sigh at all.&#8217; Winterbourne
+		had never noticed it. &#8216;She erected one
+		of the young pines into its hole, and held up
+		her finger; the soft musical breathing instantly
+		set in, which was not to cease night or day till
+		the grown tree should be felled&#8212;probably
+		long after the two planters had been felled
+		themselves.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Later on in the story there is a description
+		of this same Giles Winterbourne returning with
+		his horses and his cider apparatus from a neighboring
+		village. &#8216;He looked and smelt like
+		autumn&#8217;s very brother, his face being sunburnt
+		to wheat color, his eyes blue as corn flowers,
+		his sleeves and leggings dyed with fruit stains,
+		his hands clammy with the sweet juice of apples,
+		his hat sprinkled with pips, and everywhere
+		about him that atmosphere of cider
+		which at its first return each season has such
+		an indescribable fascination for those who have
+		been born and bred among the orchards.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Hardy throws off little sketches of this sort
+		with an air of unconsciousness which is fascinating&#8230;. It
+		may be a sunset, or it may be only
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_90" title="90"></a>a flake of snow falling upon a young girl&#8217;s hair,
+		or the light from lanterns penetrating the shutters
+		and flickering over the ceiling of a room in
+		the early winter morning,&#8212;no matter what
+		the circumstance or happening is, it is caught
+		in the act, photographed in permanent colors,
+		made indelible and beautiful.</p>
+
+		<p>Hardy&#8217;s art is tyrannical. It compels one to
+		be interested in that which delights him. It
+		imposes its own standards. There is a rude
+		strength about the man which readers endure
+		because they are not unwilling to be slaves to
+		genius. You may dislike sheep, and care but
+		little for the poetical aspect of cows, if indeed
+		you are not inclined to question the existence
+		of poetry in cows; but if you read <i class="title">Far from
+		the Madding Crowd</i> you can never again pass
+		a flock of sheep without being conscious of a
+		multitude of new thoughts, new images, new
+		matters for comparison. All that dormant section
+		of your soul which for years was in a
+		comatose condition on the subject of sheep is
+		suddenly and broadly awake. Read <i class="title">Tess</i> and
+		at once cows and a dairy have a new meaning
+		to you. They are a conspicuous part of the
+		setting of that stage upon which poor Tess
+		Durbeyfield&#8217;s life drama was played.</p>
+
+		<p>But Hardy does not flaunt his knowledge in
+		his reader&#8217;s face. These things are distinctly
+		means to an end, not ends in themselves. He
+		has no theory to advance about keeping bees
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_91" title="91"></a>or making cider. He has taken no little journeys
+		in the world. On the contrary, where he
+		has traveled at all, he has traveled extensively.
+		He is like a tourist who has been so many times
+		abroad that his allusions are naturally and unaffectedly
+		made. But the man just back from a
+		first trip on the continent has astonishment
+		stamped upon his face, and he speaks of Paris
+		and of the Alps as if he had discovered both.
+		Zola is one of those practitioners who, big with
+		recently acquired knowledge, appear to labor
+		under the idea that the chief end of a novel is
+		to convey miscellaneous information. This is
+		probably a mistake. Novels are not handbooks
+		on floriculture, banking, railways, or the management
+		of department stores. One may make
+		a parade of minute details and endlessly wearisome
+		learning and gain a certain credit thereby;
+		but what if the details and the learning are
+		chiefly of value in a dictionary of sciences and
+		commerce? Wisdom of this sort is to be sparingly
+		used in a work of art.</p>
+
+		<p>In these matters I cannot but feel that Hardy
+		has a reticence so commendable that praise of it
+		is superfluous and impertinent. After all, men
+		and women are better than sheep and cows,
+		and had he been more explicit, he would have
+		tempted one to inquire whether he proposed
+		making a story or a volume which might bear
+		the title <i class="title">The Wessex Farmer&#8217;s Own Hand-Book</i>,
+		and containing wise advice as to pigs, poultry,
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_92" title="92"></a>and the useful art of making two heads of cabbage
+		grow where only one had grown before.</p>
+
+		<h3 class="essay_subtitle">III</h3>
+
+		<p>Among the most engaging qualities of this
+		writer is humor. Hardy is a humorous man
+		himself and entirely appreciative of the humor
+		that is in others. According to a distinguished
+		philosopher, wit and humor produce love.
+		Hardy must then be in daily receipt of large
+		measures of this &#8216;improving passion&#8217; from his
+		innumerable readers on both sides of the Atlantic.</p>
+
+		<p>His humor manifests itself in a variety of
+		ways; by the use of witty epithet; by ingenious
+		description of a thing which is not strikingly
+		laughable in itself, but which becomes
+		so from the closeness of his rendering; by a
+		leisurely and ample account of a character with
+		humorous traits,&#8212;traits which are brought artistically
+		into prominence as an actor heightens
+		the complexion in stage make-up; and finally
+		by his lively reproductions of the talk of village
+		and country people,&#8212;a class of society whose
+		everyday speech has only to be heard to be enjoyed.
+		I do not pretend that the sources of
+		Hardy&#8217;s humor are exhausted in this analysis,
+		but the majority of illustrations can be assigned
+		to some one of these divisions.</p>
+
+		<p>He is usually thought to be at his best in descriptions
+		of farmers, village mechanics, laborers,
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_93" title="93"></a>dairymen, men who kill pigs, tend sheep,
+		furze-cutters, masons, hostlers, loafers who do
+		nothing in particular, and while thus occupied
+		rail on Lady Fortune in good set terms. Certainly
+		he paints these people with affectionate
+		fidelity. Their virile, racy talk delights him.
+		His reproductions of that talk are often intensely
+		realistic. Nearly every book has its
+		chorus of human grotesques whose mere names
+		are a source of mirth. William Worm, Grandfer
+		Cantle, &#8216;Corp&#8217;el&#8217; Tullidge, Christopher
+		Coney, John Upjohn, Robert Creedle, Martin
+		Cannister, Haymoss Fry, Robert Lickpan, and
+		Sammy Blore,&#8212;men so denominated should
+		stand for comic things, and these men do. William
+		Worm, for example, was deaf. His deafness
+		took an unusual form; he heard fish frying
+		in his head, and he was not reticent upon the
+		subject of his infirmity. He usually described
+		himself by the epithet &#8216;wambling,&#8217; and protested
+		that he would never pay the Lord for
+		his making,&#8212;a degree of self-knowledge which
+		many have arrived at but few have the courage
+		to confess. He was once observed in the act
+		of making himself &#8216;passing civil and friendly
+		by overspreading his face with a large smile
+		that seemed to have no connection with the
+		humor he was in.&#8217; Sympathy because of his
+		deafness elicited this response: &#8216;Ay, I assure
+		you that frying o&#8217; fish is going on for nights
+		and days. And, you know, sometimes &#8217;tisn&#8217;t
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_94" title="94"></a>only fish, but rashers o&#8217; bacon and inions. Ay,
+		I can hear the fat pop and fizz as nateral as
+		life.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>He was questioned as to what means of cure
+		he had tried.</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;Oh, ay bless ye, I&#8217;ve tried everything.
+		Ay, Providence is a merciful man, and I have
+		hoped he&#8217;d have found it out by this time, living
+		so many years in a parson&#8217;s family, too,
+		as I have; but &#8217;a don&#8217;t seem to relieve me.
+		Ay, I be a poor wambling man, and life&#8217;s a
+		mint o&#8217; trouble.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>One knows not which to admire the more,
+		the appetizing realism in William Worm&#8217;s account
+		of his infirmity, or the primitive state of
+		his theological views which allowed him to look
+		for special divine favor by virtue of the ecclesiastical
+		conspicuousness of his late residence.</p>
+
+		<p>Hardy must have heard, with comfort in the
+		thought of its literary possibilities, the following
+		dialogue on the cleverness of women. It
+		occurs in the last chapter of <i class="title">The Woodlanders</i>.
+		A man who is always spoken of as the &#8216;hollow-turner,&#8217;
+		a phrase obviously descriptive of his
+		line of business, which related to wooden bowls,
+		spigots, cheese-vats, and funnels, talks with
+		John Upjohn.</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;What women do know nowadays!&#8217; he says.
+		&#8216;You can&#8217;t deceive &#8217;em as you could in my
+		time.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;What they knowed then was not small,&#8217; said
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_95" title="95"></a>John Upjohn. &#8216;Always a good deal more than
+		the men! Why, when I went courting my wife
+		that is now, the skillfulness that she would
+		show in keeping me on her pretty side as she
+		walked was beyond all belief. Perhaps you&#8217;ve
+		noticed that she&#8217;s got a pretty side to her face
+		as well as a plain one?&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;I can&#8217;t say I&#8217;ve noticed it particular much,&#8217;
+		said the hollow-turner blandly.</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;Well,&#8217; continued Upjohn, not disconcerted,
+		&#8216;she has. All women under the sun be prettier
+		one side than t&#8217;other. And, as I was saying,
+		the pains she would take to make me walk
+		on the pretty side were unending. I warrent
+		that whether we were going with the sun or
+		against the sun, uphill or downhill, in wind or
+		in lewth, that wart of hers was always toward
+		the hedge, and that dimple toward me. There
+		was I too simple to see her wheelings and
+		turnings; and she so artful though two years
+		younger, that she could lead me with a cotton
+		thread like a blind ham; &#8230; no, I don&#8217;t think
+		the women have got cleverer, for they was
+		never otherwise.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<h3 class="essay_subtitle">IV</h3>
+
+		<p>These men have sap and juice in their talk.
+		When they think they think clearly. When
+		they speak they express themselves with an
+		energy and directness which mortify the thin
+		speech of conventional persons. Here is Farfrae,
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_96" title="96"></a>the young Scotchman, in the tap-room of
+		the Three Mariners Inn of Casterbridge, singing
+		of his ain contree with a pathos quite unknown
+		in that part of the world. The worthies
+		who frequent the place are deeply moved.
+		&#8216;Danged if our country down here is worth
+		singing about like that,&#8217; says Billy Wills, the
+		glazier,&#8212;while the literal Christopher Coney
+		inquires, &#8216;What did ye come away from yer
+		own country for, young maister, if ye be so
+		wownded about it?&#8217; Then it occurs to him
+		that it wasn&#8217;t worth Farfrae&#8217;s while to leave
+		the fair face and the home of which he had
+		been singing to come among such as they.
+		&#8216;We be bruckle folk here&#8212;the best o&#8217; us
+		hardly honest sometimes, what with hard winters,
+		and so many mouths to fill, and God-a&#8217;mighty
+		sending his little taties so terrible
+		small to fill &#8217;em with. We don&#8217;t think about
+		flowers and fair faces, not we&#8212;except in the
+		shape of cauliflowers and pigs&#8217; chaps.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>I should like to see the man who sat to Artist
+		Hardy for the portrait of Corporal Tullidge in
+		<i class="title">The Trumpet-Major</i>. This worthy, who was
+		deaf and talked in an uncompromisingly loud
+		voice, had been struck in the head by a piece
+		of shell at Valenciennes in &#8217;93. His left arm
+		had been smashed. Time and Nature had done
+		what they could, and under their beneficent influences
+		the arm had become a sort of anatomical
+		rattle-box. People interested in Corp&#8217;el
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_97" title="97"></a>Tullidge were allowed to see his head and hear
+		his arm. The corp&#8217;el gave these private views
+		at any time, and was quite willing to show off,
+		though the exhibition was apt to bore him a
+		little. His fellows displayed him much as one
+		would a &#8216;freak&#8217; in a dime museum.</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;You have got a silver plate let into yer
+		head, haven&#8217;t ye, corp&#8217;el?&#8217; said Anthony Cripplestraw.
+		&#8216;I have heard that the way they
+		mortised yer skull was a beautiful piece of workmanship.
+		Perhaps the young woman would like
+		to see the place.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The young woman was Anne Garland, the
+		sweet heroine of the story; and Anne didn&#8217;t
+		want to see the silver plate, the thought of
+		which made her almost faint. Nor could she
+		be tempted by being told that one couldn&#8217;t see
+		such a &#8216;wownd&#8217; every day. Then Cripplestraw,
+		earnest to please her, suggested that
+		Tullidge rattle his arm, which Tullidge did, to
+		Anne&#8217;s great distress.</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;Oh, it don&#8217;t hurt him, bless ye. Do it, corp&#8217;el?&#8217;
+		said Cripplestraw.</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;Not a bit,&#8217; said the corporal, still working
+		his arm with great energy. There was, however,
+		a perfunctoriness in his manner &#8216;as if the
+		glory of exhibition had lost somewhat of its
+		novelty, though he was still willing to oblige.&#8217;
+		Anne resisted all entreaties to convince herself
+		by feeling of the corporal&#8217;s arm that the bones
+		were &#8216;as loose as a bag of ninepins,&#8217; and displayed
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_98" title="98"></a>an anxiety to escape. Whereupon the
+		corporal, &#8216;with a sense that his time was getting
+		wasted,&#8217; inquired: &#8216;Do she want to see or
+		hear any more, or don&#8217;t she?&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>This is but a single detail in the account of
+		a party which Miller Loveday gave to soldier
+		guests in honor of his son John,&#8212;a description
+		the sustained vivacity of which can only be
+		appreciated through a reading of those brilliant
+		early chapters of the story.</p>
+
+		<p>Half the mirth that is in these men comes
+		from the frankness with which they confess
+		their actual thoughts. Ask a man of average
+		morals and average attainments why he doesn&#8217;t
+		go to church. You won&#8217;t know any better after
+		he has given you his answer. Ask Nat Chapman,
+		of the novel entitled <i class="title">Two on a Tower</i>, and
+		you will not be troubled with ambiguities. He
+		doesn&#8217;t like to go because Mr. Torkingham&#8217;s
+		sermons make him think of soul-saving and
+		other bewildering and uncomfortable topics.
+		So when the son of Torkingham&#8217;s predecessor
+		asks Nat how it goes with him, that tiller of
+		the soil answers promptly: &#8216;Pa&#8217;son Tarkenham
+		do tease a feller&#8217;s conscience that much, that
+		church is no holler-day at all to the limbs, as it
+		was in yer reverent father&#8217;s time!&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The unswerving honesty with which they assign
+		utilitarian motives for a particular line of
+		conduct is delightful. Three men discuss a
+		wedding, which took place not at the home of
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_99" title="99"></a>the bride but in a neighboring parish, and was
+		therefore very private. The first doesn&#8217;t blame
+		the new married pair, because &#8216;a wedding at
+		home means five and six handed reels by the
+		hour, and they do a man&#8217;s legs no good when
+		he&#8217;s over forty.&#8217; A second corroborates the remark
+		and says: &#8216;True. Once at the woman&#8217;s
+		house you can hardly say nay to being one in
+		a jig, knowing all the time that you be expected
+		to make yourself worth your victuals.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The third puts the whole matter beyond the
+		need of further discussion by adding: &#8216;For my
+		part, I like a good hearty funeral as well as
+		anything. You&#8217;ve as splendid victuals and
+		drink as at other parties, and even better. And
+		it don&#8217;t wear your legs to stumps in talking
+		over a poor fellow&#8217;s ways as it do to stand up
+		in hornpipes.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Beings who talk like this know their minds,&#8212;a
+		rather unwonted circumstance among the
+		sons of men,&#8212;and knowing them, they do the
+		next most natural thing in the world, which is
+		to speak the minds they have.</p>
+
+		<p>There is yet another phase of Hardy&#8217;s humor
+		to be noted: that humor, sometimes defiant,
+		sometimes philosophic, which concerns death
+		and its accompaniments. It cannot be thought
+		morbid. Hardy is too fond of Nature ever to
+		degenerate into mere morbidity. He has lived
+		much in the open air, which always corrects a
+		tendency to &#8216;vapors.&#8217; He takes little pleasure
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_100" title="100"></a>in the gruesome, a statement in support of
+		which one may cite all his works up to 1892,
+		the date of the appearance of <i class="title">Tess</i>. This paper
+		includes no comment in detail upon the
+		later books; but so far as <i class="title">Tess</i> is concerned it
+		would be critical folly to speak of it as morbid.
+		It is sad, it is terrible, as <i class="title">Lear</i> is terrible, or
+		as any one of the great tragedies, written by
+		men we call &#8216;masters,&#8217; is terrible. <i class="title">Jude</i> is psychologically
+		gruesome, no doubt; but not absolutely
+		indefensible. Even if it were as black a
+		book as some critics have painted it, the general
+		truth of the statement as to the healthfulness
+		of Hardy&#8217;s work would not be impaired.
+		This work judged as a whole is sound and invigorating.
+		He cannot be accused of over-fondness
+		for charnel-houses or ghosts. He does
+		not discourse of graves and vaults in order to
+		arouse that terror which the thought of death
+		inspires. It is not for the purpose of making
+		the reader uncomfortable. If the grave interests
+		him, it is because of the reflections awakened.
+		&#8216;Man, proud man,&#8217; needs that jog to his
+		memory which the pomp of interments and
+		aspect of tombstones give. Hardy has keen
+		perception of that humor which glows in the
+		presence of death and on the edge of the grave.
+		The living have such a tremendous advantage
+		over the dead, that they can neither help feeling
+		it nor avoid a display of the feeling. When
+		the lion is buried the dogs crack jokes at the
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_101" title="101"></a>funeral. They do it in a subdued manner, no
+		doubt, and with a sense of proprieties, but
+		nevertheless they do it. Their immense superiority
+		is never so apparent as at just this moment.</p>
+
+		<p>This humor, which one notes in Hardy, is
+		akin to the humor of the grave-diggers in <i class="title">Hamlet</i>,
+		but not so grim. I have heard a country
+		undertaker describe the details of the least attractive
+		branch of his uncomfortable business
+		with a pride and self-satisfaction that would
+		have been farcical had not the subject been so
+		depressing. This would have been matter for
+		Hardy&#8217;s pen. There are few scenes in his
+		books more telling than that which shows the
+		operations in the family vault of the Luxellians,
+		when John Smith, Martin Cannister, and old
+		Simeon prepare the place for Lady Luxellian&#8217;s
+		coffin. It seems hardly wise to pronounce this
+		episode as good as the grave-diggers&#8217; scene in
+		<i class="title">Hamlet</i>; that would shock some one and gain
+		for the writer the reputation of being enthusiastic
+		rather than critical. But I profess that I
+		enjoy the talk of old Simeon and Martin Cannister
+		quite as much as the talk of the first and
+		second grave-diggers.</p>
+
+		<p>Simeon, the shriveled mason, was &#8216;a marvelously
+		old man, whose skin seemed so much too
+		large for his body that it would not stay in
+		position.&#8217; He talked of the various great dead
+		whose coffins filled the family vault. Here was
+		the stately and irascible Lord George:&#8212;</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_102" title="102"></a>&#8216;Ah, poor Lord George,&#8217; said the mason, looking contemplatively at the huge coffin; &#8216;he
+		and I were as bitter enemies once as any could
+		be when one is a lord and t&#8217;other only a mortal
+		man. Poor fellow! He&#8217;d clap his hand upon
+		my shoulder and cuss me as familiar and neighborly
+		as if he&#8217;d been a common chap. Ay, &#8217;a
+		cussed me up hill and &#8217;a cussed me down; and
+		then &#8217;a would rave out again and the goold
+		clamps of his fine new teeth would glisten in
+		the sun like fetters of brass, while I, being a
+		small man and poor, was fain to say nothing at
+		all. Such a strappen fine gentleman as he was
+		too! Yes, I rather liken en sometimes. But
+		once now and then, when I looked at his towering
+		height, I&#8217;d think in my inside, &#8220;What a
+		weight you&#8217;ll be, my lord, for our arms to lower
+		under the inside of Endelstow church some
+		day!&#8221;&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;And was he?&#8217; inquired a young laborer.</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;He was. He was five hundred weight if &#8217;a
+		were a pound. What with his lead, and his
+		oak, and his handles, and his one thing and
+		t&#8217;other&#8217;&#8212;here the ancient man slapped his
+		hand upon the cover with a force that caused a
+		rattle among the bones inside&#8212;&#8216;he half broke
+		my back when I took his feet to lower en down
+		the steps there. &#8220;Ah,&#8221; saith I to John there&#8212;didn&#8217;t
+		I, John?&#8212;&#8220;that ever one man&#8217;s glory
+		should be such a weight upon another man!&#8221;
+		But there, I liked my Lord George sometimes.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_103" title="103"></a>It may be observed that as Hardy grows
+		older his humor becomes more subtle or quite
+		dies away, as if serious matters pressed upon
+		his mind, and there was no time for being jocular.
+		Some day, perhaps, if he should rise to
+		the dignity of an English classic, this will be
+		spoken of as his third period, and critics will be
+		wise in the elucidation thereof. But just at
+		present this third period is characterized by the
+		terms &#8216;pessimistic&#8217; and &#8216;unhealthy.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>That he is a pessimist in the colloquial sense
+		admits of little question. Nor is it surprising;
+		it is rather difficult not to be. Not a few persons
+		are pessimists and won&#8217;t tell. They preserve
+		a fair exterior, but secretly hold that all
+		flesh is grass. Some people escape the disease
+		by virtue of much philosophy or much religion
+		or much work. Many who have not taken up
+		permanent residence beneath the roof of Schopenhauer
+		or Von Hartmann are occasional
+		guests. Then there is that great mass of pessimism
+		which is the result, not of thought, but
+		of mere discomfort, physical and super-physical.
+		One may have attacks of pessimism from a
+		variety of small causes. A bad stomach will
+		produce it. Financial difficulties will produce it.
+		The light-minded get it from changes in the
+		weather.</p>
+
+		<p>That note of melancholy which we detect in
+		many of Hardy&#8217;s novels is as it should be. For
+		no man can apprehend life aright and still look
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_104" title="104"></a>upon it as a carnival. He may attain serenity
+		in respect to it, but he can never be jaunty and
+		flippant. He can never slap life upon the back
+		and call it by familiar names. He may hold
+		that the world is indisputably growing better,
+		but he will need to admit that the world is having
+		a hard time in so doing.</p>
+
+		<p>Hardy would be sure of a reputation for pessimism
+		in some quarters if only because of his
+		attitude, or what people think is his attitude,
+		toward marriage. He has devoted many pages
+		and not a little thought to the problems of the
+		relations between men and women. He is considerably
+		interested in questions of &#8216;matrimonial
+		divergence.&#8217; He recognizes that most
+		obvious of all obvious truths, that marriage is
+		not always a success; nay, more than this, that
+		it is often a makeshift, an apology, a pretense.
+		But he professes to undertake nothing beyond a
+		statement of the facts. It rests with the public
+		to lay his statement beside their experience
+		and observation, and thus take measure of the
+		fidelity of his art.</p>
+
+		<p>He notes the variety of motives by which
+		people are actuated in the choice of husbands
+		and wives. In the novel called <i class="title">The Woodlanders</i>,
+		Grace Melbury, the daughter of a rich
+		though humbly-born yeoman, has unusual
+		opportunities for a girl of her class, and is educated
+		to a point of physical and intellectual
+		daintiness which make her seem superior to
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_105" title="105"></a>her home environment. Her father has hoped
+		that she will marry her rustic lover, Giles Winterbourne,
+		who, by the way, is a man in every
+		fibre of his being. Grace is quite unspoiled by
+		her life at a fashionable boarding school, but
+		after her return her father feels (and Hardy
+		makes the reader feel) that in marrying Giles
+		she will sacrifice herself. She marries Dr.
+		Fitzspiers, a brilliant young physician, recently
+		come into the neighborhood, and in so doing
+		she chooses for the worse. The character of
+		Dr. Fitzspiers is summarized in a statement he
+		once made (presumably to a male friend) that
+		&#8216;on one occasion he had noticed himself to be
+		possessed by five distinct infatuations at the
+		same time.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>His flagrant infidelities bring about a temporary
+		separation; Grace is not able to comprehend
+		&#8216;such double and treble-barreled hearts.&#8217;
+		When finally they are reunited the life-problem
+		of each still awaits an adequate solution. For
+		the motive which brings the girl back to her
+		husband is only a more complex phase of the
+		same motive which chiefly prompted her to
+		marry him. Hardy says that Fitzspiers as a
+		lover acted upon Grace &#8216;like a dram.&#8217; His
+		presence &#8216;threw her into an atmosphere which
+		biased her doings until the influence was over.&#8217;
+		Afterward she felt &#8216;something of the nature of
+		regret for the mood she had experienced.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>But this same story contains two other characters
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_106" title="106"></a>who are unmatched in fiction as the
+		incarnation of pure love and self-forgetfulness.
+		Giles Winterbourne, whose devotion to Grace
+		is without wish for happiness which shall not
+		imply a greater happiness for her, dies that
+		no breath of suspicion may fall upon her. He
+		in turn is loved by Marty South with a completeness
+		which destroys all thought of self.
+		She enjoys no measure of reward while Winterbourne
+		lives. He never knows of Marty&#8217;s love.
+		But in that last fine paragraph of this remarkable
+		book, when the poor girl places the flowers
+		upon his grave she utters a little lament
+		which for beauty, pathos, and realistic simplicity
+		is without parallel in modern fiction.
+		Hardy was never more of an artist than when
+		writing the last chapter of <i class="title">The Woodlanders</i>.</p>
+
+		<p>After all, a book in which unselfish love is
+		described in terms at once just and noble cannot
+		be dangerously pessimistic, even if it also
+		takes cognizance of such hopeless cases as a
+		man with a chronic tendency to fluctuations of
+		the heart.</p>
+
+		<p>The matter may be put briefly thus: In
+		Hardy&#8217;s novels one sees the artistic result of
+		an effort to paint life as it is, with much of its
+		joy and a deal of its sorrow, with its good people
+		and its selfish people, its positive characters
+		and its Laodiceans, its men and women who
+		dominate circumstances, and its unhappy ones
+		who are submerged. These books are the
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_107" title="107"></a>record of what a clear-eyed, sane, vigorous,
+		sympathetic, humorous man knows about life;
+		a man too conscious of things as they are to
+		wish grossly to exaggerate or to disguise them;
+		and at the same time so entirely aware how
+		much poetry as well as irony God has mingled
+		in the order of the world as to be incapable of
+		concealing that fact either. He is of such
+		ample intellectual frame that he makes the
+		petty contentions of literary schools appear
+		foolish. I find a measure of Hardy&#8217;s mind in
+		passages which set forth his conception of the
+		preciousness of life, no matter what the form
+		in which life expresses itself. He is peculiarly
+		tender toward brute creation. In that
+		paragraph which describes Tess discovering
+		the wounded pheasants in the wood, Hardy
+		suggests the thought, quite new to many people,
+		that chivalry is not confined to the relations
+		of man to man or of man to woman.
+		There are still weaker fellow-creatures in Nature&#8217;s
+		teeming family. What if we are unmannerly
+		or unchivalrous toward them?</p>
+
+		<p>He abounds in all manner of pithy sayings,
+		many of them wise, a few of them profound,
+		and not one which is unworthy a second reading.
+		It is to be hoped that he will escape the
+		doubtful honor of being dispersedly set forth in
+		a &#8216;Wit and Wisdom of Thomas Hardy.&#8217; Such
+		books are a depressing species of literature and
+		seem chiefly designed to be given away at holiday
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_108" title="108"></a>time to acquaintances who are too important
+		to be put off with Christmas cards, and
+		not important enough to be supplied with gifts
+		of a calculable value.</p>
+
+		<p>One must praise the immense spirit and vivacity
+		of scenes where something in the nature
+		of a struggle, a moral duel, goes on. In such
+		passages every power at the writer&#8217;s command
+		is needed; unerring directness of thought, and
+		words which clothe this thought as an athlete&#8217;s
+		garments fit the body. Everything must
+		count, and the movement of the narrative must
+		be sustained to the utmost. The chess-playing
+		scene between Elfride and Knight in <i class="title">A Pair
+		of Blue Eyes</i> is an illustration. Sergeant Troy
+		displaying his skill in handling the sword&#8212;weaving
+		his spell about Bathsheba in true
+		snake fashion, is another example. Still more
+		brilliant is the gambling scene in <i class="title">The Return
+		of the Native</i>, where Wildeve and Diggory
+		Venn, out on the heath in the night, throw dice
+		by the light of a lantern for Thomasin&#8217;s money.
+		Venn, the reddleman, in the Mephistophelian
+		garb of his profession, is the incarnation of a
+		good spirit, and wins the guineas from the
+		clutch of the spendthrift husband. The scene
+		is immensely dramatic, with its accompaniments
+		of blackness and silence, Wildeve&#8217;s haggard
+		face, the circle of ponies, known as heath-croppers,
+		which are attracted by the light, the
+		death&#8217;s-head moth which extinguishes the candle,
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_109" title="109"></a>and the finish of the game by the light of
+		glow-worms. It is a glorious bit of writing in
+		true bravura style.</p>
+
+		<p>His books have a quality which I shall venture
+		to call &#8216;spaciousness,&#8217; in the hope that the
+		word conveys the meaning I try to express. It
+		is obvious that there is a difference between
+		books which are large and books which are
+		merely long. The one epithet refers to atmosphere,
+		the other to number of pages. Hardy
+		writes large books. There is room in them
+		for the reader to expand his mind. They are
+		distinctly out-of-door books, &#8216;not smacking of
+		the cloister or the library.&#8217; In reading them
+		one has a feeling that the vault of heaven is
+		very high, and that the earth stretches away to
+		interminable distances upon all sides. This
+		quality of largeness is not dependent upon
+		number of pages; nor is length absolute as
+		applied to books. A book may contain one
+		hundred pages and still be ninety-nine pages
+		too long, for the reason that its truth, its lesson,
+		its literary virtue, are not greater than
+		might be expressed in a single page.</p>
+
+		<p>Spaciousness is in even less degree dependent
+		upon miles. The narrowness, geographically
+		speaking, of Hardy&#8217;s range of expression is
+		notable. There is much contrast between him
+		and Stevenson in this respect. The Scotchman
+		has embodied in his fine books the experiences
+		of life in a dozen different quarters of
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_110" title="110"></a>the globe. Hardy, with more robust health,
+		has traveled from Portland to Bath, and from
+		&#8216;Wintoncester&#8217; to &#8216;Exonbury,&#8217;&#8212;journeys
+		hardly more serious than from the blue bed to
+		the brown. And it is better thus. No reader
+		of <i class="title">The Return of the Native</i> would have been
+		content that Eustacia Vye should persuade her
+		husband back to Paris. Rather than the boulevards
+		one prefers Egdon heath, as Hardy paints
+		it, &#8216;the great inviolate place,&#8217; the &#8216;untamable
+		Ishmaelitish thing&#8217; which its arch-enemy, Civilization,
+		could not subdue.</p>
+
+		<p>He is without question one of the best writers
+		of our time, whether for comedy or for
+		tragedy; and for extravaganza, too, as witness
+		his lively farce called <i class="title">The Hand of Ethelberta</i>.
+		He can write dialogue or description. He is
+		so excellent in either that either, as you read
+		it, appears to make for your highest pleasure.
+		If his characters talk, you would gladly have
+		them talk to the end of the book. If he, the
+		author, speaks, you would not wish to interrupt.
+		More than most skillful writers, he preserves
+		that just balance between narrative and
+		colloquy.</p>
+
+		<p>His best novels prior to the appearance of
+		<i class="title">Tess</i>, are <i class="title">The Woodlanders</i>, <i class="title">Far from the Madding
+		Crowd</i>, <i class="title">The Return of the Native</i>, and
+		<i class="title">The Mayor of Casterbridge</i>. These four are
+		the bulwarks of his reputation, while a separate
+		and great fame might be based alone on that
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_111" title="111"></a>powerful tragedy called by its author <i class="title">Tess of
+		the D&#8217;Urbervilles</i>.</p>
+
+		<p>Criticism which glorifies any one book of a
+		given author at the expense of all his other
+		books is profitless, if not dangerous. Moreover,
+		it is dangerous to have a favorite author
+		as well as a favorite book of that favorite
+		author. A man&#8217;s choice of books, like his
+		choice of friends, is usually inexplicable to
+		everybody but himself. However, the chief
+		object in recommending books is to make converts
+		to the gospel of literature according to
+		the writer of these books. For which legitimate
+		purpose I would recommend to the reader
+		who has hitherto denied himself the pleasure of
+		an acquaintance with Thomas Hardy, the two
+		volumes known as <i class="title">The Woodlanders</i> and <i class="title">The
+		Return of the Native</i>. The first of these is
+		the more genial because it presents a more
+		genial side of Nature. But the other is a noble
+		piece of literary workmanship, a powerful book,
+		ingeniously framed, with every detail strongly
+		realized; a book which is dramatic, humorous,
+		sincere in its pathos, rich in its word-coloring,
+		eloquent in its descriptive passages; a book
+		which embodies so much of life and poetry that
+		one has a feeling of mental exaltation as he
+		reads.</p>
+
+		<p>Surely it is not wise in the critical Jeremiahs
+		so despairingly to lift up their voices, and so
+		strenuously to bewail the condition of the literature
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_112" title="112"></a>of the time. The literature of the time
+		is very well, as they would see could they but
+		turn their fascinated gaze from the meretricious
+		and spectacular elements of that literature
+		to the work of Thomas Hardy and George
+		Meredith. With such men among the most
+		influential in modern letters, and with Barrie
+		and Stevenson among the idols of the reading
+		world, it would seem that the office of public
+		Jeremiah should be continued rather from
+		courtesy than from an overwhelming sense of
+		the needs of the hour.</p>
+	</div>
+	<div id="keats" class="essay">
+		<h2 class="essay_title"><a class="pagenum" id="page_113" title="113"></a>A READING IN THE LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS</h2>
+		<p class="return_toc"><a href="#contents">Return to Contents</a></p>
+		<p><span class="first_word">One</span> would like to know whether a first reading
+		in the letters of Keats does not generally
+		produce something akin to a severe mental
+		shock. It is a sensation which presently becomes
+		agreeable, being in that respect like a
+		plunge into cold water, but it is undeniably a
+		shock. Most readers of Keats, knowing him,
+		as he should be known, by his poetry, have not
+		the remotest conception of him as he shows
+		himself in his letters. Hence they are unprepared
+		for this splendid exhibition of virile intellectual
+		health. Not that they think of him as
+		morbid,&#8212;his poetry surely could not make
+		this impression,&#8212;but rather that the popular
+		conception of him is, after all these years, a
+		legendary Keats, the poet who was killed by
+		reviewers, the Keats of Shelley&#8217;s preface to
+		the <i class="title">Adonais</i>, the Keats whose story is written
+		large in the world&#8217;s book of Pity and of Death.
+		When the readers are confronted with a fair
+		portrait of the real man, it makes them rub
+		their eyes. Nay, more, it embarrasses them.
+		To find themselves guilty of having pitied one
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_114" title="114"></a>who stood in small need of pity is mortifying.
+		In plain terms, they have systematically bestowed
+		(or have attempted to bestow) alms on
+		a man whose income at its least was bigger
+		than any his patrons could boast. Small wonder
+		that now and then you find a reader, with
+		large capacity for the sentimental, who looks
+		back with terror to his first dip into the letters.</p>
+
+		<p>The legendary Keats dies hard; or perhaps
+		we would better say that when he seems to be
+		dying he is simply, in the good old fashion of
+		legends, taking out a new lease of life. For it
+		is as true now as when the sentence was first
+		penned, that &#8216;a mixture of a lie doth ever add
+		pleasure.&#8217; Among the many readers of good
+		books, there will always be some whose notions
+		of the poetical proprieties suffer greatly by the
+		facts of Keats&#8217;s history. It is so much pleasanter
+		to them to think that the poet&#8217;s sensitive
+		spirit was wounded to death by bitter
+		words than to know that he was carried off by
+		pulmonary disease. But when they are tired
+		of reading <i class="title">Endymion</i>, <i class="title">Isabella</i>, and <i class="title">The Eve of
+		St. Agnes</i> in the light of this incorrect conception,
+		let them try a new reading in the light
+		of the letters, and the masculinity of this very
+		robust young maker of poetry will prove refreshing.</p>
+
+		<p>The letters are in every respect good reading.
+		Rather than deplore their frankness, as
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_115" title="115"></a>one critic has done, we ought to rejoice in their
+		utter want of affectation, in their boyish honesty.
+		At every turn there is something to
+		amuse or to startle one into thinking. We are
+		carried back in a vivid way to the period of
+		their composition. Not a little of the pulsing
+		life of that time throbs anew, and we catch
+		glimpses of notable figures. Often, the feeling
+		is that we have been called in haste to a window
+		to look at some celebrity passing by, and
+		have arrived just in time to see him turn the
+		corner. What a touch of reality, for example,
+		does one get in reading that &#8216;Wordsworth went
+		rather huff&#8217;d out of town&#8217;! One is not in the
+		habit of thinking of Wordsworth as capable of
+		being &#8216;huffed,&#8217; but the writer of the letters
+		feared that he was. All of Keats&#8217;s petty anxieties
+		and small doings, as well as his aspirations
+		and his greatest dreams, are set down here in
+		black on white. It is a complete and charming
+		revelation of the man. One learns how he
+		&#8216;went to Hazlitt&#8217;s lecture on Poetry, and got
+		there just as they were coming out;&#8217; how he
+		was insulted at the theatre, and wouldn&#8217;t tell
+		his brothers; how it vexed him because the
+		Irish servant said that his picture of Shakespeare
+		looked exactly like her father, only &#8216;her
+		father had more color than the engraving;&#8217;
+		how he filled in the time while waiting for the
+		stage to start by counting the buns and tarts
+		in a pastry-cook&#8217;s window, &#8216;and had just begun
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_116" title="116"></a>on the jellies;&#8217; how indignant he was at being
+		spoken of as &#8216;quite the little poet;&#8217; how he sat
+		in a hatter&#8217;s shop in the Poultry while Mr. Abbey
+		read him some extracts from Lord Byron&#8217;s
+		&#8216;last flash poem,&#8217; <i class="title">Don Juan</i>; how some beef
+		was carved exactly to suit his appetite, as if he
+		&#8216;had been measured for it;&#8217; how he dined with
+		Horace Smith and his brothers and some other
+		young gentlemen of fashion, and thought them
+		all hopelessly affected; in a word, almost anything
+		you want to know about John Keats can
+		be found in these letters. They are of more
+		value than all the &#8216;recollections&#8217; of all his
+		friends put together. In their breezy good-nature
+		and cheerfulness they are a fine antidote
+		to the impression one gets of him in Haydon&#8217;s
+		account, &#8216;lying in a white bed with a
+		book, hectic and on his back, irritable at his
+		weakness and wounded at the way he had been
+		used. He seemed to be going out of life with
+		a contempt for this world, and no hopes of the
+		other. I told him to be calm, but he muttered
+		that if he did not soon get better he would
+		destroy himself.&#8217; This is taking Keats at his
+		worst. It is well enough to know that he
+		seemed to Haydon as Haydon has described
+		him, but few men appear to advantage when
+		they are desperately ill. Turn to the letters
+		written during his tour in Scotland, when he
+		walked twenty miles a day, climbed Ben Nevis,
+		so fatigued himself that, as he told Fanny
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_117" title="117"></a>Keats, &#8216;when I am asleep you might sew my
+		nose to my great toe and trundle me around
+		the town, like a Hoop, without waking me.
+		Then I get so hungry a Ham goes but a very
+		little way, and fowls are like Larks to me&#8230;.
+		I take a whole string of Pork Sausages down
+		as easily as a Pen&#8217;orth of Lady&#8217;s fingers.&#8217; And
+		then he bewails the fact that when he arrives
+		in the Highlands he will have to be contented
+		&#8216;with an acre or two of oaten cake, a hogshead
+		of Milk, and a Cloaths basket of Eggs morning,
+		noon, and night.&#8217; Here is the active Keats,
+		of honest mundane tastes and an athletic disposition,
+		who threatens&#8217; to cut all sick people if
+		they do not make up their minds to cut Sickness.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Indeed, the letters are so pleasant and amusing
+		in the way they exhibit minor traits, habits,
+		prejudices, and the like, that it is a temptation
+		to dwell upon these things. How we love a
+		man&#8217;s weaknesses&#8212;if we share them! I do
+		not know that Keats would have given occasion
+		for an anecdote like that told of a certain book-loving
+		actor, whose best friend, when urged to
+		join the chorus of praise that was quite universally
+		sung to this actor&#8217;s virtues, acquiesced
+		by saying amiably, &#8216;Mr. Blank undoubtedly has
+		genius, but he can&#8217;t spell;&#8217; yet there are comforting
+		evidences that Keats was no servile follower
+		of the &#8216;monster Conventionality&#8217; even in
+		his spelling, while in respect to the use of capitals
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_118" title="118"></a>he was a law unto himself. He sprinkled
+		them through his correspondence with a lavish
+		hand, though at times he grew so economical
+		that, as one of his editors remarks, he would
+		spell Romeo with a small <em>r</em>, Irishman with a
+		small <em>i</em>, and God with a small <em>g</em>.</p>
+
+		<p>It is also a pleasure to find that, with his
+		other failings, he had a touch of book-madness.
+		There was in him the making of a first-class
+		bibliophile. He speaks with rapture of his
+		black-letter Chaucer, which he proposes to have
+		bound &#8216;in Gothique,&#8217; so as to unmodernize as
+		much as possible its outward appearance. But
+		to Keats books were literature or they were
+		not literature, and one cannot think that his
+		affections would twine about ever so bookish a
+		volume which was merely &#8216;curious.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>One reads with sympathetic amusement of
+		Keats&#8217;s genuine and natural horror of paying
+		the same bill twice, &#8216;there not being a more
+		unpleasant thing in the world (saving a thousand
+		and one others).&#8217; The necessity of preserving
+		adequate evidence that a bill had been
+		paid was uppermost in his thought quite frequently;
+		and once when, at Leigh Hunt&#8217;s instance,
+		sundry packages of papers belonging
+		to that eminently methodical and businesslike
+		man of letters were to be sorted out and in
+		part destroyed, Keats refused to burn any, &#8216;for
+		fear of demolishing receipts.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>But the reader will chance upon few more
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_119" title="119"></a>humorous passages than that in which the poet
+		tells his brother George how he cures himself
+		of the blues, and at the same time spurs his
+		flagging powers of invention: &#8216;Whenever I
+		find myself growing vaporish I rouse myself,
+		wash and put on a clean shirt, brush my hair
+		and clothes, tie my shoe-strings neatly, and, in
+		fact, adonize, as if I were going out&#8212;then all
+		clean and comfortable, I sit down to write.
+		This I find the greatest relief.&#8217; The virtues
+		of a clean shirt have often been sung, but it
+		remained for Keats to show what a change of
+		linen and a general <em>adonizing</em> could do in the
+		way of furnishing poetic stimulus. This is better
+		than coffee, brandy, absinthe, or falling in
+		love; and it prompts one to think anew that
+		the English poets, taking them as a whole,
+		were a marvelously healthy and sensible breed
+		of men.</p>
+
+		<p>It is, however, in respect to the light they
+		throw upon the poet&#8217;s literary life that the letters
+		are of highest significance. They gratify
+		to a reasonable extent that natural desire we
+		all have to see authorship in the act. The processes
+		by which genius brings things to pass
+		are so mysterious that our curiosity is continually
+		piqued; and our failure to get at the real
+		thing prompts us to be more or less content
+		with mere externals. If we may not hope to
+		see the actual process of making poetry, we
+		may at least study the poet&#8217;s manuscript. By
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_120" title="120"></a>knowing of his habits of work we flatter ourselves
+		that we are a little nearer the secret of
+		his power.</p>
+
+		<p>We must bear in mind that Keats was a boy,
+		always a boy, and that he died before he quite
+		got out of boyhood. To be sure, most boys of
+		twenty-six would resent being described by so
+		juvenile a term. But one must have successfully
+		passed twenty-six without doing anything
+		in particular to understand how exceedingly
+		young twenty-six is. And to have wrought so
+		well in so short a time, Keats must have had
+		from the first a clear and noble conception of
+		the nature of his work, as he must also have
+		displayed extraordinary diligence in the doing
+		of it. Perhaps these points are too obvious,
+		and of a sort which would naturally occur to
+		any one; but it will be none the less interesting
+		to see how the letters bear witness to their
+		truth.</p>
+
+		<p>In the first place, Keats was anything but a
+		loafer at literature. He seems never to have
+		dawdled. A fine healthiness is apparent in all
+		allusions to his processes of work. &#8216;I read and
+		write about eight hours a day,&#8217; he remarks in
+		a letter to Haydon. Bailey, Keats&#8217;s Oxford
+		friend, says that the fellow would go to his
+		writing-desk soon after breakfast, and stay
+		there until two or three o&#8217;clock in the afternoon.
+		He was then writing <i class="title">Endymion</i>. His
+		stint was about &#8216;fifty lines a day, &#8230; and he
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_121" title="121"></a>wrote with as much regularity, and apparently
+		with as much ease, as he wrote his letters&#8230;.
+		Sometimes he fell short of his allotted task, but
+		not often, and he would make it up another
+		day. But he never forced himself.&#8217; Bailey
+		quotes, in connection with this, Keats&#8217;s own
+		remark to the effect that poetry would better
+		not come at all than not to come &#8216;as naturally
+		as the leaves of a tree.&#8217; Whether this spontaneity
+		of production was as great as that of
+		some other poets of his time may be questioned;
+		but he would never have deserved
+		Tom Nash&#8217;s sneer at those writers who can
+		only produce by &#8216;sleeping betwixt every sentence.&#8217;
+		Keats had in no small degree the &#8216;fine
+		extemporal vein&#8217; with &#8216;invention quicker than
+		his eye.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>We uncritically feel that it could hardly have
+		been otherwise in the case of one with whom
+		poetry was a passion. Keats had an infinite
+		hunger and thirst for good poetry. His poetical
+		life, both in the receptive and productive
+		phases of it, was intense. Poetry was meat
+		and drink to him. He could even urge his
+		friend Reynolds to talk about it to him, much
+		as one might beg a trusted friend to talk about
+		one&#8217;s lady-love, and with the confidence that
+		only the fitting thing would be spoken. &#8216;Whenever
+		you write, say a word or two on some
+		passage in Shakespeare which may have come
+		rather new to you,&#8217;&#8212;a sentence which shows
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_122" title="122"></a>his faith in the many-sidedness of the great
+		poetry. Shakespeare was forever &#8216;coming
+		new&#8217; to <em>him</em>, and he was &#8216;haunted&#8217; by particular
+		passages. He loved to fill the cup of his
+		imagination with the splendors of the best
+		poets until the cup overflowed. &#8216;I find I cannot
+		exist without Poetry,&#8212;without eternal
+		Poetry; half the day will not do,&#8212;the whole
+		of it; I began with a little, but habit has made
+		me a leviathan.&#8217; He tells Leigh Hunt, in a
+		letter written from Margate, that he thought so
+		much about poetry, and &#8216;so long together,&#8217;
+		that he could not get to sleep at night.
+		Whether this meant in working out ideas of his
+		own, or living over the thoughts of other poets,
+		is of little importance; the remark shows how
+		deeply the roots of his life were imbedded in
+		poetical soil. He loved a debauch in the verse
+		of masters of his art. He could intoxicate himself
+		with Shakespeare&#8217;s sonnets. He rioted in
+		&#8216;all their fine things said unconsciously.&#8217; We
+		are tempted to say, by just so much as he had
+		large reverence for these men, by just so much
+		he was of them.</p>
+
+		<p>Undoubtedly, this ability to be moved by
+		strong imaginative work may be abused until it
+		becomes a maudlin and quite disordered sentiment.
+		Keats was too well balanced to be carried
+		into appreciative excesses. He knew that
+		mere yearning could not make a poet of one
+		any more than mere ambition could. He understood
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_123" title="123"></a>the limits of ambition as a force in literature.
+		Keats&#8217;s ambition trembled in the presence
+		of Keats&#8217;s conception of the magnitude
+		of the poetic office. &#8216;I have asked myself so
+		often why I should be a poet more than other
+		men, seeing how great a thing it is.&#8217; Yet he
+		had honest confidence. One cannot help liking
+		him for the fine audacity with which he
+		pronounces his own work good,&#8212;better even
+		than that of a certain other great name in English
+		literature; one cannot help loving him for
+		the sweet humility with which he accepts the
+		view that, after all, success or failure lies entirely
+		without the range of self-choosing. There
+		is a point of view from which it is folly to hold
+		a poet responsible even for his own poetry, and
+		when <i class="title">Endymion</i> was spoken of as &#8216;slipshod&#8217;
+		Keats could reply, &#8216;That it is so is no fault of
+		mine&#8230;. The Genius of Poetry must work
+		out its own salvation in a man&#8230;. That
+		which is creative must create itself. In <i class="title">Endymion</i>
+		I leaped headlong into the sea, and
+		thereby have become better acquainted with
+		the soundings, the quicksands, and the rocks,
+		than if I had stayed upon the green shore, and
+		piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable
+		advice. I was never afraid of failure; for I
+		would sooner fail than not be among the greatest.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Well might a man who could write that last
+		sentence look upon poetry not only as a responsible,
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_124" title="124"></a>but as a dangerous pursuit. Men who
+		aspire to be poets are gamblers. In all the
+		lotteries of the literary life none is so uncertain
+		as this. A million chances that you don&#8217;t
+		win the prize to one chance that you do. It is
+		a curious thing that ever so thoughtful and
+		conscientious an author may not know whether
+		he is making literature or merely writing verse.
+		He conforms to all the canons of taste in his
+		own day; he is devout and reverent; he shuns
+		excesses of diction, and he courts originality;
+		his verse seems to himself and to his unflattering
+		friends instinct with the spirit of his time,
+		but twenty years later it is old-fashioned.
+		Keats, with all his feeling of certainty, stood
+		with head uncovered before that power which
+		gives poetical gifts to one, and withholds them
+		from another. Above all would he avoid self-delusion
+		in these things. &#8216;There is no greater
+		Sin after the seven deadly than to flatter one&#8217;s
+		self into an idea of being a great Poet.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Keats, if one may judge from a letter written
+		to John Taylor in February, 1818, had little
+		expectation that his <i class="title">Endymion</i> was going to be
+		met with universal plaudits. He doubtless
+		looked for fair treatment. He probably had
+		no thought of being sneeringly addressed as
+		&#8216;Johnny,&#8217; or of getting recommendations to
+		return to his &#8216;plasters, pills, and ointment
+		boxes.&#8217; In fact, he looked upon the issue as
+		entirely problematical. He seemed willing to
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_125" title="125"></a>take it for granted that in <i class="title">Endymion</i> he had
+		but moved into the go-cart from the leading-strings.
+		&#8216;If <i class="title">Endymion</i> serves me for a pioneer,
+		perhaps I ought to be content, for thank
+		God I can read and perhaps understand Shakespeare
+		to his depths; and I have, I am sure,
+		many friends who if I fail will attribute any
+		change in my life to humbleness rather than
+		pride,&#8212;to a cowering under the wings of great
+		poets rather than to bitterness that I am not
+		appreciated.&#8217; And for evidence of any especial
+		bitterness because of the lashing he received
+		one will search the letters in vain. Keats was
+		manly and good-humored, most of his morbidity
+		being referred directly to his ill health. The
+		trouncing he had at the hands of the reviewers
+		was no more violent than the one administered
+		to Tennyson by Professor Wilson. Critics,
+		good and bad, can do much harm. They may
+		terrorize a timid spirit. But a greater terror
+		than the fear of the reviewers hung over the
+		head of John Keats. He stood in awe of his
+		own artistic and poetic sense. He could say
+		with truth that his own domestic criticism had
+		given him pain without comparison beyond
+		what <i class="title">Blackwood</i> or the <i class="title">Quarterly</i> could possibly
+		inflict. If he had had any terrible heart-burning
+		over their malignancy, if he had felt
+		that his life was poisoned, he could hardly have
+		forborne some allusion to it in his letters to his
+		brother, George Keats. But he is almost imperturbable.
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_126" title="126"></a>He talks of the episode freely,
+		says that he has been urged to publish his <i class="title">Pot
+		of Basil</i> as a reply to the reviewers, has no idea
+		that he can be made ridiculous by abuse, notes
+		the futility of attacks of this kind, and then,
+		with a serene conviction that is irresistible,
+		adds, &#8216;I think I shall be among the English
+		Poets after my death!&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Such egoism of genius is magnificent; the
+		more so as it appears in Keats because it runs
+		parallel with deep humility in the presence of
+		the masters of his art. Naturally, the masters
+		who were in their graves were the ones he reverenced
+		the most and read without stint. But
+		it was by no means essential that a poet be a
+		dead poet before Keats did him homage. It
+		is impossible to think that Keats&#8217;s attitude towards
+		Wordsworth was other than finely appreciative,
+		in spite of the fact that he applauded
+		Reynolds&#8217;s <i class="title">Peter Bell</i>, and inquired almost petulantly
+		why one should be teased with Wordsworth&#8217;s
+		&#8216;Matthew with a bough of wilding in
+		his hand.&#8217; But it is also impossible that his
+		sense of humor should not have been aroused
+		by much that he found in Wordsworth. It was
+		Wordsworth he meant when he said, &#8216;Every
+		man has his speculations, but every man does
+		not brood and peacock over them till he makes
+		a false coinage and deceives himself,&#8217;&#8212;a sentence,
+		by the way, quite as unconsciously funny
+		as some of the things he laughed at in the works
+		of his great contemporary.</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_127" title="127"></a>It will be pertinent to quote here two or
+		three of the good critical words which Keats
+		scattered through his letters. Emphasizing the
+		use of simple means in his art, he says, &#8216;I think
+		that poetry should surprise by a fine excess, and
+		not by singularity; it should strike the reader
+		as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and
+		appear almost a remembrance.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;We hate poetry that has a palpable design
+		upon us&#8230;. Poetry should be great and unobtrusive,
+		a thing which enters into one&#8217;s soul,
+		and does not startle it or amaze it with itself,
+		but with its subject.&#8217; Or as Ruskin has put
+		the thing with respect to painting, &#8216;Entirely
+		first-rate work is so quiet and natural that there
+		can be no dispute over it.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Keats appears to have been in no sense a
+		hermit. With the exception of Byron, he was
+		perhaps less of a recluse than any of his poetical
+		contemporaries. With respect to society
+		he frequently practiced total abstinence; but
+		the world was amusing, and he liked it. He
+		was fond of the theatre, fond of whist, fond of
+		visiting the studios, fond of going to the houses
+		of his friends. But he would run no risks; he
+		was shy and he was proud. He dreaded contact
+		with the ultra-fashionables. Naturally, his
+		opportunities for such intercourse were limited,
+		but he cheerfully neglected his opportunities.
+		I doubt if he ever bewailed his humble origin;
+		nevertheless, the constitution of English society
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_128" title="128"></a>would hardly admit of his forgetting it. He
+		had that pardonable pride which will not allow a
+		man to place himself among those who, though
+		outwardly fair-spoken, offer the insult of a hostile
+		and patronizing mental attitude.</p>
+
+		<p>Most of his friendships were with men, and
+		this is to his credit. The man is spiritually
+		warped who is incapable of a deep and abiding
+		friendship with one of his own sex; and to go
+		a step farther, that man is utterly to be distrusted
+		whose only friends are among women.
+		We may not be prepared to accept the radical
+		position of a certain young thinker, who proclaims,
+		in season, but defiantly, that &#8216;men are
+		the idealists, after all;&#8217; yet it is easy to comprehend
+		how one may take this point of view.
+		The friendships of men are a vastly more interesting
+		and poetic study than the friendships of
+		men and women. This is in the nature of the
+		case. It is the usual victory of the normal
+		over the abnormal. As a rule, it is impossible
+		for a friendship to exist between a man and
+		woman, unless the man and woman in question
+		be husband and wife. Then it is as rare as it
+		is beautiful. And with men, the most admirable
+		spectacle is not always that where attendant
+		circumstances prompt to heroic display of
+		friendship, for it is often so much easier to
+		die than to live. But you may see young
+		men pledging their mutual love and support in
+		this difficult and adventurous quest of what is
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_129" title="129"></a>noblest in the art of living. Such love will not
+		urge to a theatrical posing, and it can hardly
+		find expression in words. Words seem to profane
+		it. I do not say that Keats stood in such
+		an ideal relation to any one of his many friends
+		whose names appear in the letters. He gave
+		of himself to them all, and he received much
+		from each. No man of taste and genius could
+		have been other than flattered by the way in
+		which Keats approached him. He was charming
+		in his attitude toward Haydon; and when
+		Haydon proposed sending Keats&#8217;s sonnet to
+		Wordsworth, the young poet wrote, &#8216;The Idea
+		of your sending it to Wordsworth put me out
+		of breath&#8212;you know with what Reverence I
+		would send my well wishes to him.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>But interesting as a chapter on Keats&#8217;s
+		friendships with men would be, we are bound
+		to confess that in dramatic intensity it would
+		grow pale when laid beside that fiery love passage
+		of his life, his acquaintance with Fanny
+		Brawne. The thirty-nine letters given in the
+		fourth volume of Buxton Forman&#8217;s edition of
+		<i class="title">Keats&#8217;s Works</i> tell the story of this affair of a
+		poet&#8217;s heart. These are the letters which Mr.
+		William Watson says he has never read, and at
+		which no consideration shall ever induce him
+		to look. But Mr. Watson reflects upon people
+		who have been human enough to read them
+		when he compares such a proceeding on his
+		own part (were he able to be guilty of it) to the
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_130" title="130"></a>indelicacy of &#8216;listening at a keyhole or spying
+		over a wall.&#8217; This is not a just illustration.
+		The man who takes upon himself the responsibility
+		of being the first to open such intimate
+		letters, and adds thereto the infinitely greater
+		responsibility of publishing them in so attractive
+		a form that he who runs will stop running
+		in order to read,&#8212;such an editor will need to
+		satisfy Mr. Watson that in so doing he was not
+		listening at a keyhole or spying over a wall.
+		For the general public, the wall is down, and
+		the door containing the keyhole thrown open.
+		Perhaps our duty is not to look. I, for one,
+		wish that great men would not leave their
+		love letters around. Nay, I wish you a better
+		wish than that: it is that the perfect taste of
+		the gentleman and scholar who gave us in its
+		present form the correspondence of Carlyle and
+		Emerson, the early and later letters of Carlyle,
+		and the letters of Lowell might have control
+		of the private papers of every man of genius
+		whose teachings the world holds dear. He
+		would need for this an indefinite lease upon
+		life; but since I am wishing, let me wish
+		largely. There is need of such wishing. Many
+		editors have been called, and only two or three
+		chosen.</p>
+
+		<p>But why one who reads the letters of Keats
+		to Fanny Brawne should have any other feeling
+		than that of pity for a poor fellow who was
+		so desperately in love as to be wretched because
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_131" title="131"></a>of it I do not see. Even a cynic will
+		grant that Keats was not disgraced, since it is
+		very clear that he did not yield readily to what
+		Dr. Holmes calls the great passion. He had a
+		complacent boyish superiority of attitude with
+		respect to all those who are weak enough to
+		love women. &#8216;Nothing,&#8217; he says, &#8216;strikes me
+		so forcibly with a sense of the ridiculous as
+		love. A man in love I do think cuts the sorryest
+		figure in the world. Even when I know a
+		poor fool to be really in pain about it I could
+		burst out laughing in his face. His pathetic
+		visage becomes irresistible.&#8217; Then he speaks
+		of that dinner party of stutterers and squinters
+		described in the <i class="title">Spectator</i>, and says that it
+		would please him more &#8216;to scrape together a
+		party of lovers.&#8217; If this letter be genuine and
+		the date of it correctly given, it was written
+		three months after he had succumbed to the
+		attractions of Fanny Brawne. Perhaps he was
+		trying to brave it out, as one may laugh to conceal
+		embarrassment.</p>
+
+		<p>In a much earlier letter than this he hopes
+		he shall never marry, but nevertheless has a
+		good deal to say about a young lady with fine
+		eyes and fine manners and a &#8216;rich Eastern
+		look.&#8217; He discovers that he can talk to her
+		without being uncomfortable or ill at ease. &#8216;I
+		am too much occupied in admiring to be awkward
+		or in a tremble&#8230;. She kept me awake
+		one night as a tune of Mozart&#8217;s might do&#8230;.
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_132" title="132"></a>I don&#8217;t cry to take the moon home with me in
+		my pocket, nor do I fret to leave her behind
+		me.&#8217; But he was not a little touched, and
+		found it easy to fill two pages on the subject
+		of this dark beauty. She was a friend of the
+		Reynolds family. She crosses the stage of the
+		Keats drama in a very impressive manner, and
+		then disappears.</p>
+
+		<p>The most extraordinary passage to be met
+		with in relation to the poet&#8217;s attitude towards
+		women is in a letter written to Benjamin Bailey
+		in July, 1818. As a partial hint towards its full
+		meaning I would take two phrases in <i class="title">Daniel
+		Deronda</i>. George Eliot says of Gwendolen
+		Harleth that there was &#8216;a certain fierceness of
+		maidenhood in her,&#8217; which expression is quoted
+		here only to emphasize the girl&#8217;s feeling towards
+		men as described a little later, when Rex Gascoigne
+		attempted to tell her his love. Gwendolen
+		repulsed him with a sort of fury that was
+		surprising to herself. The author&#8217;s interpretative
+		comment is, &#8216;<em>The life of passion had begun
+		negatively in her.</em>&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>So one might say of Keats that the life of
+		passion began negatively in him. He was conscious
+		of a hostility of temper towards women.
+		&#8216;I am certain I have not a right feeling toward
+		women&#8212;at this moment I am striving to be
+		just to them, but I cannot.&#8217; He certainly
+		started with a preposterously high ideal, for he
+		says that when a schoolboy he thought a fair
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_133" title="133"></a>woman a pure goddess. And now he is disappointed
+		at finding women only the equals of
+		men. This disappointment helps to give rise
+		to that antagonism which is almost inexplicable
+		save as George Eliot&#8217;s phrase throws light upon
+		it. He thinks that he insults women by these
+		perverse feelings of unprovoked hostility. &#8216;Is
+		it not extraordinary,&#8217; he exclaims, &#8216;when among
+		men I have no evil thoughts, no malice, no
+		spleen; I feel free to speak or to be silent;
+		&#8230; I am free from all suspicion, and comfortable.
+		When I am among women, I have evil
+		thoughts, malice, spleen; I cannot speak or be
+		silent; I am full of suspicions, and therefore
+		listen to nothing; I am in a hurry to be gone.&#8217;
+		He wonders how this trouble is to be cured.
+		He speaks of it as a prejudice produced from
+		&#8216;a gordian complication of feelings, which must
+		take time to unravel.&#8217; And then, with a good-humored,
+		characteristic touch, he drops the
+		subject, saying, &#8216;After all, I do think better of
+		women than to suppose they care whether Mister
+		John Keats, five feet high, likes them or
+		not.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Three or four months after writing these
+		words he must have begun his friendly relations
+		with the Brawne family. This would be
+		in October or November, 1818. Keats&#8217;s description
+		of Fanny is hardly flattering, and not
+		even vivid. What is one to make of the colorless
+		expression &#8216;a fine style of countenance of
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_134" title="134"></a>the lengthened sort&#8217;? But she was fair to
+		him, and any beauty beyond that would have
+		been superfluous. We look at the silhouette
+		and sigh in vain for trace of the loveliness
+		which ensnared Keats. But if our daguerreotypes
+		of forty years ago can so entirely fail of
+		giving one line of that which in its day passed
+		for dazzling beauty, let us not be unreasonable
+		in our demands upon the artistic capabilities of
+		a silhouette. Not infrequently is it true that
+		the style of dress seems to disfigure. But we
+		have learned, in course of experience, that
+		pretty women manage to be pretty, however
+		much fashion, with their cordial help, disguises
+		them.</p>
+
+		<p>It is easy to see from the letters that Keats
+		was a difficult lover. Hard to please at the
+		best, his two sicknesses, one of body and one
+		of heart, made him whimsical. Nothing less
+		than a woman of genius could possibly have
+		managed him. He was jealous, perhaps quite
+		unreasonably so. Fanny Brawne was young, a
+		bit coquettish, buoyant, and he misinterpreted
+		her vivacity. She liked what is commonly
+		called &#8216;the world,&#8217; and so did he when he was
+		well; but looking through the discolored glass
+		of ill health, all nature was out of harmony.
+		For these reasons it happens that the letters at
+		times come very near to being documents in
+		love-madness. Many a line in them gives
+		sharp pain, as a record of heart-suffering must
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_135" title="135"></a>always do. You may read Richard Steele&#8217;s
+		love letters for pleasure, and have it. The
+		love letters of Keats scorch and sting; and the
+		worst of it is that you cannot avoid reflecting
+		upon the transitory character of such a passion.
+		Withering young love like this does not last.
+		It may burn itself out, or, what is quite as
+		likely, it may become sober and rational. But
+		in its earlier maddened state it cannot possibly
+		last; a man would die under it. Men as a rule
+		do not so die, for the race of the Azra is nearly
+		extinct.</p>
+
+		<p>These Brawne letters, however, are not without
+		their bright side; and it is wonderful to see
+		how Keats&#8217;s elastic nature would rebound the
+		instant that the pressure of the disease relaxed.
+		He is at times almost gay. The singing of a
+		thrush prompts him to talk in his natural epistolary
+		voice: &#8216;There&#8217;s the Thrush again&#8212;I
+		can&#8217;t afford it&#8212;he&#8217;ll run me up a pretty Bill
+		for Music&#8212;besides he ought to know I deal at
+		Clementi&#8217;s.&#8217; And in the letter which he wrote
+		to Mrs. Brawne from Naples is a touch of the
+		old bantering Keats when he says that &#8216;it&#8217;s
+		misery to have an intellect in splints.&#8217; He was
+		never strong enough to write again to Fanny,
+		or even to read her letters.</p>
+
+		<p>I should like to close this reading with a few
+		sentences from a letter written to Reynolds in
+		February, 1818. Keats says: &#8216;I had an idea
+		that a man might pass a very pleasant life in
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_136" title="136"></a>this manner&#8212;let him on a certain day read a
+		certain Page of full Poesy or distilled Prose,
+		and let him wander with it, and muse upon it,
+		 &#8230; and prophesy upon it, and dream upon it,
+		until it becomes stale&#8212;but when will it do so?
+		Never! When Man has arrived at a certain
+		ripeness in intellect any one grand and spiritual
+		passage serves him as a starting post towards
+		all the &#8220;two-and-thirty Palaces.&#8221; How happy
+		is such a voyage of conception, what delicious
+		diligent Indolence!&#8230; Nor will this sparing
+		touch of noble Books be any irreverence to
+		their Writers&#8212;for perhaps the honors paid by
+		Man to Man are trifles in comparison to the
+		Benefit done by great Works to the Spirit and
+		pulse of good by their mere passive existence.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>May we not say that the final test of great
+		literature is that it be able to be read in the
+		manner here indicated? As Keats read, so did
+		he write. His own work was</p>
+
+		<blockquote>
+			<p class="verse"><span class="i10">&#8216;accomplished in repose</span><br />
+				Too great for haste, too high for rivalry.&#8217;</p>
+		</blockquote>
+
+	</div>
+	<div id="novelist" class="essay">
+		<h2 class="essay_title"><a class="pagenum" id="page_137" title="137"></a>AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST</h2>
+		<p class="return_toc"><a href="#contents">Return to Contents</a></p>
+		<p><span class="first_word">The</span> fathers in English literature were not a
+		little given to writing books which they called
+		&#8216;anatomies.&#8217; Thomas Nash, for example, wrote
+		an <i class="title">Anatomy of Absurdities</i>, and Stubbes an
+		<i class="title">Anatomy of Abuses</i>. Greene, the novelist, entitled
+		one of his romances <i class="title">Arbasto, the Anatomy
+		of Fortune</i>. The most famous book which
+		bears a title of this kind is the <i class="title">Anatomy of
+		Melancholy</i>, by Robert Burton. It is notable,
+		first, for its inordinate length; second, for its
+		readableness, considering the length and the
+		depth of it; third, for its prodigal and barbaric
+		display of learning; and last, because it
+		is said to have had the effect of making the
+		most indolent man of letters of the eighteenth
+		century get up betimes in the morning. Why
+		Dr. Johnson needed to get up in order to read
+		the <i class="title">Anatomy of Melancholy</i> will always be an
+		enigma to some. Perhaps he did not get up.
+		Perhaps he merely sat up and reached for the
+		book, which would have been placed conveniently
+		near the bed. For the virtue of the act
+		resided in the circumstance of his being awake
+		and reading a good book two hours ahead of
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_138" title="138"></a>his wonted time for beginning his day. If he
+		colored his remark so as to make us think
+		he got up and dressed before reading, he may
+		be forgiven. It was innocently spoken. Just
+		as a man who lives in one room will somehow
+		involuntarily fall into the habit of speaking
+		of that one room in the plural, so the doctor
+		added a touch which would render him heroic
+		in the eyes of those who knew him. I should
+		like a pictorial book-plate representing Dr.
+		Johnson, in gown and nightcap, sitting up in
+		bed reading the <i class="title">Anatomy of Melancholy</i>, with
+		Hodge, the cat, curled up contentedly at his
+		feet.</p>
+
+		<p>It would be interesting to know whether
+		Johnson ever read, in bed or out, a book called
+		<i class="title">Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit</i>. It was published
+		in the spring of 1579 by Gabriel Cawood,
+		&#8216;dwelling in Paules Churchyard,&#8217; and was followed
+		one year later by a second part, <i class="title">Euphues
+		and his England</i>. These books were the work
+		of John Lyly, a young Oxford Master of Arts.
+		According to the easy orthography of that time
+		(if the word orthography may be applied to a
+		practice by virtue of which every man spelled
+		as seemed right in his own eyes), Lyly&#8217;s name
+		is found in at least six forms: Lilye, Lylie,
+		Lilly, Lyllie, Lyly, and Lylly. Remembering
+		the willingness of <em>i</em> and <em>y</em> to bear one another&#8217;s
+		burdens, we may still exclaim, with Dr. Ingleby,
+		&#8216;Great is the mystery of archaic spelling!&#8217;
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_139" title="139"></a>Great indeed when a man sometimes had more
+		suits of letters to his name than suits of clothes
+		to his back. That the name of this young author
+		was pronounced as was the name of the
+		flower, lily, seems the obvious inference from
+		Henry Upchear&#8217;s verses, which contain punning
+		allusions to Lyly and Robert Greene:&#8212;</p>
+
+		<blockquote>
+		<p class="verse">&#8216;Of all the flowers a Lillie once I lov&#8217;d<br />
+			Whose laboring beautie brancht itself abroad,&#8217; etc.</p>
+		</blockquote>
+
+		<p>Original editions of the <i class="title">Anatomy of Wit</i> and
+		its fellow are very rare. Probably there is not
+		a copy of either book in the United States.
+		This statement is ventured in good faith, and
+		may have the effect of bringing to light a
+		hitherto neglected copy.<sup class="note_marker"><a href="#note_1" id="fnm1" title="The writer of this paper...">1</a></sup> Strange it is that
+		princely collectors of yore appear not to have
+		cared for <i class="title">Euphues</i>. Surely one would not venture
+		to affirm that John, Duke of Roxburghe,
+		might not have had it if he had wanted it. The
+		book is not to be found in his sale catalogue;
+		he had Lyly&#8217;s plays in quarto, seven of them
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_140" title="140"></a>each marked &#8216;rare,&#8217; and he had two copies
+		of a well-known book called <i class="title">Euphues Golden
+		Legacie</i>, written by Thomas Nash. The Perkins
+		Sale catalogue shows neither of Lyly&#8217;s
+		novels. List after list of the spoils of mighty
+		book-hunters has only a blank where the <i class="title">Anatomy
+		of Wit</i> ought to be. From this we may
+		argue great scarcity, or great indifference, or
+		both. In the compact little reprint made by
+		Professor Arber one may read this moral tale,
+		which was fashionable when Shakespeare was
+		a youth of sixteen. For convenience it will be
+		advisable to speak of it as a single work in two
+		parts, for such it practically is.</p>
+
+		<p>To pronounce upon this romance is not easy.
+		We read a dozen or two of pages, and say, &#8216;This
+		is very fantastical humours.&#8217; We read further,
+		and are tempted to follow Sir Hugh to the
+		extent of declaring, &#8216;This is lunatics.&#8217; One
+		may venture the not profound remark that it
+		takes all sorts of books to make a literature.
+		<i class="title">Euphues</i> is one of the books that would prompt
+		to that very remark. For he who first said
+		that it takes all sorts of people to make a world
+		was markedly impressed with the differences
+		between those people and himself. He had in
+		mind eccentric folk, types which deviate from
+		the normal and the sane. So <i class="title">Euphues</i> is a
+		very Malvolio among books, cross-gartered and
+		wreathed as to its countenance with set smiles.
+		The curious in literary history will always enjoy
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_141" title="141"></a>such a production. The verdict of that part of
+		the reading world which keeps a book alive by
+		calling for fresh copies of it after the old copies
+		are worn out is against <i class="title">Euphues</i>. It had a vivacious
+		existence between 1579 and 1636, and
+		then went into a literary retirement lasting two
+		hundred and thirty-six years. When it again
+		came before the public it was introduced as
+		&#8216;a great bibliographical rarity.&#8217; Its fatal old-fashionedness
+		hangs like a millstone about its
+		neck. In the poems of Chaucer and the dramas
+		of Shakespeare are a thousand touches which
+		make the reader feel that Chaucer and Shakespeare
+		are his contemporaries, that they have
+		written in his own time, and published but yesterday.
+		Read <i class="title">Euphues</i>, and you will say to
+		yourself, &#8216;That book must have been written
+		three hundred years ago, and it looks its age.&#8217;
+		Yet it has its virtues. One may not say of it,
+		as Johnson said of the <i class="title">Rehearsal</i>, that it &#8216;has
+		not wit enough to keep it sweet.&#8217; Neither may
+		he, upon second thought, conclude that &#8216;it has
+		not vitality enough to preserve it from putrefaction.&#8217;
+		It has, indeed, a bottom of good
+		sense; and so had Malvolio. It is filled from
+		end to beginning with wit, or with what passed
+		for wit among many readers of that day. Often
+		the wit is of a tawdry and spectacular sort,&#8212;mere
+		verbal wit, the use of a given word not
+		because it is the best word, the most fitting
+		word, but because the author wants a word
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_142" title="142"></a>beginning with the letter G, or the letter M, or
+		the letter F, as the case may be. On the second
+		page of Greene&#8217;s <i class="title">Arbasto</i> is this sentence:
+		&#8216;He did not so much as vouchsafe to give an
+		<em>eare</em> to my <em>parle</em>, or an <em>eye</em> to my <em>person</em>.&#8217;
+		Greene learned this trick from Lyly, who was
+		a master of the art. The sentence represents
+		one of the common forms in <i class="title">Euphues</i>, such as
+		this: &#8216;To the stomach <em>quatted</em> with <em>dainties</em>
+		all <em>delicates</em> seem <em>queasie</em>.&#8217; Sometimes the balance
+		is preserved by three words on a side.
+		For example, the companions whom Euphues
+		found in Naples practiced arts &#8216;whereby they
+		might either <em>soake</em> his <em>purse</em> to reape <em>commodotie</em>,
+		or <em>sooth</em> his <em>person</em> to winne <em>credite</em>.&#8217;
+		Other illustrations are these: I can neither
+		&#8216;<em>remember</em> our <em>miseries</em> without <em>griefe</em>, nor <em>redresse</em>
+		our <em>mishaps</em> without <em>grones</em>.&#8217; &#8216;If the
+		<em>wasting</em> of our <em>money</em> might not <em>dehort</em> us, yet
+		the <em>wounding</em> of our <em>mindes</em> should <em>deterre</em>
+		us.&#8217; This next sentence, with its combination
+		of K sounds, clatters like a pair of castanets:
+		&#8216;Though Curio bee as hot as a toast, yet
+		Euphues is as cold as a clocke, though hee
+		bee a cocke of the game, yet Euphues is content
+		to bee craven and crye creake.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Excess of alliteration is the most obvious
+		feature of Lyly&#8217;s style. That style has been
+		carefully analyzed by those who are learned in
+		such things. The study is interesting, with its
+		talk of alliteration and transverse alliteration,
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_143" title="143"></a>antithesis, climax, and assonance. In truth,
+		one does not know which to admire the more,
+		the ingenuity of the man who constructed the
+		book, or the ingenuity of the scholars who have
+		explained how he did it. Between Lyly on the
+		one hand, and the grammarians on the other,
+		the reader is almost tempted to ask if this be
+		literature or mathematics. Whether Lyly got
+		his style from Pettie or Guevara is an important
+		question, but he made it emphatically his
+		own, and it will never be called by any other
+		name than Euphuism. The making of a book
+		on this plan is largely the result of astonishing
+		mental gymnastics. It commands respect in
+		no small degree, because Lyly was able to keep
+		it up so long. To walk from New York to
+		Albany, as did the venerable Weston not so
+		very long since, is a great test of human endurance.
+		But walking is the employment of
+		one&#8217;s legs and body in God&#8217;s appointed way of
+		getting over the ground. Suppose a man were
+		to undertake to hop on one leg from New York
+		to Albany, the utility or the &aelig;sthetic value of
+		the performance would be less obvious. The
+		most successful artist in hopping could hardly
+		expect applause from the right-minded. He
+		would excite attention because he was able to
+		hop so far, and not because he was the exponent
+		of a praiseworthy method of locomotion.
+		Lyly gained eminence by doing to a greater extent
+		than any man a thing that was not worth
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_144" title="144"></a>doing at all. One is more astonished at Lyly&#8217;s
+		power of endurance as author than at his own
+		power of endurance as reader. For the volume
+		is actually readable even at this day. Did
+		Lyly not grow wearied of perpetually riding
+		these alliterative trick-ponies? Apparently not.
+		The book is &#8216;executed&#8217; with a vivacity, a dash,
+		a &#8216;go,&#8217; that will captivate any reader who is
+		willing to meet the author halfway. <i class="title">Euphues</i>
+		became the rage, and its literary style the fashion.
+		How or why must be left to him to explain
+		who can tell why sleeves grow small and
+		then grow big, why skirts are at one time only
+		two and a half yards around and at another
+		time five and a half or eight yards around. An
+		Elizabethan gentleman might be too poor to
+		dress well, but he would squander his last penny
+		in getting his ruff starched. Lyly&#8217;s style bristles
+		with extravagances of the starched ruff
+		sort, which only serve to call attention to the
+		intellectual deficiencies in the matter of doublet
+		and hose.</p>
+
+		<p>Of plot or story there is but little. The
+		hero, Euphues, who gives the title to the romance,
+		is a young, clever, and rich Athenian.
+		He visits Naples, where his money and wit
+		attract many to his side. By his careless,
+		pleasure-seeking mode of life he wakens the
+		fatherly interest of a wise old gentleman, Eubulus,
+		who calls upon him to warn him of his
+		danger. The conversation between the two is
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_145" title="145"></a>the first and not the least amusing illustration
+		of the courtly verbal fencing with which the
+		book is filled. The advice of the old man only
+		provokes Euphues into making the sophistical
+		plea that his style of living is right because
+		nature prompts him to it; and he leaves Eubulus
+		&#8216;in a great quandary&#8217; and in tears. Nevertheless,
+		the old gentleman has the righteous
+		energy which prompts him to say to the departing
+		Euphues, already out of hearing, &#8216;Seeing
+		thou wilt not buy counsel at the first hand
+		good cheap, thou shalt buy repentance at the
+		second hand, at such unreasonable rate, that
+		thou wilt curse thy hard pennyworth, and ban
+		thy hard heart.&#8217; Euphues takes to himself a
+		new sworn brother, one Philautus, who carries
+		him to visit his lady-love, Lucilla. Lucilla is
+		rude at first, but becomes enamored of Euphues&#8217;s
+		conversational power, and finally of
+		himself. In fact, she unceremoniously throws
+		over her former lover, and tells her father that
+		she will either marry Euphues or else lead apes
+		in hell. This causes a break in the friendship
+		between Euphues and Philautus, and there is
+		an exchange of formidably worded letters, in
+		which Philautus reminds Euphues that all
+		Greeks are liars, and Euphues quotes Euripides
+		to the effect that all is lawful in love. Lucilla,
+		who is fickle, suddenly dismisses her new cavalier
+		for yet a third, while Euphues and Philautus,
+		in the light of their common misfortune,
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_146" title="146"></a>fall upon each other&#8217;s necks and are reconciled.
+		Both profess themselves to have been fools,
+		while Euphues, as the greater and more recent
+		fool, composes a pamphlet against love. This
+		he calls a &#8216;cooling-card.&#8217; It is addressed primarily
+		to Philautus, but contains general advice
+		for &#8216;all fond lovers.&#8217; Euphues&#8217;s own cure was
+		radical, for he says, &#8216;Now do I give a farewell
+		to the world, meaning rather to macerate myself
+		with melancholy, than pine in folly, rather
+		choosing to die in my study amidst my books
+		than to court it in Italy in the company of
+		ladies.&#8217; He returns to Athens, applies himself
+		to the study of philosophy, becomes public
+		reader in the University, and, as crowning evidence
+		that he has finished sowing his wild oats,
+		produces three volumes of lectures. Realizing
+		how much of his own youth has been wasted,
+		he writes a pamphlet on the education of the
+		young, a dialogue with an atheist, and these,
+		with a bundle of letters, make up the first part
+		of the <i class="title">Anatomy of Wit</i>. From one of the letters
+		we learn that Lucilla was as frail as she
+		was beautiful, and that she died in evil report.
+		The story, including the diatribe against love,
+		is about as long as <i class="title">The Vicar of Wakefield</i>.
+		It begins as a romance and ends as a sermon.</p>
+
+		<p>The continuation of the novel, <i class="title">Euphues and
+		his England</i>, is a little over a third longer than
+		Part One. The two friends carry out their project
+		of visiting England. After a wearisome
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_147" title="147"></a>voyage they reach Dover, view the cliffs and
+		the castle, and then proceed to Canterbury.
+		Between Canterbury and London they stop for
+		a while with a &#8216;comely olde gentleman,&#8217; Fidus,
+		who keeps bees and tells good stories. He
+		also gives sound advice as to the way in which
+		strangers should conduct themselves. A lively
+		bit of writing is the account which Fidus gives
+		of his commonwealth of bees. It is not according
+		to Lubbock, but is none the less amusing.
+		In London the two travelers become favorites
+		at the court. Philautus falls in love, to the
+		great annoyance of Euphues, who argues
+		mightily with him against such folly. The two
+		gentlemen expend vast resources of stationery
+		and language upon the subject. They quarrel
+		violently, and Euphues becomes so irritated
+		that he must needs go and rent new lodgings,
+		&#8216;which by good friends he quickly got, and
+		there fell to his <i class="title">Pater noster</i>, where awhile,&#8217;
+		says Lyly innocently, &#8216;I will not trouble him in
+		his prayers.&#8217; They are reconciled later, and
+		Philautus obtains permission to love; but he
+		has discovered in the mean time that the lady
+		will not have him. The account of his passion,
+		how it &#8216;boiled and bubbled,&#8217; of his visit to the
+		soothsayer to purchase love charms, his stately
+		declamations to Camilla and her elaborate replies
+		to him, of his love letter concealed in a
+		pomegranate, and her answer stitched into a
+		copy of Petrarch,&#8212;is all very lively reading,
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_148" title="148"></a>much more so than that dreary love-making
+		between Pyrocles and Philoclea, or between
+		any other pair of the many exceedingly tiresome
+		folk in Sidney&#8217;s <i class="title">Arcadia</i>. Grant that it
+		is deliciously absurd. It is not to be supposed
+		that a clever eighteen-year-old girl, replying to
+		a declaration of love, will talk in the language
+		of a trained nurse, and say: &#8216;Green sores are to
+		be dressed roughly lest they fester, tettars are
+		to be drawn in the beginning lest they spread,
+		Ringworms to be anointed when they first
+		appear lest they compass the whole body, and
+		the assaults of love to be beaten back at the
+		first siege lest they undermine at the second.&#8217;
+		Was ever suitor in this fashion rejected! It
+		makes one think of some of the passages in the
+		<i class="title">History of John Buncle</i>, where the hero pours
+		out a torrent of passionate phrases, and the
+		&#8216;glorious&#8217; Miss Noel, in reply, begs that they
+		may take up some rational topic of conversation;
+		for example, what is <em>his</em> view of that
+		opinion which ascribes &#8216;prim&aelig;vity and sacred
+		prerogatives&#8217; to the Hebrew language.</p>
+
+		<p>But Philautus does not break his heart over
+		Camilla&#8217;s rejection. He is consoled with the
+		love of another fair maiden, marries her, and
+		settles in England. Euphues goes back to
+		Athens, and presently retires to the country,
+		where he follows the calling of one whose profession
+		is melancholy. Like most hermits of
+		culture, he leaves his address with his banker.
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_149" title="149"></a>We assume this, for he was very rich; it is not
+		difficult to be a hermit on a large income. The
+		book closes with a section called &#8216;Euphues
+		Glasse for Europe,&#8217; a thirty-page panegyric on
+		England and the Queen.</p>
+
+		<p>They say that this novel was very popular,
+		and certain causes of its popularity are not
+		difficult to come at. A large measure of the
+		success that <i class="title">Euphues</i> had is due to the commonplaceness
+		of its observations. It abounds
+		in proverbs and copy-book wisdom. In this
+		respect it is as homely as an almanac. John
+		Lyly had a great store of &#8216;miscellany thoughts,&#8217;
+		and he cheerfully parted with them. His book
+		succeeded as Tupper&#8217;s <i class="title">Proverbial Philosophy</i>
+		and Watts&#8217; <i class="title">On the Mind</i> succeeded. People
+		believed that they were getting ideas, and people
+		like what they suppose to be ideas if no
+		great effort is required in the getting of them.
+		It is astonishing how often the world needs to
+		be advised of the brevity of time. Yet every
+		person who can wade in the shallows of his own
+		mind and not wet his shoe-tops finds a sweet
+		melancholy and a stimulating freshness in the
+		thought that time is short. John Lyly said,
+		&#8216;There is nothing more swifter than time,
+		nothing more sweeter,&#8217;&#8212;and countless Elizabethan
+		gentlemen and ladies underscored that
+		sentence, or transferred it to their commonplace
+		books,&#8212;if they had such painful aids to
+		culture,&#8212;and were comforted and edified by
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_150" title="150"></a>the discovery that brilliant John Lyly had
+		made. This glib command of the matter-of-course,
+		with a ready use of the proverb and the
+		&#8216;old said saw,&#8217; is a marked characteristic of the
+		work. It emphasizes the youth of its author.
+		We learn what could not have been new even
+		in 1579, that &#8216;in misery it is a great comfort to
+		have a companion;&#8217; that &#8216;a new broom sweepeth
+		clean;&#8217; that &#8216;delays breed dangers;&#8217; that
+		&#8216;nothing is so perilous as procrastination;&#8217; that
+		&#8216;a burnt child dreadeth the fire;&#8217; that it is well
+		not to make comparisons &#8216;lest comparisons
+		should seem odious;&#8217; that &#8216;it is too late to
+		shut the stable door when the steed is stolen;&#8217;
+		that &#8216;many things fall between the cup and the
+		lip;&#8217; and that &#8216;marriages are made in heaven,
+		though consummated on earth.&#8217; With these
+		old friends come others, not altogether familiar
+		of countenance, and quaintly archaic in their
+		dress: &#8216;It must be a wily mouse that shall
+		breed in the cat&#8217;s ear;&#8217; &#8216;It is a mad hare that
+		will be caught with a tabor, and a foolish bird
+		that stayeth the laying salt on her tail, and a
+		blind goose that cometh to the fox&#8217;s sermon.&#8217;
+		Lyly would sometimes translate a proverb; he
+		does not tell us that fine words butter no parsnips,
+		but says, &#8216;Fair words fat few,&#8217;&#8212;which is
+		delightfully alliterative, but hardly to be accounted
+		an improvement. Expressions that
+		are surprisingly modern turn up now and then.
+		One American street urchin taunts another by
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_151" title="151"></a>telling him that he doesn&#8217;t know enough to
+		come in when it rains. The saying is at least
+		three hundred years old, for Lyly says, in a
+		dyspeptic moment, &#8216;So much wit is sufficient
+		for a woman as when she is in the rain can
+		warn her to come out of it.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Another cause of the popularity of <i class="title">Euphues</i>
+		is its sermonizing. The world loves to hear
+		good advice. The world is not nervously anxious
+		to follow the advice, but it understands
+		the edification that comes by preaching. With
+		many persons, to have heard a sermon is almost
+		equivalent to having practiced the virtues taught
+		in the sermon. Churches are generally accepted
+		as evidences of civilization. A man
+		who is exploiting the interests of a new Western
+		town will invariably tell you that it has so
+		many churches. Also, an opera-house. The
+		English world above all other worlds loves to
+		hear good advice. England is the natural
+		home of the sermon. Jusserand notes, almost
+		with wonder, that in the annual statistics of
+		the London publishers the highest numbers
+		indicate the output of sermons and theological
+		works. Then come novels. John Lyly was
+		ingenious; he combined good advice and storytelling.
+		Not skillfully, hiding the sermon amid
+		lively talk and adventure, but blazoning the
+		fact that he was going to moralize as long as
+		he would. He shows no timidity, even declares
+		upon one of his title-pages that in this volume
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_152" title="152"></a>&#8216;there is small offense by lightness given to the
+		wise, and less occasion of looseness proffered
+		to the wanton.&#8217; Such courage in this day
+		would be apt seriously to injure the sale of a
+		novel. Did not Ruskin declare that Miss
+		Edgeworth had made virtue so obnoxious that
+		since her time one hardly dared express the
+		slightest bias in favor of the Ten Commandments?
+		Lyly knew the public for which he
+		acted as literary caterer. They liked sermons,
+		and sermons they should have. Nearly every
+		character in the book preaches, and Euphues is
+		the most gifted of them all. Even that old
+		gentleman of Naples who came first to Euphues
+		because his heart bled to see so noble a youth
+		given to loose living has the tables turned upon
+		him, for Euphues preaches to the preacher
+		upon the sovereign duty of resignation to the
+		will of God.</p>
+
+		<p>A noteworthy characteristic is the frequency
+		of Lyly&#8217;s classical allusions. If the only definition
+		of pedantry be &#8216;vain and ostentatious display
+		of learning,&#8217; I question if we may dismiss
+		Lyly&#8217;s wealth of classical lore with the word
+		&#8216;pedantry.&#8217; He was fresh from his university
+		life. If he studied at all when he was at Oxford,
+		he must have studied Latin and Greek,
+		for after these literatures little else was studied.
+		Young men and their staid tutors were compelled
+		to know ancient history and mythology.
+		Like Heine, they may have taken a &#8216;real
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_153" title="153"></a>delight in the mob of gods and goddesses who
+		ran so jolly naked about the world.&#8217; In the
+		first three pages of the <i class="title">Anatomy of Wit</i> there
+		are twenty classical names, ten of them coupled
+		each with an allusion. Nobody begins a speech
+		without a reference of this nature within calling
+		distance. Euphues and Philautus fill their
+		talk with evidences of a classical training. The
+		ladies are provided with apt remarks drawn
+		from the experiences of Helen, of Cornelia, of
+		Venus, of Diana, and Vesta. Even the master
+		of the ship which conveyed Euphues from
+		Naples to England declaims about Ulysses and
+		Julius C&aelig;sar. This naturally destroys all dramatic
+		effect. Everybody speaks Euphuism,
+		though classical allusion alone is not essentially
+		Euphuistic. John Lyly would be the last man
+		to merit any portion of that fine praise bestowed
+		by Hazlitt upon Shakespeare when he said that
+		Shakespeare&#8217;s genius &#8216;consisted in the faculty
+		of transforming himself at will into whatever
+		he chose.&#8217; Lyly&#8217;s genius was the opposite of
+		this; it consisted in the faculty of transforming
+		everybody into a reduplication of himself.
+		There is no change in style when the narrative
+		parts end and the dialogue begins. All the
+		persons of the drama utter one strange tongue.
+		They are no better than the characters in a
+		Punch and Judy show, where one concealed
+		manipulator furnishes voice for each of the
+		figures. But in Lyly&#8217;s novel there is not even
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_154" title="154"></a>an attempt at the most rudimentary ventriloquism.</p>
+
+		<p>What makes the book still less a reflection
+		of life is that the speakers indulge in interminably
+		long harangues. No man (unless he were
+		a Coleridge) would be tolerated who talked in
+		society at such inordinate length. When the
+		characters can&#8217;t talk to one another they retire
+		to their chambers and declaim to themselves.
+		They polish their language with the same care,
+		open the classical dictionary, and have at themselves
+		in good set terms. Philautus, inflamed
+		with love of Camilla, goes to his room and pronounces
+		a ten-minute discourse on the pangs of
+		love, having only himself for auditor. They
+		are amazingly patient under the verbal inflictions
+		of one another. Euphues, angry with
+		Philautus for having allowed himself to fall in
+		love, takes him to task in a single speech containing
+		four thousand words. If Lyly had set
+		out with the end in view of constructing a story
+		by putting into it alone &#8216;what is not life,&#8217; his
+		product would have been what we find it now.
+		One could easily believe the whole affair to
+		have been intended for a tremendous joke were
+		it not that the tone is so serious. We are
+		accustomed to think of youth as light-hearted:
+		but look at a serious child,&#8212;there is nothing
+		more serious in the world. Lyly was twenty-six
+		years when he first published. Much of the
+		seriousness in his romance is the burden of
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_155" title="155"></a>twenty-six years&#8217; experience of life, a burden
+		greater perhaps than he ever afterward carried.</p>
+
+		<p>Being, as we take it, an unmarried man, Lyly
+		gives directions for managing a wife. He believes
+		in the wholesome doctrine that a man
+		should select his own wife. &#8216;Made marriages
+		by friends&#8217; are dangerous. &#8216;I had as lief
+		another should take measure by his back of my
+		apparel as appoint what wife I shall have by
+		his mind.&#8217; He prefers in a wife &#8216;beauty before
+		riches, and virtue before blood.&#8217; He holds to
+		the radical English doctrine of wifely submission;
+		there is no swerving from the position
+		that the man is the woman&#8217;s &#8216;earthly master,&#8217;<sup class="note_marker"><a href="#note_2" id="fnm2" title="Lady Burton&#8217;s Dedication...">2</a></sup>
+		but in taming a wife no violence is to be employed.
+		Wives are to be subdued with kindness.
+		&#8216;If their husbands with great threatenings,
+		with jars, with brawls, seek to make them
+		tractable, or bend their knees, the more stiff
+		they make them in the joints, the oftener they
+		go about by force to rule them, the more froward
+		they find them; but using mild words,
+		gentle persuasions, familiar counsel, entreaty,
+		submission, they shall not only make them to
+		bow their knees, but to hold up their hands,
+		not only cause them to honor them, but to
+		stand in awe of them.&#8217; By such methods will
+		that supremest good of an English home be
+		brought about, namely, that the wife shall stand
+		in awe of her husband.</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_156" title="156"></a>The young author admits that some wives
+		have the domineering instinct, and that way
+		danger lies. A man must look out for himself.
+		If he is not to make a slave of his wife, he is
+		also not to be too submissive; &#8216;that will cause
+		her to disdain thee.&#8217; Moreover, he must have
+		an eye to the expenditure. She may keep the
+		keys, but he will control the pocket-book. The
+		model wife in Ecclesiastes had greater privileges;
+		she could not only consider a piece of
+		ground, but she could buy it if she liked it.
+		Not so this well-trained wife of Lyly&#8217;s novel.
+		&#8216;Let all the keys hang at her girdle, but the
+		purse at thine, so shalt thou know what thou
+		dost spend, and how she can spare.&#8217; But in
+		setting forth his theory for being happy though
+		married, Lyly, methinks, preaches a dangerous
+		doctrine in this respect: he hints at the possibility
+		of a man&#8217;s wanting, in vulgar parlance, to
+		go on a spree, expresses no question as to the
+		propriety of his so doing, but says that if a man
+		does let himself loose in this fashion his wife
+		must not know it. &#8216;Imitate the kings of Persia,
+		who when they were given to riot kept no
+		company with their wives, but when they used
+		good order had their queens even at the table.&#8217;
+		In short, the wife was to duplicate the moods
+		of her husband. &#8216;Thou must be a glass to thy
+		wife, for in thy face must she see her own; for
+		if when thou laughest she weep, when thou
+		mournest she giggle, the one is a manifest sign
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_157" title="157"></a>she delighteth in others, the other a token she
+		despiseth thee.&#8217; John Lyly was a wise youth.
+		He struck the keynote of the mode in which
+		most incompatible marriages are played when
+		he said that it was a bad sign if one&#8217;s wife giggled
+		when one was disposed to be melancholy.</p>
+
+		<p>An interesting study is the author&#8217;s attitude
+		toward foreign travel. It would appear to have
+		been the fashion of the time to indulge in much
+		invective against foreign travel, but nevertheless&#8212;to
+		travel. Many men believed with
+		young Valentine that &#8216;home keeping youth
+		have ever homely wits,&#8217; while others were rather
+		of Ascham&#8217;s mind when he said, &#8216;I was once in
+		Italy, but I thank God my stay there was only
+		nine days.&#8217; Lyly came of a nation of travelers.
+		Then as now it was true that there was no
+		accessible spot of the globe upon which the
+		Englishman had not set his foot. Nomadic
+		England went abroad; sedentary England
+		stayed at home to rail at him for so doing.
+		Aside from that prejudice which declared that
+		all foreigners were fools, there was a well-founded
+		objection to the sort of traveling usually
+		described as seeing the world. Young
+		men went upon the continent to see questionable
+		forms of pleasure, perhaps to practice
+		them. Whether justly or not, common report
+		named Italy as the higher school of pleasurable
+		vices, and Naples as the city where one&#8217;s doctorate
+		was to be obtained. Gluttony and licentiousness
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_158" title="158"></a>are the sins of Naples. Eubulus tells
+		Euphues that in that city are those who &#8216;sleep
+		with meat in their mouths, with sin in their
+		hearts, and with shame in their houses.&#8217; There
+		is no limit to the inconveniences of traveling.
+		&#8216;Thou must have the back of an ass to bear all,
+		and the snout of a swine to say nothing&#8230;.
+		Travelers must sleep with their eyes open lest
+		they be slain in their beds, and wake with their
+		eyes shut lest they be suspected by their looks.&#8217;
+		Journeys by the fireside are better. &#8216;If thou
+		covet to travel strange countries, search the
+		maps, there shalt thou see much with great
+		pleasure and small pains, if to be conversant in
+		all courts, read histories, where thou shalt
+		understand both what the men have been and
+		what their manners are, and methinketh there
+		must be much delight where there is no danger.&#8217;
+		Perhaps Lyly intended to condemn traveling
+		with character unformed. A boy returned
+		with more vices than he went forth with pence,
+		and was able to sin both by experience and
+		authority. Lest he should be thought to speak
+		with uncertain voice upon this matter Lyly
+		gives Euphues a story to tell in which the chief
+		character describes the effect of traveling upon
+		himself. &#8216;There was no crime so barbarous,
+		no murder so bloody, no oath so blasphemous,
+		no vice so execrable, but that I could readily
+		recite where I learned it, and by rote repeat the
+		peculiar crime of every particular country, city,
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_159" title="159"></a>town, village, house, or chamber.&#8217; Here, indeed,
+		is no lack of plain speech.</p>
+
+		<p>In the section called &#8216;Euphues and his
+		Eph&oelig;bus&#8217; twenty-nine pages are devoted to
+		the question of the education of youth. It is
+		largely taken from Plutarch. Some of the
+		points are these: that a mother shall herself
+		nurse her child, that the child shall be early
+		framed to manners, &#8216;for as the steele is imprinted
+		in the soft waxe, so learning is engraven
+		in ye minde of an young Impe.&#8217; He is not to
+		hear &#8216;fonde fables or filthy tales.&#8217; He is to
+		learn to pronounce distinctly and to be kept
+		from &#8216;barbarous talk,&#8217; that is, no dialect and no
+		slang. He is to become expert in martial
+		affairs, in shooting and darting, and he must
+		hunt and hawk for his &#8216;honest recreation.&#8217; If
+		he will not study, he is not to be &#8216;scourged
+		with stripes, but threatened with words, not
+		<em>dulled with blows</em>, like servants, the which, the
+		more they are beaten the better they bear it,
+		and the less they care for it.&#8217; In taking this
+		position Lyly is said to be only following Ascham.
+		Ascham was not the first in his own
+		time to preach such doctrine. Forty years before
+		the publication of <i class="title">The Schoolmaster</i>, Sir
+		Thomas Elyot, in his book called <i class="title">The Governour</i>,
+		raised his voice against the barbarity of
+		teachers &#8216;by whom the wits of children be
+		dulled,&#8217;&#8212;almost the very words of John Lyly.</p>
+
+		<p><i class="title">Euphues</i>, besides being a treatise on love
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_160" title="160"></a>and education, is a sort of Tudor tract upon
+		animated nature. It should be a source of joy
+		unspeakable to the general reader if only for
+		what it teaches him in the way of natural history.
+		How much of what is most gravely
+		stated here did John Lyly actually believe? It
+		is easy to grant so orthodox a statement of
+		physical fact as that &#8216;the Sunne doth harden
+		the durte, and melte the waxe;&#8217; but ere the
+		sentence be finished, the author calls upon us
+		to believe that &#8216;Perfumes doth refresh the
+		Dove and kill the Betill.&#8217; The same reckless
+		extravagance of remark is to be noted whenever
+		bird, beast, or reptile is mentioned. The
+		crocodile of Shakespeare&#8217;s time must have been
+		a very contortionist among beasts, for, says
+		Lyly, &#8216;when one approacheth neere unto him,
+		[he] gathereth up himselfe into the roundnesse
+		of a ball, but running from him, stretcheth
+		himselfe into the length of a tree.&#8217; Perhaps
+		the fame of this creature&#8217;s powers grew in the
+		transmission of the narrative from the banks of
+		the Nile to the banks of the Thames. The
+		ostrich was human in its vanity according to
+		Lyly; men and women sometimes pull out
+		their white hairs, but &#8216;the Estritch, that taketh
+		the greatest pride in her feathers, picketh some
+		of the worst out and burneth them.&#8217; Nay,
+		more than that, being in &#8216;great haste she pricketh
+		none but hirselfe which causeth hir to
+		runne when she would rest.&#8217; We shall presently
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_161" title="161"></a>expect to hear that ostriches wear boots
+		by the straps of which they lift themselves
+		over ten-foot woven-wire fences. But Lyly
+		used the conventional natural history that was
+		at hand, and troubled himself in no respect to
+		inquire about its truth or falsity.</p>
+
+		<p>There is yet another cause of the popularity
+		of this book in its own time, which has been
+		too little emphasized. It is that trumpet blast
+		of patriotism with which the volume ends. We
+		feel, as we read the thirty pages devoted to the
+		praise of England and the Queen, that this is
+		right, fitting, artistic, and we hope that it is tolerably
+		sincere. Flattery came easily to men in
+		those days, and there was small hope of advancement
+		for one who did not master the art. But
+		there is a glow of earnestness in these paragraphs
+		rather convincing to the skeptic. Nor
+		would the book be complete without this eulogy.
+		We have had everything else; a story for who
+		wanted a story, theories upon the education of
+		children, a body of mythological divinity, a discussion
+		of methods of public speaking, advice
+		for men who are about to marry, a theological
+		sparring match, in which a man of straw is set
+		up to be knocked down, and <em>is</em> knocked down,
+		a thousand illustrations of wit and curious reading,
+		and now, as a thing that all men could
+		understand, the author tells Englishmen of
+		their own good fortune in being Englishmen,
+		and is finely outspoken in praise of what he
+		calls &#8216;the blessed Island.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_162" title="162"></a>This is an old-fashioned vein, to be sure,&#8212;the
+		<i lang="la">ad captandum</i> trick of a popular orator
+		bent upon making a success. It is not looked
+		upon in all places with approval. &#8216;Our unrivaled
+		prosperity&#8217; was a phrase which greatly
+		irritated Matthew Arnold. Here in America,
+		are we not taught by a highly fastidious journal
+		that we may be patriotic if we choose, but we
+		must be careful how we let people know it?
+		We mustn&#8217;t make a fuss about it. We
+		mustn&#8217;t be blatant. The star-spangled banner
+		on the public schools is at best a cheap and
+		vulgar expression of patriotism. But somehow
+		even this sort of patriotism goes with the people,
+		and perhaps these instincts of the common
+		folk are not entirely to be despised. Many a
+		reader of <i class="title">Euphues</i>, who cared but little for its
+		elaborated style, who was not moved by its
+		orthodoxy, who didn&#8217;t read books simply because
+		they were fashionable, must have felt his
+		pulse stirred by Lyly&#8217;s chant of England&#8217;s
+		greatness. For Euphues is John Lyly, and
+		John Lyly&#8217;s creed was substantially that of
+		the well-known hero of a now forgotten comic
+		opera, &#8216;I am an Englishman.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>In the thin disguise of the chief character of
+		his story the author describes the happy island,
+		its brave gentlemen and rich merchants, its fair
+		ladies and its noble Queen. The glories of
+		London, which he calls the storehouse and
+		mart of all Europe, and the excellence of English
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_163" title="163"></a>universities, &#8216;out of which do daily proceed
+		men of great wisdom,&#8217; are alike celebrated.
+		England&#8217;s material wealth in mines and quarries
+		is amply set forth, also the fine qualities of
+		the breed of cattle, and the virtues of English
+		spaniels, hounds, and mastiffs; for these constitute
+		a sort of good that all could appreciate.
+		He is satirical at the expense of his countrymen&#8217;s
+		dress,&#8212;&#8216;there is nothing in England
+		more constant than the inconstancie of attire,&#8217;&#8212;but
+		praises their silence and gravity at their
+		meals. They have wise ministers in the court,
+		and devout guardians of the true religion and
+		of the church. &#8216;O thrice happy England,
+		where such councilors are, where such people
+		live, where such virtue springeth.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>In the paragraphs relating to the queen, Lyly
+		grows positively eloquent. He praises her
+		matchless beauty, her mercy, patience, and
+		moderation, and emphasizes the fact of her virginity
+		to a degree that would have satisfied the
+		imperial votaress herself if but once she had
+		considered her admirer&#8217;s words: &#8216;O fortunate
+		England that hath such a Queen; ungratefull,
+		if thou pray not for her; wicked, if thou do not
+		love her; miserable, if thou lose her.&#8217; He calls
+		down Heaven&#8217;s blessings upon her that she
+		may be &#8216;triumphant in victories like the Palm
+		tree, fruitful in her age like the Vine, in all
+		ages prosperous, to all men gracious, in all
+		places glorious: so that there be no end of her
+		praise, until the end of all flesh.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_164" title="164"></a>With passages such as these, this interesting
+		book draws to a conclusion. A most singular
+		and original book, worthy to be read, unless,
+		indeed, the reading of these out-of-the-way volumes
+		were found to encroach upon time belonging
+		by right of eminent intellectual domain to
+		Chaucer and to Shakespeare, to Spenser and
+		to Milton. That <i class="title">Euphues</i> is in no exact sense
+		a novel admits of little question. It is also a
+		brilliant illustration of how not to write English.
+		Nevertheless it is very amusing, and its
+		disappearance would be a misfortune, since it
+		would eclipse the innocent gayety of many a
+		man who loves to bask in that golden sunshine
+		which streams from the pages of old English
+		books.</p>
+
+		<div id="novelist_notes" class="notes">
+			<ol>
+				<li id="note_1" class="footnote">
+					<p>	The writer of this paper once sent to that fine scholar
+						and gracious gentleman, Professor Edward Arber, to inquire
+						whether in his opinion one might hope to buy at a modest
+						price a copy of either the first or the second part of <i class="title">Euphues</i>.
+						Professor Arber&#8217;s reply was amusingly emphatic: &#8216;You might
+						as well try to purchase one of Mahomet&#8217;s old slippers.&#8217; But
+						in July of 1896 there were four copies of this old novel on
+						sale at one New York bookstore. One of the copies was
+						of great beauty, consisting of the two parts of the story bound
+						up together in a really sumptuous fashion. The price was
+						not large as prices of such books go, but on the other hand
+						&#8216;&#8217;a was not small.&#8217;
+						<span class="note_return"><a href="#fnm1" title="Back to text">Return</a></span>
+					</p>
+				</li>
+				<li id="note_2" class="footnote">
+					<p> Lady Burton&#8217;s Dedication of her husband&#8217;s biography,&#8212;&#8216;To
+						my earthly master,&#8217; etc.
+						<span class="note_return"><a href="#fnm2" title="Back to text">Return</a></span>
+					</p>
+				</li>
+			</ol>
+		</div>
+	</div>
+	<div id="autobiography" class="essay">
+		<h2 class="essay_title"><a class="pagenum" id="page_165" title="165"></a>THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FAIR-MINDED MAN</h2>
+		<p class="return_toc"><a href="#contents">Return to Contents</a></p>
+		<p><span class="first_word">It</span> is by no means necessary that one be a
+		man of letters in order to write a good book.
+		Some very admirable books have been written
+		by men who gave no especial thought to literature
+		as an art. They wrote because they were
+		so fortunate as to find themselves in possession
+		of ideas, and not because they had determined
+		to become authors. Literature as such implies
+		sophistication, and people who devote themselves
+		to literature do so from a variety of
+		motives. But these writers of whom I now
+		speak have a less complex thought back of their
+		work. They do not, for example, propose pleasure
+		to the reader as an object in writing.
+		Their aim is single. They recount an experience,
+		or plead a cause. Literature with them
+		is always a means to an end. They are like
+		pedestrians who never look upon walking as
+		other than a rational process for reaching a
+		given place. It does not occur to them that
+		walking makes for health and pleasure, and that
+		it is also an exercise for displaying a graceful
+		carriage, the set of the shoulders, the poise of
+		the head.</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_166" title="166"></a>To be sure one runs the risk of being deceived
+		in this matter. The actress who plays
+		the part of an unaffected young girl, for aught
+		that the spectator knows to the contrary may
+		be a pronounced woman of the world. Not
+		every author who says to the public &#8216;excuse
+		my untaught manner&#8217; is on this account to be
+		regarded as a literary ingénu. His simplicity
+		awakens distrust. The fact that he professes
+		to be a layman is a reason for suspecting him.
+		He is probably an adept, a master of the wiles
+		by which readers are snared.</p>
+
+		<p>But aside from the cases in which deception
+		is practiced, or at least attempted, there is in
+		the world a respectable body of literature which
+		is not the work of literary men. Its chief
+		characteristic is sincerity. The writers of these
+		books are so busy in telling the truth that they
+		have no time to think of literature.</p>
+
+		<p>Among the more readable of these pieces is
+		that unpretentious volume in which Dr. Joseph
+		Priestley relates the story of his life. For in
+		classing this book with the writings of authors
+		who are not men of letters one surely does not
+		go wide of the mark. There is a sense in
+		which it is entirely proper to say that Priestley
+		was not a literary man. He produced twenty-five
+		volumes of &#8216;works,&#8217; but they were for use
+		rather than for art. He wrote on science, on
+		grammar, on theology, on law. He published
+		controversial tracts: &#8216;Did So-and-So believe
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_167" title="167"></a>so-and-so or something quite different?&#8217; and
+		then a discussion of the &#8216;grounds&#8217; of this belief.
+		He made &#8216;rejoinders,&#8217; &#8216;defenses,&#8217; &#8216;animadversions,&#8217;
+		and printed the details of his
+		<i class="title">Experiments on Different Kinds of Air</i>. This
+		is distinctly uninviting. Let me propose an
+		off-hand test by which to determine whether or
+		no a given book is literature. <em>Can you imagine
+		Charles Lamb in the act of reading that book?</em>
+		If you can; it&#8217;s literature; if you can&#8217;t, it isn&#8217;t.
+		I find it difficult to conceive of Charles Lamb
+		as mentally immersed in the <i class="title">Letter to an Anti-p&aelig;dobaptist</i>
+		or the <i class="title">Doctrine of Phlogiston
+		Established</i>, but it is natural to think of him
+		turning the pages of Priestley&#8217;s Memoir, reading
+		each page with honest satisfaction and pronouncing
+		the volume to be worthy the title of
+		A BOOK.</p>
+
+		<p>It is a plain unvarnished tale and entirely
+		innocent of those arts by the practice of which
+		authors please their public. There is no eloquence,
+		no rhetoric, no fine writing of any sort.
+		The two or three really dramatic events in
+		Priestley&#8217;s career are not handled with a view
+		to producing dramatic effect. There are places
+		where the author might easily have become
+		impassioned. But he did not become impassioned.
+		Not a few paragraphs contain unwritten
+		poems. The simple-hearted Priestley was
+		unconscious of this, or if conscious, then too
+		modest to make capital of it. He had never
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_168" title="168"></a>aspired to the reputation of a clever writer, but
+		rather of a useful one. His aim was quite as
+		simple when he wrote the Memoir as when he
+		wrote his various philosophical reports. He
+		never deviated into brilliancy. He set down
+		plain statements about events which had happened
+		to him, and people whom he had known.
+		Nevertheless the narrative is charming, and the
+		reasons of its charm are in part these:&#8212;</p>
+
+		<p>In the first place the book belongs to that
+		department of literature known as autobiography.
+		Autobiography has peculiar virtues. The
+		poorest of it is not without some flavor of life,
+		and at its best it is transcendent. A notable
+		value lies in its power to stimulate. This
+		power is very marked in Priestley&#8217;s case, where
+		the self-delineated portrait is of a man who met
+		and overcame enormous difficulties. He knew
+		poverty and calumny, both brutal things. He
+		had a thorn in the flesh,&#8212;for so he himself
+		characterized that impediment in his speech
+		which he tried more or less unsuccessfully all
+		his life to cure. He found his scientific usefulness
+		impaired by religious and political
+		antagonisms. He tasted the bitterness of mob
+		violence; his house was sacked, his philosophical
+		instruments destroyed, his manuscripts and
+		books scattered along the highway. But as he
+		looked back upon these things he was not
+		moved to impatience. There is a high serenity
+		in his narrative as becomes a man who has
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_169" title="169"></a>learned to distinguish between the ephemeral
+		and the permanent elements of life.</p>
+
+		<p>Yet it is not impossible that autobiography
+		of this sort has an effect the reverse of stimulating
+		upon some people. It is pleasanter to
+		read of heroes than to be a hero oneself. The
+		story of conquest is inspiring, but the actual
+		process is apt to be tedious. One&#8217;s nerves are
+		tuned to a fine energy in reading of Priestley&#8217;s
+		efforts to accomplish a given task. &#8216;I spent
+		the latter part of every week with Mr. Thomas,
+		a Baptist minister, &#8230; who had no liberal
+		education. Him I instructed in Hebrew, and
+		by that means made myself a considerable proficient
+		in that language. At the same time I
+		learned Chaldee and Syriac and just began to
+		read Arabic&#8217; This seems easy in the telling,
+		but in reality it was a long, a monotonous, an
+		exhausting process. Think of the expenditure
+		of hours and eyesight over barbarous alphabets
+		and horrid grammatical details. One must
+		needs have had a mind of leather to endure such
+		philological and linguistic wear and tear. Priestley&#8217;s
+		mind not only cheerfully endured it but
+		actually toughened under it. The man was
+		never afraid of work. Take as an illustration
+		his experience in keeping school.</p>
+
+		<p>He had pronounced objections to this business,
+		and he registered his protest. But suppose
+		the alternative is to teach school or to
+		starve. A man will then teach school. I don&#8217;t
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_170" title="170"></a>know that this was quite the situation in which
+		Priestley found himself, though he needed
+		money. He may have hesitated to enter a profession
+		which in his time required a more extensive
+		muscular equipment than he was able
+		to furnish. The old English schoolmasters
+		were &#8216;bruisers.&#8217; They had thick skins, hard
+		heads, and solid fists. The symbols of their
+		office were a Greek grammar and a flexible rod.
+		They were skillful either with the book or the
+		birch. It has taken many years to convince
+		the world that the short road to the moods and
+		tenses does not necessarily lie through the
+		valley of the shadow of flogging. Perhaps
+		Priestley objected to school-mastering because
+		it was laborious. It was indeed laborious as he
+		practiced it. One marvels at his endurance.
+		His school consisted of about thirty boys, and
+		he had a separate room for about half-a-dozen
+		young ladies. &#8216;Thus I was employed from
+		seven in the morning until four in the afternoon,
+		without any interval except one hour for
+		dinner; and I never gave a holiday on any consideration,
+		the red letter days excepted. Immediately
+		after this employment in my own
+		school-rooms I went to teach in the family of
+		Mr. Tomkinson, an eminent attorney, &#8230; and
+		here I continued until seven in the evening.&#8217;
+		Twelve consecutive hours of teaching, less one
+		hour for dinner! It was hardly necessary for
+		Priestley to add that he had &#8216;but little leisure
+		for reading.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_171" title="171"></a>He laid up no money from teaching, but like
+		a true man of genius spent it upon books, a
+		small air-pump, an electrical machine. By
+		training his advanced pupils to manipulate
+		these he &#8216;extended the reputation&#8217; of his
+		school. This was playing at science. Several
+		years were yet to elapse before he should acquire
+		fame as an original investigator.</p>
+
+		<p>This autobiography is valuable because it
+		illustrates the events of a remarkable time.
+		He who cares about the history of theological
+		opinion, the history of chemical science, the
+		history of liberty, will read these pages with
+		keen interest. Priestley was active in each of
+		these fields. Men famous for their connection
+		with the great movements of the period were
+		among his friends and acquaintance. He knew
+		Franklin and Richard Price. John Canton,
+		who was the first man in England to verify
+		Franklin&#8217;s experiments, was a friend of Priestley.
+		So too were Smeaton the engineer, James
+		Watt, Boulton, Josiah Wedgewood, and Erasmus
+		Darwin. He knew Kippis, Lardner, Parr,
+		and had met Porson and Dr. Johnson. His
+		closest friend for many years was Theophilus
+		Lindsey. One might also mention the great
+		Lavoisier, Magellan the Jesuit philosopher, and
+		a dozen other scientific, ecclesiastical, and political
+		celebrities. The Memoir, however, is almost
+		as remarkable for what it does not tell
+		concerning these people as for what it does.
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_172" title="172"></a>Priestley was not anecdotal. And he is only a
+		little less reticent about himself than he is
+		about others. He does indeed describe his early
+		struggles as a dissenting minister, but the
+		reader would like a little more expansiveness in
+		the account of his friendships and his chemical
+		discoveries. These discoveries were made during
+		the time that he was minister at the Mill-hill
+		Chapel, Leeds. Here he began the serious
+		study of chemistry. And that without training
+		in the science as it was then understood. At
+		Warrington he had heard a series of chemical
+		lectures by Dr. Turner of Liverpool, a gentleman
+		whom Americans ought to regard with
+		amused interest, for he was the man who congratulated
+		his fellows in a Liverpool debating
+		society that while they had just lost the <i lang="la">terra
+		firma</i> of thirteen colonies in America, they had
+		gained, under the generalship of Dr. Herschel,
+		a <i lang="la">terra incognita</i> of much greater extent <i lang="la">in
+		nubibus</i>. Priestley not only began his experiments
+		without any great store of knowledge,
+		but also without apparatus save what he devised
+		for himself of the cheapest materials. In 1772
+		he published his first important scientific tract,
+		&#8216;a small pamphlet on the method of impregnating
+		water with fixed air.&#8217; For this he received
+		the Copley medal from the Royal Society. On
+		the first of August, 1774, he discovered oxygen.
+		Nobody in Leeds troubled particularly to inquire
+		what this dissenting minister was about
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_173" title="173"></a>with his vials and tubes, his mice and his
+		plants. Priestley says that the only person
+		who took &#8216;much interest&#8217; was Mr. Hey, a surgeon.
+		Mr. Hey was a &#8216;zealous Methodist&#8217; and
+		wrote answers to Priestley&#8217;s theological papers.
+		Arminian and Socinian were at peace if science
+		was the theme. When Priestley departed from
+		Leeds, Hey begged of him the &#8216;earthen trough&#8217;
+		in which all his experiments had been made.
+		This earthen trough was nothing more nor less
+		than a washtub of the sort in common local
+		use. So independent is genius of the elaborate
+		appliances with which talent must produce results.</p>
+
+		<p>The discoveries brought fame, especially
+		upon the Continent, and led Lord Shelburne
+		to invite Priestley to become his &#8216;literary companion.&#8217;
+		Dr. Price was the intermediary in
+		effecting this arrangement. Priestley&#8217;s nominal
+		post was that of &#8216;librarian,&#8217; and he now and
+		then officiated as experimentalist extraordinary
+		before Lord Shelburne&#8217;s guests. The compensation
+		was not illiberal, and the relation
+		seems to have been as free from degrading elements
+		as such relations can be. Priestley was
+		not a sycophant even in the day when men of
+		genius thought it no great sin to give flattery
+		in exchange for dinners. It was never his
+		habit to burn incense before the great simply
+		because the great liked the smell of incense and
+		were accustomed to it. On the other hand,
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_174" title="174"></a>Shelburne appears to have treated the philosopher
+		with kindness and delicacy, and the situation
+		was not without difficulties for his lordship.</p>
+
+		<p>Among obvious advantages which Priestley
+		derived from this residence were freedom from
+		financial worry, time for writing and experimenting,
+		a tour on the Continent, and the privilege
+		of spending the winter season of each
+		year in London.</p>
+
+		<p>It was during these London visits that he
+		renewed his acquaintance with Dr. Franklin.
+		They were members of a club of &#8216;philosophical
+		gentlemen&#8217; which met at stated times at the
+		London Coffee House, Ludgate Hill. There
+		were few days upon which the Father of Pneumatic
+		Chemistry and the Father of Electrical
+		Science did not meet. When their talk was
+		not of dephlogisticated air and like matters it
+		was pretty certain to be political. The war
+		between England and America was imminent.
+		Franklin dreaded it. He often said to Priestley
+		that &#8216;if the difference should come to an
+		open rupture, it would be a war of <em>ten years</em>,
+		and he should not live to see the end of it.&#8217;
+		He had no doubt as to the issue. &#8216;The English
+		may take all our great towns, but that will
+		not give them possession of the country,&#8217; he
+		used to say. Franklin&#8217;s last day in England
+		was given to Priestley. The two friends spent
+		much of the time in reading American newspapers,
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_175" title="175"></a>especially accounts of the reception
+		which the Boston Port Bill met with in America,
+		and as Franklin read the addresses to the
+		inhabitants of Boston, from the places in the
+		neighborhood, &#8216;the tears trickled down his
+		cheeks.&#8217; He wrote to Priestley from Philadelphia
+		just a month after the battle of Lexington,
+		briefly describing that lively episode, and mentioning
+		his pleasant six weeks voyage with
+		weather &#8216;so moderate that a London wherry
+		might have accompanied us all the way.&#8217; At
+		the close of his letter he says: &#8216;In coming
+		over I made a valuable philosophical discovery,
+		which I shall communicate to you when I can
+		get a little time. At present I am extremely
+		hurried.&#8217; In October of that year, 1775, Franklin
+		wrote to Priestley about the state of affairs
+		in America. His letter contains one passage
+		which can hardly be hackneyed from over-quotation.
+		Franklin wants Priestley to tell &#8216;our
+		dear good friend,&#8217; Dr. Price, that America is
+		&#8216;determined and unanimous.&#8217; &#8216;Britain at the
+		expense of three millions has killed 150 yankees
+		this campaign, which is 20,000 l. a head; and
+		at Bunker&#8217;s Hill, she gained a mile of ground,
+		all of which she lost again, by our taking post
+		on Ploughed Hill. During the same time
+		60,000 children have been born in America.&#8217;
+		From these data Dr. Price is to calculate &#8216;the
+		time and expense necessary to kill us all, and
+		conquer the whole of our territory.&#8217; Then the
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_176" title="176"></a>letter closes with greetings &#8216;to the club of honest
+		whigs at the London Coffee House.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Seven years later Franklin&#8217;s heart was still
+		faithful to the club. He writes to Priestley
+		from France: &#8216;I love you as much as ever, and
+		I love all the honest souls that meet at the
+		London Coffee House&#8230;. I labor for peace
+		with more earnestness that I may again be
+		happy in your sweet society.&#8217; Franklin thought
+		that war was folly. In a letter to Dr. Price,
+		he speaks of the great improvements in natural
+		philosophy, and then says: &#8216;There is one improvement
+		in moral philosophy which I wish to
+		see: the discovery of a plan that would induce
+		and oblige nations to settle their disputes without
+		first cutting one another&#8217;s throats.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Priestley lamented that a man of Franklin&#8217;s
+		character and influence &#8216;should have been an
+		unbeliever in Christianity, and also have done
+		as much as he did to make others unbelievers.&#8217;
+		Franklin acknowledged that he had not given
+		much attention to the evidences of Christianity,
+		and asked Priestley to recommend some &#8216;treatises&#8217;
+		on the subject &#8216;but not of great length.&#8217;
+		Priestley suggested certain chapters of Hartley&#8217;s
+		<i class="title">Observations on Man</i>, and also what he
+		himself had written on the subject in his <i class="title">Institutes
+		of Natural and Revealed Religion</i>.
+		Franklin had promised to read whatever books
+		his friend might advise and give his &#8216;sentiments
+		on them.&#8217; &#8216;But the American war breaking out
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_177" title="177"></a>soon after, I do not believe,&#8217; says Priestley,
+		&#8216;that he ever found himself sufficiently at leisure
+		for the discussion.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Priestley valued his own scientific reputation
+		not a little for the weight it gave, among skeptics,
+		to his arguments in support of his religious
+		belief. He found that all the philosophers in
+		Paris were unbelievers. They looked at him
+		with mild astonishment when they learned that
+		he was not of the same mind. They may even
+		have thought him a phenomenon which required
+		scientific investigation. &#8216;As I chose on
+		all occasions to appear as a Christian, I was
+		told by some of them that I was the only person
+		they had ever met with, of whose understanding
+		they had any opinion, who professed
+		to believe Christianity.&#8217; Priestley began to
+		question them as to what they supposed Christianity
+		was, and with the usual result,&#8212;they
+		were not posted on the subject.</p>
+
+		<p>In 1780 Priestley went to Birmingham. In
+		the summer of 1791 occurred that remarkable
+		riot, perhaps the most dramatic event in the
+		philosopher&#8217;s not unpicturesque career. This
+		storm had long been gathering, and when it
+		broke, the principal victim of its anger was, I
+		verily believe, more astonished than frightened.
+		The Dissenters were making unusual efforts to
+		have some of their civil disabilities removed.
+		Feeling against them was especially bitter. In
+		Birmingham this hostility was intensified by
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_178" title="178"></a>the public discourses of Mr. Madan, &#8216;the most
+		respectable clergyman of the town,&#8217; says Priestley.
+		He published &#8216;a very inflammatory sermon &#8230; inveighing
+		against the Dissenters in
+		general, and myself in particular.&#8217; Priestley
+		made a defense under the title of <i class="title">Familiar
+		Letters to the Inhabitants of Birmingham</i>.
+		This produced a &#8216;reply&#8217; from Madan, and
+		&#8216;other letters&#8217; from his opponent. Being a
+		conspicuous representative of that body which
+		was most &#8216;obnoxious to the court&#8217; it is not surprising
+		that Priestley should have been singled
+		out for unwelcome honors. The feeling of
+		intolerance was unusually strong. It was said&#8212;I
+		don&#8217;t know how truly&#8212;that at a confirmation
+		in Birmingham tracts were distributed
+		against Socinianism in general and Priestley in
+		particular. Very reputable men thought they
+		did God service in inflaming the minds of the
+		rabble against this liberal-minded gentleman.
+		Priestley&#8217;s account of the riot in the Memoir
+		is singularly temperate. It might even be
+		called tame. He was quite incapable of posing,
+		or of playing martyr to an audience of which
+		a goodly part was sympathetic and ready to
+		believe his sufferings as great as he chose to
+		make them appear. One could forgive a slight
+		outburst of indignation had the doctor chosen
+		so to relieve himself. &#8216;On occasion of the
+		celebration of the anniversary of the French
+		revolution, on July 14, 1791, by several of my
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_179" title="179"></a>friends, but with which I had little to do, a mob,
+		encouraged by some persons in power, first
+		burned the meeting-house in which I preached,
+		then another meeting-house in the town, and
+		then my dwelling-house, demolishing my library,
+		apparatus, and as far as they could everything
+		belonging to me.&#8230; Being in some personal
+		danger on this occasion I went to London.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>A much livelier account from Priestley&#8217;s
+		own hand and written the next day after the
+		riot is found in a letter to Theophilus Lindsay.
+		&#8216;The company were hardly gone from the inn
+		before a drunken mob rushed into the house
+		and broke all the windows. They then set fire
+		to our meeting-house and it is burned to the
+		ground. After that they gutted, and some say
+		burned the old meeting. In the mean time
+		some friends came to tell me that I and my
+		house were threatened, and another brought a
+		chaise to convey me and my wife away. I had
+		not presence of mind to take even my MSS.;
+		and after we were gone the mob came and demolished
+		everything, household goods, library,
+		and apparatus.&#8217; The letter differs from the
+		Memoir in saying that &#8216;happily no fire could
+		be got.&#8217; Priestley afterwards heard that &#8216;much
+		pains was taken, but without effect, to get fire
+		from my large electrical machine which stood in
+		the Library.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>It is rather a curious fact that Priestley was
+		not at the inn where the anniversary was celebrating.
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_180" title="180"></a>While the company there were chanting
+		the praises of liberty he was at home playing
+		backgammon with his wife, a remarkably
+		innocent and untreasonable occupation. Mr.
+		Arthur Young visited the scene of the riot a
+		few days later and had thoughts upon it. &#8216;Seeing,
+		as I passed, a house in ruins, on inquiry I
+		found that it was Dr. Priestley&#8217;s. I alighted
+		from my horse, and walked over the ruins of
+		that laboratory which I had left home with the
+		expectation of reaping instruction in; of that
+		laboratory, the labours of which have not only
+		illuminated mankind but enlarged the sphere
+		of science itself; which has carried its master&#8217;s
+		fame to the remotest corner of the civilized
+		world; and will now with equal celerity convey
+		the infamy of its destruction to the disgrace
+		of the age and the scandal of the British
+		name.&#8217; It is not necessary to supplement
+		Arthur Young&#8217;s burst of indignation with private
+		bursts of our own. We can afford to be
+		as philosophic over the matter as Priestley was.
+		That feeling was hot against him even in London
+		is manifest from the fact that the day after
+		his arrival a hand-bill was distributed beginning
+		with the words: &#8216;Dr. Priestley is a damned
+		rascal, an enemy both to the religious and political
+		constitution of this country, a fellow of a
+		treasonable mind, consequently a bad Christian.&#8217;
+		The &#8216;bad Christian&#8217; thought it showed
+		&#8216;no small degree of courage&#8217; in Mr. William
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_181" title="181"></a>Vaughan to receive him into his house. &#8216;But
+		it showed more in Dr. Price&#8217;s congregation at
+		Hackney to invite me to succeed him.&#8217; The
+		invitation was not unanimous, as Priestley with
+		his characteristic passion for exactness is at
+		pains to tell the reader. Some of the members
+		withdrew, &#8216;which was not undesirable.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>People generally looked askance at him. If
+		he was upon one side of the street the respectable
+		part of the world made it convenient to
+		pass by on the other side. He even found his
+		relations with his philosophical acquaintance
+		&#8216;much restricted.&#8217; &#8216;Most of the members of
+		the Royal Society shunned him,&#8217; he says. This
+		seems amusing and unfortunate. Apparently
+		one&#8217;s qualifications as a scientist were of little
+		avail if one happened to hold heterodox views
+		on the Trinity, or were of opinion that more
+		liberty than Englishmen then had would be
+		good for them. Priestley resigned his fellowship
+		in the Royal Society.</p>
+
+		<p>One does not need even mildly to anathematize
+		the instigators of that historic riot. They
+		were unquestionably zealous for what they believed
+		to be the truth. Moreover, as William
+		Hutton observed at the time, &#8216;It&#8217;s the right of
+		every Englishman to walk in darkness if he
+		chooses.&#8217; The method employed defeated its
+		own end. Persecution is an unsafe investment
+		and at best pays a low rate of interest. No
+		dignified person can afford to indulge in it.
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_182" title="182"></a>There&#8217;s the danger of being held up to the
+		laughter of posterity. It has happened so
+		many times that the unpopular cause has become
+		popular. This ought to teach zealots to
+		be cautious. What would Madan have thought
+		if he could have been told that within thirty
+		years one of his own coadjutors in this affair
+		would have publicly expressed regret for the
+		share he had in it? Madan has his reward,
+		three quarters of a column in the <i class="title">Dictionary of
+		National Biography</i>. But to-day Priestley&#8217;s
+		statue stands in a public square of Birmingham
+		opposite the Council House. Thus do
+		matters get themselves readjusted in this very
+		interesting world.</p>
+
+		<p>Rutt&#8217;s Life of Priestley (that remarkable illustration
+		of how to make a very poor book out
+		of the best materials) contains a selection of
+		the addresses and letters of condolence which
+		were forthcoming at this time. Some of them
+		are stilted and dull, but they are actual &#8216;documents,&#8217;
+		and the words in them are alive with
+		the passion of that day. They make the transaction
+		very real and close at hand.</p>
+
+		<p>Priestley was comparatively at ease in his
+		new home. Yet he could not entirely escape
+		punishment. There were &#8216;a few personal insults
+		from the lowest of the rabble.&#8217; Anxiety
+		was felt lest he might again receive the attentions
+		of a mob. He humorously remarked: &#8216;On
+		the 14th of July, 1792, it was taken for granted
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_183" title="183"></a>by many of my neighbors that my house was
+		to come down just as at Birmingham the year
+		before.&#8217; The house did not come down, but
+		its occupant grew ill at ease, and within another
+		two years he had found a new home in the new
+		nation across the sea.</p>
+
+		<p>It is hardly exact to say that he was &#8216;driven&#8217;
+		from England, as some accounts of his life have
+		it. Mere personal unpopularity would not have
+		sufficed for this. But at sixty-one a man
+		hasn&#8217;t as much fight in him as at forty-five.
+		He is not averse to quiet. Priestley&#8217;s three
+		sons were going to America because their
+		father thought that they could not be &#8216;placed&#8217;
+		to advantage in a country so &#8216;bigoted&#8217; as their
+		native land was then. &#8216;My own situation, if
+		not hazardous, was become unpleasant, so that
+		I thought my removal would be of more service
+		to the cause of truth than my longer stay in
+		England.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The sons went first and laid the foundations
+		of the home in Northumberland, Pennsylvania.
+		The word &#8216;Susquehanna&#8217; had a magic sound
+		to Englishmen. On March 30, 1794, Priestley
+		delivered his farewell discourse. April 6 he
+		passed with his friends the Lindsays in Essex
+		Street, and a day later went to Gravesend.
+		For the details of the journey one must go to
+		his correspondence.</p>
+
+		<p>His last letters were written from Deal and
+		Falmouth, April 9 and 11. The vessel was
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_184" title="184"></a>six weeks in making the passage. The weather
+		was bad and the travelers experienced everything
+		&#8216;but shipwreck and famine.&#8217; There was
+		no lack of entertainment, for the ocean was
+		fantastic and spectacular. Not alone were
+		there the usual exhibitions of flying-fish, whales,
+		porpoises, and sharks, but also &#8216;mountains of
+		ice larger than the captain had ever seen before,&#8217;&#8212;for
+		thus early had transatlantic captains
+		learned the art of pronouncing upon the exceptional
+		character of a particular voyage for the
+		benefit of the traveler who is making that voyage.
+		They saw water-spouts, &#8216;four at one
+		time.&#8217; The billows were &#8216;mountain-high, and
+		at night appeared to be all on fire.&#8217; They had
+		infinite leisure, and scarcely knew how to use
+		it. Mrs. Priestley wrote &#8216;thirty-two large
+		pages of paper.&#8217; The doctor read &#8216;the whole
+		of the Greek Testament and the Hebrew Bible
+		as far as the first book of Samuel.&#8217; He also
+		read through Hartley&#8217;s second volume, and
+		&#8216;for amusement several books of voyages and
+		Ovid&#8217;s Metamorphoses.&#8217; &#8216;If I had [had] a
+		Virgil I should have read him through, too. I
+		read a great deal of Buchanan&#8217;s poems, and
+		some of Petrarch&#8217;s <i lang="la">de remediis</i>, and Erasmus&#8217;s
+		Dialogues; also Peter Pindar&#8217;s poems, &#8230;
+		which pleased me much more than I expected.
+		He is Paine in verse.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>On June 1 the ship reached Sandy Hook.
+		Three days later Dr. and Mrs. Priestley &#8216;landed
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_185" title="185"></a>at the Battery in as private a manner as possible,
+		and went immediately to Mrs. Loring&#8217;s
+		lodging-house close by.&#8217; The next morning
+		the principal inhabitants of New York came to
+		pay their respects and congratulations; among
+		others Governor Clinton, Dr. Prevoost, bishop
+		of New York; Mr. Osgood, late envoy to Great
+		Britain; the heads of the college; most of the
+		principal merchants, and many others; for an
+		account of which amenities one must read
+		Henry Wansey&#8217;s <i class="title">Excursion to the United States
+		in the Summer of 1794</i>, published by Salisbury
+		in 1796, a most amusing and delectable volume.</p>
+
+		<p>Priestley missed seeing Vice-president John
+		Adams by one day. Adams had sailed for Boston
+		on the third. But he left word that Boston
+		was &#8216;better calculated&#8217; for Priestley than any
+		other part of America, and that &#8216;he would find
+		himself very well received if he should be inclined
+		to settle there.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Mrs. Priestley in a letter home says: &#8216;Dr. P.
+		is wonderfully pleased with everything, and
+		indeed I think he has great reason from the
+		attentions paid him.&#8217; The good people became
+		almost frivolous with their dinner-parties, receptions,
+		calls, and so forth. Then there were
+		the usual addresses from the various organizations,&#8212;one
+		from the Tammany Society, who
+		described themselves as &#8216;a numerous body of
+		freemen, who associate to cultivate among
+		them the love of liberty, and the enjoyment of
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_186" title="186"></a>the happy republican government under which
+		they live.&#8217; There was an address from the
+		&#8216;Democratic Society,&#8217; one from the &#8216;Associated
+		Teachers in the City of New York,&#8217; one from
+		the &#8216;Republican Natives of Great Britain and
+		Ireland,&#8217; one from the &#8216;Medical Society.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The pleasure was not unmixed. Dr. Priestley
+		the theologian had a less cordial reception
+		than Dr. Priestley the philosopher and martyr.
+		The orthodox were considerably disturbed by
+		his coming. &#8216;Nobody asks me to preach, and
+		I hear there is much jealousy and dread of me.&#8217;
+		In Philadelphia at a Baptist meeting the minister
+		bade his people beware, for &#8216;a Priestley had
+		entered the land.&#8217; But the heretic was very
+		patient and earnest to do what he might for
+		the cause of &#8216;rational&#8217; Christianity. The widespread
+		infidelity distressed him. He mentioned
+		it as a thing to be wondered at that in America
+		the lawyers were almost universally unbelievers.
+		He lost no time in getting to work. On
+		August 27, when he had been settled in Northumberland
+		only a month, he wrote to a friend
+		that he had just got Paine&#8217;s <i class="title">Age of Reason</i>, and
+		thought to answer it. By September 14 he
+		had done so. &#8216;I have transcribed for the press
+		my answer to Mr. Paine, whose work is the
+		weakest and most absurd as well as most arrogant
+		of anything I have yet seen.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Priestley was fully conscious of the humor of
+		his situation. He was trying to save the public,
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_187" title="187"></a>including lawyers, from the mentally debilitating
+		effects of reading Paine&#8217;s <i class="title">Age of Reason</i>,
+		while at the same time all the orthodox divines
+		were warning their flocks of the danger consequent
+		upon having anything to do with <em>him</em>.</p>
+
+		<p>Honors and rumors of honors came to him.
+		He was talked of for the presidency of colleges
+		yet to be founded, and was invited to professorships
+		in colleges that actually were. He went
+		occasionally to Philadelphia, a frightful journey
+		from Northumberland in those days. Through
+		his influence a Unitarian society was established.
+		He gave public discourses, and there
+		was considerable curiosity to see and hear so
+		famous a man. &#8216;I have the use of Mr. Winchester&#8217;s
+		pulpit every morning &#8230; and yesterday
+		preached my first sermon.&#8217; He was told
+		that &#8216;a great proportion of the members of
+		Congress were present,&#8217; and we know that
+		&#8216;Mr. Vice-President Adams was a regular attendant.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>In company with his friend Mr. Russell,
+		Priestley went to take tea with President Washington.
+		They stayed two hours &#8216;as in any private
+		family,&#8217; and at leavetaking were invited
+		&#8216;to come at any time without ceremony.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>About a year later Priestley saw again Washington,
+		who had finished his second term of
+		office. &#8216;I went to take leave of the late president.
+		He seemed not to be in very good spirits.
+		He invited me to Mt. Vernon, and said he
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_188" title="188"></a>thought he should hardly go from home twenty
+		miles as long as he lived.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Priestley was not to have the full measure of
+		the rest which he coveted. He had left England
+		to escape persecution, and persecution followed
+		him. Cobbett, who had assailed him in
+		a scurrilous pamphlet at the time of his emigration,
+		continued his attacks. Priestley was
+		objectionable because he was a friend of France.
+		Moreover he had opinions about things, some
+		of which he freely expressed,&#8212;a habit he had
+		contracted so early in life as to render it hopeless
+		that he should ever break himself of it.
+		Cobbett&#8217;s virulence was so great as to excite
+		the astonishment of Mr. Adams, who said to
+		Priestley, &#8216;I wonder why the man abuses you;&#8217;
+		when a hint from Adams, Priestley thought,
+		would have prevented it all. But it was not
+		easy to control William Cobbett. Adams may
+		have thought that Cobbett was a being created
+		for the express purpose of being let alone.
+		There are such beings. Every one knows, or
+		can guess, to what sort of animal Churton Collins
+		compared Dean Swift, when the Dean was
+		in certain moods. William Cobbett, too, had his
+		moods.</p>
+
+		<p>Yet it is impossible to read Priestley&#8217;s letters
+		between 1798 and 1801 without indignation
+		against those who preyed upon his peace of
+		mind. He writes to Lindsay: &#8216;It is nothing
+		but a firm faith in a good Providence that is
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_189" title="189"></a>my support at present: but it is an effectual
+		one.&#8217; His &#8216;never failing resource&#8217; was the
+		&#8216;daily study of the Scriptures.&#8217; In moments
+		of depression he loved to read the introduction
+		to Hartley&#8217;s second volume, those noble passages
+		beginning: &#8216;Whatever be our doubts,
+		fears, or anxieties, whether selfish or social,
+		whether for time or eternity, our only hope
+		and refuge must be in the infinite power, knowledge
+		and goodness of God.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Priestley was indeed a remarkable man. His
+		services to science were very great. He laid
+		the foundations of notable structures which,
+		however, other men were to rear. He might
+		have been a greater man had he been less versatile.
+		And yet his versatility was one source
+		of his greatness. He clung to old-fashioned
+		notions, defending the doctrine of &#8216;philogiston&#8217;
+		after it had been abandoned by nearly every
+		other chemist of repute. For this he has been
+		ridiculed. But he was not ridiculous, he was
+		singularly open-minded. He knew that his
+		reputation as a philosopher was under a cloud.
+		&#8216;Though all the world is at present against me,
+		I see no reason to despair of the old system;
+		and yet, <em>if I should see reason to change my
+		opinion, I think I should rather feel a pride in
+		making the most public acknowledgment of it</em>.&#8217;
+		These are words which Professor Huxley might
+		well have quoted in his beautiful address on
+		Priestley delivered at Birmingham, for they are
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_190" title="190"></a>the perfect expression and symbol of the fair-minded
+		man.</p>
+
+		<p>He was as modest as he was fair-minded.
+		When it was proposed that he should accompany
+		Captain Cook&#8217;s expedition to the South
+		Seas, and the arrangements were really completed,
+		he was objected to because of his political
+		and religious opinions. Dr. Reinhold
+		Foster was appointed in his stead. He was
+		a person &#8216;far better qualified,&#8217; said Priestley.
+		Again when he was invited to take the chair of
+		Chemistry at Philadelphia he refused. This for
+		several reasons, the chief of which was that he
+		did not believe himself fitted for it. One would
+		naturally suppose that the inventor of soda-water
+		and the discoverer of oxygen would have
+		been able to give lectures to young men on
+		chemistry. But Priestley believed that he
+		&#8216;could not have acquitted himself in it to proper
+		advantage.&#8217; &#8216;Though I have made discoveries
+		in some branches of chemistry, I never gave
+		much attention to the common routine of it,
+		and know but little of the common processes.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Priestley still awaits a biographer. The two
+		thick volumes compiled by Rutt more than
+		sixty-three years ago have not been reprinted,
+		nor are they likely to be. But a life so precious
+		in its lessons should be recorded in just terms.
+		It would be an inspiring book, and its title
+		might well be &#8216;The Story of a Man of Character.&#8217;
+		Not the least of its virtues would consist
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_191" title="191"></a>in ample recognition of Joseph Priestley&#8217;s
+		unwavering confidence that all things were
+		ordered for the best; and then of his piety,
+		which prompted him to say, as he looked back
+		upon his life: &#8216;I am thankful to that good Providence
+		which always took more care of me
+		than ever I took of myself.&#8217;</p>
+	</div>
+	<div id="waistcoat" class="essay">
+		<h2 class="essay_title"><a class="pagenum" id="page_192" title="192"></a>CONCERNING A RED WAISTCOAT</h2>
+		<p class="return_toc"><a href="#contents">Return to Contents</a></p>
+		<p><span class="first_word">Hero-worship</span> is appropriate only to youth.
+		With age one becomes cynical, or indifferent,
+		or perhaps too busy. Either the sense of the
+		marvelous is dulled, or one&#8217;s boys are just
+		entering college and life is agreeably practical.
+		Marriage and family cares are good if only for
+		the reason that they keep a man from getting
+		bored. But they also stifle his yearnings after
+		the ideal. They make hero-worship appear
+		foolish. How can a man go mooning about
+		when he has just had a good cup of coffee and
+		a snatch of what purports to be the news,
+		while an attractive and well-dressed woman sits
+		opposite him at breakfast-table, and by her
+		mere presence, to say nothing of her wit, compels
+		him to be respectable and to carry a level
+		head? The father of a family and husband of
+		a federated club woman has no business with
+		hero-worship. Let him leave such folly to
+		beardless youth.</p>
+
+		<p>But if a man has never outgrown the boy
+		that was in him, or has never married, then
+		may he do this thing. He will be happy himself,
+		and others will be happy as they consider
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_193" title="193"></a>him. Indeed, there is something altogether
+		charming about the personality of him who
+		proves faithful to his early loves in literature
+		and art; who continues a graceful hero-worship
+		through all the caprices of literary fortune;
+		and who, even though his idol may have been
+		dethroned, sets up a private shrine at which he
+		pays his devotions, unmindful of the crowd
+		which hurries by on its way to do homage to
+		strange gods.</p>
+
+		<p>Some men are born to be hero-worshipers.
+		Théophile Gautier is an example. If one did
+		not love Gautier for his wit and his good-nature,
+		one would certainly love him because
+		he dared to be sentimental. He displayed an
+		almost comic excess of emotion at his first
+		meeting with Victor Hugo. Gautier smiles as
+		he tells the story; but he tells it exactly, not
+		being afraid of ridicule. He went to call upon
+		Hugo with his friends Gérard de Nerval and
+		Pétrus Borel. Twice he mounted the staircase
+		leading to the poet&#8217;s door. His feet dragged
+		as if they had been shod with lead instead of
+		leather. His heart throbbed; cold sweat
+		moistened his brow. As he was on the point
+		of ringing the bell, an idiotic terror seized him,
+		and he fled down the stairs, four steps at a
+		time, Gérard and Pétrus after him, shouting
+		with laughter. But the third attempt was successful.
+		Gautier saw Victor Hugo&#8212;and
+		lived. The author of <i class="title">Odes et Ballades</i> was
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_194" title="194"></a>just twenty-eight years old. Youth worshiped
+		youth in those great days.</p>
+
+		<p>Gautier said little during that visit, but he
+		stared at the poet with all his might. He
+		explained afterwards that one may look at gods,
+		kings, pretty women, and great poets rather
+		more scrutinizingly than at other persons, and
+		this too without annoying them. &#8216;We gazed
+		at Hugo with admiring intensity, but he did
+		not appear to be inconvenienced.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>What brings Gautier especially to mind is
+		the appearance within a few weeks of an amusing
+		little volume entitled <i class="title">Le Romantisme et
+		l&#8217;éditeur Renduel</i>. Its chief value consists, no
+		doubt, in what the author, M. Adolphe Jullien,
+		has to say about Renduel. That noted publisher
+		must have been a man of unusual gifts
+		and unusual fortune. He was a fortunate man
+		because he had the luck to publish some of the
+		best works of Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, Théophile
+		Gautier, Alfred de Musset, Gérard de
+		Nerval, Charles Nodier, and Paul Lacroix; and
+		he was a gifted man because he was able successfully
+		to manage his troop of geniuses,
+		neither quarreling with them himself nor allowing
+		them to quarrel overmuch with one another.
+		Renduel&#8217;s portrait faces the title-page of the
+		volume, and there are two portraits of him
+		besides. There are fac-similes of agreements
+		between the great publisher and his geniuses.
+		There is a famous caricature of Victor Hugo
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_195" title="195"></a>with a brow truly monumental. There is a caricature
+		of Alfred de Musset with a figure like
+		a Regency dandy,&#8212;a figure which could have
+		been acquired only by much patience and unremitted
+		tight-lacing; also one of Balzac, which
+		shows that that great novelist&#8217;s waist-line had
+		long since disappeared, and that he had long
+		since ceased to care. What was a figure to
+		him in comparison with the flesh-pots of Paris!</p>
+
+		<p>One of the best of these pictorial satires is
+		Roubaud&#8217;s sketch of Gautier. It has a teasing
+		quality, it is diabolically fascinating. It shows
+		how great an art caricature is in the hands of a
+		master.</p>
+
+		<p>But the highest virtue of a good new book
+		is that it usually sends the reader back to a
+		good old book. One can hardly spend much
+		time upon Renduel; he will remember that
+		Gautier has described that period when hero-worship
+		was in the air, when the sap of a new
+		life circulated everywhere, and when he himself
+		was one of many loyal and enthusiastic
+		youths who bowed the head at mention of Victor
+		Hugo&#8217;s name. The reader will remember,
+		too, that Gautier was conspicuous in that band
+		of Romanticists who helped to make <i class="title">Hernani</i>
+		a success the night of its first presentation.
+		Gautier believed that to be the great event of
+		his life. He loved to talk about it, dream
+		about it, write of it.</p>
+
+		<p>There was a world of good fellowship among
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_196" title="196"></a>the young artists, sculptors, and poets of that
+		day. They took real pleasure in shouting Hosanna
+		to Victor Hugo and to one another.
+		Even Zola, the Unsentimental, speaks of <i lang="fr">ma
+		tristesse</i> as he reviews that delightful past. He
+		cannot remember it, to be sure, but he has
+		read about it. He thinks ill of the present as
+		he compares the present with &#8216;those dead
+		years.&#8217; Writers then belonged to a sort of
+		heroic brotherhood. They went out like soldiers
+		to conquer their literary liberties. They
+		were kings of the Paris streets. &#8216;But we,&#8217;
+		says Zola in a pensive strain, &#8216;we live like
+		wolves each in his hole.&#8217; I do not know how
+		true a description this is of modern French literary
+		society, but it is not difficult to make
+		one&#8217;s self think that those other days were the
+		days of magnificent friendships between young
+		men of genius. It certainly was a more brilliant
+		time than ours. It was flamboyant, to
+		use one of Gautier&#8217;s favorite words.</p>
+
+		<p>Youth was responsible for much of the enthusiasm
+		which obtained among the champions
+		of artistic liberty. These young men who did
+		honor to the name of Hugo were actually
+		young. They rejoiced in their youth. They
+		flaunted it, so to speak, in the faces of those
+		who were without it. Gautier says that young
+		men of that day differed in one respect from
+		young men of this day; modern young men
+		are generally in the neighborhood of fifty years
+		of age.</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_197" title="197"></a>Gautier has described his friends and comrades
+		most felicitously. All were boys, and all
+		were clever. They were poor and they were
+		happy. They swore by Scott and Shakespeare,
+		and they planned great futures for themselves.</p>
+
+		<p>Take for an example Jules Vabre, who owed
+		his reputation to a certain Essay on the Inconvenience
+		of Conveniences. You will search the
+		libraries in vain for this treatise. The author
+		did not finish it. He did not even commence
+		it,&#8212;only talked about it. Jules Vabre had a
+		passion for Shakespeare, and wanted to translate
+		him. He thought of Shakespeare by day
+		and dreamed of Shakespeare by night. He
+		stopped people in the street to ask them if they
+		had read Shakespeare.</p>
+
+		<p>He had a curious theory concerning language.
+		Jules Vabre would not have said, As a
+		man thinks so is he, but, As a man drinks so is
+		he. According to Gautier&#8217;s statement, Vabre
+		maintained the paradox that the Latin languages
+		needed to be &#8216;watered&#8217; (<i lang="fr">arroser</i>) with
+		wine, and the Anglo-Saxon languages with
+		beer. Vabre found that he made extraordinary
+		progress in English upon stout and extra stout.
+		He went over to England to get the very atmosphere
+		of Shakespeare. There he continued
+		for some time regularly &#8216;watering&#8217; his language
+		with English ale, and nourishing his body with
+		English beef. He would not look at a French
+		newspaper, nor would he even read a letter
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_198" title="198"></a>from home. Finally he came back to Paris,
+		anglicized to his very galoshes. Gautier says
+		that when they met, Vabre gave him a &#8216;shake
+		hand&#8217; almost energetic enough to pull the arm
+		from the shoulder. He spoke with so strong
+		an English accent that it was difficult to understand
+		him; Vabre had almost forgotten his
+		mother tongue. Gautier congratulated the exile
+		upon his return, and said, &#8216;My dear Jules
+		Vabre, in order to translate Shakespeare it is
+		now only necessary for you to learn French.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Gautier laid the foundations of his great fame
+		by wearing a red waistcoat the first night of
+		<i class="title">Hernani</i>. All the young men were fantastic
+		in those days, and the spirit of carnival was in
+		the whole romantic movement. Gautier was
+		more courageously fantastic than other young
+		men. His costume was effective, and the public
+		never forgot him. He says with humorous
+		resignation: &#8216;If you pronounce the name of
+		Théophile Gautier before a Philistine who has
+		never read a line of our works, the Philistine
+		knows us, and remarks with a satisfied air, &#8220;Oh
+		yes, the young man with the red waistcoat and
+		the long hair.&#8221; &#8230; Our poems are forgotten,
+		but our red waistcoat is remembered.&#8217; Gautier
+		cheerfully grants that when everything about
+		him has faded into oblivion this gleam of light
+		will remain, to distinguish him from literary
+		contemporaries whose waistcoats were of soberer
+		hue.</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_199" title="199"></a>The chapter in his <i class="title">Histoire du Romantisme</i>
+		in which Gautier tells how he went to the tailor
+		to arrange for the most spectacular feature of
+		his costume is lively and amusing. He spread
+		out the magnificent piece of cherry-colored
+		satin, and then unfolded his design for a &#8216;pour-point,&#8217;
+		like a &#8216;Milan cuirass.&#8217; Says Gautier,
+		using always his quaint editorial <em>we</em>, &#8216;It has
+		been said that we know a great many words,
+		but we don&#8217;t know words enough to express
+		the astonishment of our tailor when we lay before
+		him our plan for a waistcoat.&#8217; The man
+		of shears had doubts as to his customer&#8217;s sanity.</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;Monsieur,&#8217; he exclaimed, &#8216;this is not the
+		fashion!&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;It will be the fashion when we have worn
+		the waistcoat once,&#8217; was Gautier&#8217;s reply. And
+		he declares that he delivered the answer with a
+		self-possession worthy of a Brummel or &#8216;any
+		other celebrity of dandyism.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>It is no part of this paper to describe the
+		innocently absurd and good-naturedly extravagant
+		things which Gautier and his companions
+		did, not alone the first night of <i class="title">Hernani</i>, but at
+		all times and in all places. They unquestionably
+		saw to it that Victor Hugo had fair play
+		the evening of February 25, 1830. The occasion
+		was an historic one, and they with their
+		Merovingian hair, their beards, their waistcoats,
+		and their enthusiasm helped to make it an unusually
+		lively and picturesque occasion.</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_200" title="200"></a>I have quoted a very few of the good things
+		which one may read in Gautier&#8217;s <i class="title">Histoire du
+		Romantisme</i>. The narrative is one of much
+		sweetness and humor. It ought to be translated
+		for the benefit of readers who know
+		Gautier chiefly by <i class="title">Mademoiselle de Maupin</i>
+		and that for reasons among which love of literature
+		is perhaps the least influential.</p>
+
+		<p>It is pleasant to find that Renduel confirms
+		the popular view of Gautier&#8217;s character. M.
+		Jullien says that Renduel never spoke of Gautier
+		but in praise. &#8216;Quel bon garçon!&#8217; he used
+		to say. &#8216;Quel brave c&oelig;ur!&#8217; M. Jullien has
+		naturally no large number of new facts to give
+		concerning Gautier. But there are eight or
+		nine letters from Gautier to Renduel which
+		will be read with pleasure, especially the one in
+		which the poet says to the publisher, &#8216;Heaven
+		preserve you from historical novels, and your
+		eldest child from the smallpox.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Gautier must have been both generous and
+		modest. No mere egoist could have been so
+		faithful in his hero-worship or so unpretentious
+		in his allusions to himself. One has only to
+		read the most superficial accounts of French
+		literature to learn how universally it is granted
+		that Gautier had skillful command of that language
+		to which he was born. Yet he himself
+		was by no means sure that he deserved a master&#8217;s
+		degree. He quotes one of Goethe&#8217;s sayings,&#8212;a
+		saying in which the great German
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_201" title="201"></a>poet declares that after the practice of many
+		arts there was but one art in which he could be
+		said to excel, namely, the art of writing in German;
+		in that he was almost a master. Then
+		Gautier exclaims, &#8216;Would that <em>we</em>, after so
+		many years of labor, had become almost a master
+		of the art of writing in French! But such
+		ambitions are not for us!&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Yet they were for him; and it is a satisfaction
+		to note how invariably he is accounted, by
+		the artists in literature, an eminent man among
+		many eminent men in whose touch language
+		was plastic.</p>
+	</div>
+	<div id="vagabond" class="essay">
+		<h2 class="essay_title"><a class="pagenum" id="page_202" title="202"></a>STEVENSON: THE VAGABOND AND THE PHILOSOPHER</h2>
+		<p class="return_toc"><a href="#contents">Return to Contents</a></p>
+		<p><span class="first_word">A certain</span> critic said of Stevenson that he
+		was &#8216;incurably literary;&#8217; the phrase is a good
+		one, being both humorous and true. There is
+		comfort in the thought that such efforts as
+		may have been made to keep him in the path
+		of virtuous respectability failed. Rather than
+		<em>do</em> anything Stevenson preferred to loaf and to
+		write books. And he early learned that considerable
+		loafing is necessary if one expects to
+		become a writer. There is a sense in which it
+		is true that only lazy people are fit for literature.
+		Nothing is so fruitful as a fine gift for
+		idleness. The most prolific writers have been
+		people who seemed to have nothing to do.
+		Every one has read that description of George
+		Sand in her latter years, &#8216;an old lady who came
+		out into the garden at mid-day in a broad-brimmed
+		hat and sat down on a bench or wandered
+		slowly about. So she remained for hours
+		looking about her, musing, contemplating. She
+		was gathering impressions, absorbing the universe,
+		steeping herself in Nature; and at night
+		she would give all this forth as a sort of emanation.&#8217;
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_203" title="203"></a>One shudders to think what the result
+		might have been if instead of absorbing the
+		universe George Sand had done something
+		practical during those hours. But the Scotchman
+		was not like George Sand in any particular
+		that I know of save in his perfect willingness
+		to bask in the sunshine and steep himself in
+		Nature. His books did not &#8216;emanate.&#8217; The
+		one way in which he certainly did not produce
+		literature was by improvisation. George Sand
+		never revised her work; it might almost be said
+		that Robert Louis Stevenson never did anything
+		else.</p>
+
+		<p>Of his method we know this much. He
+		himself has said that when he went for a walk
+		he usually carried two books in his pocket, one
+		a book to read, the other a note-book in which
+		to put down the ideas that came to him. This
+		remark has undoubtedly been seized upon and
+		treasured in the memory as embodying a secret
+		of his success. Trusting young souls have
+		begun to walk about with note-books: only to
+		learn that the note-book was a detail, not an
+		essential, in the process.</p>
+
+		<p>He who writes while he walks cannot write
+		very much, but he may, if he chooses, write
+		very well. He may turn over the rubbish of
+		his vocabulary until he finds some exquisite and
+		perfect word with which to bring out his meaning.
+		This word need not be unusual; and if it
+		is &#8216;exquisite&#8217; then exquisite only in the sense
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_204" title="204"></a>of being fitted with rare exactness to the idea.
+		Stevenson wrote so well in part because he
+		wrote so deliberately. He knew the vulgarity
+		of haste, especially in the making of literature.
+		He knew that finish counted for much, perhaps
+		for half. Has he not been reported as
+		saying that it wasn&#8217;t worth a man&#8217;s while to
+		attempt to be a writer unless he was quite willing
+		to spend a day if the need were, on the
+		turn of a single sentence? In general this
+		means the sacrifice of earthly reward; it means
+		that a man must work for love and let the ravens
+		feed him. That scriptural source has been
+		distinctly unfruitful in these latter days, and
+		few authors are willing to take a prophet&#8217;s
+		chances. But Stevenson was one of the few.</p>
+
+		<p>He laid the foundations of his reputation
+		with two little volumes of travel. <i class="title">An Inland
+		Voyage</i> appeared in 1878; <i class="title">Travels with a
+		Donkey in the Cevennes</i>, in 1879. These books
+		are not dry chronicles of drier facts. They
+		bear much the same relation to conventional
+		accounts of travel that flowers growing in a
+		garden bear to dried plants in a herbarium.
+		They are the most friendly and urbane things
+		in modern English literature. They have been
+		likened to Sterne&#8217;s <i class="title">Sentimental Journey</i>. The
+		criticism would be better if one were able to
+		imagine Stevenson writing the adventure of the
+		<i lang="fr">fille de chambre</i>, or could conceive of Lawrence
+		Sterne writing the account of the meeting with
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_205" title="205"></a>the Plymouth Brother. &#8216;And if ever at length,
+		out of our separate and sad ways, we should all
+		come together into one common-house, I have
+		a hope to which I cling dearly, that my mountain
+		Plymouth Brother will hasten to shake
+		hands with me again.&#8217; That was written
+		twenty years ago and the Brother was an old
+		man then. And now Stevenson is gone. How
+		impossible it is not to wonder whether they
+		have yet met in that &#8216;one common-house.&#8217; &#8216;He
+		feared to intrude, but he would not willingly
+		forego one moment of my society; and he
+		seemed never weary of shaking me by the
+		hand.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The <i class="title">Inland Voyage</i> contains passages hardly
+		to be matched for beauty. Let him who would
+		be convinced read the description of the forest
+		Mormal, that forest whose breath was perfumed
+		with nothing less delicate than sweet brier. &#8216;I
+		wish our way had always lain among woods,&#8217;
+		says Stevenson. &#8216;Trees are the most civil
+		society.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Stevenson&#8217;s traveling companion was a young
+		English baronet. The two adventurers paddled
+		in canoes through the pleasant rivers and
+		canals of Belgium and North France. They
+		had plenty of rain and a variety of small misadventures;
+		but they also had sunshine, fresh
+		air, and experiences among the people of the
+		country such as they could have got in no other
+		way. They excited not a little wonder, and
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_206" title="206"></a>the common opinion was that they were doing
+		the journey for a wager; there seemed to be
+		no other reason why two respectable gentlemen,
+		not poor, should work so hard and get so
+		wet.</p>
+
+		<p>This was conceived in a more adventurous
+		vein than appears at first sight. In an unsubdued
+		country one contends with beasts and
+		men who are openly hostile. But when one is
+		a stranger in the midst of civilization and meets
+		civilization at its back door, he is astonished
+		to find how little removed civilization is from
+		downright savagery. Stevenson and his companion
+		learned as they could not have learned
+		otherwise how great deference the world pays
+		to clothes. Whether your heart is all right
+		turns out a matter of minor importance; but&#8212;<em>are
+		your clothes all right?</em> If so, smiles, and
+		good beds at respectable inns; if not, a lodging
+		in a cow-shed or beneath any poor roof which
+		suffices to keep off the rain. The voyagers
+		had constantly to meet the accusation of being
+		peddlers. They denied it and were suspected
+		afresh while the denial was on their lips. The
+		public mind was singularly alert and critical on
+		the subject of peddlers.</p>
+
+		<p>At La Fere, &#8216;of Cursed Memory,&#8217; they had
+		a rebuff which nearly spoiled their tempers.
+		They arrived in a rain. It was the finest kind
+		of a night to be indoors &#8216;and hear the rain upon
+		the windows.&#8217; They were told of a famous
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_207" title="207"></a>inn. When they reached the carriage entry
+		&#8216;the rattle of many dishes fell upon their ears.&#8217;
+		They sighted a great field of snowy table-cloth,
+		the kitchen glowed like a forge. They made
+		their triumphal entry, &#8216;a pair of damp rag-and-bone
+		men, each with a limp India-rubber bag
+		upon his arm.&#8217; Stevenson declares that he
+		never had a sound view of that kitchen. It
+		seemed to him a culinary paradise &#8216;crowded
+		with the snowy caps of cookmen, who all turned
+		round from their sauce-pans and looked at us
+		with surprise.&#8217; But the landlady&#8212;a flushed,
+		angry woman full of affairs&#8212;there was no
+		mistaking her. They asked for beds and were
+		told to find beds in the suburbs: &#8216;We are too
+		busy for the like of you!&#8217; They said they
+		would dine then, and were for putting down
+		their luggage. The landlady made a run at
+		them and stamped her foot: &#8216;Out with you&#8212;out
+		of the door,&#8217; she screeched.</p>
+
+		<p>I once heard a young Englishman who had
+		been drawn into some altercation at a continental
+		hotel explain a discreet movement on his
+		own part by saying: &#8216;Now a French cook running
+		amuck with a carving knife in his hand
+		would have bean a nahsty thing to meet, you
+		know.&#8217; There were no knives in this case,
+		only a woman&#8217;s tongue. Stevenson says that
+		he doesn&#8217;t know how it happened, &#8216;but next
+		moment we were out in the rain, and I was
+		cursing before the carriage entry like a disappointed
+		mendicant.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_208" title="208"></a>&#8216;It&#8217;s all very fine to talk about tramps and
+		morality. Six hours of police surveillance
+		(such as I have had) or one brutal rejection
+		from an inn door change your views upon the
+		subject, like a course of lectures. As long as
+		you keep in the upper regions, with all the
+		world bowing to you as you go, social arrangements
+		have a very handsome air; but once get
+		under the wheels and you wish society were at
+		the devil. I will give most respectable men a
+		fortnight of such a life, and then I will offer
+		them twopence for what remains of their morality.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Stevenson declares that he could have set
+		the temple of Diana on fire that night if it had
+		been handy. &#8216;There was no crime complete
+		enough to express my disapproval of human
+		institutions.&#8217; As for the baronet, he was horrified
+		to learn that he had been taken for a peddler
+		again; and he registered a vow before
+		Heaven never to be uncivil to a peddler. But
+		before making that vow he particularized a
+		complaint for every joint in the landlady&#8217;s
+		body.</p>
+
+		<p>To read <i class="title">An Inland Voyage</i> is to be impressed
+		anew with the thought that some men are born
+		with a taste for vagabondage. They are instinctively
+		for being on the move. Like the
+		author of that book they travel &#8216;not to go any
+		where but to go.&#8217; If they behold a stage-coach
+		or a railway train in motion they heartily wish
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_209" title="209"></a>themselves aboard. They are homesick when
+		they stop at home, and are only at home when
+		they are on the move. Talk to them of foreign
+		lands and they are seized with unspeakable
+		heart-ache and longing. Stevenson met an
+		omnibus driver in a Belgian village who looked
+		at him with thirsty eyes because he was able
+		to travel. How that omnibus driver &#8216;longed
+		to be somewhere else and see the round world
+		before he died.&#8217; &#8216;Here I am,&#8217; said he. &#8216;I
+		drive to the station. Well. And then I drive
+		back again to the hotel. And so on every day
+		and all the week round. My God, is that life?&#8217;
+		Stevenson opined that this man had in him the
+		making of a traveler of the right sort; he
+		might have gone to Africa or to the Indies
+		after Drake. &#8216;But it is an evil age for the gipsily
+		inclined among men. He who can sit
+		squarest on a three-legged stool, he it is who
+		has the wealth and glory.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>In his <i class="title">Travels with a Donkey</i> the author had
+		no companionship but such as the donkey afforded;
+		and to tell the truth this companionship
+		was almost human at times. He learned
+		to love the quaint little beast which shared his
+		food and his trials. &#8216;My lady-friend&#8217; he calls
+		her. Modestine was her name; &#8216;she was patient,
+		elegant in form, the color of an ideal
+		mouse and inimitably small.&#8217; She gave him
+		trouble, and at times he felt hurt and was distant
+		in manner towards her. Modestine carried
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_210" title="210"></a>the luggage. She may not have known
+		that R. L. Stevenson wrote books, but she
+		knew as by instinct that R. L. Stevenson had
+		never driven a donkey. She wrought her will
+		with him, that is, she took her own gait. &#8216;What
+		that pace was there is no word mean enough to
+		describe; it was something as much slower
+		than a walk as a walk is slower than a run.&#8217;
+		He must belabor her incessantly. It was an
+		ignoble toil, and he felt ashamed of himself
+		besides, for he remembered her sex. &#8216;The
+		sound of my own blows sickened me. Once
+		when I looked at her she had a faint resemblance
+		to a lady of my acquaintance who had
+		formerly loaded me with kindness; and this
+		increased my horror of my cruelty.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>From time to time Modestine&#8217;s load would
+		topple off. The villagers were delighted with
+		this exhibition and laughed appreciatively.
+		&#8216;Judge if I was hot!&#8217; says Stevenson. &#8216;I remembered
+		having laughed myself when I had
+		seen good men struggling with adversity in the
+		person of a jack-ass, and the recollection filled
+		me with penitence. That was in my old light
+		days before this trouble came upon me.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>He had a sleeping-bag, waterproof without,
+		blue sheep&#8217;s wool within, and in this portable
+		house he passed his nights afield. Not always
+		by choice, as witness his chapter entitled &#8216;A
+		Camp in the Dark.&#8217; There are two or three
+		pages in that chapter which come pretty near
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_211" title="211"></a>to perfection,&#8212;if there be such a thing as perfection
+		in literature. I don&#8217;t know who could
+		wish for anything better than the paragraphs
+		in which Stevenson describes falling asleep in
+		the tempest, and awaking next morning to see
+		the &#8216;world flooded with a blue light, the mother
+		of dawn.&#8217; He had been in search of an adventure
+		all his life, &#8216;a pure dispassionate adventure,
+		such as befell early and heroic voyagers,&#8217; and
+		he thinks that he realized a fraction of his daydreams
+		when that morning found him, an inland
+		castaway, &#8216;as strange to his surroundings
+		as the first man upon the earth.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Passages like these indicate Stevenson&#8217;s quality.
+		He was no carpet-knight; he had the
+		true adventurer&#8217;s blood in his veins. He and
+		Drake and the Belgian omnibus-driver should
+		have gone to the Indies together. Better still,
+		the omnibus driver should have gone with
+		Drake, and Stevenson should have gone with
+		Amyas Leigh. They say that Stevenson traveled
+		in search of health. Without doubt; but
+		think how he <em>would</em> have traveled if he had
+		had good health. And one has strange mental
+		experiences alone with the stars. That came
+		of sleeping in the fields &#8216;where God keeps an
+		open house.&#8217; &#8216;I thought I had rediscovered
+		one of those truths which are revealed to savages
+		and hid from political economists.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Much as he gloried in his solitude he &#8216;became
+		aware of a strange lack;&#8217; for he was
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_212" title="212"></a>human. And he gave it as his opinion that &#8216;to
+		live out of doors with the woman a man loves
+		is of all lives the most complete and free.&#8217; It
+		may be so. Such a woman would need to be
+		of heroic physical mould, and there is danger
+		that she would turn out of masculine mould as
+		well. Isopel Berners was of such sort. Isopel
+		could handle her clenched fists like a prizefighter.
+		She was magnificent in the forest, and
+		never so perfectly in place as when she backed
+		up George Borrow in his fight with the Flaming
+		Tinman. Having been in the habit of taking
+		her own part, she was able to give pertinent
+		advice at a critical moment. &#8216;It&#8217;s of no use
+		flipping at the Flaming Tinman with your left
+		hand,&#8217; she said, &#8216;why don&#8217;t you use your right?&#8217;
+		Isopel called Borrow&#8217;s right arm &#8216;Long Melford.&#8217;
+		And when the Flaming Tinman got his
+		knock-down blow from Borrow&#8217;s right, Isopel
+		exclaimed, &#8216;Hurrah for Long Melford; there
+		is nothing like Long Melford for shortness all
+		the world over!&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>But what an embarrassing personage Miss
+		Berners would have been transferred from the
+		dingle to the drawing-room; nay, how impossible
+		it is to think of that athletic young goddess
+		as <em>Miss</em> Berners! The distinctions and titles
+		of conventional society refuse to cling even to
+		her name. I wonder how Stevenson would
+		have liked Isopel Berners.</p>
+
+		<p>And now his philosophy. Yet somehow
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_213" title="213"></a>&#8216;philosophy&#8217; seems a big word for so unpretentious
+		a theory of life as his. Stevenson didn&#8217;t
+		philosophize much; he was content to live and
+		to enjoy. He was deliberate, and in general
+		he would not suffer himself to be driven. He
+		resembled an admirable lady of my acquaintance
+		who, when urged to get something done
+		by a given time, usually replied that &#8216;time was
+		made for slaves.&#8217; Stevenson had the same
+		feeling. He says: &#8216;Hurry is the resource of
+		the faithless. When a man can trust his own
+		heart and those of his friends to-morrow is as
+		good as to-day. And if he die in the mean
+		while, why, then, there he dies, and the question
+		is solved.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>You think this a poor philosophy? But there
+		must be all kinds of philosophy; the people in
+		the world are not run into one mould like so
+		much candle-grease. And because of this, his
+		doctrine of Inaction and Postponement, stern
+		men and practical women have frowned upon
+		Stevenson. In their opinion instead of being
+		up and doing he consecrated too many hours to
+		the idleness of literature. They feel towards
+		him as Hawthorne fancied his ancestor the
+		great witch judge would have felt towards <em>him</em>.
+		Hawthorne imagines that ghostly and terrible
+		ancestor looking down upon him and exclaiming
+		with infinite scorn, &#8216;A writer of storybooks.
+		What kind of employment is that for
+		an immortal soul?&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_214" title="214"></a>To many people nothing is more hateful
+		than this willingness to hold aloof and let
+		things drift. That any human being should
+		acquiesce with the present order of the world
+		appears monstrous to these earnest souls. An
+		Indian critic once called Stevenson &#8216;a faddling
+		Hedonist.&#8217; Stevenson quotes the phrase with
+		obvious amusement and without attempting to
+		gainsay its accuracy.</p>
+
+		<p>But if he allowed the world to take its course
+		he expected the same privilege. He wished
+		neither to interfere nor to be interfered with.
+		And he was a most cheerful nonconformist
+		withal. He says: &#8216;To know what you prefer
+		instead of humbly saying amen to what the
+		world tells you you ought to prefer is to have
+		kept your soul alive.&#8217; Independence and optimism
+		are vital parts of his unformulated creed.
+		He hated cynicism and sourness. He believed
+		in praise of one&#8217;s own good estate. He thought
+		it was an inspiriting thing to hear a man boast,
+		&#8216;so long as he boasts of what he really has.&#8217;
+		If people but knew this they would boast &#8216;more
+		freely and with a better grace.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Stevenson was humorously alive to the old-fashioned
+		quality of his doctrine of happiness
+		and content. He says in the preface to an
+		<i class="title">Inland Voyage</i> that although the book &#8216;runs to
+		considerably over a hundred pages, it contains
+		not a single reference to the imbecility of God&#8217;s
+		universe, nor so much as a single hint that I
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_215" title="215"></a>could have made a better one myself&#8212;I really
+		do not know where my head can have been.&#8217;
+		But while this omission will, he fears, render
+		his book &#8216;philosophically unimportant&#8217; he hopes
+		that &#8216;the eccentricity may please in frivolous
+		circles.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Stevenson could be militant. His letter on
+		Father Damien shows that. But there was
+		nothing of the professional reformer about him.
+		He had no hobby, and he was the artist first
+		and then the philanthropist. This is right;
+		it was the law of his being. Other men are
+		better equipped to do the work of humanity&#8217;s
+		city missionaries than was he. Let their more
+		rugged health and less sensitive nerves bear
+		the burden; his poet&#8217;s mission was not the less
+		important.</p>
+
+		<p>The remaining point I have to note, among
+		a number which might be noted, is his firm
+		grasp of this idea: that whether he is his
+		brother&#8217;s keeper or not he is at all events his
+		brother&#8217;s brother. It is &#8216;philosophy&#8217; of a very
+		good sort to have mastered this conception
+		and to have made the life square with the
+		theory. This doctrine is fashionable just now,
+		and thick books have been written on the subject,
+		filled with wise terms and arguments. I
+		don&#8217;t know whether Stevenson bothered his
+		head with these matters from a scientific point
+		of view or not, but there are many illustrations
+		of his interest. Was it this that made him so
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_216" title="216"></a>gentle in his unaffected manly way? He certainly
+		understood how difficult it is for the well-to-do
+		member of society to get any idea not
+		wholly distorted of the feelings and motives of
+		the lower classes. He believed that certain
+		virtues resided more conspicuously among the
+		poor than among the rich. He declared that
+		the poor were more charitably disposed than
+		their superiors in wealth. &#8216;A workman or a
+		peddler cannot shutter himself off from his less
+		comfortable neighbors. If he treats himself to
+		a luxury he must do it in the face of a dozen
+		who cannot. And what should more directly
+		lead to charitable thoughts?&#8217; But with the
+		advent of prosperity a man becomes incapable
+		of understanding how the less fortunate live.
+		Stevenson likens that happy individual to a
+		man going up in a balloon. &#8216;He presently
+		passes through a zone of clouds and after that
+		merely earthly things are hidden from his gaze.
+		He sees nothing but the heavenly bodies, all in
+		admirable order and positively as good as new.
+		He finds himself surrounded in the most touching
+		manner by the attentions of Providence,
+		and compares himself involuntarily with the
+		lilies and the sky-larks. He does not precisely
+		sing, of course; but then he looks so unassuming
+		in his open landau! If all the world dined
+		at one table this philosophy would meet with
+		some rude knocks.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>In the three years since Stevenson&#8217;s death
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_217" title="217"></a>many additions have been made to the body of
+		literature by him and about him. There are
+		letters, finished and unfinished novels, and recollections
+		by the heaping handful. Critics
+		are considerably exercised over the question
+		whether any, or all, or only two or three of his
+		books are to last. The matter has, I believe,
+		been definitely decided so that posterity, whatever
+		other responsibilities it has, will at least
+		not have that one; and anything that we can
+		do to relieve the future of its burdens is altruism
+		worthy the name.</p>
+
+		<p>Stevenson was one of the best tempered
+		men that ever lived. He never prated about
+		goodness, but was unaffectedly good and sunny-hearted
+		as long as he lived. Of how many
+		men can it be said, as it <em>can</em> be said of him,
+		that he was sick all his days and never uttered
+		a whimper? What rare health of mind was
+		this which went with such poor health of body!
+		I&#8217;ve known men to complain more over toothache
+		than Stevenson thought it worth while to
+		do with death staring him in the face. He did
+		not, like Will o&#8217; the Mill, live until the snow
+		began to thicken on his head. He never knew
+		that which we call middle age.</p>
+
+		<p>He worked harder than a man in his condition
+		should have done. At times he felt the
+		need to write for money; and this was hostile
+		to his theory of literature. He wrote to his
+		friend Colvin: &#8216;I sometimes sit and yearn for
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_218" title="218"></a>anything in the nature of an income that would
+		come in&#8212;mine has all got to be gone and
+		fished for with the immortal mind of man.
+		What I want is an income that really comes in
+		of itself while all you have to do is just to
+		blossom and exist and sit on chairs.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>I wish he might have had it; I can think of
+		no other man whose indolence would have been
+		so profitable to the world.</p>
+	</div>
+	<div id="st_ives" class="essay">
+		<h2 class="essay_title"><a class="pagenum" id="page_219" title="219"></a>STEVENSON&#8217;S ST. IVES</h2>
+		<p class="return_toc"><a href="#contents">Return to Contents</a></p>
+		<p><span class="first_word">With</span> the publication of <i class="title">St. Ives</i> the catalogue
+		of Stevenson&#8217;s important writings has
+		closed. In truth it closed several years ago,&#8212;in
+		1891, to be exact,&#8212;when <i class="title">Catriona</i> was published.
+		Nothing which has appeared since that
+		date can modify to any great extent the best
+		critical estimate of his novels. Neither <i class="title">Weir
+		of Hermiston</i> nor <i class="title">St. Ives</i> affects the matter.
+		You may throw them into the scales with his
+		other works, and then you may take them out;
+		beyond a mere trembling the balance is not
+		disturbed. But suppose you were to take out
+		<i class="title">Kidnapped</i>, or <i class="title">Treasure Island</i>, or <i class="title">The Master
+		of Ballantrae</i>, the loss would be felt at once
+		and seriously. And unless he has left behind
+		him, hidden away among his loose papers, some
+		rare and perfect sketch, some letter to posterity
+		which shall be to his reputation what Neil Paraday&#8217;s
+		lost novel in <i class="title">The Death of the Lion</i>
+		might have been to his, <i class="title">St. Ives</i> may be regarded
+		as the epilogue.</p>
+
+		<p>Stevenson&#8217;s death and the publication of this
+		last effort of his fine genius may tend to draw
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_220" title="220"></a>away a measure of public interest from that
+		type of novel which he, his imitators, and his
+		rivals have so abundantly produced. This may
+		be the close of a &#8216;period&#8217; such as we read about
+		in histories of literature.</p>
+
+		<p>If the truth be told, has not our generation
+		had enough of duels, hair-breadth escapes, post-chaises,
+		and highwaymen, mysterious strangers
+		muffled in great-coats, and pistols which always
+		miss fire when they shouldn&#8217;t? To say positively
+		that we <em>have</em> done with all this might
+		appear extravagant in the light of the popularity
+		of certain modern heroic novels. But it
+		might not be too radical a view if one were to
+		maintain that these books are the expression of
+		something temporary and accidental, that they
+		sustain a chronological relation to modern literature
+		rather than an essential one.</p>
+
+		<p>Matthew Arnold spoke of Heine as a sardonic
+		smile on the face of the Zeitgeist. Let
+		us say that these modern stories in the heroic
+		vein are a mere heightening of color on the
+		cheeks of that interesting young lady, the
+		Genius of the modern novel&#8212;a heightening of
+		color <em>on</em> the cheeks, for the color comes from
+		without and not from within. It is a matter of
+		no moment. Artificial red does no harm for
+		once, and looks well under gaslight.</p>
+
+		<p>These novels of adventure which we buy so
+		cheerfully, read with such pleasure, and make
+		such a good-natured fuss over, are for the
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_221" title="221"></a>greater part an expression of something altogether
+		foreign to the deeper spirit of modern
+		fiction. Surely the true modern novel is the
+		one which reflects the life of to-day. And life
+		to-day is easy, familiar, rich in material comforts,
+		and on the whole without painfully striking
+		contrasts and thrilling episodes. People
+		have enough to eat, reasonable liberty, and a
+		degree of patience with one another which suggests
+		indifference. A man may shout aloud in
+		the market-place the most revolutionary opinions,
+		and hardly be taken to task for it; and
+		then on the other hand we have got our rulers
+		pretty well under control. This paragraph,
+		however, is not the peroration of a eulogy upon
+		&#8216;our unrivaled happiness.&#8217; It attempts merely
+		to lay stress on such facts as these, that it is
+		not now possible to hang a clergyman of the
+		Church of England for forgery, as was done in
+		1777; that a man may not be deprived of the
+		custody of his own children because he holds
+		heterodox religious opinions, as happened in
+		1816. There is widespread toleration; and
+		civilization in the sense in which Ruskin uses
+		the word has much increased. Now it is possible
+		for a Jew to become Prime Minister, and
+		for a Roman Catholic to become England&#8217;s
+		Poet Laureate.</p>
+
+		<p>If, then, life is familiar, comfortable, unrestrained,
+		and easy, as it certainly seems to be,
+		how are we to account for the rise of this
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_222" title="222"></a>semihistoric, heroic literature? It is almost
+		grotesque, the contrast between the books
+		themselves and the manner in which they are
+		produced. One may picture the incongruous
+		elements of the situation,&#8212;a young society
+		man going up to his suite in a handsome modern
+		apartment house, and dictating romance to
+		a type-writer. In the evening he dines at his
+		club, and the day after the happy launching of
+		his novel he is interviewed by the representative
+		of a newspaper syndicate, to whom he explains
+		his literary method, while the interviewer
+		makes a note of his dress and a comment on
+		the decoration of his mantelpiece.</p>
+
+		<p>Surely romance written in this way&#8212;and
+		we have not grossly exaggerated the way&#8212;bears
+		no relation to modern literature other
+		than a chronological one. <i class="title">The Prisoner of
+		Zenda</i> and <i class="title">A Gentleman of France</i>, to mention
+		two happy and pleasing examples of this type
+		of novel, are not modern in the sense that they
+		express any deep feeling or any vital characteristic
+		of to-day. They are not instinct with the
+		spirit of the times. One might say that these
+		stories represent the novel in its theatrical
+		mood. It is the novel masquerading. Just
+		as a respectable bookkeeper likes to go into
+		private theatricals, wear a wig with curls, a
+		slouch hat with ostrich feathers, a sword and
+		ruffles, and play a part to tear a cat in, so does
+		the novel like to do the same. The day after
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_223" title="223"></a>the performance the whole artificial equipment
+		drops away and disappears. The bookkeeper
+		becomes a bookkeeper once more and a natural
+		man. The hour before the footlights has done
+		him no harm. True, he forgot his lines at one
+		place, but what is a prompter for if not to act
+		in such an emergency? Now that it is over
+		the affair may be pronounced a success,&#8212;particularly
+		in the light of the gratifying statement
+		that a clear profit has been realized towards
+		paying for the new organ.</p>
+
+		<p>This is a not unfair comparison of the part
+		played by these books in modern fiction. The
+		public likes them, buys them, reads them; and
+		there is no reason why the public should not.
+		In proportion to the demand for color, action,
+		posturing, and excessive gesticulation, these
+		books have a financial success; in proportion
+		to the conscientiousness of the artist who creates
+		them they have a literary vitality. But
+		they bear to the actual modern novel a relation
+		not unlike that which <i class="title">The Castle of Otranto</i>
+		bears to <i class="title">Tom Jones</i>,&#8212;making allowance of
+		course for the chronological discrepancy.</p>
+
+		<p>From one point the heroic novel is a protest
+		against the commonplace and stupid elements
+		of modern life. According to Mr. Frederic
+		Harrison there is no romance left in us. Life
+		is stale and flat; yet even Mr. Harrison would
+		hardly go to the length of declaring that it is
+		also commercially unprofitable. The artificial
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_224" title="224"></a>apartment-house romance is one expression of
+		the revolt against the duller elements in our
+		civilization; and as has often been pointed out,
+		the novel of psychological horrors is another
+		expression.</p>
+
+		<p>There are a few men, however, whose work
+		is not accounted for by saying that they love
+		theatrical pomp and glitter for its own sake, or
+		that they write fiction as a protest against the
+		times in which they live. Stevenson was of
+		this number. He was an adventurer by inheritance
+		and by practice. He came of a race of
+		adventurers, adventurers who built lighthouses
+		and fought with that bold outlaw, the Sea. He
+		himself honestly loved, and in a measure lived,
+		a wild life. There is no truer touch of nature
+		than in the scene where St. Ives tells the boy
+		Rowley that he is a hunted fugitive with a price
+		set upon his head, and then enjoys the tragic
+		astonishment depicted in the lad&#8217;s face.</p>
+
+		<p>Rowley &#8216;had a high sense of romance and a
+		secret cultus for all soldiers and criminals.
+		His traveling library consisted of a chap-book
+		life of Wallace, and some sixpenny parts of the
+		Old Bailey Sessions Papers; &#8230; and the
+		choice depicts his character to a hair. You
+		can imagine how his new prospects brightened
+		on a boy of this disposition. To be the servant
+		and companion of a fugitive, a soldier, and a
+		murderer rolled in one&#8212;to live by stratagems,
+		disguises, and false names, in an atmosphere of
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_225" title="225"></a>midnight and mystery so thick that you could
+		cut it with a knife&#8212;was really, I believe, more
+		dear to him than his meals, though he was a
+		great trencher-man and something of a glutton
+		besides. For myself, as the peg by which all
+		this romantic business hung, I was simply idolized
+		from that moment; and he would rather
+		have sacrificed his hand than surrendered the
+		privilege of serving me.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>One can believe that Stevenson was a boy
+		with tastes and ambitions like Rowley. But
+		for that matter Rowley stands for universal
+		boy-nature.</p>
+
+		<p>Criticism of <i class="title">St. Ives</i> becomes both easy and
+		difficult by reason of the fact that we know so
+		much about the book from the author&#8217;s point
+		of view. He wrote it in trying circumstances,
+		and never completed it; the last six chapters
+		are from the pen of a practiced story-teller, who
+		follows the author&#8217;s known scheme of events.
+		Stevenson was almost too severe in his comment
+		upon his book. He says of <i class="title">St. Ives</i>:&#8212;</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;It is a mere tissue of adventures; the central
+		figure not very well or very sharply drawn;
+		no philosophy, no destiny, to it; some of the
+		happenings very good in themselves, I believe,
+		but none of them <i lang="de">bildende</i>, none of them constructive,
+		except in so far perhaps as they make
+		up a kind of sham picture of the time, all in
+		italics, and all out of drawing. Here and there,
+		I think, it is well written; and here and there
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_226" title="226"></a>it&#8217;s not&#8230;. If it has a merit to it, I should
+		say it was a sort of deliberation and swing to
+		the style, which seems to me to suit the mail-coaches
+		and post-chaises with which it sounds
+		all through. &#8217;Tis my most prosaic book.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>One must remember that this is epistolary
+		self-criticism, and that it is hardly to be looked
+		upon in the nature of an &#8216;advance notice.&#8217; Still
+		more confidential and epistolary is the humorous
+		and reckless affirmation that <i class="title">St. Ives</i> is &#8216;a
+		rudderless hulk.&#8217; &#8216;It&#8217;s a pagoda,&#8217; says Stevenson
+		in a letter dated September, 1894, &#8216;and you
+		can just feel&#8212;or I can feel&#8212;that it might
+		have been a pleasant story if it had only been
+		blessed at baptism.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>He had to rewrite portions of it in consequence
+		of having received what Dr. Johnson
+		would have called &#8216;a large accession of new
+		ideas.&#8217; The ideas were historical. The first
+		five chapters describe the experiences of French
+		prisoners of war in Edinburgh Castle. St.
+		Ives was the only &#8216;gentleman&#8217; among them,
+		the only man with ancestors and a right to the
+		&#8216;particle.&#8217; He suffered less from ill treatment
+		than from the sense of being made ridiculous.
+		The prisoners were dressed in uniform,&#8212;&#8216;jacket,
+		waistcoat, and trousers of a sulphur or
+		mustard yellow, and a shirt of blue-and-white
+		striped cotton.&#8217; St. Ives thought that &#8216;some
+		malignant genius had found his masterpiece of
+		irony in that dress.&#8217; So much is made of this
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_227" title="227"></a>point that one reads with unusual interest the
+		letter in which Stevenson bewails his &#8216;miserable
+		luck&#8217; with <i class="title">St. Ives</i>; for he was halfway
+		through it when a book, which he had ordered
+		six months before, arrived, upsetting all his
+		previous notions of how the prisoners were
+		cared for. Now he must change the thing
+		from top to bottom. &#8216;How could I have
+		dreamed the French prisoners were watched
+		over like a female charity school, kept in a grotesque
+		livery, and shaved twice a week?&#8217; All
+		his points had been made on the idea that they
+		were &#8216;unshaved and clothed anyhow.&#8217; He
+		welcomes the new matter, however, in spite of
+		the labor it entails. And it is easy to see how
+		he has enriched the earlier chapters by accentuating
+		St. Ives&#8217;s disgust and mortification over
+		his hideous dress and stubby chin.</p>
+
+		<p>The book has a light-hearted note, as a romance
+		of the road should have. The events
+		take place in 1813; they might have occurred
+		fifty or seventy-five years earlier. For the
+		book lacks that convincing something which
+		fastens a story immovably within certain chronological
+		limits. It is the effect which Thomas
+		Hardy has so wonderfully produced in that little
+		tale describing Napoleon&#8217;s night-time visit
+		to the coast of England; the effect which Stevenson
+		himself was equally happy in making
+		when he wrote the piece called <i class="title">A Lodging for
+		a Night</i>.</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_228" title="228"></a><i class="title">St. Ives</i> has plenty of good romantic stuff in
+		it, though on the whole it is romance of the
+		conventional sort. It is too well bred, let us
+		say too observant of the forms and customs
+		which one has learned to expect in a novel of
+		the road. There is an escape from the castle
+		in the sixth chapter, a flight in the darkness
+		towards the cottage of the lady-love in the
+		seventh chapter, an appeal to the generosity of
+		the lady-love&#8217;s aunt, a dragon with gold-rimmed
+		eyeglasses, in the ninth chapter. And so on.
+		We would not imply that all this is lacking in
+		distinction, but it seems to want that high distinction
+		which Stevenson could give to his
+		work. Ought one to look for it in a book confessedly
+		unsatisfactory to its author, and a book
+		which was left incomplete?</p>
+
+		<p>There is a pretty account of the first meeting
+		between St. Ives and Flora. One naturally
+		compares it with the scene in which David Balfour
+		describes his sensations and emotions when
+		the spell of Catriona&#8217;s beauty came upon him.
+		Says David:&#8212;</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;There is no greater wonder than the way
+		the face of a young woman fits in a man&#8217;s
+		mind and stays there, and he could never tell
+		you why; it just seems it was the thing he
+		wanted.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>This is quite perfect, and in admirable keeping
+		with the genuine simplicity of David&#8217;s character:&#8212;</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_229" title="229"></a>&#8216;She had wonderful bright eyes like stars;
+		&#8230; and whatever was the cause, I stood there
+		staring like a fool.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>This is more concise than St. Ives&#8217;s description
+		of Flora; but St. Ives was a man of the
+		world who had read books, and knew how to
+		compare the young Scotch beauty to Diana:&#8212;</p>
+
+		<p>&#8216;As I saw her standing, her lips parted, a
+		divine trouble in her eyes, I could have clapped
+		my hands in applause, and was ready to acclaim
+		her a genuine daughter of the winds.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The account of the meeting with Walter
+		Scott and his daughter on the moors does not
+		have the touch of reality in it that one would
+		like. Here was an opportunity, however, of
+		the author&#8217;s own making.</p>
+
+		<p>There are flashes of humor, as when St.
+		Ives found himself locked in the poultry-house
+		&#8216;alone with half a dozen sitting hens. In the
+		twilight of the place all fixed their eyes on me
+		severely, and seemed to upbraid me with some
+		crying impropriety.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>There are sentences in which, after Stevenson&#8217;s
+		own manner, real insight is combined
+		with felicitous expression. St. Ives is commenting
+		upon the fact that he has done a thing
+		which most men learned in the wisdom of this
+		world would have pronounced absurd; he has
+		&#8216;made a confidant of a boy in his teens and
+		positively smelling of the nursery.&#8217; But he has
+		no cause to repent it. &#8216;There is none so apt
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_230" title="230"></a>as a boy to be the adviser of any man in difficulties
+		like mine. To the beginnings of virile
+		common sense he adds the last lights of the
+		child&#8217;s imagination.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>Men have been known to thank God when
+		certain authors died,&#8212;not because they bore
+		the slightest personal ill-will, but because they
+		knew that as long as the authors lived nothing
+		could prevent them from writing. In thinking
+		of Stevenson, however, one cannot tell whether
+		he experiences the more a feeling of personal
+		or of literary loss, whether he laments chiefly
+		the man or the author. It is not possible to
+		separate the various cords of love, admiration,
+		and gratitude which bind us to this man. He
+		had a multitude of friends. He appealed to a
+		wider audience than he knew. He himself
+		said that he was read by journalists, by his fellow
+		novelists, and by boys. Envious admiration
+		might prompt a less successful writer to
+		exclaim, &#8216;Well, isn&#8217;t that enough?&#8217; No, for
+		to be truly blest one must have women among
+		one&#8217;s readers. And there are elect ladies not a
+		few who know Stevenson&#8217;s novels; yet it is a
+		question whether he has reached the great
+		mass of female novel-readers. Certainly he is
+		not well known in that circle of fashionable
+		maidens and young matrons which justly prides
+		itself upon an acquaintance with Van Bibber.
+		And we can hardly think he is a familiar name
+		to that vast and not fashionable constituency
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_231" title="231"></a>which battens upon the romances of Marie
+		Corelli under the impression that it is perusing
+		literature, while he offers no comfort whatever
+		to that type of reader who prefers that a novel
+		shall be filled with hard thinking, with social
+		riddles, theological problems, and &#8216;sexual theorems.&#8217;
+		Stevenson was happy with his journalists
+		and boys. Among all modern British men
+		of letters he was in many ways the most highly
+		blest; and his career was entirely picturesque
+		and interesting. Other men have been more
+		talked about, but the one thing which he did
+		not lack was discriminating praise from those
+		who sit in high critical places.</p>
+
+		<p>He was prosperous, too, though not grossly
+		prosperous. It is no new fact that the sales of
+		his books were small in proportion to the magnitude
+		of his contemporary fame. People
+		praised him tremendously, but paid their dollars
+		for entertainment of another quality than that
+		supplied by his fine gifts. <i class="title">An Inland Voyage</i>
+		has never been as popular as <i class="title">Three Men in a
+		Boat</i>, nor <i class="title">Treasure Island</i> and <i class="title">Kidnapped</i> as
+		<i class="title">King Solomon&#8217;s Mines</i>; while <i class="title">The Black
+		Arrow</i>, which Mr. Lang does not like, and
+		Professor Saintsbury insists is &#8216;a wonderfully
+		good story,&#8217; has not met a wide public favor at
+		all. <i class="title">Travels with a Donkey</i>, which came out
+		in 1879, had only reached its sixth English edition
+		in 1887. Perhaps that is good for a book
+		so entirely virtuous in a literary way, but it was
+		not a success to keep a man awake nights.</p>
+
+		<p><a class="pagenum" id="page_232" title="232"></a>We have been told that it is wrong to admire
+		<i class="title">Jekyll and Hyde</i>, that the story is &#8216;coarse,&#8217; an
+		&#8216;outrage upon the grand allegories of the same
+		motive,&#8217; and several other things; nay, it is
+		even hinted that this popular tale is evidence
+		of a morbid strain in the author&#8217;s nature.
+		Rather than dispute the point it is a temptation
+		to urge upon the critic that he is not radical
+		enough, for in Stevenson&#8217;s opinion all literature
+		might be only a &#8216;morbid secretion.&#8217;</p>
+
+		<p>The critics, however, agree in allowing us to
+		admire without stint those smaller works in
+		which his characteristic gifts displayed themselves
+		at the best. <i class="title">Thrawn Janet</i> is one of
+		these, and the story of Tod Lapraik, told by
+		Andie Dale in <i class="title">Catriona</i>, is another. Stevenson
+		himself declared that if he had never written
+		anything except these two stories he would
+		still have been a writer. We hope that there
+		would be votes cast for <i class="title">Will o&#8217; the Mill</i>, which
+		is a lovely bit of literary workmanship. And
+		there are a dozen besides these.</p>
+
+		<p>He was an artist of undoubted gifts, but he
+		was an artist in small literary forms. His
+		longest good novels are after all little books.
+		When he attempted a large canvas he seemed
+		not perfectly in command of his materials,
+		though he could use those materials as they
+		could have been used by no other artist. There
+		is nothing in his books akin to that broad and
+		massive treatment which may be felt in a novel
+		<a class="pagenum" id="page_233" title="233"></a>like <i class="title">Rhoda Fleming</i> or in a tragedy like <i class="title">Tess
+		of the D&#8217;Urbervilles</i>.</p>
+
+		<p>Andrew Lang was right when he said of
+		Stevenson: He is a &#8216;Little Master,&#8217; but of the
+		Little Masters the most perfect and delightful.</p>
+	</div>
+	<div id="printers_page" class="section">
+		<p class="press">The Riverside Press</p>
+
+		<p>CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, U. S. A.</p>
+		<p>ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY<br />
+			H. O. HOUGHTON AND CO.</p>
+	</div>
+	<div id="the_end">
+		&nbsp;
+	</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Bibliotaph, by Leon H. Vincent
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Bibliotaph, by Leon H. Vincent
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Bibliotaph
+       and Other People
+
+Author: Leon H. Vincent
+
+Release Date: May 2, 2007 [EBook #21272]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE BIBLIOTAPH ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Barbara Tozier, Bill Tozier and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+THE BIBLIOTAPH
+
+And Other People
+
+
+BY
+
+
+LEON H. VINCENT
+
+
+
+BOSTON AND NEW YORK
+HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
+The Riverside Press, Cambridge
+1899
+
+
+
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1898, BY LEON H. VINCENT
+ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
+
+
+
+
+TO MY FATHER
+THE REV. B. T. VINCENT, D.D.
+THIS LITTLE VOLUME IS
+Dedicated
+WITH LOVE AND ADMIRATION
+
+
+
+
+Four of these papers--the first Bibliotaph, and the notes on Keats,
+Gautier, and Stevenson's _St. Ives_--are reprinted from the _Atlantic
+Monthly_ by the kind permission of the editor.
+
+I am also indebted to the literary editor of the _Springfield
+Republican_ and to the editors of _Poet-Lore_, respectively, for
+allowing me to reprint the paper on _Thomas Hardy_ and the lecture on
+_An Elizabethan Novelist_.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+THE BIBLIOTAPH: A PORTRAIT NOT WHOLLY IMAGINARY
+THE BIBLIOTAPH: HIS FRIENDS, SCRAP-BOOKS, AND 'BINS'
+LAST WORDS ON THE BIBLIOTAPH
+THOMAS HARDY
+A READING IN THE LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS
+AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST
+THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FAIR-MINDED MAN
+CONCERNING A RED WAISTCOAT
+STEVENSON: THE VAGABOND AND THE PHILOSOPHER
+STEVENSON'S ST. IVES
+
+
+
+
+THE BIBLIOTAPH AND OTHER PEOPLE
+
+
+
+
+THE BIBLIOTAPH: A PORTRAIT NOT WHOLLY IMAGINARY
+
+
+A popular and fairly orthodox opinion concerning
+book-collectors is that their vices are many, their virtues of a
+negative sort, and their ways altogether past finding out. Yet the
+most hostile critic is bound to admit that the fraternity of
+bibliophiles is eminently picturesque. If their doings are
+inscrutable, they are also romantic; if their vices are numerous, the
+heinousness of those vices is mitigated by the fact that it is
+possible to sin humorously. Regard him how you will, the sayings and
+doings of the collector give life and color to the pages of those
+books which treat of books. He is amusing when he is purely an
+imaginary creature. For example, there was one Thomas Blinton. Every
+one who has ever read the volume called _Books and Bookmen_ knows
+about Thomas Blinton. He was a man who wickedly adorned his volumes
+with morocco bindings, while his wife 'sighed in vain for some old
+_point d'Alencon lace_.' He was a man who was capable of bidding
+fifteen pounds for a Foppens edition of the essays of Montaigne,
+though fifteen pounds happened to be 'exactly the amount which he owed
+his plumber and gas-fitter, a worthy man with a large family.' From
+this fictitious Thomas Blinton all the way back to Richard Heber, who
+was very real, and who piled up books as other men heap together
+vulgar riches, book-collectors have been a picturesque folk.
+
+The name of Heber suggests the thought that all men who buy books are
+not bibliophiles. He alone is worthy the title who acquires his
+volumes with something like passion. One may buy books like a
+gentleman, and that is very well. One may buy books like a gentleman
+and a scholar, which counts for something more. But to be truly of the
+elect one must resemble Richard Heber, and buy books like a gentleman,
+a scholar, and a madman.
+
+You may find an account of Heber in an old file of _The Gentleman's
+Magazine_. He began in his youth by making a library of the classics.
+Then he became interested in rare English books, and collected them
+_con amore_ for thirty years. He was very rich, and he had never given
+hostages to fortune; it was therefore possible for him to indulge his
+fine passion without stint. He bought only the best books, and he
+bought them by thousands and by tens of thousands. He would have held
+as foolishness that saying from the Greek which exhorts one to do
+nothing too much. According to Heber's theory, it is impossible to
+have too many good books. Usually one library is supposed to be enough
+for one man. Heber was satisfied only with eight libraries, and then
+he was hardly satisfied. He had a library in his house at Hodnet. 'His
+residence in Pimlico, where he died, was filled, like Magliabecchi's
+at Florence, with books from the top to the bottom; every chair, every
+table, every passage containing piles of erudition.' He had a house in
+York Street which was crowded with books. He had a library in Oxford,
+one at Paris, one at Antwerp, one at Brussels, and one at Ghent. The
+most accurate estimate of his collections places the number at 146,827
+volumes. Heber is believed to have spent half a million dollars for
+books. After his death the collections were dispersed. The catalogue
+was published in twelve parts, and the sales lasted over three years.
+
+Heber had a witty way of explaining why he possessed so many copies of
+the same book. When taxed with the sin of buying duplicates he replied
+in this manner: 'Why, you see, sir, no man can comfortably do without
+_three_ copies of a book. One he must have for his show copy, and he
+will probably keep it at his country house; another he will require
+for his own use and reference; and unless he is inclined to part with
+this, which is very inconvenient, or risk the injury of his best copy,
+he must needs have a third at the service of his friends.'
+
+In the pursuit of a coveted volume Heber was indefatigable. He was not
+of those Sybaritic buyers who sit in their offices while agents and
+dealers do the work. 'On hearing of a curious book he has been known
+to put himself into the mail-coach, and travel three, four, or five
+hundred miles to obtain it, fearful to trust his commission to a
+letter.' He knew the solid comfort to be had in reading a book
+catalogue. Dealers were in the habit of sending him the advance sheets
+of their lists. He ordered books from his death-bed, and for anything
+we know to the contrary died with a catalogue in his fingers.
+
+A life devoted to such a passion is a stumbling-block to the
+practical man, and to the Philistine foolishness. Yet you may hear men
+praised because up to the day of death they were diligent in
+business,--business which added to life nothing more significant than
+that useful thing called money. Thoreau used to say that if a man
+spent half his time in the woods for the love of the woods he was in
+danger of being looked upon as a loafer; but if he spent all his time
+as a speculator, shearing off those woods and making Earth bald before
+her time, he was regarded as an upright and industrious citizen.
+
+Heber had a genius for friendship as well as for gathering together
+choice books. Sir Walter Scott addressed verses to him. Professor
+Porson wrote emendations for him in his favorite copy of _Athenaeus_.
+To him was inscribed Dr. Ferrier's poetical epistle on Bibliomania.
+His virtues were celebrated by Dibdin and by Burton. In brief, the
+sketch of Heber in The_ Gentleman's Magazine_ for January, 1834,
+contains a list of forty-six names,--all men of distinction by birth,
+learning, or genius, and all men who were proud to call Richard Heber
+friend. He was a mighty hunter of books. He was genial, scholarly,
+generous. Out-of-door men will be pleased to know that he was active
+physically. He was a tremendous walker, and enjoyed tiring out his
+bailiff by an all-day tramp.
+
+Of many good things said of him this is one of the best: 'The learned
+and curious, whether rich or poor, have always free access to his
+library.' Thus was it possible for Scott very truthfully to say to
+Heber, 'Thy volumes open as thy heart.'
+
+No life of this Prince of Book-Hunters has been written, I believe.
+Some one with access to the material, and a sympathy with the love of
+books as books, should write a memoir of Heber the Magnificent. It
+ought not to be a large volume, but it might well be about the size of
+Henry Stevens's _Recollections of James_ _Lenox_. And if it were
+equally readable it were a readable book indeed.
+
+Dibdin thought that Heber's tastes were so catholic as to make it
+difficult to classify him among hunters of books. The implication is
+that most men can be classified. They have their specialties. What
+pleases one collector much pleases another but little or not at all.
+Collectors differ radically in the attitude they take with respect to
+their volumes. One man buys books to read, another buys them to gloat
+over, a third that he may fortify them behind glass doors and keep the
+key in his pocket. Therefore have learned words been devised to make
+apparent the varieties of motive and taste. These words begin with
+_biblio_; you may have a _biblio_ almost anything.
+
+Two interesting types of maniac are known respectively as the
+bibliotaph and the biblioclast. A biblioclast is one who indulges
+himself in the questionable pleasure of mutilating books in order more
+sumptuously to fit out a particular volume. The disease is English in
+origin, though some of the worst cases have been observed in America.
+Clergymen and presidents of colleges have been known to be seized with
+it. The victim becomes more or less irresponsible, and presently runs
+mad. Such an one was John Bagford, of diabolical memory, who mutilated
+not less than ten thousand volumes to form his vast collection of
+title-pages. John Bagford died an unrepentant sinner, lamenting with
+one of his later breaths that he could not live long enough to get
+hold of a genuine Caxton and rip the initial page out of that.
+
+The bibliotaph buries books; not literally, but sometimes with as much
+effect as if he had put his books underground. There are several
+varieties of him. The dog-in-the-manger bibliotaph is the worst; he
+uses his books but little himself, and allows others to use them not
+at all. On the other hand, a man may be a bibliotaph simply from
+inability to get at his books. He may be homeless, a bachelor, a
+denizen of boarding-houses, a wanderer upon the face of the earth. He
+may keep his books in storage or accumulate them in the country,
+against the day when he shall have a town house with proper library.
+
+The most genial lover of books who has walked city streets for many a
+day was a bibliotaph. He accumulated books for years in the huge
+garret of a farmhouse standing upon the outskirts of a Westchester
+County village. A good relative 'mothered' the books for him in his
+absence. When the collection outgrew the garret it was moved into a
+big village store. It was the wonder of the place. The country folk
+flattened their noses against the panes and tried to peer into the
+gloom beyond the half-drawn shades. The neighboring stores were in
+comparison miracles of business activity. On one side was a
+harness-shop; on the other a nondescript establishment at which one
+might buy anything, from sunbonnets and corsets to canned salmon and
+fresh eggs. Between these centres of village life stood the silent
+tomb for books. The stranger within the gates had this curiosity
+pointed out to him along with the new High School and the Soldiers'
+Monument.
+
+By shading one's eyes to keep away the glare of the light, it was
+possible to make out tall carved oaken cases with glass doors, which
+lined the walls. They gave distinction to the place. It was not
+difficult to understand the point of view of the dressmaker from
+across the way who stepped over to satisfy her curiosity concerning
+the stranger, and his concerning the books, and who said in a friendly
+manner as she peered through a rent in the adjoining shade, 'It's
+almost like a cathedral, ain't it?'
+
+To an inquiry about the owner of the books she replied that he was
+brought up in that county; that there were people around there who
+said that he had been an exhorter years ago; her impression was that
+now he was a 'political revivalist,' if I knew what that was.
+
+The phrase seemed hopeless, but light was thrown upon it when, later,
+I learned that this man of many buried books gave addresses upon the
+responsibilities of citizenship, upon the higher politics, and upon
+themes of like character. They said that he was humorous. The farmers
+liked to hear him speak. But it was rumored that he went to colleges,
+too. The dressmaker thought that the buying of so many books was
+'wicked.' 'He goes from New York to Beersheba, and from Chicago to
+Dan, buying books. Never reads 'em because he hardly ever comes here.'
+
+It became possible to identify the Bibliotaph of the country store
+with a certain mature youth who some time since 'gave his friends the
+slip, chose land-travel or seafaring,' and has not returned to build
+the town house with proper library. They who observed him closely
+thought that he resembled Heber in certain ways. Perhaps this fact
+alone would justify an attempt at a verbal portrait. But the
+additional circumstance that, in days when people with the slightest
+excuse therefor have themselves regularly photographed, this
+old-fashioned youth refused to allow his 'likeness' to be taken,--this
+circumstance must do what it can to extenuate minuteness of detail in
+the picture, as well as over-attention to points of which a photograph
+would have taken no account.
+
+You are to conceive of a man between thirty-eight and forty years of
+age, big-bodied, rapidly acquiring that rotund shape which is thought
+becoming to bishops, about six feet high though stooping a little,
+prodigiously active, walking with incredible rapidity, having large
+limbs, large feet, large though well-shaped and very white hands; in
+short, a huge fellow physically, as big of heart as of body, and, in
+the affectionate thought of those who knew him best, as big of
+intellect as of heart.
+
+His head might be described as leonine. It was a massive head, covered
+with a tremendous mane of brown hair. This was never worn long, but it
+was so thick and of such fine texture that it constituted a real
+beauty. He had no conceit of it, being innocent of that peculiar
+German type of vanity which runs to hair, yet he could not prevent
+people from commenting on his extraordinary hirsute adornment. Their
+occasional remarks excited his mirth. If they spoke of it again, he
+would protest. Once, among a small party of his closest friends, the
+conversation turned upon the subject of hair, and then upon the beauty
+of _his_ hair; whereupon he cried out, 'I am embarrassed by this
+unnecessary display of interest in my Samsonian assertiveness.'
+
+He loved to tease certain of his acquaintances who, though younger
+than himself, were rapidly losing their natural head-covering. He
+prodded them with ingeniously worded reflections upon their unhappy
+condition. He would take as a motto Erasmus's unkind salutation, 'Bene
+sit tibi cum tuo calvitio,' and multiply amusing variations upon it.
+He delighted in sending them prescriptions and advertisements clipped
+from newspapers and medical journals. He quoted at them the remark of
+a pale, bald, blond young literary aspirant, who, seeing him, the
+Bibliotaph, passing by, exclaimed audibly and almost passionately,
+'Oh, I perfectly adore _hair_!'
+
+Of his clothes it might be said that he did not wear them, but rather
+dwelt at large in them. They were made by high-priced tailors and were
+fashionably cut, but he lived in them so violently--that is, traveled
+so much, walked so much, sat so long and so hard, gestured so
+earnestly, and carried in his many pockets such an extraordinary
+collection of notebooks, indelible pencils, card-cases, stamp-boxes,
+penknives, gold toothpicks, thermometers, and what not--that within
+twenty-four hours after he had donned new clothes all the artistic
+merits of the garments were obliterated; they were, from every point
+of view, hopelessly degenerate.
+
+He was a scrupulously clean man, but there was a kind of civilized
+wildness in his appearance which astonished people; and in perverse
+moments he liked to terrify those who knew him but little by affirming
+that he was a near relative of Christopher Smart, and then explaining
+in mirth-provoking phrases that one of the arguments used for proving
+Smart's insanity was that he did not love clean linen.
+
+His appetite was large, as became a large and active person. He was a
+very valiant trencher-man; and yet he could not have been said to love
+eating for eating's sake. He ate when he was hungry, and found no
+difficulty in being hungry three times a day. He should have been an
+Englishman, for he enjoyed a late supper. In the proper season this
+consisted of a bountiful serving of tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, with
+a glass of lemonade. As a variant upon the beverage he took milk. He
+was the only man I have known, whether book-hunter or layman, who
+could sleep peacefully upon a supper of cucumbers and milk.
+
+There is probably no occult relation between first editions and
+onions. The Bibliotaph was mightily pleased with both: the one, he
+said, appealed to him aesthetically, the other dietetically. He
+remarked of some particularly large Spanish onions that there was 'a
+globular wholesomeness about them which was very gratifying;' and
+after eating one he observed expansively that he felt 'as if he had
+swallowed the earth and the fullness thereof.' His easy, good-humored
+exaggerations and his odd comments upon the viands made him a pleasant
+table companion: as when he described a Parker House Sultana Roll by
+saying that 'it looked like the sanguinary output of the whole Crimean
+war.'
+
+High-priced restaurants did not please him as well as humbler and less
+obtrusive places. But it was all one,--Delmonico's, the Bellevue, a
+stool in the Twelfth Street Market, or a German cafe on Van Buren
+Street. The humors of certain eating-houses gave him infinite delight.
+He went frequently to the Diner's Own Home, the proprietor of which,
+being both cook and Christian, had hit upon the novel plan of giving
+Scriptural advice and practical suggestions by placards on the walls.
+The Bibliotaph enjoyed this juxtaposition of signs: the first read,
+'The very God of peace sanctify you wholly;' the second, 'Look out for
+your Hat and Coat.'
+
+The Bibliotaph had no home, and was reputed to live in his post-office
+box. He contributed to the support of at least three clubs, but was
+very little seen at any one of them. He enjoyed the large cities, and
+was contented in whichever one he happened to find himself. He was
+emphatically a city man, but what city was of less import. He knew
+them all, and was happy in each. He had his favorite hotel, his
+favorite bath, his work, bushels of newspapers and periodicals,
+friends who rejoiced in his coming as children in the near advent of
+Christmas, and finally book-shops in which to browse at his pleasure.
+It was interesting to hear him talk about city life. One of his quaint
+mannerisms consisted in modifying a well-known quotation to suit his
+conversational needs. 'Why, sir,' he would remark, 'Fleet Street has a
+very animated appearance, but I think the full tide of human existence
+is at the corner of Madison and State.'
+
+His knowledge of cities was both extensive and peculiar. I have heard
+him name in order all the hotels on Broadway, beginning at the lower
+end and coming up as far as hotels exist, branching off upon the
+parallel and cross streets where there were noted caravansaries, and
+connecting every name with an event of importance, or with the life
+and fortunes of some noted man who had been guest at that particular
+inn. This was knowledge more becoming in a guide, perhaps, but it will
+illustrate the encyclopaedic fullness of his miscellaneous information.
+
+As was natural and becoming in a man born within forty miles of the
+metropolis, he liked best the large cities of the East, and was least
+content in small Western cities. But this was the outcome of no
+illiberal prejudice, and there was a quizzical smile upon his lips and
+a teasing look in his eyes when he bantered a Westerner. 'A man,' he
+would sometimes say, 'may come by the mystery of childbirth into Omaha
+or Kansas City and be content, but he can't come by Boston, New York,
+or Philadelphia.' Then, a moment later, paraphrasing his remark, he
+would add, 'To go to Omaha or Kansas City by way of New York and
+Philadelphia is like being translated heavenward with such violence
+that one _passes through_--into a less comfortable region!'
+
+Strange to say, the conversation of this most omnivorous of
+book-collectors was less of books than of men. True, he was deeply
+versed in bibliographical details and dangerously accurate in his talk
+about them, but, after all, the personality back of the book was the
+supremely interesting thing. He abounded in anecdote, and could
+describe graphically the men he had met, the orators he had heard, the
+occasions of importance where he had been an interested spectator. His
+conversation was delightfully fresh and racy because of the vividness
+of the original impressions, the unusual force of the ideas which were
+the copies of these impressions, and the fine artistic sense which
+enabled him to determine at once what points should be omitted, and
+what words should be used most fittingly to express the ideas
+retained.
+
+He had no pride in his conversational power. He was always modest, but
+never diffident. I have seen him sit, a respectful listener,
+absolutely silent, while some ordinary chatterer held the company's
+attention for an hour. Many good talkers are unhappy unless they have
+the privilege of exercising their gifts. Not so he. Sometimes he had
+almost to be compelled to begin. On such occasions one of his
+intimates was wont to quote from Boswell: 'Leave him to me, sir; I'll
+make him rear.'
+
+The superficial parts of his talk were more easily retained. In mere
+banter, good-humored give-and-take, that froth and bubble of
+conversational intercourse, he was delightful. His hostess, the wife
+of a well-known comedian, apologized to him for having to move him out
+of the large guest-chamber into another one, smaller and higher
+up,--this because of an unexpected accession of visitors. He replied
+that it did not incommode him; and as for being up another flight of
+stairs, 'it was a comfort to him to know that when he was in a state
+of somnolent helplessness he was as near heaven as it was possible to
+get in an actor's house.' The same lady was taking him roundly to task
+on some minor point in which he had quite justly offended her;
+whereupon he turned to her husband and said, 'Jane worships but little
+at the shrine of politeness because so much of her time is mortgaged
+to the shrine of truth.'
+
+When asked to suggest an appropriate and brief cablegram to be sent to
+a gentleman who on the following day would become sixty years of age,
+and who had taken full measure of life's joys, he responded, 'Send him
+this: "_You don't look it, but you've lived like it._"'
+
+His skill in witty retort often expressed itself by accepting a verbal
+attack as justified, and elaborating it in a way to throw into shadow
+the assault of the critic. At a small and familiar supper of bookish
+men, when there was general dissatisfaction over an expensive but
+ill-made salad, he alone ate with apparent relish. The host, who was
+of like mind with his guests, said, 'The Bibliotaph doesn't care for
+the quality of his food, if it has filling power.' To which he at once
+responded, 'You merely imply that I am like a robin: I eat cherries
+when I may, and worms when I must.'
+
+His inscriptions in books given to his friends were often singularly
+happy. He presented a copy of _Lowell's Letters_ to a gentleman and
+his wife. The first volume was inscribed to the husband as follows:--
+
+'To Mr. ---- ----, who is to the owner of the second volume of these
+Letters what this volume is to that: so delightful as to make one glad
+that there's another equally as good, if not better.'
+
+In volume two was the inscription to the wife, worded in this
+manner:--
+
+'To Mrs. ---- ----, without whom the owner of the first volume of
+these Letters would be as that first volume without this one:
+interesting, but incomplete.'
+
+Perhaps this will illustrate his quickness to seize upon ever so minute
+an occasion for the exercise of his humor. A young woman whom he admired,
+being brought up among brothers, had received the nickname, half
+affectionately and half patronizingly bestowed, of 'the Kid.' Among
+her holiday gifts for a certain year was a book from the Bibliotaph, a
+copy of _Old-Fashioned Roses_, with this dedication: 'To a Kid, had
+Abraham possessed which, Isaac had been the burnt-offering.'
+
+It is as a buyer and burier of books that the subject of this paper
+showed himself in most interesting light. He said that the time to
+make a library was when one was young. He held the foolish notion that
+a man does not purchase books after he is fifty; I shall expect to see
+him ransacking the shops after he is seventy, if he shall survive his
+eccentricities of diet that long. He was an omnivorous buyer, picking
+up everything he could lay his hands upon. Yet he had a clearly
+defined motive for the acquisition of every volume. However absurd the
+purchase might seem to the bystander, he, at any rate, could have
+given six cogent reasons why he must have that particular book.
+
+He bought according to the condition of his purse at a given time. If
+he had plenty of money, it would be expensive publications, like those
+issued by the Grolier Club. If he was financially depressed, he would
+hunt in the out-of-door shelves of well-known Philadelphia bookshops.
+It was marvelous to see what things, new and old, he was able to
+extract from a ten-cent alcove. Part of the secret lay in this idea:
+to be a good book-hunter one must not be too dainty; one must not be
+afraid of soiling one's hands. He who observes the clouds shall not
+reap, and he who thinks of his cuffs is likely to lose many a bookish
+treasure. Our Bibliotaph generally parted company with his cuffs when
+he began hunting for books. How many times have I seen those cuffs
+with the patent fasteners sticking up in the air, as if reaching out
+helplessly for their owner; the owner in the mean time standing high
+upon a ladder which creaked under his weight, humming to himself as he
+industriously examined every volume within reach. This ability to live
+without cuffs made him prone to reject altogether that orthodox bit of
+finish to a toilet. I have known him to spend an entire day in New
+York between club, shops, and restaurant, with one cuff on, and the
+other cuff--its owner knew not where.
+
+He differed from Heber in that he was not 'a classical scholar of the
+old school,' but there were many points in which he resembled the
+famous English collector. Heber would have acknowledged him as a son
+if only for his energy, his unquenchable enthusiasm, and the exactness
+of his knowledge concerning the books which he pretended to know at
+all. For not alone is it necessary that a collector should know
+precisely what book he wants; it is even more important that he should
+be able to know a book _as_ the book he wants when he sees it. It is a
+lamentable thing to have fired in the dark, and then discover that you
+have shot a wandering mule, and not the noble game you were in pursuit
+of. One cannot take his reference library with him to the shops. The
+tests, the criteria, must be carried in the head. The last and most
+inappropriate moment for getting up bibliographical lore is that
+moment when the pressing question is, to buy or not to buy. Master
+Slender, in the play, learned the difficulties which beset a man whose
+knowledge is in a book, and whose book is at home upon a shelf. It is
+possible to sympathize with him when he exclaims, 'I had rather than
+forty shillings I had my Book of Songs and Sonnets here!' In making
+love there are other resources; all wooers are not as ill equipped as
+Slender was. But in hunting rare books the time will be sure to come
+when a man may well cry, 'I had rather than forty dollars I had my
+list of first editions with me!'
+
+The Bibliotaph carried much accurate information in his head, but he
+never traveled without a thesaurus in his valise. It was a small
+volume containing printed lists of the first editions of rare books.
+The volume was interleaved; the leaves were crowded with manuscript
+notes. An appendix contained a hundred and more autograph letters from
+living authors, correcting, supplementing, or approving the printed
+bibliographies. Even these authors' own lists were accurately
+corrected. They needed it in not a few instances. For it is a wise
+author who knows his own first edition. Men may write remarkable
+books, and understand but little the virtues of their books from the
+collector's point of view. Men are seldom clever in more ways than
+one. Z. Jackson was a practical printer, and his knowledge as a
+printer enabled him to correct sundry errors in the first folio of
+Shakespeare. But Z. Jackson, as the Rev. George Dawson observes,
+'ventured beyond the composing-case, and, having corrected blunders
+made by the printers, corrected excellencies made by the poet.'
+
+It was amusing to discover, by means of these autograph letters, how
+seldom a good author was an equally good bibliographer. And this is as
+it should be. The author's business is, not to take account of first
+editions, but to make books of such virtue that bibliomaniacs shall be
+eager to possess the first editions thereof. It is proverbial that a
+poet is able to show a farmer things new to him about his own farm.
+Turn a bibliographer loose upon a poet's works, and he will amaze the
+poet with an account of _his_ own doings. The poet will straightway
+discover that while he supposed himself to be making 'mere literature'
+he was in reality contributing to an elaborate and exact science.
+
+The Bibliotaph was not a blind enthusiast on the subject of first
+editions. He was one of the few men who understood the exceeding great
+virtues of second editions. He declared that a man who was so
+fortunate as to secure a second edition of Henry Crabb Robinson's
+_Diary_ was in better case than he who had bothered himself to obtain
+a first. When it fell in with his mood to argue against that which he
+himself most affected, he would quote the childish bit of doggerel
+beginning 'The first the worst, the second the same,' and then grow
+eloquent over the dainty Templeman Hazlitts which are chiefly third
+editions. He thought it absurd to worry over a first issue of
+Carlyle's _French Revolution_ if it were possible to buy at moderate
+price a copy of the third edition, which is a well-nigh perfect book,
+'good to the touch and grateful to the eye.' But this lover of books
+grew fierce in his special mania if you hinted that it was also
+foolish to spend a large sum on an _editio princeps_ of _Paradise
+Lost_ or of _Robinson Crusoe_. There are certain authors concerning
+the desirability of whose first editions it must not be disputed.
+
+The singular readiness with which bookish treasures fell into his way
+astonished less fortunate buyers. Rare Stevensons dropped into his
+hand like ripe fruit from a tree. The most inaccessible of pamphlets
+fawned upon him, begging to be purchased, just as the succulent little
+roast pigs in _The New Paul and Virginia_ run about with knives and
+forks in their sides pleading to be eaten. The Bibliotaph said he did
+not despair of buying Poe's _Tamerlane_ for twenty-five cents one of
+these days; and that a rarity he was sure to get sooner or later was a
+copy of that English newspaper which announced Shelley's death under
+the caption _Now he Knows whether there is a Hell or Not_.
+
+He unconsciously followed Heber in that he disliked large-paper
+copies. Heber would none of them because they took up too much room;
+their ample borders encroached upon the rights of other books. Heber
+objected to this as Prosper Merimee objected to the gigantic English
+hoopskirts of 1865,--there was space on Regent Street for but one
+woman at a time.
+
+Original as the Bibliotaph was in appearance, manners, habits, he was
+less striking in what he did than in what he said. It is a pity that
+no record of his talk exists. It is not surprising that there is no
+such record, for his habits of wandering precluded the possibility of
+his making a permanent impression. By the time people had fully
+awakened to the significance of his presence among them he was gone.
+So there grew up a legend concerning him, but no true biography. He
+was like a comet, very shaggy and very brilliant, but he stayed so
+brief a time in a place that it was impossible for one man to give
+either the days or the thought to the reproduction of his more serious
+and considered words. A greater difficulty was involved in the fact
+that the Bibliotaph had many socii, but no fidus Achates. Moreover,
+Achates, in this instance, would have needed the reportorial powers of
+a James Boswell that he might properly interpret genius to the public.
+
+This particular genius illustrated the misfortune of having too great
+facility in establishing those relations which lie midway between
+acquaintance and friendship. To put the matter in the form of a
+paradox, he had so many _friends_ that he had no _friend_. Perhaps
+this is unjust, but friendship has a touch of jealousy and
+exclusiveness in it. He was too large-natured to say to one of his
+admirers, 'Thou shalt have no other gods save myself;' but there were
+those among the admirers who were quite prepared to say to him, 'We
+prefer that thou shalt have no other worshipers in addition to us.'
+
+People wondered that he seemed to have no care for a conventional home
+life. He was taxed with want of sympathy with what makes even a humble
+home a centre of light and happiness. He denied it, and said to his
+accusers, 'Can you not understand that after a stay in _your_ home I
+go away with much the feeling that must possess a lusty young calf
+when his well-equipped mother tells him that henceforth he must find
+means of sustenance elsewhere?'
+
+He professed to have been once in love, but no one believed it. He
+used to say that his most remarkable experience as a bachelor was in
+noting the uniformity with which eligible young women passed him by on
+the other side of the way. And when a married friend offered
+condolence, with that sleek complacency of manner noteworthy in men
+who are conscious of being mated for life better than they deserve,
+the Bibliotaph said, with an admiring glance at the wife, 'Your
+sympathy is supererogatory, sir, for I fully expect to become your
+residuary legatee.'
+
+It is most pleasing to think of this unique man 'buffeting his books'
+in one of those temporary libraries which formed about him whenever he
+stopped four or five weeks in a place. The shops were rifled of not a
+few of their choicest possessions, and the spoils carried off to his
+room. It was a joy to see him display his treasures, a delight to hear
+him talk of them. He would disarm criticism with respect to the more
+eccentric purchases by saying, 'You wouldn't approve of this, but _I_
+thought it was curious,'--and then a torrent of facts, criticisms,
+quotations, all bearing upon the particular volume which you were
+supposed not to like; and so on, hour after hour. There was no limit
+save that imposed by the receptive capacity of the guest. It reminded
+one of the word spoken concerning a 'hard sitter at books' of the last
+century, that he was a literary giant 'born to grapple with whole
+libraries.' But the fine flavor of those hours spent in hearing him
+discourse upon books and men is not to be recovered. It is evanescent,
+spectral, now. This talk was like the improvisation of a musician who
+is profoundly learned, but has in him a vein of poetry too. The talk
+and the music strongly appeal to robust minds, and at the same time do
+not repel the sentimentalist.
+
+It is not to be supposed that the Bibliotaph pleased every one with
+whom he came in contact. There were people whom his intellectual
+potency affected in a disagreeable way. They accused him of applying
+great mental force to inconsidered trifles. They said it was a
+misfortune that so much talent was going to waste. But there is no
+task so easy as criticising an able man's employment of his gifts.
+
+
+
+
+THE BIBLIOTAPH: HIS FRIENDS, SCRAP-BOOKS, AND 'BINS'
+
+
+To arrive at a high degree of pleasure in collecting a library, one
+must travel. The Bibliotaph regularly traveled in search of his
+volumes. His theory was that the collector must go to the book, not
+wait for the book to come to him. No reputable sportsman, he said,
+would wish the game brought alive to his back-yard for him to kill.
+Half the pleasure was in tracking the quarry to its hiding-place. He
+himself ordered but seldom from catalogues, and went regularly to and
+fro among the dealers in books, seeking the volume which his heart
+desired. He enjoyed those shops where the book-seller kept open house,
+where the stock was large and surprises were common, where the
+proprietor was prodigiously well-informed on some points and
+correspondingly ill-informed on others. He bought freely, never
+disputed a price, and laid down his cash with the air of a man who
+believes that unspent money is the root of all evil.
+
+These travels brought about three results: the making of friends, the
+compilation of scrap-books, and the establishment of 'bins.' Before
+speaking of any one of these points, a word on the satisfactions of
+bibliographical touring.
+
+In every town of considerable size, and in many towns of
+inconsiderable size, are bookshops. It is a poor shop which does not
+contain at least one good book. This book bides its time, and usually
+outstays its welcome. But its fate is about its neck. Somewhere there
+is a collector to whom that book is precious. They are made for one
+another, the collector and the book; and it is astonishing how
+infrequently they miss of realizing their mutual happiness. The
+book-seller is a marriage-broker for unwedded books. His business is
+to find them homes, and take a fee for so doing. Sugarman the Shadchan
+was not more zealous than is your vendor of rare books.
+
+Now, it is a curious fact that the most desirable of bookish treasures
+are often found where one would be least likely to seek them. Montana
+is a great State, nevertheless one does not think of going to Montana
+for early editions of Shakespeare. Let the book-hunter inwardly digest
+the following plain tale of a clergyman and a book of plays.
+
+There is a certain collector who is sometimes called 'The Bishop.' He
+is not a bishop, but he may be so designated; coming events have been
+known to cast conspicuous shadows in the likeness of mitre and
+crosier. The Bishop heard of a man in Montana who had an old book of
+plays with an autograph of William Shakespeare pasted in it. Being a
+wise ecclesiastic, he did not exclaim 'Tush' and 'Fie,' but proceeded
+at once to go book-hunting in Montana. He went by proxy, if not in
+person; the journey is long. In due time the owner of the volume was
+found and the book was placed in the Bishop's hands for inspection. He
+tore off the wrappers, and lo! it was a Fourth Folio of Shakespeare
+excellently well preserved, and with what appeared to be the great
+dramatist's signature written on a slip of paper and pasted inside the
+front cover. The problem of the genuineness of that autograph does not
+concern us. The great fact is that a Shakespeare folio turned up in
+Montana. Now when he hears some one express desire for a copy of
+Greene's _Groatsworth of Wit_, or any other rare book of Elizabeth's
+time, the Bishop's thoughts fly toward the setting sun. Then he smiles
+a notable kind of smile, and says, 'If I could get away I'd run out to
+Montana and try to pick up a copy for you.'
+
+There is a certain gentleman who loves the literature of Queen Anne's
+reign. He lives with Whigs and Tories, vibrates between coffee-house
+and tea-table. He annoys his daughter by sometimes calling her
+'Belinda,' and astonishes his wife with his mock-heroic apostrophes to
+her hood and patches. He reads his _Spectator_ at breakfast while
+other people batten upon newspapers only three hours old. He smiles
+over the love-letters of Richard Steele, and reverences the name and
+the writings of Joseph Addison. Indeed, his devotion to Addison is so
+radical that he has actually been guilty of reading _The Campaign_ and
+the _Dialogue on Medals_. This gentleman hunted books one day and was
+not successful. It seemed to him that on this particular afternoon the
+world was stuffed with Allison's histories of Europe, and Jeffrey's
+contributions to the _Edinburgh Review_. His heart was filled with
+bitterness and his nostrils with dust. Books which looked inviting
+turned out to be twenty-second editions. Of fifty things upon his list
+not one came to light. But it was predestined that he should not go
+sorrowing to his home. He pulled out from a bottom shelf two musty
+octavo volumes bound in dark brown leather, and each securely tied
+with a string; for the covers had been broken from the backs. The
+titles were invisible, the contents a mystery. The gentleman held the
+unpromising objects in his hand and meditated upon them. They might be
+a treatise on conic sections, or a Latin Grammar, and again they might
+be a Book. He untied the string and opened one of the volumes. Was it
+a breath of summer air from Isis that swept out of those pages, which
+were as white as snow in spite of the lapse of nearly two centuries?
+He read the title, MUSARUM ANGLICANARUM ANALECTA. The date was 1699.
+He turned to the table of contents, and his heart gave a contented
+throb. There was the name he wished to see, J. Addison, Magd. Coll:
+The name occurred eight times. The dejected collector had found a
+clean and uncut copy of those two volumes of contemporary Latin verse
+compiled by Joseph Addison, when he was a young man at Oxford, and
+printed at the Sheldonian Theatre. Addison contributed eight poems to
+the second volume. The bookseller was willing to take seventy-five
+cents for the set, and told the gentleman as he did up the package
+that he was a comfort to the trade.
+
+That night the gentleman read _The Battle of the Pigmies and the
+Cranes_, while his wife read the evening edition of the _Lurid
+Paragraph_. Now he says to his friends, 'Hunt books in the most
+unpromising places, but make a thorough search. You may not discover a
+Koh-i-noor, but you will be pretty sure to run upon some desirable
+little thing which gives you pleasure and costs but a trifle.'
+
+One effect of this adventure upon himself is that he cannot pass a
+volume which is tied with a string. He spends his days and Saturday
+nights in tying and untying books with broken covers. Even the
+evidence of a clearly-lettered title upon the back fails to satisfy
+him. He is restless until he has made a thorough search in the body of
+the volume.
+
+The Bibliotaph's own best strokes of fortune were made in
+out-of-the-way places. But some god was on his side. For at his
+approach the bibliographical desert blossomed like the rose. He used
+to hunt books in Texas at one period in his life; and out of Texas
+would he come, bringing, so it is said, first editions of George
+Borrow and Jane Austen. It was maddening to be with him at such times,
+especially if one had a gift for envy.
+
+Yet why should one envy him his money, or his unerring hand and eye?
+He paid for the book, but it was yours to read and to caress so long
+as you would. If he took it from you it was only that he might pass it
+on to some other friend. But if that volume once started in the
+direction of the great tomb of books in Westchester County, no power
+on earth could avail to restore it to the light of day.
+
+It is pleasant to meditate upon past journeys with the Bibliotaph. He
+was an incomparable traveling companion, buoyant, philosophic,
+incapable of fatigue, and never ill. Yet it is a tradition current,
+that he, the mighty, who called himself a friend to physicians,
+because he never robbed them of their time either in or out of
+office-hours, once succumbed to that irritating little malady known as
+car-sickness. He succumbed, but he met his fate bravely and with the
+colors of his wit flying. The circumstances are these:--
+
+There is a certain railway thoroughfare which justly prides itself
+upon the beauty of its scenery. This road passes through a
+hill-country, and what it gains in the picturesque it loses in that
+rectilinear directness most grateful to the traveler with a sensitive
+stomach. The Bibliotaph often patronized this thoroughfare, and one
+day it made him sick. As the train swept around a sharp curve, he
+announced his earliest symptom by saying: 'The conspicuous advantages
+of this road are that one gets views of the scenery and reviews of his
+meals.'
+
+A few minutes later he suggested that the road would do well to change
+its name, and hereafter be known as 'The Emetic G. and O.'
+
+They who were with him proffered sympathy, but he refused to be
+pitied. He thought he had a remedy. He discovered that by taking as
+nearly as possible a reclining posture, he got temporary relief. He
+kept settling more and more till at last he was nearly on his back.
+Then he said: 'If it be true that the lower down we get the more
+comfortable we are, the basements of Hell will have their
+compensations.'
+
+He was too ill to say much after this, but his last word, before the
+final and complete extinction of his manhood, was, 'The influence of
+this road is such that employees have been known involuntarily to
+throw up their jobs.'
+
+The Bibliotaph invariably excited comment and attention when he was
+upon his travels. I do not think he altogether liked it. Perhaps he
+neither liked it nor disliked it. He accepted the fact that he was not
+as other men quite as he would have accepted any indisputable fact. He
+used occasionally to express annoyance because of the discrepancy
+between his reputation and appearance; in other words, because he
+seemed a man of greater fame than he was. He suffered the petty
+discomforts of being a personage, and enjoyed none of the advantages.
+He declared that he was quite willing to be much more distinguished or
+much less conspicuous. What he objected to was the Laodicean character
+of his reputation as set over against the pronounced and even
+startling character of his looks and manner.
+
+He used also to note with amusement how indelible a mark certain early
+ambitions and tentative studies had made upon him. People invariably
+took him for a clergyman. They decided this at once and conducted
+themselves accordingly. He made no protest, but observed that their
+convictions as to how they should behave in his presence had
+corollaries in the shape of very definite convictions as to how he
+should carry himself before them. He thought that such people might be
+described as moral trainers. They do not profess virtue themselves,
+but they take a real pleasure in keeping you up to your profession.
+
+The Bibliotaph had no explanation to give why he was so immediately
+and invariably accounted as one in orders. He was quite sure that the
+clerical look was innate, and by no means dependent upon the wearing
+of a high vest or a Joseph Parker style of whisker; for once as he sat
+in the hot room of a Turkish bath and in the Adamitic simplicity of
+attire suitable to the temperature and the place, a gentleman who
+occupied the chair nearest introduced conversation by saying, 'I beg
+your pardon, sir, but are you not a clergyman?'
+
+'This incident,' said the Bibliotaph, 'gave me a vivid sense of the
+possibility of determining a man's profession by a cursory examination
+of his cuticle.' Lowell's conviction about N. P. Willis was
+well-founded: namely, that if it had been proper to do so, Willis
+could have worn his own plain bare skin in a way to suggest that it
+was a representative Broadway tailor's best work.
+
+I imagine that few boys escape an outburst of that savage instinct for
+personal adornment which expresses itself in the form of rude tattooing
+upon the arms. The Bibliotaph had had his attack in early days, and
+the result was a series of decorations of a highly patriotic character,
+and not at all in keeping with South Kensington standards. I said to
+him once, apropos of the pictures on his arms: 'You are a great
+surprise to your friends in this particular.' 'Yes,' he replied, 'few
+of them are aware that the volume of this Life is extra-illustrated.'
+
+But that which he of necessity tolerated in himself he would not
+tolerate in his books. They were not allowed to become pictorially
+amplified. He saw no objection to inserting a rare portrait in a good
+book. It did not necessarily injure the book, and it was one way of
+preserving the portrait. Yet the thing was questionable, and it was
+likely to prove the first step in a downward path. As to cramming a
+volume with a heterogeneous mass of pictures and letters gathered from
+all imaginable sources, he held the practice in abhorrence, and the
+bibliographical results as fit only for the libraries of the
+illiterate rich. He admitted the possibility of doing such a thing
+well or ill; but at its best it was an ill thing skillfully done.
+
+The Bibliotaph upon his travels was a noteworthy figure if only
+because of the immense parcel of books with which he burdened himself.
+That part of the journeying public which loves to see some new thing
+puzzled itself mightily over the gentleman of full habit, who in
+addition to his not inconsiderable encumbrance of flesh and luggage,
+chose to carry about a shawl-strap loaded to utmost capacity with a
+composite mass of books, magazines, and newspapers. It was enormously
+heavy, and the way in which its component parts adhered was but a
+degree short of the miraculous. He appeared hardly conscious of its
+weight, for he would pick the thing up and literally _trip_ with it on
+a toe certainly not light, but undeniably fantastic.
+
+He carried the books about with him partly because he had just
+purchased them and wished to study their salient points, and partly
+because he was taking them to a 'bin.' There is no mystery about these
+'bins.' They were merely places of temporary rest for the books before
+the grand moving to the main library. But if not mysterious they were
+certainly astonishing, because of their number and size. With respect
+to number, one in every large city was the rule. With respect to size,
+few people buy in a lifetime as many books as were sometimes heaped
+together in one of these places of deposit. He would begin by leaving
+a small bundle of books with some favorite dealer, then another, and
+then another. As the collection enlarged, the accommodations would be
+increased; for it was a satisfaction to do the Bibliotaph this favor,
+he purchased so liberally and tipped the juvenile clerks in so royal a
+manner. Nor was he always in haste to move out after he had once moved
+in. One bookseller, speaking of the splendid proportions which the
+'bin' was assuming, declared that he sometimes found it difficult to
+adjust himself mentally to the situation; he couldn't tell when he
+came to his place of business in the morning whether he was in his own
+shop or the Bibliotaph's library.
+
+The corner of the shop where the great collector's accumulations were
+piled up was a centre of mirth and conversation if he himself chanced
+to be in town. Men dropped in for a minute and stayed an hour. In some
+way time appeared to broaden and leisure to grow more ample. Life had
+an unusual richness, and warmth, and color, when the Bibliotaph was
+by. There was an Olympian largeness and serenity about him. He seemed
+almost pagan in the breadth of his hold upon existence. And when he
+departed he left behind him what can only be described as great
+unfilled mental spaces. I recall that a placard was hung up in his
+particular corner with the inscription, 'English spoken here.' This
+amused him. Later there was attached to it another strip upon which
+was crayoned, 'Sir, we had much good talk,' with the date of the talk.
+Still later a victim added the words, 'Yes, sir, on that day the
+Bibliotaph tossed and gored a number of people admirably.'
+
+It was difficult for the Bibliotaph not to emit intellectual sparks of
+one kind or another. His habit of dealing with every fact as if it
+deserved his entire mental force, was a secret of his originality.
+Everything was worth while. If the fact was a serious fact, all the
+strength of his mind would be applied to its exposition or defense. If
+it was a fact of less importance, humor would appear as a means to the
+conversational end. And he would grow more humorous as the topics grew
+less significant. When finally he rioted in mere word-play, banter,
+quizzing, it was a sign that he regarded the matter as worthy no
+higher species of notice.
+
+I like this theory of his wit so well that I am minded not to expose
+it to an over-rigid test. The following small fragments of his talk
+are illustrative of such measure of truth as the theory may contain.
+
+Among the Bibliotaph's companions was one towards whose mind he
+affected the benevolent and encouraging attitude of a father to a
+budding child. He was asked by this friend to describe a certain
+quaint and highly successful entertainer. This was the response: 'The
+gentleman of whom you speak has the habit of coming before his
+audience as an idiot and retiring as a genius. You and I, sir,
+couldn't do that; we should sustain the first character consistently
+throughout the entire performance.'
+
+It was his humor to insist that all the virtues and gifts of a
+distinguished collector were due for their expansion and development
+to association with himself and the writer of these memories. He would
+say in the presence of the distinguished collector: 'Henry will
+probably one day forget us, but on the Day of Judgment, in any just
+estimate of the causes of his success, the Lord won't.'
+
+I have forgotten what the victim's retort was; it is safe to assume
+that it was adequate.
+
+This same collector had the pleasing habit of honoring the men he
+loved, among whom the Bibliotaph was chief, with brightly written
+letters which filled ten and fifteen half-sheets. But the average
+number of words to a line was two, while a five-syllable word had
+trouble in accommodating itself to a line and a half, and the sheets
+were written only upon one side. The Bibliotaph's comment was: 'Henry
+has a small brain output, but unlimited influence at a paper-mill.'
+
+Of all the merry sayings in which the Bibliotaph indulged himself at
+the expense of his closest friend this was the most comforting. A
+gentleman present was complaining that Henry took liberties in
+correcting his pronunciation. 'I have no doubt of the occasional need
+of such correction, but it isn't often required, and not half so often
+as he seems to think. I, on the other hand, observe frequent minor
+slips in his use of language, but I do not feel at liberty to correct
+him.'
+
+The Bibliotaph began to apply salve to the bruised feelings of the
+gentleman present as follows: 'The animus of Henry's criticism is
+unquestionably envy. He probably feels how few flies there are in your
+ointment. While you are astonished that in his case there should be so
+little ointment for so many flies.'
+
+The Bibliotaph never used slang, and the united recollections of his
+associates can adduce but two or three instances in which he sunk
+verbally so low as even to _hint_ slang. He said that there was one
+town which in his capacity of public speaker he should like to visit.
+It was a remote village in Virginia where there was a girls' seminary,
+the catalogue of which set forth among advantages of location this:
+that the town was one to which the traveling lecturer and the circus
+never came. The Bibliotaph said, 'I should go there. For I am the one
+when I am on the platform, and by the unanimous testimony of all my
+friends I am the other when I am off.'
+
+The second instance not only illustrates his ingenuity in trifles, but
+also shows how he could occasionally answer a friend according to his
+folly. He had been describing a visit which he had made in the
+hero-worshiping days of boyhood to Chappaqua; how friendly and
+good-natured the great farmer-editor was; how he called the Bibliotaph
+'Bub,' and invited him to stay to dinner; how he stayed and talked
+politics with his host; how they went out to the barn afterwards to
+look at the stock; what Greeley said to him and what he said to
+Greeley,--it was a perfect bit of word-sketching, spontaneous,
+realistic, homely, unpretentious, irresistibly comic because of the
+quaintness of the dialogue as reported, and because of the mental
+image which we formed of this large-headed, round-bellied, precocious
+youth, who at the age of sixteen was able for three consecutive hours
+to keep the conversational shuttlecock in the air with no less a
+person than Horace Greeley. Amid the laughter and comment which
+followed the narration one mirthful genius who chose for the day to
+occupy the seat of the scorner, called out to the Bibliotaph:--
+
+'How old did you say you were at that time, "Bub"?'
+
+'Sixteen.'
+
+'And did you wear whiskers?'
+
+The query was insulting. But the Bibliotaph measured the flippancy of
+the remark with his eye and instantly fitted an answer to the mental
+needs of the questioner.
+
+'Even if I had,' he said, 'it would have availed me nothing, for in
+those days there was no wind.'
+
+The Bibliotaph was most at home in the book-shop, on the street, or at
+his hotel. He went to public libraries only in an emergency, for he
+was impatient of that needful discipline which compelled him to ask
+for each volume he wished to see. He had, however, two friends in
+whose libraries one might occasionally meet him in the days when he
+hunted books upon this wide continent. One was the gentleman to whom
+certain letters on literature have been openly addressed, and who has
+made a library by a process which involves wise selection and infinite
+self-restraint. This priceless little collection contains no volume
+which is imperfect, no volume which mars the fine sense of repose
+begotten in one at the sight of lovely books becomingly clothed, and
+no volume which is not worthy the name of literature. And there is
+matter for reflection in the thought that it is not the library of a
+rich man. Money cannot buy the wisdom which has made this collection
+what it is, and without self-denial it is hardly possible to give the
+touch of real elegance to a private library. When dollars are not
+counted the assemblage of books becomes promiscuous. How may we better
+describe this library than by the phrase Infinite riches in a little
+book-case!
+
+There was yet another friend, the Country Squire, who revels in
+wealth, buys large-paper copies, reads little but deeply, and raises
+chickens. His library (the room itself, I mean) is a gentleman's
+library, with much cornice, much plate-glass, and much carving;
+whereof a wit said, 'The Squire has such a beautiful library, and no
+place to put his books.'
+
+These books are of a sort to rejoice the heart, but their tenure of
+occupancy is uncertain. Hardly one of them but is liable to eviction
+without a moment's notice. They have a look in their attitude which
+indicates consciousness of being pilgrims and strangers. They seem to
+say, 'We can tarry, we can tarry but a night.' Some have tarried two
+nights, others a week, others a year, a few even longer. But aside
+from a dozen or so of volumes, not one of the remaining three thousand
+dares to affirm that it holds a permanent place in its owner's heart
+of hearts. It is indeed a noble procession of books which has passed
+in and out of those doors. A day will come in which the owner realizes
+that he has as good as the market can furnish, and then banishments
+will cease. One sighs not for the volumes which deserved exile, but
+for those which were sent away because their master ceased to love
+them.
+
+There was no friend with whom the Bibliotaph lived on easier terms
+than with the Country Squire. They were counterparts. They
+supplemented one another. The Bibliotaph, though he was born and bred
+on a farm, had fled for his salvation to the city. The Squire, a man
+of city birth and city education, had fled for his soul's health to
+the country; he had rendered existence almost perfect by setting up an
+urban home in rural surroundings. It was well said of that house that
+it was finely reticent in its proffers of hospitality, and regally
+magnificent in its kindness to those whom it delighted to honor.
+
+It was in the Country Squire's library that the Bibliotaph first met
+that actor with whom he became even more intimate than with the Squire
+himself. The closeness of their relation suggested the days of the old
+Miracle plays when the theatre and the Church were as hand in glove.
+The Bibliotaph signified his appreciation of his new friend by giving
+him a copy of a sixteenth-century book 'containing a pleasant
+invective against Poets, Pipers, Players, Jesters, and such like
+Caterpillars of a Commonwealth.' The Player in turn compiled for his
+friend of clerical appearance a scrap-book, intended to show how evil
+associations corrupt good actors.
+
+This actor professed that which for want of a better term might be
+called parlor agnosticism. The Bibliotaph was sturdily inclined
+towards orthodoxy, and there was from time to time collision between
+the two. It is my impression that the actor sometimes retired with
+four of his five wits halting. But he was brilliant even when he
+mentally staggered. Neither antagonist convinced the other, and after
+a while they grew wearied of traveling over one another's minds.
+
+It fell out on a day that the actor made a fine speech before a large
+gathering, and mindful of stage effect he introduced a telling
+allusion to an all-wise and omnipotent Providence. For this he was, to
+use his own phrase, 'soundly spanked' by all his friends; that is, he
+was mocked at, jeered, ridiculed. To what end, they said, was one an
+agnostic if he weakly yielded his position to the exigencies of an
+after-dinner speech. The Bibliotaph alone took pains to analyze his
+late antagonist's position. He wrote to the actor congratulating him
+upon his success. 'I wondered a little at this, remembering how
+inconsiderable has been your practice; and I infer that it has been
+inconsiderable, for I am aware how seldom an actor can be persuaded to
+make a speech. I, too, was at first shocked when I heard that you had
+made a respectful allusion to Deity; but I presently took comfort,
+_remembering that your gods, like your grease-paints, are purely
+professional_.'
+
+He was always capital in these teasing moods. To be sure, he buffeted
+one about tremendously, but his claws were sheathed, and there was a
+contagiousness in his frolicsome humor. Moreover one learned to look
+upon one's self in the light of a public benefactor. To submit to be
+knocked about by the Bibliotaph was in a modest way to contribute to
+the gayety of nations. If one was not absolutely happy one's self,
+there was a chastened comfort in beholding the happiness of the
+on-lookers.
+
+A small author wrote a small book, so small that it could be read in
+less time than it takes to cover an umbrella, that is, 'while you
+wait.' The Bibliotaph had Brobdingnagian joy of this book. He sat and
+read it to himself in the author's presence, and particularly
+diminutive that book appeared as its light cloth cover was outlined
+against the Bibliotaph's ample black waistcoat. From time to time he
+would vent 'a series of small private laughs,' especially if he was on
+the point of announcing some fresh illustration of the fallibility of
+inexperienced writers. Finally the uncomfortable author said, 'Don't
+sit there and pick out the mistakes.' To which the Bibliotaph
+triumphantly replied, 'What other motive is there for reading it at
+all?'
+
+He purchased every copy of this book which he could find, and when
+asked by the author why he did so, replied, 'In order to withdraw it
+from circulation.' A moment afterwards he added reflectively, 'But how
+may I hope to withdraw a book from that which it has never had?'
+
+He was apt to be severe in his judgment of books, as when he said of a
+very popular but very feeble literary performance that it was an
+argument for the existence of God. 'Such intensity of stupidity was
+not realized without Infinite assistance.'
+
+He could be equally emphatic in his comments upon men. Among his
+acquaintance was a church dignitary who blew alternately hot and cold
+upon him. When advised of some new illustration of the divine's
+uncertainty of attitude, the Bibliotaph merely said, 'He's more of a
+chameleon than he is a clergyman.'
+
+That Bostonian would be deficient in wit who failed to enjoy this
+remark. Speaking of the characteristics of American cities, the
+Bibliotaph said, 'It never occurs to the Hub that anything of
+importance can possibly happen at the periphery.'
+
+He greatly admired the genial and philanthropic editor of a well-known
+Philadelphia newspaper. Shortly after Mr. Childs's death some one
+wrote to the Bibliotaph that in a quiet Kentucky town he had noticed a
+sign over a shop-door which read, 'G. W. Childs, dealer in Tobacco and
+Cigars.' There was something graceful in the Bibliotaph's reply. He
+expressed surprise at Mr. Childs's new occupation, but declared that
+for his own part he was 'glad to know that the location of Heaven had
+at last been definitely ascertained.'
+
+The Bibliotaph habitually indulged himself in the practice of
+hero-worship. This propensity led him to make those glorified
+scrap-books which were so striking a feature in his collection. They
+were no commonplace affairs, the ugly result of a union of cheap
+leather, newspaper-clippings and paste, but sumptuous books
+resplendent in morocco and gilt tooling, the creations of an artist
+who was eminent among binders. These scrap-books were chiefly devoted
+to living men,--men who were famous, or who were believed to be on the
+high road to fame. There was a book for each man. In this way did the
+Bibliotaph burn incense before his Dii majores et minores.
+
+These books were enriched with everything that could illustrate the
+gifts and virtues of the men in whose honor they were made. They
+contained rare manuscripts, rare pictures, autograph comments and
+notes, a bewildering variety of records,--memorabilia which were above
+price. Poets wrote humorous verse, and artists who justly held their
+time as too precious to permit of their working for love decorated the
+pages of the Bibliotaph's scrap-books. One does not abuse the word
+'unique' when he applies it to these striking volumes.
+
+The Bibliotaph did not always follow contemporary judgment in his
+selection of men to be so canonized. He now and then honored a man
+whose sense of the relation of achievement to fame would not allow him
+to admit to himself that he deserved the distinction, and whose sense
+of humor could not but be strongly excited at the thought of
+deification by so unusual a process. It might be pleasant to consider
+that the Bibliotaph cared so much for one's letters as to wish not to
+destroy them, but it was awful to think of those letters as bound and
+annotated. This was to get a taste of posthumous fame before
+posthumous fame was due. The Bibliotaph added a new terror to life,
+for he compelled one to live up to one's scrap-book. He reversed the
+old Pagan formula, which was to the effect that 'So-and-So died and
+was made a god.' According to the Bibliotaph's prophetic method, a man
+was made a god first and allowed to die at his leisure afterward. Not
+every one of that little company which his wisdom and love have marked
+for great reputation will be able to achieve it. They are unanimously
+grateful that he cared enough for them to wish to drag their humble
+gifts into the broad light of publicity. But their gratitude is
+tempered by the thought that perhaps he was only elaborately humorous
+at their expense.
+
+The Bibliotaph's intellectual processes were so vigorous and his
+pleasure in mental activity for its own sake was so intense that he
+was quite capable of deciding after a topic of discussion had been
+introduced which side he would take. And this with a splendid disdain
+of the merits of the cause which he espoused. I remember that he once
+set out to maintain the thesis that a certain gentleman, as notable
+for his virtues as he was conspicuous for lack of beauty, was
+essentially a handsome man. The person who initiated the discussion by
+observing that 'Mr. Blank was unquestionably a plain man' expected
+from the Bibliotaph (if he expected any remark whatever) nothing
+beyond a Platonic 'That I do most firmly believe.' He was not a little
+astonished when the great book-collector began an elaborate and
+exhaustive defense of the gentleman whose claims to beauty had been
+questioned. At first it was dialogue, and the opponent had his share
+of talk; but when in an unlucky moment he hinted that such energy
+could only be the result of consciousness on the Bibliotaph's part
+that he was in a measure pleading his own cause, the dialogue changed
+to monologue. For the Bibliotaph girded up his loins and proceeded to
+smite his opponent hip and thigh. All in good humor, to be sure, and
+laughter reigned, but it was tremendous and it was logically
+convincing. It was clearly not safe to have a reputation for good
+looks while the Bibliotaph was in this temper. All the gentlemen were
+in terror lest something about their countenances might be construed
+as beauty, and men with good complexions longed for newspapers behind
+which to hide their disgrace.
+
+As for the disputant who had stirred up the monster, his situation was
+as unenviable as it was comic to the bystanders. He had never before
+dropped a stone into the great geyser. He was therefore unprepared for
+the result. One likened him to an unprotected traveler in a heavy
+rain-storm. For the Bibliotaph's unpremeditated speech was a very
+cloud-burst of eloquence. The unhappy gentleman looked despairingly in
+every direction as if beseeching us for the loan of a word-proof
+umbrella. There was none to be had. We who had known a like experience
+were not sorry to stand under cover and watch a fellow mortal undergo
+this verbal drenching. The situation recalled one described by
+Lockhart when a guest differed on a point of scholarship with the
+great Coleridge. Coleridge began to 'exert himself.' He burst into a
+steady stream of talk which broadened and deepened as the moments
+fled. When finally it ceased the bewildered auditor pulled himself
+together and exclaimed, 'Zounds, I was never so _be-thumped_ with
+words in my life!'
+
+People who had opportunity of observing the Bibliotaph were tempted to
+speculate on what he might have become if he had not chosen to be just
+what he was. His versatility led them to declare for this, that, and
+the other profession, largely in accordance with their own personal
+preferences. Lawyers were sure that he should have been an advocate;
+ministers that he would have done well to yield to the 'call' he had
+in his youth; teachers were positive that he would have made an
+inspiring teacher. No one, so far as I know, ever told him that in
+becoming a book-collector he had deprived the world of a great
+musician; for he was like Charles Lamb in that he was sentimentally
+inclined to harmony but organically incapable of a tune.
+
+Yet he was so broad-minded that it was not possible for him to hold
+even a neutral attitude in the presence of anything in which other
+people delighted. I have known him to sit through a long and heavy
+organ recital, not in a resigned manner but actively attentive,
+clearly determined that if the minutest portion of his soul was
+sensitive to the fugues of J. S. Bach he would allow that portion to
+bask in the sunshine of an unwonted experience. So that from one point
+of view he was the incarnation of tolerance as he certainly was the
+incarnation of good-humor and generosity. He envied no man his gifts
+from Nature or Fortune. He was not only glad to let live, but
+painstakingly energetic in making the living of people a pleasure to
+them, and he received with amused placidity adverse comments upon
+himself.
+
+Words which have been used to describe a famous man of this century I
+will venture to apply in part to the Bibliotaph. 'He was a kind of
+gigantic and Olympian school-boy, ... loving-hearted, bountiful,
+wholesome and sterling to the heart's core.'
+
+
+
+
+LAST WORDS ON THE BIBLIOTAPH
+
+
+The Bibliotaph's major passion was for collecting books; but he had a
+minor passion, the bare mention of which caused people to lift their
+eyebrows suspiciously. He was a shameless, a persistent, and a
+successful hunter of autographs. His desire was for the signatures of
+living men of letters, though an occasional dead author would be
+allowed a place in the collection, provided he had not been dead too
+long. As a rule, however, the Bibliotaph coveted the 'hand of write'
+of the man who was now more or less conspicuously in the public eye.
+This autograph must be written in a representative work of the author
+in question. The Bibliotaph would not have crossed the street to
+secure a line from Ben Jonson's pen, but he mourned because the
+autograph of the Rev. C. L. Dodgson was not forthcoming, nor likely to
+be. His conception of happiness was this: to own a copy of the first
+edition of _Alice in Wonderland_, upon the fly-leaf of which Lewis
+Carroll had written his name, together with the statement that he had
+done so at the Bibliotaph's request, and because that eminent
+collector could not be made happy in any other Way.
+
+The Bibliotaph liked the autograph of the modern man of letters
+because it _was_ modern, and because there was a reasonable hope of
+its being genuine. He loved genuineness. Everything about himself was
+exactly what it pretended to be. From his soul to his clothing he was
+honest. And his love for the genuine was only surpassed in degree by
+his contempt for the spurious. I remember that some one gave him a bit
+of silverware, a toilet article, perhaps, which he next day threw out
+of a car window, because he had discovered that it was not sterling.
+He scouted the suggestion that possibly the giver may not have known.
+Such ignorance was inexcusable, he said. 'The likelier interpretation
+was that the gift was symbolical of the giver.' The act seemed brutal,
+and the comment thereon even more so. But to realize the atmosphere,
+the setting of the incident, one must imagine the Bibliotaph's round
+and comfortable figure, his humorous look, and the air of genial
+placidity with which he would do and say a thing like this. It was as
+impossible to be angry with him in behalf of the unfortunate giver of
+cheap silver as to take offense at a tree or mountain. And it was
+useless to argue the matter--nay it was folly, for he would
+immediately become polysyllabic and talk one down.
+
+It was this desire for genuine things which made him entirely
+suspicious of autographs which had been bought and sold. He had no
+faith in them, and he would weaken your faith, supposing you were a
+collector of such things. Offer him an autograph of our first
+president and he would reply, 'I don't believe that it's genuine; and
+if it were I shouldn't care for it; I never had the honor of General
+Washington's acquaintance.' The inference was that one could have a
+personal relation with a living great man, and the chances were
+largely in favor of getting an autograph that was not an object of
+suspicion.
+
+Few collectors in this line have been as happy as the Bibliotaph. The
+problem was easily mastered with respect to the majority of authors.
+As a rule an author is not unwilling to give such additional pleasure
+to a reader of his book as may consist in writing his name in the
+reader's copy. It is conceivable that the author may be bored by too
+many requests of this nature, but he might be bored to an even greater
+degree if no one cared enough for him to ask for his autograph. Some
+writers resisted a little, and it was beautiful to see the Bibliotaph
+bring them to terms. He was a highwayman of the Tom Faggus type, just
+so adroit, and courteous, and daring. He was perhaps at his best in
+cases where he had actually to hold up his victim; one may imagine the
+scene,--the author resisting, the Bibliotaph determined and having the
+masterful air of an expert who had handled just such cases before.
+
+A humble satellite who disapproved of these proceedings read aloud to
+the Bibliotaph that scorching little essay entitled _Involuntary
+Bailees_, written by perhaps the wittiest living English essayist. An
+involuntary bailee--as the essayist explains--is a person to whom
+people (generally unknown to him) send things which he does not wish
+to receive, but which _they_ are anxious to have returned. If a man
+insists upon lending you a book, you become an involuntary bailee. You
+don't wish to read the book, but you have it in your possession. It
+has come to you by post, let us suppose, 'and to pack it up and send
+it back again requires a piece of string, energy, brown paper, and
+stamps enough to defray the postage.' And it is a question whether a
+casual acquaintance 'has any right thus to make demands on a man's
+energy, money, time, brown paper, string, and other capital and
+commodities.' There are other ways of making a man an involuntary
+bailee. You may ask him to pass judgment on your poetry, or to use his
+influence to get your tragedy produced, or to do any one of a half
+hundred things which he doesn't want to do and which you have no
+business to ask him to do. The essayist makes no mention of the
+particular form of sin which the Bibliotaph practiced, but he would
+probably admit that malediction was the only proper treatment for the
+idler who bothers respectable authors by asking them to write their
+names in his copies of their books. For to what greater extent could
+one trespass upon an author's patience, energy, brown paper, string,
+and commodities generally? It was amusing to watch the Bibliotaph as
+he listened to this arraignment of his favorite pursuit. The writer of
+the essay admits that there may be extenuating circumstances. If the
+autograph collector comes bearing gifts one may smile upon his suit.
+If for example he accompanies his request for an autograph with
+'several brace of grouse, or a salmon of noble proportions, or rare
+old books bound by Derome, or a service of Worcester china with the
+square mark,' he may hope for success. The essayist opines that such
+gifts 'will not be returned by a celebrity who respects himself.'
+'They bless him who gives and him who takes much more than tons of
+manuscript poetry, and thousands of entreaties for an autograph.'
+
+A superficial examination of the Bibliotaph's collection revealed the
+fact that he had either used necromancy or given many gifts. The
+reader may imagine some such conversation between the great collector
+and one of his dazzled visitors:--
+
+'Pray, how did you come by this?'
+
+'His lordship has always been very kind in such matters.'
+
+'And where did you get this?'
+
+'I am greatly indebted to the Prime Minister for his complaisance.'
+
+'But this poet is said to abhor Americans.'
+
+'You see that his antipathy has not prevented his writing a stanza in
+my copy of his most notable volume.'
+
+'And this?'
+
+'I have at divers times contributed the sum of five dollars to divers
+Fresh Air funds.'
+
+The Bibliotaph could not be convinced that his sin of autograph
+collecting was not venial. When authors denied his requests, on the
+ground that they were intrusions, he was inclined to believe that
+selfishness lay at the basis of their motives. Some men are quite
+willing to accept great fame, but they resent being obliged to pay the
+penalties. They wish to sit in the fierce light which beats on an
+intellectual throne, but they are indignant when the passers-by stop
+to stare at them. They imagine that they can successfully combine the
+glory of honorable publicity with the perfect retirement enjoyed only
+by aspiring mediocrity. The Bibliotaph believed that he was a
+missionary to these people. He awakened in them a sense of their
+obligations toward their admirers. The principle involved is akin to
+that enunciated by a certain American philosopher, who held that it is
+an act of generosity to borrow of a man once in a while; it gives that
+man a lively interest in the possible success or possible failure of
+your undertaking.
+
+He levied autographic toll on young writers. For mature men of letters
+with established reputations he would do extraordinary and difficult
+services. A famous Englishman, not a novelist by profession, albeit he
+wrote one of the most successful novels of his day, earnestly desired
+to own if possible a complete set of all the American pirated editions
+of his book. The Bibliotaph set himself to this task, and collected
+energetically for two years. The undertaking was considerable, for
+many of the pirated editions were in pamphlet, and dating from twenty
+years back. It was almost impossible to get the earliest in a spotless
+condition. Quantities of trash had to be overhauled, and weeks might
+elapse before a perfect copy of a given edition would come to light.
+Books are dirty, but pamphlets are dirtier. The Bibliotaph declared
+that had he rendered an itemized bill for services in this matter, the
+largest item would have been for Turkish baths.
+
+Here was a case in which the collector paid well for the privilege of
+having a signed copy of a well-loved author's novel. He begrudged no
+portion of his time or expenditure. If it pleased the great Englishman
+to have upon his shelves, in compact array and in spotless condition,
+these proofs of what he _didn't_ earn by the publication of his books
+in America, well and good. The Bibliotaph was delighted that so modest
+a service on his part could give so apparently great a pleasure. The
+Englishman must have had the collecting instinct, and he must have
+been philosophical, since he could contemplate with equanimity these
+illegitimate volumes.
+
+The conclusion of the story is this: The work of collecting the
+reprints was finished. The last installment reached the famous
+Englishman during an illness which subsequently proved fatal. They
+were spread upon the coverlid of the bed, and the invalid took a great
+and humorous satisfaction in looking them over. Said the Bibliotaph,
+recounting the incident in his succinct way, 'They reached him on his
+death-bed,--and made him willing to go.'
+
+The Bibliotaph was true to the traditions of the book-collecting
+brotherhood, in that he read but little. His knowledge of the world
+was fresh from life, not 'strained through books,' as Johnson said of
+a certain Irish painter whom he knew at Birmingham. But the Bibliotaph
+was a mighty devourer of book-catalogues. He got a more complete
+satisfaction, I used to think, in reading a catalogue than in reading
+any other kind of literature. To see him unwrapping the packages which
+his English mail had brought was to see a happy man. For in addition
+to books by post, there would be bundles of sale-catalogues. Then
+might you behold his eyes sparkle as he spread out the tempting lists;
+the humorous lines about the corners of his mouth deepened, and he
+would take on what a little girl who watched him called his 'pussy-cat
+look.' Then with an indelible pencil in his huge and pudgy left fist
+(for the Bibliotaph was a Benjaminite), he would go through the pages,
+checking off the items of interest, rolling with delight in his chair
+as he exclaimed from time to time, 'Good books! Such good books!' Say
+to him that you yourself liked to read a catalogue, and his response
+was pretty sure to be, 'Pleasant, isn't it?' This was expressive of a
+high state of happiness, and was an allusion. For the Bibliotaph was
+once with a newly-married man, and they two met another man, who, as
+the conversation proceeded, disclosed the fact that he also had but
+recently been wed. Whereupon the first bridegroom, marveling that
+there could be another in the world so exalted as himself, exclaimed
+with sympathetic delight, 'And _you_, too, are married.' 'Yes,' said
+the second, 'pleasant, isn't it?' with much the same air that he would
+have said, 'Nice afternoon.' This was one of the incidents which made
+the Bibliotaph skeptical about marriage. But he adopted the phrase as
+a useful one with which to express the state of highest mental and
+spiritual exaltation.
+
+People wondered at the extent of his knowledge of books. It was very
+great, but it was not incredible. If a man cannot touch pitch without
+being defiled, still less can he handle books without acquiring
+bibliographical information. I am not sure that the Bibliotaph ever
+heard of that professor of history who used to urge his pupils to
+handle books, even when they could not get time to read them. 'Go to
+the library, take down the volumes, turn over the leaves, read the
+title-pages and the tables of contents; information will stick to
+you'--this was the professor's advice. Information acquired in this
+way may not be profound, but so far as it goes it is definite and
+useful. For the collector it is indispensable. In this way the
+Bibliotaph had amassed his seemingly phenomenal knowledge of books. He
+had handled thousands and tens of thousands of volumes, and he never
+relinquished his hold upon a book until he had 'placed' it,--until he
+knew just what its rank was in the hierarchy of desirability.
+
+Between a diligent reading of catalogues and an equally diligent
+rummaging among the collections of third and fourth rate old
+book-shops, the Bibliotaph had his reward. He undoubtedly bought a
+deal of trash, but he also lighted upon nuggets. For example, in
+Leask's Life of Boswell is an account of that curious little romance
+entitled _Dorando_. This so-called _Spanish Tale_, printed for J.
+Wilkie at the Bible in St. Paul's Church-Yard, was the work of James
+Boswell. It was published anonymously in 1767, and he who would might
+then have bought it for 'one shilling.' It was to be 'sold also by J.
+Dodsley in Pall Mall, T. Davies in Russell-Street, Covent Garden, and
+by the Book-sellers of Scotland.' This T. Davies was the very man who
+introduced Boswell to Johnson. He was an actor as well as a
+bookseller. _Dorando_ was a story with a key. Under the names of Don
+Stocaccio, Don Tipponi, and Don Rodomontado real people were
+described, and the facts of the 'famous Douglas cause' were presented
+to the public. The little volume was suppressed in so far as that was
+possible. It is rare, so rare that Boswell's latest biographer speaks
+of it as the 'forlorn hope of the book-hunter,' though he doubts not
+that copies of it are lurking in some private collection. One copy at
+least is lurking in the Bibliotaph's library. He bought it, not for a
+song to be sure, but very reasonably. The Bibliotaph declares that
+this book is good for but one thing,--to shake in the faces of Boswell
+collectors who haven't it.
+
+The Bibliotaph had many literary heroes. Conspicuous among them were
+Professor Richard Porson and Benjamin Jowett, the late master of
+Balliol. The Bibliotaph collected everything that related to these two
+men, all the books with which they had had anything to do, every
+newspaper clipping and magazine article which threw light upon their
+manners, habits, modes of thought. He especially loved to tell
+anecdotes of Porson. He knew many. He had an interleaved copy of J.
+Selby Watson's Life of Porson into which were copied a multitude of
+facts not to be found in that amusing biography. The Bibliotaph used
+to say that he would rather have known Porson than any other man of
+his time. He used to quote this as one of the best illustrations of
+Porson's wit, and one of the finest examples of the retort satiric to
+be found in any language. One of Porson's works was assailed by
+Wakefield and by Hermann, scholars to be sure, but scholars whose
+scholarship Porson held in contempt. Being told of their attack Porson
+only said that 'whatever he wrote in the future should be written in
+such a way that those fellows wouldn't be able to reach it with their
+fore-paws if they stood on their hind-legs to get at it!'
+
+The Bibliotaph gave such an air of contemporaneity to his stories of
+the great Greek professor that it seemed at times as if they were the
+relations of one who had actually known Porson. So vividly did he
+portray the marvels of that compound of thirst and scholarship that no
+one had the heart to laugh when, after one of his narrations, a
+gentleman asked the Bibliotaph if he himself had studied under Porson.
+
+'Not _under_ him but _with_ him,' said the Bibliotaph. 'He was my
+coeval. Porson, Richard Bentley, Joseph Scaliger, and I were all
+students together.'
+
+Speaking of Jowett the Bibliotaph once said that it was wonderful to
+note how culture failed to counteract in an Englishman that
+disposition to heave stones at an American. Jowett, with his
+remarkable breadth of mind and temper, was quite capable of observing,
+with respect to a certain book, that it was American, 'yet in perfect
+taste.' 'This,' said the Bibliotaph, 'is as if one were to say, "The
+guests were Americans, but no one expectorated on the carpet."' The
+Bibliotaph thought that there was not so much reason for this
+attitude. The sins of Englishmen and Americans were identical, he
+believed, but the forms of their expression were different. 'Our sin
+is a voluble boastfulness; theirs is an irritating, unrestrainable,
+all-but-constantly manifested, satisfied self-consciousness. The same
+results are reached by different avenues. We praise ourselves; they
+belittle others.' Then he added with a smile: 'Thus even in these
+latter days are the Scriptures exemplified; the same spirit with
+varying manifestations.'
+
+He was once commenting upon Jowett's classification of humorists.
+Jowett divided humorists 'into three categories or classes; those who
+are not worth reading at all; those who are worth reading once, but
+once only; and those who are worth reading again and again and for
+ever.' This remark was made to Swinburne, who quotes it in his all too
+brief _Recollections of Professor Jowett_. Swinburne says that the
+starting-point of their discussion was the _Biglow Papers_, which
+'famous and admirable work of American humour' Jowett placed in the
+second class. Swinburne himself thought that the _Biglow Papers_ was
+too good for the second class and not quite good enough for the third.
+'I would suggest that a fourth might be provided, to include such
+examples as are worth, let us say, two or three readings in a
+life-time.'
+
+The Bibliotaph made a variety of comments on this, but I remember only
+the following; it is a reason for not including the _Biglow Papers_ in
+Jowett's third and crowning class. 'Humor to be popular permanently
+must be general rather than local, and have to do with a phase of
+character rather than a fact of history; that is, it must deal in a
+great way with what is always interesting to all men. Humor that does
+not meet this requirement is not likely, when its novelty has worn
+off, to be read even occasionally save by those who enjoy it as an
+intellectual performance or who are making a critical study of its
+author.' The observation, if not profound, is at least sensible, and
+it illustrates very well the Bibliotaph's love of alliteration and
+antithesis. But it is easier to remember and to report his caustic and
+humorous remarks.
+
+The Country Squire had a card-catalogue of the books in his library,
+and he delighted to make therein entries of his past and his new
+purchases. But it was not always possible to find upon the shelves
+books that were mentioned in the catalogue. The Bibliotaph took
+advantage of a few instances of this sort to prod his moneyed friend.
+He would ask the Squire if he had such-and-such a book. The Squire
+would say that he had, and appeal to his catalogue in proof of it.
+Then would follow a search for the volume. If, as sometimes happened,
+no book corresponding to the entry could be found, the Bibliotaph
+would be satirical and remark:--
+
+'I'll tell you what you ought to name your catalogue.'
+
+'What?'
+
+'Great expectations!'
+
+Another time he said, 'This is not a list of your books, this is a
+list of the things that you intend to buy;' or he would suggest that
+the Squire would do well to christen his catalogue _Vaulting
+Ambition_. Perhaps the variation might take this form. After a
+fruitless search for some book, which upon the testimony of the
+catalogue was certainly in the collection, the Bibliotaph would
+observe, 'This catalogue might not inappropriately be spoken of as the
+substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen.'
+Another time the Bibliotaph said to the Squire, calling to mind the
+well-known dictum as to the indispensableness of certain books,
+'Between what one sees on your shelves and what one reads in your
+card-catalogue one would have reason to believe that you were a
+gentleman.'
+
+Once the Bibliotaph said to me in the presence of the Squire: 'I think
+that our individual relation to books might be expressed in this way.
+You read books but you don't buy them. I buy books but I don't read
+them. The Squire neither reads them nor buys them,--only
+card-catalogues them!'
+
+To all this the Squire had a reply which was worldly, emphatic, and
+adequate, but the object of this study is not to exhibit the virtues
+of the Squire's speech, witty though it was.
+
+One of the Bibliotaph's friends began without sufficient provocation
+to write verse. The Bibliotaph thought that if the matter were taken
+promptly in hand the man could be saved. Accordingly, when next he
+gave this friend a book he wrote upon a fly-leaf: 'To a Poet who is
+nothing if not original--and who is not original!' And the injured
+rhymester exclaimed when he read the inscription: 'You deface every
+book you give me.'
+
+He could pay a compliment, as when he was dining with a married pair
+who were thought to be not yet disenchanted albeit in the tenth year
+of their married life. The lady was speaking to the Bibliotaph, but in
+the eagerness of conversation addressed him by her husband's first
+name. Whereupon he turned to the husband and said: 'Your wife implies
+that I am a repository of grace and a bundle of virtues, and calls me
+by your name.'
+
+He once sent this same lady, apropos of the return of the shirt-waist
+season, a dozen neckties. In the box was his card with these words
+penciled upon it: 'A contribution to the man-made dress of a God-made
+woman.'
+
+The Squire had great skill in imitating the cries of various domestic
+fowl, as well as dogs, cats, and children. Once, in a moment of social
+relaxation, he was giving an exhibition of his power to the vast
+amusement of his guests. When he had finished, the Bibliotaph said:
+'The theory of Henry Ward Beecher that every man has something of the
+animal in him is superabundantly exemplified in _your_ case. You, sir,
+have got the whole Ark.'
+
+There was a quaint humor in his most commonplace remarks. Of all the
+fruits of the earth he loved most a watermelon. And when a
+fellow-traveler remarked, 'That watermelon which we had at dinner was
+bad,' the Bibliotaph instantly replied: 'There is no such thing as a
+_bad_ watermelon. There are watermelons, and _better_ watermelons.'
+
+I expressed astonishment on learning that he stood six feet in his
+shoes. He replied: 'People are so preoccupied in the consideration of
+my thickness that they don't have time to observe my height.'
+
+Again, when he was walking through a private park which contained
+numerous monstrosities in the shape of painted metal deer on
+pedestals, pursued (also on pedestals) by hunters and dogs, the
+Bibliotaph pointed to one of the dogs and said, 'Cave cast-iron
+canem!'
+
+He once accompanied a party of friends and acquaintances to the summit
+of Mt. Tom. The ascent is made in these days by a very remarkable
+inclined plane. After looking at the extensive and exquisite view, the
+Bibliotaph fell to examining his return coupon, which read, 'Good for
+one Trip Down.' Then he said: 'Let us hope that in a post-terrestrial
+experience our tickets will not read in this way.'
+
+He was once ascending in the unusually commodious and luxurious
+elevator of a new ten-story hotel and remarked to his companion: 'If
+we can't be carried to the skies on flowery beds of ease, we can at
+least start in that direction under not dissimilar conditions.' He
+also said that the advantage of stopping at this particular hotel was
+that you were able to get as far as possible from the city in which it
+was located.
+
+He studied the dictionary with great diligence and was unusually
+accurate in his pronunciation. He took an amused satisfaction in
+pronouncing exactly certain words which in common talk had shifted
+phonetically from their moorings. This led a gentleman who was
+intimate with the Bibliotaph to say to him, 'Why, if I were to
+pronounce that word among my kinsfolk as you do they'd think I was
+crazy.' 'What you mean,' said the Bibliotaph, 'is, that they would
+look upon it in the light of supererogatory supplementary evidence.'
+
+He himself indulged overmuch in alliteration, but it was with humorous
+intent; and critics forgave it in him when they would have reprehended
+it in another. He had no notion that it was fine. Taken, however, in
+connection with his emphatic manner and sonorous voice he produced a
+decided and original effect. Meeting the Squire's wife after a
+considerable interval, I asked whether her husband had been behaving
+well. She replied 'As usual.' Whereupon the Bibliotaph said, 'You mean
+that his conduct in these days is characterized by a plethora of
+intention and a paucity of performance.'
+
+He objected to enlarging the boundaries of words until they stood for
+too many things. Let a word be kept so far as was reasonable to its
+earlier and authorized meaning. Speaking of the word 'symposium,'
+which has been stretched to mean a collection of short articles on a
+given subject, the Bibliotaph said that he could fancy a honey-bee
+which had been feasting on pumice until it was unable to make the line
+characteristic of its kind, explaining to its queen that it had been
+to a symposium; but that he doubted if we ought to allow any other
+meaning.
+
+The Bibliotaph got much amusement from what he insisted were the
+ill-concealed anxieties of his friend the actor on the subject of a
+future state. 'He has acquired,' said the Bibliotaph, 'both a pathetic
+and a prophetic interest in that place which begins as heaven does,
+but stops off monosyllabically.'
+
+The two men were one day discussing the question of the permanency of
+fame, how ephemeral for example was that reputation which depended
+upon the living presence of the artist to make good its claim; how an
+actor, an orator, a singer, was bound to enjoy his glory while it
+lasted, since at the instant of his death all tangible evidence of
+greatness disappeared; he could not be proven great to one who had
+never seen and heard him. Having reached this point in his
+philosophizing the Bibliotaph's player-friend became sentimental and
+quoted a great comedian to the effect that 'a dead actor was a mighty
+useless thing.' 'Certainly,' said the Bibliotaph, 'having exhausted
+the life that now is, and having no hope of the life that is to come.'
+
+Sometimes it pleased the Bibliotaph to maintain that his friend of the
+footlights would be in the future state a mere homeless wanderer,
+having neither positive satisfaction nor positive discomfort. For the
+actor was wont to insist that even if there were an orthodox heaven
+its moral opposite were the desirable locality; all the clever and
+interesting fellows would be down below. 'Except yourself,' said the
+Bibliotaph. 'You, sir, will be eliminated by your own reasoning. You
+will be denied heaven because you are not good, and hell because you
+are not great.'
+
+On the whole it pleased the Bibliotaph to maintain that his friend's
+course was downward, and that the sooner he reconciled himself to his
+undoubted fate the better. 'Why speculate upon it?' he said paternally
+to the actor, 'your prospective comparisons will one day yield to
+reminiscent contrasts.'
+
+The actor was convinced that the Bibliotaph's own past life needed
+looking into, and he declared that when he got a chance he was going
+to examine the great records. To which the Bibliotaph promptly
+responded: 'The books of the recording angel will undoubtedly be open
+to your inspection if you can get an hour off to come up. The
+probability is that you will be overworked.'
+
+The Bibliotaph never lost an opportunity for teasing. He arrived late
+one evening at the house of a friend where he was always heartily
+welcome, and before answering the chorus of greetings, proceeded to
+kiss the lady of the mansion, a queenly and handsome woman. Being
+asked why he--who was a large man and very shy with respect to women,
+as large men always are--should have done this thing, he answered that
+the kiss had been sent by a common friend and that he had delivered it
+at once, 'for if there was anything he prided himself upon it was a
+courageous discharge of an unpleasant duty.'
+
+Once when he had been narrating this incident he was asked what reply
+the lady had made to so uncourteous a speech. 'I don't remember,' said
+the Bibliotaph, 'it was long ago; but my opinion is that she would
+have been justified in denominating me by a monosyllable beginning
+with the initial letter of the alphabet and followed by successive
+sibilants.'
+
+One of the Bibliotaph's fellow book-hunters owned a chair said to have
+been given by Sir Edwin Landseer to Sir Walter Scott. The chair was
+interesting to behold, but the Bibliotaph after attempting to sit in
+it immediately got up and declared that it was not a genuine relic:
+'Sir Edwin had reason to be grateful to rather than indignant at Sir
+Walter Scott.'
+
+He said of a highly critical person that if that man were to become a
+minister he would probably announce as the subject of his first
+sermon: 'The conditions that God must meet in order to be acceptable
+to me.' He said of a poor orator who had copyrighted one of his most
+indifferent speeches, that the man 'positively suffered from an excess
+of caution.' He remarked once that the great trouble with a certain
+lady was 'she labored under the delusion that she enjoyed occasional
+seasons of sanity.'
+
+The _nil admirari_ attitude was one which he never affected, and he
+had a contempt for men who denied to the great in literature and art
+that praise which was their due. This led him to say apropos of an
+obscure critic who had assailed one of the poetical masters: 'When the
+Lord makes a man a fool he injures him; but when He so constitutes him
+that the man is never happy unless he is making that fact public, He
+insults him.'
+
+He enjoyed speculating on the subject of marriage, especially in the
+presence of those friends who unlike himself knew something about it
+empirically. He delighted to tell his lady acquaintances that their
+husbands would undoubtedly marry a second time if they had the chance.
+It was inevitable. A man whose experience has been fortunate is bound
+to marry again, because he is like the man who broke the bank at Monte
+Carlo. A man who has been unhappily married marries again because like
+an unfortunate gamester he has reached the time when his luck has got
+to change. The Bibliotaph then added with a smile: 'I have the idea
+that many men who marry a second time do in effect what is often done
+by unsuccessful gamblers at Monte Carlo; they go out and commit
+suicide.'
+
+The Bibliotaph played but few games. There was one, however, in which
+he was skillful. I blush to speak of it in these days of much muscular
+activity. What have golfers, and tennis-players, and makers of century
+runs to do with croquet? Yet there was a time when croquet was spoken
+of as 'the coming game;' and had not Clintock's friend Jennings
+written an epic poem upon it in twelve books, which poem he offered to
+lend to a certain brilliant young lady? But Gwendolen despised boys
+and cared even less for their poetry than for themselves.
+
+At the house of the Country Squire the Bibliotaph was able to gratify
+his passion for croquet, and verily he was a master. He made a
+grotesque figure upon the court, with his big frame which must stoop
+mightily to take account of balls and short-handled mallets, with his
+agile manner, his uncovered head shaggy with its barbaric profusion of
+hair (whereby some one was led to nickname him Bibliotaph Indetonsus),
+with the scanty black alpaca coat in which he invariably played--a
+coat so short in the sleeves and so brief in the skirt that the figure
+cut by the wearer might almost have passed for that of Mynheer Ten
+Broek of many-trowsered memory. But it was vastly more amusing to
+watch him than to play with him. He had a devil 'most undoubted.' Only
+with the help of black art and by mortgaging one's soul would it have
+been possible to accomplish some of the things which he accomplished.
+For the materials of croquet are so imperfect at best that chance is
+an influential element. I've seen tennis-players in the intervals of
+_their_ game watch the Bibliotaph with that superior smile suggestive
+of contempt for the puerility of his favorite sport. They might even
+condescend to take a mallet for a while to amuse _him_; but presently
+discomfited they would retire to a game less capricious than croquet
+and one in which there was reasonable hope that a given cause would
+produce its wonted effect.
+
+The Bibliotaph played strictly for the purpose of winning, and took
+savage joy in his conquests. In playing with him one had to do two
+men's work; one must play, and then one must summon such philosophy as
+one might to suffer continuous defeat, and such wit as one possessed
+to beat back a steady onslaught of daring and witty criticisms. 'I
+play like a fool,' said a despairing opponent after fruitless effort
+to win a just share of the games. 'We all have our moments of
+unconsciousness,' purred the Bibliotaph blandly in response. This same
+despairing opponent, who was an expert in everything he played, said
+that there was but one solace after croquet with the Bibliotaph; he
+would go home and read Hazlitt's essay on the Indian Jugglers.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Here ends the account of the Bibliotaph. From these inadequate notes
+it is possible to get some little idea of his habits and conversation.
+The library is said to be still growing. Packages of books come
+mysteriously from the corners of the earth and make their way to that
+remote and almost inaccessible village where the great collector hides
+his treasures. No one has ever penetrated that region, and no one, so
+far as I am aware, has ever seen the treasures. The books lie
+entombed, as it were, awaiting such day of resurrection as their owner
+shall appoint them. The day is likely to be long delayed. Of the
+collector's whereabouts now no one of his friends dares to speak
+positively; for at the time when knowledge of him was most exact THE
+BIBLIOTAPH was like a newly-discovered comet,--his course was
+problematical.
+
+
+
+
+THOMAS HARDY
+
+
+I
+
+'The reason why so few good books are written is that so few people
+that can write know anything.' So said a man who, during a busy
+career, found time to add several fine volumes to the scanty number of
+good books. And in a vivacious paragraph which follows this initial
+sentence he humorously anathematizes the literary life. He shows
+convincingly that 'secluded habits do not tend to eloquence.' He says
+that the 'indifferent apathy' so common among studious persons is by
+no means favorable to liveliness of narration. He proves that men who
+will not live cannot write; that people who shut themselves up in
+libraries have dry brains. He avows his confidence in the 'original
+way of writing books,' the way of the first author, who must have
+looked at things for himself, 'since there were no books for him to
+copy from;' and he challenges the reader to prove that this original
+way is not the best way. 'Where,' he asks, 'are the amusing books from
+voracious students and habitual writers?'
+
+This startling arraignment of authors has been made by other men than
+Walter Bagehot. Hazlitt in his essay on the 'Ignorance of the Learned'
+teaches much the same doctrine. Its general truth is indisputable,
+though Bagehot himself makes exception in favor of Sir Walter Scott.
+But the two famous critics are united in their conviction that learned
+people are generally dull, and that books which are the work of
+habitual writers are not amusing.
+
+There are as a matter of course more exceptions than one. Thomas Hardy
+is a distinguished exception. Thomas Hardy is an 'habitual writer,'
+but he is always amusing. The following paragraphs are intended to
+emphasize certain causes of this quality in his work, the quality by
+virtue of which he chains the attention and proves himself the most
+readable novelist now living. That he does attract and hold is clear
+to any one who has tried no more than a half-dozen pages from one of
+his best stories. He has the fatal habit of being interesting,--fatal
+because it robs you who read him of time which you might else have
+devoted to 'improving' literature, such as history, political economy,
+or light science. He destroys your peace of mind by compelling your
+sympathies in behalf of people who never existed. He undermines your
+will power and makes you his slave. You declare that you will read but
+one more chapter and you weakly consent to make it two chapters. As a
+special indulgence you spoil a working day in order to learn about the
+_Return of the Native_, perhaps agreeing with a supposititious 'better
+self' that you will waste no more time on novels for the next six
+months. But you are of ascetic fibre indeed if you do not follow up
+the book with a reading of _The Woodlanders_ and _The Mayor of
+Casterbridge_.
+
+There is a reason for this. If the practiced writer often fails to
+make a good book because he knows nothing, Mr. Hardy must succeed in
+large part because he knows so much. The more one reads him the more
+is one impressed with the extent of his knowledge. He has an intimate
+acquaintance with an immense number of interesting things.
+
+He knows men and women--if not all sorts and all conditions, at least
+a great many varieties of the human animal. Moreover, his men are men
+and his women are women. He does not use them as figures to accentuate
+a landscape, or as ventriloquist's puppets to draw away attention from
+the fact that he himself is doing all the talking. His people have
+individuality, power of speech, power of motion. He does not tell you
+that such a one is clever or witty; the character which he has created
+does that for himself by doing clever things and making witty remarks.
+In an excellent story by a celebrated modern master there is a young
+lady who is declared to be clever and brilliant. Out of forty or fifty
+observations which she makes, the most extraordinary concerns her
+father; she says, 'Isn't dear papa delightful?' At another time she
+inquires whether another gentleman is not also delightful. Hardy's
+resources are not so meagre as this. When his people talk we
+listen,--we do not endure.
+
+He knows other things besides men and women. He knows the soil, the
+trees, the sky, the sunsets, the infinite variations of the landscape
+under cloud and sunshine. He knows horses, sheep, cows, dogs, cats. He
+understands the interpretation of sounds,--a detail which few
+novelists comprehend or treat with accuracy; the pages of his books
+ring with the noises of house, street, and country. Moreover there is
+nothing conventional in his transcript of facts. There is no evidence
+that he has been in the least degree influenced by other men's minds.
+He takes the raw stuff of which novels are made and moulds it as he
+will. He has an absolutely fresh eye, as painters sometimes say. He
+looks on life as if he were the first literary man, 'and none had ever
+lived before him.' Paraphrasing Ruskin, one may say of Hardy that in
+place of studying the old masters he has studied what the old masters
+studied. But his point of view is his own. His pages are not
+reminiscent of other pages. He never makes you think of something you
+have read, but invariably of something you have seen or would like to
+see. He is an original writer, which means that he takes his material
+at first hand and eschews documents. There is considerable evidence
+that he has read books, but there is no reason for supposing that
+books have damaged him.
+
+Dr. Farmer proved that Shakespeare had no 'learning.' One might
+perhaps demonstrate that Thomas Hardy is equally fortunate. In that
+case he and Shakespeare may felicitate one another. Though when we
+remember that in our day it is hardly possible to avoid a tincture of
+scholarship, we may be doing the fairer thing by these two men if we
+say that the one had small Greek and the other has adroitly concealed
+the measure of Greek, whether great or small, which is in his
+possession. To put the matter in another form, though Hardy may have
+drunk in large quantity 'the spirit breathed from dead men to their
+kind,' he has not allowed his potations to intoxicate him.
+
+This paragraph is not likely to be misinterpreted unless by some
+honest soul who has yet to learn that 'literature is not sworn
+testimony.' Therefore it may be well to add that Mr. Hardy undoubtedly
+owns a collection of books, and has upon his shelves dictionaries and
+encyclopedias, together with a decent representation of those works
+which people call 'standard.' But it is of importance to remember
+this: That while he may be a well-read man, as the phrase goes, he is
+not and never has been of that class which Emerson describes with pale
+sarcasm as 'meek young men in libraries.' It is clear that Hardy has
+not 'weakened his eyesight over books,' and it is equally clear that
+he has 'sharpened his eyesight on men and women.' Let us consider a
+few of his virtues.
+
+
+II
+
+In the first place he tells a good story. No extravagant praise is due
+him for this; it is his business, his trade. He ought to do it, and
+therefore he does it. The 'first morality' of a novelist is to be able
+to tell a story, as the first morality of a painter is to be able to
+handle his brush skillfully and make it do his brain's intending.
+After all, telling stories in an admirable fashion is rather a
+familiar accomplishment nowadays. Many men, many women are able to
+make stories of considerable ingenuity as to plot, and of thrilling
+interest in the unrolling of a scheme of events. Numberless writers
+are shrewd and clever in constructing their 'fable,' but they are
+unable to do much beyond this. Walter Besant writes good stories;
+Robert Buchanan writes good stories; Grant Allen and David Christie
+Murray are acceptable to many readers. But unless I mistake greatly
+and do these men an injustice I should be sorry to do them, their
+ability ceases just at this point. They tell good stories and do
+nothing else. They write books and do not make literature. They are
+authors by their own will and not by grace of God. It may be said of
+them as Augustine Birrell said of Professor Freeman and the Bishop of
+Chester, that they are horny-handed sons of toil and worthy of their
+wage. But one would like to say a little more. Granting that this is
+praise, it is so faint as to be almost inaudible. If Hardy only wrote
+good stories he would be merely doing his duty, and therefore
+accounted an unprofitable servant. But he does much besides.
+
+He fulfills one great function of the literary artist, which is to
+mediate between nature and the reading public. Such a man is an eye
+specialist. Through his amiable offices people who have hitherto been
+blind are put into condition to see. Near-sighted persons have
+spectacles fitted to them--which they generally refuse to wear, not
+caring for literature which clears the mental vision.
+
+Hardy opens the eyes of the reader to the charm, the beauty, the
+mystery to be found in common life and in every-day objects. So alert
+and forceful an intelligence rarely applies its energy to fiction. The
+result is that he makes an almost hopelessly high standard. The
+exceptional man who comes after him may be a rival, but the majority
+of writing gentlemen can do little more than enviously admire. He
+seems to have established for himself such a rule as this, that he
+will write no page which shall not be interesting. He pours out the
+treasures of his observation in every chapter. He sees everything,
+feels everything, sympathizes with everything. To be sure he has an
+unusually rich field for work. In _The Mayor of Casterbridge_ is an
+account of the discovery of the remains of an old Roman soldier. One
+would expect Hardy to make something graphic of the episode. And so he
+does. You can almost see the warrior as he lies there 'in an oval
+scoop in the chalk, like a chicken in its shell; his knees drawn up to
+his chest; his spear against his arm; an urn at his knees, a jar at
+his throat, a bottle at his mouth; and mystified conjecture pouring
+down upon him from the eyes of Casterbridge street-boys and men.'
+
+The real virtue in this bit of description lies in the few words
+expressive of the mental attitude of the onlookers. And it is a nice
+distinction which Hardy makes when he says that 'imaginative
+inhabitants who would have felt an unpleasantness at the discovery of
+a comparatively modern skeleton in their gardens were quite unmoved by
+these hoary shapes. They had lived so long ago, their hopes and
+motives were so widely removed from ours, that between them and the
+living there seemed to stretch a gulf too wide for even a spirit to
+pass.'
+
+He takes note of that language which, though not articulate, is in
+common use among yeomen, dairymen, farmers, and the townsfolk of his
+little world. It is a language superimposed upon the ordinary
+language. 'To express satisfaction the Casterbridge market-man added
+to his utterance a broadening of the cheeks, a crevicing of the eyes,
+a throwing back of the shoulders.' 'If he wondered ... you knew it
+from perceiving the inside of his crimson mouth and the target-like
+circling of his eyes.' The language of deliberation expressed itself
+in the form of 'sundry attacks on the moss of adjoining walls with the
+end of his stick' or a 'change of his hat from the horizontal to the
+less so.'
+
+The novel called _The Woodlanders_ is filled with notable
+illustrations of an interest in minute things. The facts are
+introduced unobtrusively and no great emphasis is laid upon them. But
+they cling to the memory. Giles Winterbourne, a chief character in
+this story, 'had a marvelous power in making trees grow. Although he
+would seem to shovel in the earth quite carelessly there was a sort of
+sympathy between himself and the fir, oak, or beech that he was
+operating on; so that the roots took hold of the soil in a few days.'
+When any of the journeymen planted, one quarter of the trees died
+away. There is a graphic little scene where Winterbourne plants and
+Marty South holds the trees for him. 'Winterbourne's fingers were
+endowed with a gentle conjurer's touch in spreading the roots of each
+little tree, resulting in a sort of caress under which the delicate
+fibres all laid themselves out in their proper direction for growth.'
+Marty declared that the trees began to 'sigh' as soon as they were put
+upright, 'though when they are lying down they don't sigh at all.'
+Winterbourne had never noticed it. 'She erected one of the young pines
+into its hole, and held up her finger; the soft musical breathing
+instantly set in, which was not to cease night or day till the grown
+tree should be felled--probably long after the two planters had been
+felled themselves.'
+
+Later on in the story there is a description of this same Giles
+Winterbourne returning with his horses and his cider apparatus from a
+neighboring village. 'He looked and smelt like autumn's very brother,
+his face being sunburnt to wheat color, his eyes blue as corn flowers,
+his sleeves and leggings dyed with fruit stains, his hands clammy with
+the sweet juice of apples, his hat sprinkled with pips, and everywhere
+about him that atmosphere of cider which at its first return each
+season has such an indescribable fascination for those who have been
+born and bred among the orchards.'
+
+Hardy throws off little sketches of this sort with an air of
+unconsciousness which is fascinating.... It may be a sunset, or it may
+be only a flake of snow falling upon a young girl's hair, or the light
+from lanterns penetrating the shutters and flickering over the ceiling
+of a room in the early winter morning,--no matter what the
+circumstance or happening is, it is caught in the act, photographed in
+permanent colors, made indelible and beautiful.
+
+Hardy's art is tyrannical. It compels one to be interested in that
+which delights him. It imposes its own standards. There is a rude
+strength about the man which readers endure because they are not
+unwilling to be slaves to genius. You may dislike sheep, and care but
+little for the poetical aspect of cows, if indeed you are not inclined
+to question the existence of poetry in cows; but if you read _Far from
+the Madding Crowd_ you can never again pass a flock of sheep without
+being conscious of a multitude of new thoughts, new images, new
+matters for comparison. All that dormant section of your soul which
+for years was in a comatose condition on the subject of sheep is
+suddenly and broadly awake. Read _Tess_ and at once cows and a dairy
+have a new meaning to you. They are a conspicuous part of the setting
+of that stage upon which poor Tess Durbeyfield's life drama was
+played.
+
+But Hardy does not flaunt his knowledge in his reader's face. These
+things are distinctly means to an end, not ends in themselves. He has
+no theory to advance about keeping bees or making cider. He has taken
+no little journeys in the world. On the contrary, where he has
+traveled at all, he has traveled extensively. He is like a tourist who
+has been so many times abroad that his allusions are naturally and
+unaffectedly made. But the man just back from a first trip on the
+continent has astonishment stamped upon his face, and he speaks of
+Paris and of the Alps as if he had discovered both. Zola is one of
+those practitioners who, big with recently acquired knowledge, appear
+to labor under the idea that the chief end of a novel is to convey
+miscellaneous information. This is probably a mistake. Novels are not
+handbooks on floriculture, banking, railways, or the management of
+department stores. One may make a parade of minute details and
+endlessly wearisome learning and gain a certain credit thereby; but
+what if the details and the learning are chiefly of value in a
+dictionary of sciences and commerce? Wisdom of this sort is to be
+sparingly used in a work of art.
+
+In these matters I cannot but feel that Hardy has a reticence so
+commendable that praise of it is superfluous and impertinent. After
+all, men and women are better than sheep and cows, and had he been
+more explicit, he would have tempted one to inquire whether he
+proposed making a story or a volume which might bear the title _The
+Wessex Farmer's Own Hand-Book_, and containing wise advice as to pigs,
+poultry, and the useful art of making two heads of cabbage grow where
+only one had grown before.
+
+
+III
+
+Among the most engaging qualities of this writer is humor. Hardy is a
+humorous man himself and entirely appreciative of the humor that is in
+others. According to a distinguished philosopher, wit and humor
+produce love. Hardy must then be in daily receipt of large measures of
+this 'improving passion' from his innumerable readers on both sides of
+the Atlantic.
+
+His humor manifests itself in a variety of ways; by the use of witty
+epithet; by ingenious description of a thing which is not strikingly
+laughable in itself, but which becomes so from the closeness of his
+rendering; by a leisurely and ample account of a character with
+humorous traits,--traits which are brought artistically into
+prominence as an actor heightens the complexion in stage make-up; and
+finally by his lively reproductions of the talk of village and country
+people,--a class of society whose everyday speech has only to be heard
+to be enjoyed. I do not pretend that the sources of Hardy's humor are
+exhausted in this analysis, but the majority of illustrations can be
+assigned to some one of these divisions.
+
+He is usually thought to be at his best in descriptions of farmers,
+village mechanics, laborers, dairymen, men who kill pigs, tend sheep,
+furze-cutters, masons, hostlers, loafers who do nothing in particular,
+and while thus occupied rail on Lady Fortune in good set terms.
+Certainly he paints these people with affectionate fidelity. Their
+virile, racy talk delights him. His reproductions of that talk are
+often intensely realistic. Nearly every book has its chorus of human
+grotesques whose mere names are a source of mirth. William Worm,
+Grandfer Cantle, 'Corp'el' Tullidge, Christopher Coney, John Upjohn,
+Robert Creedle, Martin Cannister, Haymoss Fry, Robert Lickpan, and
+Sammy Blore,--men so denominated should stand for comic things, and
+these men do. William Worm, for example, was deaf. His deafness took
+an unusual form; he heard fish frying in his head, and he was not
+reticent upon the subject of his infirmity. He usually described
+himself by the epithet 'wambling,' and protested that he would never
+pay the Lord for his making,--a degree of self-knowledge which many
+have arrived at but few have the courage to confess. He was once
+observed in the act of making himself 'passing civil and friendly by
+overspreading his face with a large smile that seemed to have no
+connection with the humor he was in.' Sympathy because of his deafness
+elicited this response: 'Ay, I assure you that frying o' fish is going
+on for nights and days. And, you know, sometimes 'tisn't only fish,
+but rashers o' bacon and inions. Ay, I can hear the fat pop and fizz
+as nateral as life.'
+
+He was questioned as to what means of cure he had tried.
+
+'Oh, ay bless ye, I've tried everything. Ay, Providence is a merciful
+man, and I have hoped he'd have found it out by this time, living so
+many years in a parson's family, too, as I have; but 'a don't seem to
+relieve me. Ay, I be a poor wambling man, and life's a mint o'
+trouble.'
+
+One knows not which to admire the more, the appetizing realism in
+William Worm's account of his infirmity, or the primitive state of his
+theological views which allowed him to look for special divine favor
+by virtue of the ecclesiastical conspicuousness of his late residence.
+
+Hardy must have heard, with comfort in the thought of its literary
+possibilities, the following dialogue on the cleverness of women. It
+occurs in the last chapter of _The Woodlanders_. A man who is always
+spoken of as the 'hollow-turner,' a phrase obviously descriptive of
+his line of business, which related to wooden bowls, spigots,
+cheese-vats, and funnels, talks with John Upjohn.
+
+'What women do know nowadays!' he says. 'You can't deceive 'em as you
+could in my time.'
+
+'What they knowed then was not small,' said John Upjohn. 'Always a
+good deal more than the men! Why, when I went courting my wife that is
+now, the skillfulness that she would show in keeping me on her pretty
+side as she walked was beyond all belief. Perhaps you've noticed that
+she's got a pretty side to her face as well as a plain one?'
+
+'I can't say I've noticed it particular much,' said the hollow-turner
+blandly.
+
+'Well,' continued Upjohn, not disconcerted, 'she has. All women under
+the sun be prettier one side than t'other. And, as I was saying, the
+pains she would take to make me walk on the pretty side were unending.
+I warrent that whether we were going with the sun or against the sun,
+uphill or downhill, in wind or in lewth, that wart of hers was always
+toward the hedge, and that dimple toward me. There was I too simple to
+see her wheelings and turnings; and she so artful though two years
+younger, that she could lead me with a cotton thread like a blind ham;
+... no, I don't think the women have got cleverer, for they was never
+otherwise.'
+
+
+IV
+
+These men have sap and juice in their talk. When they think they think
+clearly. When they speak they express themselves with an energy and
+directness which mortify the thin speech of conventional persons. Here
+is Farfrae, the young Scotchman, in the tap-room of the Three Mariners
+Inn of Casterbridge, singing of his ain contree with a pathos quite
+unknown in that part of the world. The worthies who frequent the place
+are deeply moved. 'Danged if our country down here is worth singing
+about like that,' says Billy Wills, the glazier,--while the literal
+Christopher Coney inquires, 'What did ye come away from yer own
+country for, young maister, if ye be so wownded about it?' Then it
+occurs to him that it wasn't worth Farfrae's while to leave the fair
+face and the home of which he had been singing to come among such as
+they. 'We be bruckle folk here--the best o' us hardly honest
+sometimes, what with hard winters, and so many mouths to fill, and
+God-a'mighty sending his little taties so terrible small to fill 'em
+with. We don't think about flowers and fair faces, not we--except in
+the shape of cauliflowers and pigs' chaps.'
+
+I should like to see the man who sat to Artist Hardy for the portrait
+of Corporal Tullidge in _The Trumpet-Major_. This worthy, who was deaf
+and talked in an uncompromisingly loud voice, had been struck in the
+head by a piece of shell at Valenciennes in '93. His left arm had been
+smashed. Time and Nature had done what they could, and under their
+beneficent influences the arm had become a sort of anatomical
+rattle-box. People interested in Corp'el Tullidge were allowed to see
+his head and hear his arm. The corp'el gave these private views at any
+time, and was quite willing to show off, though the exhibition was apt
+to bore him a little. His fellows displayed him much as one would a
+'freak' in a dime museum.
+
+'You have got a silver plate let into yer head, haven't ye, corp'el?'
+said Anthony Cripplestraw. 'I have heard that the way they mortised
+yer skull was a beautiful piece of workmanship. Perhaps the young
+woman would like to see the place.'
+
+The young woman was Anne Garland, the sweet heroine of the story; and
+Anne didn't want to see the silver plate, the thought of which made
+her almost faint. Nor could she be tempted by being told that one
+couldn't see such a 'wownd' every day. Then Cripplestraw, earnest to
+please her, suggested that Tullidge rattle his arm, which Tullidge
+did, to Anne's great distress.
+
+'Oh, it don't hurt him, bless ye. Do it, corp'el?' said Cripplestraw.
+
+'Not a bit,' said the corporal, still working his arm with great
+energy. There was, however, a perfunctoriness in his manner 'as if the
+glory of exhibition had lost somewhat of its novelty, though he was
+still willing to oblige.' Anne resisted all entreaties to convince
+herself by feeling of the corporal's arm that the bones were 'as loose
+as a bag of ninepins,' and displayed an anxiety to escape. Whereupon
+the corporal, 'with a sense that his time was getting wasted,'
+inquired: 'Do she want to see or hear any more, or don't she?'
+
+This is but a single detail in the account of a party which Miller
+Loveday gave to soldier guests in honor of his son John,--a
+description the sustained vivacity of which can only be appreciated
+through a reading of those brilliant early chapters of the story.
+
+Half the mirth that is in these men comes from the frankness with
+which they confess their actual thoughts. Ask a man of average morals
+and average attainments why he doesn't go to church. You won't know
+any better after he has given you his answer. Ask Nat Chapman, of the
+novel entitled _Two on a Tower_, and you will not be troubled with
+ambiguities. He doesn't like to go because Mr. Torkingham's sermons
+make him think of soul-saving and other bewildering and uncomfortable
+topics. So when the son of Torkingham's predecessor asks Nat how it
+goes with him, that tiller of the soil answers promptly: 'Pa'son
+Tarkenham do tease a feller's conscience that much, that church is no
+holler-day at all to the limbs, as it was in yer reverent father's
+time!'
+
+The unswerving honesty with which they assign utilitarian motives for
+a particular line of conduct is delightful. Three men discuss a
+wedding, which took place not at the home of the bride but in a
+neighboring parish, and was therefore very private. The first doesn't
+blame the new married pair, because 'a wedding at home means five and
+six handed reels by the hour, and they do a man's legs no good when
+he's over forty.' A second corroborates the remark and says: 'True.
+Once at the woman's house you can hardly say nay to being one in a
+jig, knowing all the time that you be expected to make yourself worth
+your victuals.'
+
+The third puts the whole matter beyond the need of further discussion
+by adding: 'For my part, I like a good hearty funeral as well as
+anything. You've as splendid victuals and drink as at other parties,
+and even better. And it don't wear your legs to stumps in talking over
+a poor fellow's ways as it do to stand up in hornpipes.'
+
+Beings who talk like this know their minds,--a rather unwonted
+circumstance among the sons of men,--and knowing them, they do the
+next most natural thing in the world, which is to speak the minds they
+have.
+
+There is yet another phase of Hardy's humor to be noted: that humor,
+sometimes defiant, sometimes philosophic, which concerns death and its
+accompaniments. It cannot be thought morbid. Hardy is too fond of
+Nature ever to degenerate into mere morbidity. He has lived much in
+the open air, which always corrects a tendency to 'vapors.' He takes
+little pleasure in the gruesome, a statement in support of which one
+may cite all his works up to 1892, the date of the appearance of
+_Tess_. This paper includes no comment in detail upon the later books;
+but so far as _Tess_ is concerned it would be critical folly to speak
+of it as morbid. It is sad, it is terrible, as _Lear_ is terrible, or
+as any one of the great tragedies, written by men we call 'masters,'
+is terrible. _Jude_ is psychologically gruesome, no doubt; but not
+absolutely indefensible. Even if it were as black a book as some
+critics have painted it, the general truth of the statement as to the
+healthfulness of Hardy's work would not be impaired. This work judged
+as a whole is sound and invigorating. He cannot be accused of
+over-fondness for charnel-houses or ghosts. He does not discourse of
+graves and vaults in order to arouse that terror which the thought of
+death inspires. It is not for the purpose of making the reader
+uncomfortable. If the grave interests him, it is because of the
+reflections awakened. 'Man, proud man,' needs that jog to his memory
+which the pomp of interments and aspect of tombstones give. Hardy has
+keen perception of that humor which glows in the presence of death and
+on the edge of the grave. The living have such a tremendous advantage
+over the dead, that they can neither help feeling it nor avoid a
+display of the feeling. When the lion is buried the dogs crack jokes
+at the funeral. They do it in a subdued manner, no doubt, and with a
+sense of proprieties, but nevertheless they do it. Their immense
+superiority is never so apparent as at just this moment.
+
+This humor, which one notes in Hardy, is akin to the humor of the
+grave-diggers in _Hamlet_, but not so grim. I have heard a country
+undertaker describe the details of the least attractive branch of his
+uncomfortable business with a pride and self-satisfaction that would
+have been farcical had not the subject been so depressing. This would
+have been matter for Hardy's pen. There are few scenes in his books
+more telling than that which shows the operations in the family vault
+of the Luxellians, when John Smith, Martin Cannister, and old Simeon
+prepare the place for Lady Luxellian's coffin. It seems hardly wise to
+pronounce this episode as good as the grave-diggers' scene in
+_Hamlet_; that would shock some one and gain for the writer the
+reputation of being enthusiastic rather than critical. But I profess
+that I enjoy the talk of old Simeon and Martin Cannister quite as much
+as the talk of the first and second grave-diggers.
+
+Simeon, the shriveled mason, was 'a marvelously old man, whose skin
+seemed so much too large for his body that it would not stay in
+position.' He talked of the various great dead whose coffins filled
+the family vault. Here was the stately and irascible Lord George:--
+
+'Ah, poor Lord George,' said the mason, looking contemplatively at the
+huge coffin; 'he and I were as bitter enemies once as any could be
+when one is a lord and t'other only a mortal man. Poor fellow! He'd
+clap his hand upon my shoulder and cuss me as familiar and neighborly
+as if he'd been a common chap. Ay, 'a cussed me up hill and 'a cussed
+me down; and then 'a would rave out again and the goold clamps of his
+fine new teeth would glisten in the sun like fetters of brass, while
+I, being a small man and poor, was fain to say nothing at all. Such a
+strappen fine gentleman as he was too! Yes, I rather liken en
+sometimes. But once now and then, when I looked at his towering
+height, I'd think in my inside, "What a weight you'll be, my lord, for
+our arms to lower under the inside of Endelstow church some day!"'
+
+'And was he?' inquired a young laborer.
+
+'He was. He was five hundred weight if 'a were a pound. What with his
+lead, and his oak, and his handles, and his one thing and t'other'--here
+the ancient man slapped his hand upon the cover with a force that
+caused a rattle among the bones inside--'he half broke my back when I
+took his feet to lower en down the steps there. "Ah," saith I to John
+there--didn't I, John?--"that ever one man's glory should be such a
+weight upon another man!" But there, I liked my Lord George
+sometimes.'
+
+It may be observed that as Hardy grows older his humor becomes more
+subtle or quite dies away, as if serious matters pressed upon his
+mind, and there was no time for being jocular. Some day, perhaps, if
+he should rise to the dignity of an English classic, this will be
+spoken of as his third period, and critics will be wise in the
+elucidation thereof. But just at present this third period is
+characterized by the terms 'pessimistic' and 'unhealthy.'
+
+That he is a pessimist in the colloquial sense admits of little
+question. Nor is it surprising; it is rather difficult not to be. Not
+a few persons are pessimists and won't tell. They preserve a fair
+exterior, but secretly hold that all flesh is grass. Some people
+escape the disease by virtue of much philosophy or much religion or
+much work. Many who have not taken up permanent residence beneath the
+roof of Schopenhauer or Von Hartmann are occasional guests. Then there
+is that great mass of pessimism which is the result, not of thought,
+but of mere discomfort, physical and super-physical. One may have
+attacks of pessimism from a variety of small causes. A bad stomach
+will produce it. Financial difficulties will produce it. The
+light-minded get it from changes in the weather.
+
+That note of melancholy which we detect in many of Hardy's novels is
+as it should be. For no man can apprehend life aright and still look
+upon it as a carnival. He may attain serenity in respect to it, but he
+can never be jaunty and flippant. He can never slap life upon the back
+and call it by familiar names. He may hold that the world is
+indisputably growing better, but he will need to admit that the world
+is having a hard time in so doing.
+
+Hardy would be sure of a reputation for pessimism in some quarters if
+only because of his attitude, or what people think is his attitude,
+toward marriage. He has devoted many pages and not a little thought to
+the problems of the relations between men and women. He is
+considerably interested in questions of 'matrimonial divergence.' He
+recognizes that most obvious of all obvious truths, that marriage is
+not always a success; nay, more than this, that it is often a
+makeshift, an apology, a pretense. But he professes to undertake
+nothing beyond a statement of the facts. It rests with the public to
+lay his statement beside their experience and observation, and thus
+take measure of the fidelity of his art.
+
+He notes the variety of motives by which people are actuated in the
+choice of husbands and wives. In the novel called _The Woodlanders_,
+Grace Melbury, the daughter of a rich though humbly-born yeoman, has
+unusual opportunities for a girl of her class, and is educated to a
+point of physical and intellectual daintiness which make her seem
+superior to her home environment. Her father has hoped that she will
+marry her rustic lover, Giles Winterbourne, who, by the way, is a man
+in every fibre of his being. Grace is quite unspoiled by her life at a
+fashionable boarding school, but after her return her father feels
+(and Hardy makes the reader feel) that in marrying Giles she will
+sacrifice herself. She marries Dr. Fitzspiers, a brilliant young
+physician, recently come into the neighborhood, and in so doing she
+chooses for the worse. The character of Dr. Fitzspiers is summarized
+in a statement he once made (presumably to a male friend) that 'on one
+occasion he had noticed himself to be possessed by five distinct
+infatuations at the same time.'
+
+His flagrant infidelities bring about a temporary separation; Grace is
+not able to comprehend 'such double and treble-barreled hearts.' When
+finally they are reunited the life-problem of each still awaits an
+adequate solution. For the motive which brings the girl back to her
+husband is only a more complex phase of the same motive which chiefly
+prompted her to marry him. Hardy says that Fitzspiers as a lover acted
+upon Grace 'like a dram.' His presence 'threw her into an atmosphere
+which biased her doings until the influence was over.' Afterward she
+felt 'something of the nature of regret for the mood she had
+experienced.'
+
+But this same story contains two other characters who are unmatched in
+fiction as the incarnation of pure love and self-forgetfulness. Giles
+Winterbourne, whose devotion to Grace is without wish for happiness
+which shall not imply a greater happiness for her, dies that no breath
+of suspicion may fall upon her. He in turn is loved by Marty South
+with a completeness which destroys all thought of self. She enjoys no
+measure of reward while Winterbourne lives. He never knows of Marty's
+love. But in that last fine paragraph of this remarkable book, when
+the poor girl places the flowers upon his grave she utters a little
+lament which for beauty, pathos, and realistic simplicity is without
+parallel in modern fiction. Hardy was never more of an artist than
+when writing the last chapter of _The Woodlanders_.
+
+After all, a book in which unselfish love is described in terms at
+once just and noble cannot be dangerously pessimistic, even if it also
+takes cognizance of such hopeless cases as a man with a chronic
+tendency to fluctuations of the heart.
+
+The matter may be put briefly thus: In Hardy's novels one sees the
+artistic result of an effort to paint life as it is, with much of its
+joy and a deal of its sorrow, with its good people and its selfish
+people, its positive characters and its Laodiceans, its men and women
+who dominate circumstances, and its unhappy ones who are submerged.
+These books are the record of what a clear-eyed, sane, vigorous,
+sympathetic, humorous man knows about life; a man too conscious of
+things as they are to wish grossly to exaggerate or to disguise them;
+and at the same time so entirely aware how much poetry as well as
+irony God has mingled in the order of the world as to be incapable of
+concealing that fact either. He is of such ample intellectual frame
+that he makes the petty contentions of literary schools appear
+foolish. I find a measure of Hardy's mind in passages which set forth
+his conception of the preciousness of life, no matter what the form in
+which life expresses itself. He is peculiarly tender toward brute
+creation. In that paragraph which describes Tess discovering the
+wounded pheasants in the wood, Hardy suggests the thought, quite new
+to many people, that chivalry is not confined to the relations of man
+to man or of man to woman. There are still weaker fellow-creatures in
+Nature's teeming family. What if we are unmannerly or unchivalrous
+toward them?
+
+He abounds in all manner of pithy sayings, many of them wise, a few of
+them profound, and not one which is unworthy a second reading. It is
+to be hoped that he will escape the doubtful honor of being
+dispersedly set forth in a 'Wit and Wisdom of Thomas Hardy.' Such
+books are a depressing species of literature and seem chiefly designed
+to be given away at holiday time to acquaintances who are too
+important to be put off with Christmas cards, and not important enough
+to be supplied with gifts of a calculable value.
+
+One must praise the immense spirit and vivacity of scenes where
+something in the nature of a struggle, a moral duel, goes on. In such
+passages every power at the writer's command is needed; unerring
+directness of thought, and words which clothe this thought as an
+athlete's garments fit the body. Everything must count, and the
+movement of the narrative must be sustained to the utmost. The
+chess-playing scene between Elfride and Knight in _A Pair of Blue
+Eyes_ is an illustration. Sergeant Troy displaying his skill in
+handling the sword--weaving his spell about Bathsheba in true snake
+fashion, is another example. Still more brilliant is the gambling
+scene in _The Return of the Native_, where Wildeve and Diggory Venn,
+out on the heath in the night, throw dice by the light of a lantern
+for Thomasin's money. Venn, the reddleman, in the Mephistophelian garb
+of his profession, is the incarnation of a good spirit, and wins the
+guineas from the clutch of the spendthrift husband. The scene is
+immensely dramatic, with its accompaniments of blackness and silence,
+Wildeve's haggard face, the circle of ponies, known as heath-croppers,
+which are attracted by the light, the death's-head moth which
+extinguishes the candle, and the finish of the game by the light of
+glow-worms. It is a glorious bit of writing in true bravura style.
+
+His books have a quality which I shall venture to call 'spaciousness,'
+in the hope that the word conveys the meaning I try to express. It is
+obvious that there is a difference between books which are large and
+books which are merely long. The one epithet refers to atmosphere, the
+other to number of pages. Hardy writes large books. There is room in
+them for the reader to expand his mind. They are distinctly
+out-of-door books, 'not smacking of the cloister or the library.' In
+reading them one has a feeling that the vault of heaven is very high,
+and that the earth stretches away to interminable distances upon all
+sides. This quality of largeness is not dependent upon number of
+pages; nor is length absolute as applied to books. A book may contain
+one hundred pages and still be ninety-nine pages too long, for the
+reason that its truth, its lesson, its literary virtue, are not
+greater than might be expressed in a single page.
+
+Spaciousness is in even less degree dependent upon miles. The
+narrowness, geographically speaking, of Hardy's range of expression is
+notable. There is much contrast between him and Stevenson in this
+respect. The Scotchman has embodied in his fine books the experiences
+of life in a dozen different quarters of the globe. Hardy, with more
+robust health, has traveled from Portland to Bath, and from
+'Wintoncester' to 'Exonbury,'--journeys hardly more serious than from
+the blue bed to the brown. And it is better thus. No reader of _The
+Return of the Native_ would have been content that Eustacia Vye should
+persuade her husband back to Paris. Rather than the boulevards one
+prefers Egdon heath, as Hardy paints it, 'the great inviolate place,'
+the 'untamable Ishmaelitish thing' which its arch-enemy, Civilization,
+could not subdue.
+
+He is without question one of the best writers of our time, whether
+for comedy or for tragedy; and for extravaganza, too, as witness his
+lively farce called _The Hand of Ethelberta_. He can write dialogue or
+description. He is so excellent in either that either, as you read it,
+appears to make for your highest pleasure. If his characters talk, you
+would gladly have them talk to the end of the book. If he, the author,
+speaks, you would not wish to interrupt. More than most skillful
+writers, he preserves that just balance between narrative and
+colloquy.
+
+His best novels prior to the appearance of _Tess_, are _The
+Woodlanders_, _Far from the Madding Crowd_, _The Return of the
+Native_, and _The Mayor of Casterbridge_. These four are the bulwarks
+of his reputation, while a separate and great fame might be based
+alone on that powerful tragedy called by its author _Tess of the
+D'Urbervilles_.
+
+Criticism which glorifies any one book of a given author at the
+expense of all his other books is profitless, if not dangerous.
+Moreover, it is dangerous to have a favorite author as well as a
+favorite book of that favorite author. A man's choice of books, like
+his choice of friends, is usually inexplicable to everybody but
+himself. However, the chief object in recommending books is to make
+converts to the gospel of literature according to the writer of these
+books. For which legitimate purpose I would recommend to the reader
+who has hitherto denied himself the pleasure of an acquaintance with
+Thomas Hardy, the two volumes known as _The Woodlanders_ and _The
+Return of the Native_. The first of these is the more genial because
+it presents a more genial side of Nature. But the other is a noble
+piece of literary workmanship, a powerful book, ingeniously framed,
+with every detail strongly realized; a book which is dramatic,
+humorous, sincere in its pathos, rich in its word-coloring, eloquent
+in its descriptive passages; a book which embodies so much of life and
+poetry that one has a feeling of mental exaltation as he reads.
+
+Surely it is not wise in the critical Jeremiahs so despairingly to
+lift up their voices, and so strenuously to bewail the condition of
+the literature of the time. The literature of the time is very well,
+as they would see could they but turn their fascinated gaze from the
+meretricious and spectacular elements of that literature to the work
+of Thomas Hardy and George Meredith. With such men among the most
+influential in modern letters, and with Barrie and Stevenson among the
+idols of the reading world, it would seem that the office of public
+Jeremiah should be continued rather from courtesy than from an
+overwhelming sense of the needs of the hour.
+
+
+
+
+A READING IN THE LETTERS OF JOHN KEATS
+
+
+One would like to know whether a first reading in the letters of Keats
+does not generally produce something akin to a severe mental shock. It
+is a sensation which presently becomes agreeable, being in that
+respect like a plunge into cold water, but it is undeniably a shock.
+Most readers of Keats, knowing him, as he should be known, by his
+poetry, have not the remotest conception of him as he shows himself in
+his letters. Hence they are unprepared for this splendid exhibition of
+virile intellectual health. Not that they think of him as morbid,--his
+poetry surely could not make this impression,--but rather that the
+popular conception of him is, after all these years, a legendary
+Keats, the poet who was killed by reviewers, the Keats of Shelley's
+preface to the _Adonais_, the Keats whose story is written large in
+the world's book of Pity and of Death. When the readers are confronted
+with a fair portrait of the real man, it makes them rub their eyes.
+Nay, more, it embarrasses them. To find themselves guilty of having
+pitied one who stood in small need of pity is mortifying. In plain
+terms, they have systematically bestowed (or have attempted to bestow)
+alms on a man whose income at its least was bigger than any his
+patrons could boast. Small wonder that now and then you find a reader,
+with large capacity for the sentimental, who looks back with terror to
+his first dip into the letters.
+
+The legendary Keats dies hard; or perhaps we would better say that
+when he seems to be dying he is simply, in the good old fashion of
+legends, taking out a new lease of life. For it is as true now as when
+the sentence was first penned, that 'a mixture of a lie doth ever add
+pleasure.' Among the many readers of good books, there will always be
+some whose notions of the poetical proprieties suffer greatly by the
+facts of Keats's history. It is so much pleasanter to them to think
+that the poet's sensitive spirit was wounded to death by bitter words
+than to know that he was carried off by pulmonary disease. But when
+they are tired of reading _Endymion_, _Isabella_, and _The Eve of St.
+Agnes_ in the light of this incorrect conception, let them try a new
+reading in the light of the letters, and the masculinity of this very
+robust young maker of poetry will prove refreshing.
+
+The letters are in every respect good reading. Rather than deplore
+their frankness, as one critic has done, we ought to rejoice in their
+utter want of affectation, in their boyish honesty. At every turn
+there is something to amuse or to startle one into thinking. We are
+carried back in a vivid way to the period of their composition. Not a
+little of the pulsing life of that time throbs anew, and we catch
+glimpses of notable figures. Often, the feeling is that we have been
+called in haste to a window to look at some celebrity passing by, and
+have arrived just in time to see him turn the corner. What a touch of
+reality, for example, does one get in reading that 'Wordsworth went
+rather huff'd out of town'! One is not in the habit of thinking of
+Wordsworth as capable of being 'huffed,' but the writer of the letters
+feared that he was. All of Keats's petty anxieties and small doings,
+as well as his aspirations and his greatest dreams, are set down here
+in black on white. It is a complete and charming revelation of the
+man. One learns how he 'went to Hazlitt's lecture on Poetry, and got
+there just as they were coming out;' how he was insulted at the
+theatre, and wouldn't tell his brothers; how it vexed him because the
+Irish servant said that his picture of Shakespeare looked exactly like
+her father, only 'her father had more color than the engraving;' how
+he filled in the time while waiting for the stage to start by counting
+the buns and tarts in a pastry-cook's window, 'and had just begun on
+the jellies;' how indignant he was at being spoken of as 'quite the
+little poet;' how he sat in a hatter's shop in the Poultry while Mr.
+Abbey read him some extracts from Lord Byron's 'last flash poem,' _Don
+Juan_; how some beef was carved exactly to suit his appetite, as if he
+'had been measured for it;' how he dined with Horace Smith and his
+brothers and some other young gentlemen of fashion, and thought them
+all hopelessly affected; in a word, almost anything you want to know
+about John Keats can be found in these letters. They are of more value
+than all the 'recollections' of all his friends put together. In their
+breezy good-nature and cheerfulness they are a fine antidote to the
+impression one gets of him in Haydon's account, 'lying in a white bed
+with a book, hectic and on his back, irritable at his weakness and
+wounded at the way he had been used. He seemed to be going out of life
+with a contempt for this world, and no hopes of the other. I told him
+to be calm, but he muttered that if he did not soon get better he
+would destroy himself.' This is taking Keats at his worst. It is well
+enough to know that he seemed to Haydon as Haydon has described him,
+but few men appear to advantage when they are desperately ill. Turn to
+the letters written during his tour in Scotland, when he walked twenty
+miles a day, climbed Ben Nevis, so fatigued himself that, as he told
+Fanny Keats, 'when I am asleep you might sew my nose to my great toe
+and trundle me around the town, like a Hoop, without waking me. Then I
+get so hungry a Ham goes but a very little way, and fowls are like
+Larks to me.... I take a whole string of Pork Sausages down as easily
+as a Pen'orth of Lady's fingers.' And then he bewails the fact that
+when he arrives in the Highlands he will have to be contented 'with an
+acre or two of oaten cake, a hogshead of Milk, and a Cloaths basket of
+Eggs morning, noon, and night.' Here is the active Keats, of honest
+mundane tastes and an athletic disposition, who threatens' to cut all
+sick people if they do not make up their minds to cut Sickness.'
+
+Indeed, the letters are so pleasant and amusing in the way they
+exhibit minor traits, habits, prejudices, and the like, that it is a
+temptation to dwell upon these things. How we love a man's
+weaknesses--if we share them! I do not know that Keats would have
+given occasion for an anecdote like that told of a certain book-loving
+actor, whose best friend, when urged to join the chorus of praise that
+was quite universally sung to this actor's virtues, acquiesced by
+saying amiably, 'Mr. Blank undoubtedly has genius, but he can't
+spell;' yet there are comforting evidences that Keats was no servile
+follower of the 'monster Conventionality' even in his spelling, while
+in respect to the use of capitals he was a law unto himself. He
+sprinkled them through his correspondence with a lavish hand, though
+at times he grew so economical that, as one of his editors remarks, he
+would spell Romeo with a small _r_, Irishman with a small _i_, and God
+with a small _g_.
+
+It is also a pleasure to find that, with his other failings, he had a
+touch of book-madness. There was in him the making of a first-class
+bibliophile. He speaks with rapture of his black-letter Chaucer, which
+he proposes to have bound 'in Gothique,' so as to unmodernize as much
+as possible its outward appearance. But to Keats books were literature
+or they were not literature, and one cannot think that his affections
+would twine about ever so bookish a volume which was merely 'curious.'
+
+One reads with sympathetic amusement of Keats's genuine and natural
+horror of paying the same bill twice, 'there not being a more
+unpleasant thing in the world (saving a thousand and one others).' The
+necessity of preserving adequate evidence that a bill had been paid
+was uppermost in his thought quite frequently; and once when, at Leigh
+Hunt's instance, sundry packages of papers belonging to that eminently
+methodical and businesslike man of letters were to be sorted out and
+in part destroyed, Keats refused to burn any, 'for fear of demolishing
+receipts.'
+
+But the reader will chance upon few more humorous passages than that
+in which the poet tells his brother George how he cures himself of the
+blues, and at the same time spurs his flagging powers of invention:
+'Whenever I find myself growing vaporish I rouse myself, wash and put
+on a clean shirt, brush my hair and clothes, tie my shoe-strings
+neatly, and, in fact, adonize, as if I were going out--then all clean
+and comfortable, I sit down to write. This I find the greatest
+relief.' The virtues of a clean shirt have often been sung, but it
+remained for Keats to show what a change of linen and a general
+_adonizing_ could do in the way of furnishing poetic stimulus. This is
+better than coffee, brandy, absinthe, or falling in love; and it
+prompts one to think anew that the English poets, taking them as a
+whole, were a marvelously healthy and sensible breed of men.
+
+It is, however, in respect to the light they throw upon the poet's
+literary life that the letters are of highest significance. They
+gratify to a reasonable extent that natural desire we all have to see
+authorship in the act. The processes by which genius brings things to
+pass are so mysterious that our curiosity is continually piqued; and
+our failure to get at the real thing prompts us to be more or less
+content with mere externals. If we may not hope to see the actual
+process of making poetry, we may at least study the poet's manuscript.
+By knowing of his habits of work we flatter ourselves that we are a
+little nearer the secret of his power.
+
+We must bear in mind that Keats was a boy, always a boy, and that he
+died before he quite got out of boyhood. To be sure, most boys of
+twenty-six would resent being described by so juvenile a term. But one
+must have successfully passed twenty-six without doing anything in
+particular to understand how exceedingly young twenty-six is. And to
+have wrought so well in so short a time, Keats must have had from the
+first a clear and noble conception of the nature of his work, as he
+must also have displayed extraordinary diligence in the doing of it.
+Perhaps these points are too obvious, and of a sort which would
+naturally occur to any one; but it will be none the less interesting
+to see how the letters bear witness to their truth.
+
+In the first place, Keats was anything but a loafer at literature. He
+seems never to have dawdled. A fine healthiness is apparent in all
+allusions to his processes of work. 'I read and write about eight
+hours a day,' he remarks in a letter to Haydon. Bailey, Keats's Oxford
+friend, says that the fellow would go to his writing-desk soon after
+breakfast, and stay there until two or three o'clock in the afternoon.
+He was then writing _Endymion_. His stint was about 'fifty lines a
+day, ... and he wrote with as much regularity, and apparently with as
+much ease, as he wrote his letters.... Sometimes he fell short of his
+allotted task, but not often, and he would make it up another day. But
+he never forced himself.' Bailey quotes, in connection with this,
+Keats's own remark to the effect that poetry would better not come at
+all than not to come 'as naturally as the leaves of a tree.' Whether
+this spontaneity of production was as great as that of some other
+poets of his time may be questioned; but he would never have deserved
+Tom Nash's sneer at those writers who can only produce by 'sleeping
+betwixt every sentence.' Keats had in no small degree the 'fine
+extemporal vein' with 'invention quicker than his eye.'
+
+We uncritically feel that it could hardly have been otherwise in the
+case of one with whom poetry was a passion. Keats had an infinite
+hunger and thirst for good poetry. His poetical life, both in the
+receptive and productive phases of it, was intense. Poetry was meat
+and drink to him. He could even urge his friend Reynolds to talk about
+it to him, much as one might beg a trusted friend to talk about one's
+lady-love, and with the confidence that only the fitting thing would
+be spoken. 'Whenever you write, say a word or two on some passage in
+Shakespeare which may have come rather new to you,'--a sentence which
+shows his faith in the many-sidedness of the great poetry. Shakespeare
+was forever 'coming new' to _him_, and he was 'haunted' by particular
+passages. He loved to fill the cup of his imagination with the
+splendors of the best poets until the cup overflowed. 'I find I cannot
+exist without Poetry,--without eternal Poetry; half the day will not
+do,--the whole of it; I began with a little, but habit has made me a
+leviathan.' He tells Leigh Hunt, in a letter written from Margate,
+that he thought so much about poetry, and 'so long together,' that he
+could not get to sleep at night. Whether this meant in working out
+ideas of his own, or living over the thoughts of other poets, is of
+little importance; the remark shows how deeply the roots of his life
+were imbedded in poetical soil. He loved a debauch in the verse of
+masters of his art. He could intoxicate himself with Shakespeare's
+sonnets. He rioted in 'all their fine things said unconsciously.' We
+are tempted to say, by just so much as he had large reverence for
+these men, by just so much he was of them.
+
+Undoubtedly, this ability to be moved by strong imaginative work may
+be abused until it becomes a maudlin and quite disordered sentiment.
+Keats was too well balanced to be carried into appreciative excesses.
+He knew that mere yearning could not make a poet of one any more than
+mere ambition could. He understood the limits of ambition as a force
+in literature. Keats's ambition trembled in the presence of Keats's
+conception of the magnitude of the poetic office. 'I have asked myself
+so often why I should be a poet more than other men, seeing how great
+a thing it is.' Yet he had honest confidence. One cannot help liking
+him for the fine audacity with which he pronounces his own work
+good,--better even than that of a certain other great name in English
+literature; one cannot help loving him for the sweet humility with
+which he accepts the view that, after all, success or failure lies
+entirely without the range of self-choosing. There is a point of view
+from which it is folly to hold a poet responsible even for his own
+poetry, and when _Endymion_ was spoken of as 'slipshod' Keats could
+reply, 'That it is so is no fault of mine.... The Genius of Poetry
+must work out its own salvation in a man.... That which is creative
+must create itself. In _Endymion_ I leaped headlong into the sea, and
+thereby have become better acquainted with the soundings, the
+quicksands, and the rocks, than if I had stayed upon the green shore,
+and piped a silly pipe, and took tea and comfortable advice. I was
+never afraid of failure; for I would sooner fail than not be among the
+greatest.'
+
+Well might a man who could write that last sentence look upon poetry
+not only as a responsible, but as a dangerous pursuit. Men who aspire
+to be poets are gamblers. In all the lotteries of the literary life
+none is so uncertain as this. A million chances that you don't win the
+prize to one chance that you do. It is a curious thing that ever so
+thoughtful and conscientious an author may not know whether he is
+making literature or merely writing verse. He conforms to all the
+canons of taste in his own day; he is devout and reverent; he shuns
+excesses of diction, and he courts originality; his verse seems to
+himself and to his unflattering friends instinct with the spirit of
+his time, but twenty years later it is old-fashioned. Keats, with all
+his feeling of certainty, stood with head uncovered before that power
+which gives poetical gifts to one, and withholds them from another.
+Above all would he avoid self-delusion in these things. 'There is no
+greater Sin after the seven deadly than to flatter one's self into an
+idea of being a great Poet.'
+
+Keats, if one may judge from a letter written to John Taylor in
+February, 1818, had little expectation that his _Endymion_ was going
+to be met with universal plaudits. He doubtless looked for fair
+treatment. He probably had no thought of being sneeringly addressed as
+'Johnny,' or of getting recommendations to return to his 'plasters,
+pills, and ointment boxes.' In fact, he looked upon the issue as
+entirely problematical. He seemed willing to take it for granted that
+in _Endymion_ he had but moved into the go-cart from the
+leading-strings. 'If _Endymion_ serves me for a pioneer, perhaps I
+ought to be content, for thank God I can read and perhaps understand
+Shakespeare to his depths; and I have, I am sure, many friends who if
+I fail will attribute any change in my life to humbleness rather than
+pride,--to a cowering under the wings of great poets rather than to
+bitterness that I am not appreciated.' And for evidence of any
+especial bitterness because of the lashing he received one will search
+the letters in vain. Keats was manly and good-humored, most of his
+morbidity being referred directly to his ill health. The trouncing he
+had at the hands of the reviewers was no more violent than the one
+administered to Tennyson by Professor Wilson. Critics, good and bad,
+can do much harm. They may terrorize a timid spirit. But a greater
+terror than the fear of the reviewers hung over the head of John
+Keats. He stood in awe of his own artistic and poetic sense. He could
+say with truth that his own domestic criticism had given him pain
+without comparison beyond what _Blackwood_ or the _Quarterly_ could
+possibly inflict. If he had had any terrible heart-burning over their
+malignancy, if he had felt that his life was poisoned, he could hardly
+have forborne some allusion to it in his letters to his brother,
+George Keats. But he is almost imperturbable. He talks of the episode
+freely, says that he has been urged to publish his _Pot of Basil_ as a
+reply to the reviewers, has no idea that he can be made ridiculous by
+abuse, notes the futility of attacks of this kind, and then, with a
+serene conviction that is irresistible, adds, 'I think I shall be
+among the English Poets after my death!'
+
+Such egoism of genius is magnificent; the more so as it appears in
+Keats because it runs parallel with deep humility in the presence of
+the masters of his art. Naturally, the masters who were in their
+graves were the ones he reverenced the most and read without stint.
+But it was by no means essential that a poet be a dead poet before
+Keats did him homage. It is impossible to think that Keats's attitude
+towards Wordsworth was other than finely appreciative, in spite of the
+fact that he applauded Reynolds's _Peter Bell_, and inquired almost
+petulantly why one should be teased with Wordsworth's 'Matthew with a
+bough of wilding in his hand.' But it is also impossible that his
+sense of humor should not have been aroused by much that he found in
+Wordsworth. It was Wordsworth he meant when he said, 'Every man has
+his speculations, but every man does not brood and peacock over them
+till he makes a false coinage and deceives himself,'--a sentence, by
+the way, quite as unconsciously funny as some of the things he laughed
+at in the works of his great contemporary.
+
+It will be pertinent to quote here two or three of the good critical
+words which Keats scattered through his letters. Emphasizing the use
+of simple means in his art, he says, 'I think that poetry should
+surprise by a fine excess, and not by singularity; it should strike
+the reader as a wording of his own highest thoughts, and appear almost
+a remembrance.'
+
+'We hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us.... Poetry should
+be great and unobtrusive, a thing which enters into one's soul, and
+does not startle it or amaze it with itself, but with its subject.' Or
+as Ruskin has put the thing with respect to painting, 'Entirely
+first-rate work is so quiet and natural that there can be no dispute
+over it.'
+
+Keats appears to have been in no sense a hermit. With the exception of
+Byron, he was perhaps less of a recluse than any of his poetical
+contemporaries. With respect to society he frequently practiced total
+abstinence; but the world was amusing, and he liked it. He was fond of
+the theatre, fond of whist, fond of visiting the studios, fond of
+going to the houses of his friends. But he would run no risks; he was
+shy and he was proud. He dreaded contact with the ultra-fashionables.
+Naturally, his opportunities for such intercourse were limited, but he
+cheerfully neglected his opportunities. I doubt if he ever bewailed
+his humble origin; nevertheless, the constitution of English society
+would hardly admit of his forgetting it. He had that pardonable pride
+which will not allow a man to place himself among those who, though
+outwardly fair-spoken, offer the insult of a hostile and patronizing
+mental attitude.
+
+Most of his friendships were with men, and this is to his credit. The
+man is spiritually warped who is incapable of a deep and abiding
+friendship with one of his own sex; and to go a step farther, that man
+is utterly to be distrusted whose only friends are among women. We may
+not be prepared to accept the radical position of a certain young
+thinker, who proclaims, in season, but defiantly, that 'men are the
+idealists, after all;' yet it is easy to comprehend how one may take
+this point of view. The friendships of men are a vastly more
+interesting and poetic study than the friendships of men and women.
+This is in the nature of the case. It is the usual victory of the
+normal over the abnormal. As a rule, it is impossible for a friendship
+to exist between a man and woman, unless the man and woman in question
+be husband and wife. Then it is as rare as it is beautiful. And with
+men, the most admirable spectacle is not always that where attendant
+circumstances prompt to heroic display of friendship, for it is often
+so much easier to die than to live. But you may see young men pledging
+their mutual love and support in this difficult and adventurous quest
+of what is noblest in the art of living. Such love will not urge to a
+theatrical posing, and it can hardly find expression in words. Words
+seem to profane it. I do not say that Keats stood in such an ideal
+relation to any one of his many friends whose names appear in the
+letters. He gave of himself to them all, and he received much from
+each. No man of taste and genius could have been other than flattered
+by the way in which Keats approached him. He was charming in his
+attitude toward Haydon; and when Haydon proposed sending Keats's
+sonnet to Wordsworth, the young poet wrote, 'The Idea of your sending
+it to Wordsworth put me out of breath--you know with what Reverence I
+would send my well wishes to him.'
+
+But interesting as a chapter on Keats's friendships with men would be,
+we are bound to confess that in dramatic intensity it would grow pale
+when laid beside that fiery love passage of his life, his acquaintance
+with Fanny Brawne. The thirty-nine letters given in the fourth volume
+of Buxton Forman's edition of _Keats's Works_ tell the story of this
+affair of a poet's heart. These are the letters which Mr. William
+Watson says he has never read, and at which no consideration shall
+ever induce him to look. But Mr. Watson reflects upon people who have
+been human enough to read them when he compares such a proceeding on
+his own part (were he able to be guilty of it) to the indelicacy of
+'listening at a keyhole or spying over a wall.' This is not a just
+illustration. The man who takes upon himself the responsibility of
+being the first to open such intimate letters, and adds thereto the
+infinitely greater responsibility of publishing them in so attractive
+a form that he who runs will stop running in order to read,--such an
+editor will need to satisfy Mr. Watson that in so doing he was not
+listening at a keyhole or spying over a wall. For the general public,
+the wall is down, and the door containing the keyhole thrown open.
+Perhaps our duty is not to look. I, for one, wish that great men would
+not leave their love letters around. Nay, I wish you a better wish
+than that: it is that the perfect taste of the gentleman and scholar
+who gave us in its present form the correspondence of Carlyle and
+Emerson, the early and later letters of Carlyle, and the letters of
+Lowell might have control of the private papers of every man of genius
+whose teachings the world holds dear. He would need for this an
+indefinite lease upon life; but since I am wishing, let me wish
+largely. There is need of such wishing. Many editors have been called,
+and only two or three chosen.
+
+But why one who reads the letters of Keats to Fanny Brawne should have
+any other feeling than that of pity for a poor fellow who was so
+desperately in love as to be wretched because of it I do not see. Even
+a cynic will grant that Keats was not disgraced, since it is very
+clear that he did not yield readily to what Dr. Holmes calls the great
+passion. He had a complacent boyish superiority of attitude with
+respect to all those who are weak enough to love women. 'Nothing,' he
+says, 'strikes me so forcibly with a sense of the ridiculous as love.
+A man in love I do think cuts the sorryest figure in the world. Even
+when I know a poor fool to be really in pain about it I could burst
+out laughing in his face. His pathetic visage becomes irresistible.'
+Then he speaks of that dinner party of stutterers and squinters
+described in the _Spectator_, and says that it would please him more
+'to scrape together a party of lovers.' If this letter be genuine and
+the date of it correctly given, it was written three months after he
+had succumbed to the attractions of Fanny Brawne. Perhaps he was
+trying to brave it out, as one may laugh to conceal embarrassment.
+
+In a much earlier letter than this he hopes he shall never marry, but
+nevertheless has a good deal to say about a young lady with fine eyes
+and fine manners and a 'rich Eastern look.' He discovers that he can
+talk to her without being uncomfortable or ill at ease. 'I am too much
+occupied in admiring to be awkward or in a tremble.... She kept me
+awake one night as a tune of Mozart's might do.... I don't cry to take
+the moon home with me in my pocket, nor do I fret to leave her behind
+me.' But he was not a little touched, and found it easy to fill two
+pages on the subject of this dark beauty. She was a friend of the
+Reynolds family. She crosses the stage of the Keats drama in a very
+impressive manner, and then disappears.
+
+The most extraordinary passage to be met with in relation to the
+poet's attitude towards women is in a letter written to Benjamin
+Bailey in July, 1818. As a partial hint towards its full meaning I
+would take two phrases in _Daniel Deronda_. George Eliot says of
+Gwendolen Harleth that there was 'a certain fierceness of maidenhood
+in her,' which expression is quoted here only to emphasize the girl's
+feeling towards men as described a little later, when Rex Gascoigne
+attempted to tell her his love. Gwendolen repulsed him with a sort of
+fury that was surprising to herself. The author's interpretative
+comment is, '_The life of passion had begun negatively in her._'
+
+So one might say of Keats that the life of passion began negatively in
+him. He was conscious of a hostility of temper towards women. 'I am
+certain I have not a right feeling toward women--at this moment I am
+striving to be just to them, but I cannot.' He certainly started with
+a preposterously high ideal, for he says that when a schoolboy he
+thought a fair woman a pure goddess. And now he is disappointed at
+finding women only the equals of men. This disappointment helps to
+give rise to that antagonism which is almost inexplicable save as
+George Eliot's phrase throws light upon it. He thinks that he insults
+women by these perverse feelings of unprovoked hostility. 'Is it not
+extraordinary,' he exclaims, 'when among men I have no evil thoughts,
+no malice, no spleen; I feel free to speak or to be silent; ... I am
+free from all suspicion, and comfortable. When I am among women, I
+have evil thoughts, malice, spleen; I cannot speak or be silent; I am
+full of suspicions, and therefore listen to nothing; I am in a hurry
+to be gone.' He wonders how this trouble is to be cured. He speaks of
+it as a prejudice produced from 'a gordian complication of feelings,
+which must take time to unravel.' And then, with a good-humored,
+characteristic touch, he drops the subject, saying, 'After all, I do
+think better of women than to suppose they care whether Mister John
+Keats, five feet high, likes them or not.'
+
+Three or four months after writing these words he must have begun his
+friendly relations with the Brawne family. This would be in October or
+November, 1818. Keats's description of Fanny is hardly flattering, and
+not even vivid. What is one to make of the colorless expression 'a
+fine style of countenance of the lengthened sort'? But she was fair to
+him, and any beauty beyond that would have been superfluous. We look
+at the silhouette and sigh in vain for trace of the loveliness which
+ensnared Keats. But if our daguerreotypes of forty years ago can so
+entirely fail of giving one line of that which in its day passed for
+dazzling beauty, let us not be unreasonable in our demands upon the
+artistic capabilities of a silhouette. Not infrequently is it true
+that the style of dress seems to disfigure. But we have learned, in
+course of experience, that pretty women manage to be pretty, however
+much fashion, with their cordial help, disguises them.
+
+It is easy to see from the letters that Keats was a difficult lover.
+Hard to please at the best, his two sicknesses, one of body and one of
+heart, made him whimsical. Nothing less than a woman of genius could
+possibly have managed him. He was jealous, perhaps quite unreasonably
+so. Fanny Brawne was young, a bit coquettish, buoyant, and he
+misinterpreted her vivacity. She liked what is commonly called 'the
+world,' and so did he when he was well; but looking through the
+discolored glass of ill health, all nature was out of harmony. For
+these reasons it happens that the letters at times come very near to
+being documents in love-madness. Many a line in them gives sharp pain,
+as a record of heart-suffering must always do. You may read Richard
+Steele's love letters for pleasure, and have it. The love letters of
+Keats scorch and sting; and the worst of it is that you cannot avoid
+reflecting upon the transitory character of such a passion. Withering
+young love like this does not last. It may burn itself out, or, what
+is quite as likely, it may become sober and rational. But in its
+earlier maddened state it cannot possibly last; a man would die under
+it. Men as a rule do not so die, for the race of the Azra is nearly
+extinct.
+
+These Brawne letters, however, are not without their bright side; and
+it is wonderful to see how Keats's elastic nature would rebound the
+instant that the pressure of the disease relaxed. He is at times
+almost gay. The singing of a thrush prompts him to talk in his natural
+epistolary voice: 'There's the Thrush again--I can't afford it--he'll
+run me up a pretty Bill for Music--besides he ought to know I deal at
+Clementi's.' And in the letter which he wrote to Mrs. Brawne from
+Naples is a touch of the old bantering Keats when he says that 'it's
+misery to have an intellect in splints.' He was never strong enough to
+write again to Fanny, or even to read her letters.
+
+I should like to close this reading with a few sentences from a letter
+written to Reynolds in February, 1818. Keats says: 'I had an idea that
+a man might pass a very pleasant life in this manner--let him on a
+certain day read a certain Page of full Poesy or distilled Prose, and
+let him wander with it, and muse upon it, ... and prophesy upon it,
+and dream upon it, until it becomes stale--but when will it do so?
+Never! When Man has arrived at a certain ripeness in intellect any one
+grand and spiritual passage serves him as a starting post towards all
+the "two-and-thirty Palaces." How happy is such a voyage of
+conception, what delicious diligent Indolence!... Nor will this
+sparing touch of noble Books be any irreverence to their Writers--for
+perhaps the honors paid by Man to Man are trifles in comparison to the
+Benefit done by great Works to the Spirit and pulse of good by their
+mere passive existence.'
+
+May we not say that the final test of great literature is that it be
+able to be read in the manner here indicated? As Keats read, so did he
+write. His own work was
+
+              'accomplished in repose
+    Too great for haste, too high for rivalry.'
+
+
+
+
+AN ELIZABETHAN NOVELIST
+
+
+The fathers in English literature were not a little given to writing
+books which they called 'anatomies.' Thomas Nash, for example, wrote
+an _Anatomy of Absurdities_, and Stubbes an _Anatomy of Abuses_.
+Greene, the novelist, entitled one of his romances _Arbasto, the
+Anatomy of Fortune_. The most famous book which bears a title of this
+kind is the _Anatomy of Melancholy_, by Robert Burton. It is notable,
+first, for its inordinate length; second, for its readableness,
+considering the length and the depth of it; third, for its prodigal
+and barbaric display of learning; and last, because it is said to have
+had the effect of making the most indolent man of letters of the
+eighteenth century get up betimes in the morning. Why Dr. Johnson
+needed to get up in order to read the _Anatomy of Melancholy_ will
+always be an enigma to some. Perhaps he did not get up. Perhaps he
+merely sat up and reached for the book, which would have been placed
+conveniently near the bed. For the virtue of the act resided in the
+circumstance of his being awake and reading a good book two hours
+ahead of his wonted time for beginning his day. If he colored his
+remark so as to make us think he got up and dressed before reading, he
+may be forgiven. It was innocently spoken. Just as a man who lives in
+one room will somehow involuntarily fall into the habit of speaking of
+that one room in the plural, so the doctor added a touch which would
+render him heroic in the eyes of those who knew him. I should like a
+pictorial book-plate representing Dr. Johnson, in gown and nightcap,
+sitting up in bed reading the _Anatomy of Melancholy_, with Hodge, the
+cat, curled up contentedly at his feet.
+
+It would be interesting to know whether Johnson ever read, in bed or
+out, a book called _Euphues, the Anatomy of Wit_. It was published in
+the spring of 1579 by Gabriel Cawood, 'dwelling in Paules Churchyard,'
+and was followed one year later by a second part, _Euphues and his
+England_. These books were the work of John Lyly, a young Oxford
+Master of Arts. According to the easy orthography of that time (if the
+word orthography may be applied to a practice by virtue of which every
+man spelled as seemed right in his own eyes), Lyly's name is found in
+at least six forms: Lilye, Lylie, Lilly, Lyllie, Lyly, and Lylly.
+Remembering the willingness of _i_ and _y_ to bear one another's
+burdens, we may still exclaim, with Dr. Ingleby, 'Great is the mystery
+of archaic spelling!' Great indeed when a man sometimes had more suits
+of letters to his name than suits of clothes to his back. That the
+name of this young author was pronounced as was the name of the
+flower, lily, seems the obvious inference from Henry Upchear's verses,
+which contain punning allusions to Lyly and Robert Greene:--
+
+    'Of all the flowers a Lillie once I lov'd
+    Whose laboring beautie brancht itself abroad,' etc.
+
+Original editions of the _Anatomy of Wit_ and its fellow are very
+rare. Probably there is not a copy of either book in the United
+States. This statement is ventured in good faith, and may have the
+effect of bringing to light a hitherto neglected copy.[1] Strange it
+is that princely collectors of yore appear not to have cared for
+_Euphues_. Surely one would not venture to affirm that John, Duke of
+Roxburghe, might not have had it if he had wanted it. The book is not
+to be found in his sale catalogue; he had Lyly's plays in quarto,
+seven of them each marked 'rare,' and he had two copies of a
+well-known book called _Euphues Golden Legacie_, written by Thomas
+Nash. The Perkins Sale catalogue shows neither of Lyly's novels. List
+after list of the spoils of mighty book-hunters has only a blank where
+the _Anatomy of Wit_ ought to be. From this we may argue great
+scarcity, or great indifference, or both. In the compact little
+reprint made by Professor Arber one may read this moral tale, which
+was fashionable when Shakespeare was a youth of sixteen. For
+convenience it will be advisable to speak of it as a single work in
+two parts, for such it practically is.
+
+
+    [1] The writer of this paper once sent to that fine scholar
+        and gracious gentleman, Professor Edward Arber, to inquire
+        whether in his opinion one might hope to buy at a modest
+        price a copy of either the first or the second part of
+        _Euphues_. Professor Arber's reply was amusingly emphatic:
+        'You might as well try to purchase one of Mahomet's old
+        slippers.' But in July of 1896 there were four copies of
+        this old novel on sale at one New York bookstore. One of
+        the copies was of great beauty, consisting of the two
+        parts of the story bound up together in a really sumptuous
+        fashion. The price was not large as prices of such books
+        go, but on the other hand ''a was not small.'
+
+To pronounce upon this romance is not easy. We read a dozen or two of
+pages, and say, 'This is very fantastical humours.' We read further,
+and are tempted to follow Sir Hugh to the extent of declaring, 'This
+is lunatics.' One may venture the not profound remark that it takes
+all sorts of books to make a literature. _Euphues_ is one of the books
+that would prompt to that very remark. For he who first said that it
+takes all sorts of people to make a world was markedly impressed with
+the differences between those people and himself. He had in mind
+eccentric folk, types which deviate from the normal and the sane. So
+_Euphues_ is a very Malvolio among books, cross-gartered and wreathed
+as to its countenance with set smiles. The curious in literary history
+will always enjoy such a production. The verdict of that part of the
+reading world which keeps a book alive by calling for fresh copies of
+it after the old copies are worn out is against _Euphues_. It had a
+vivacious existence between 1579 and 1636, and then went into a
+literary retirement lasting two hundred and thirty-six years. When it
+again came before the public it was introduced as 'a great
+bibliographical rarity.' Its fatal old-fashionedness hangs like a
+millstone about its neck. In the poems of Chaucer and the dramas of
+Shakespeare are a thousand touches which make the reader feel that
+Chaucer and Shakespeare are his contemporaries, that they have written
+in his own time, and published but yesterday. Read _Euphues_, and you
+will say to yourself, 'That book must have been written three hundred
+years ago, and it looks its age.' Yet it has its virtues. One may not
+say of it, as Johnson said of the _Rehearsal_, that it 'has not wit
+enough to keep it sweet.' Neither may he, upon second thought,
+conclude that 'it has not vitality enough to preserve it from
+putrefaction.' It has, indeed, a bottom of good sense; and so had
+Malvolio. It is filled from end to beginning with wit, or with what
+passed for wit among many readers of that day. Often the wit is of a
+tawdry and spectacular sort,--mere verbal wit, the use of a given word
+not because it is the best word, the most fitting word, but because
+the author wants a word beginning with the letter G, or the letter M,
+or the letter F, as the case may be. On the second page of Greene's
+_Arbasto_ is this sentence: 'He did not so much as vouchsafe to give
+an _eare_ to my _parle_, or an _eye_ to my _person_.' Greene learned
+this trick from Lyly, who was a master of the art. The sentence
+represents one of the common forms in _Euphues_, such as this: 'To the
+stomach _quatted_ with _dainties_ all _delicates_ seem _queasie_.'
+Sometimes the balance is preserved by three words on a side. For
+example, the companions whom Euphues found in Naples practiced arts
+'whereby they might either _soake_ his _purse_ to reape _commodotie_,
+or _sooth_ his _person_ to winne _credite_.' Other illustrations are
+these: I can neither '_remember_ our _miseries_ without _griefe_, nor
+_redresse_ our _mishaps_ without _grones_.' 'If the _wasting_ of our
+_money_ might not _dehort_ us, yet the _wounding_ of our _mindes_
+should _deterre_ us.' This next sentence, with its combination of K
+sounds, clatters like a pair of castanets: 'Though Curio bee as hot as
+a toast, yet Euphues is as cold as a clocke, though hee bee a cocke of
+the game, yet Euphues is content to bee craven and crye creake.'
+
+Excess of alliteration is the most obvious feature of Lyly's style.
+That style has been carefully analyzed by those who are learned in
+such things. The study is interesting, with its talk of alliteration
+and transverse alliteration, antithesis, climax, and assonance. In
+truth, one does not know which to admire the more, the ingenuity of
+the man who constructed the book, or the ingenuity of the scholars who
+have explained how he did it. Between Lyly on the one hand, and the
+grammarians on the other, the reader is almost tempted to ask if this
+be literature or mathematics. Whether Lyly got his style from Pettie
+or Guevara is an important question, but he made it emphatically his
+own, and it will never be called by any other name than Euphuism. The
+making of a book on this plan is largely the result of astonishing
+mental gymnastics. It commands respect in no small degree, because
+Lyly was able to keep it up so long. To walk from New York to Albany,
+as did the venerable Weston not so very long since, is a great test of
+human endurance. But walking is the employment of one's legs and body
+in God's appointed way of getting over the ground. Suppose a man were
+to undertake to hop on one leg from New York to Albany, the utility or
+the aesthetic value of the performance would be less obvious. The most
+successful artist in hopping could hardly expect applause from the
+right-minded. He would excite attention because he was able to hop so
+far, and not because he was the exponent of a praiseworthy method of
+locomotion. Lyly gained eminence by doing to a greater extent than any
+man a thing that was not worth doing at all. One is more astonished at
+Lyly's power of endurance as author than at his own power of endurance
+as reader. For the volume is actually readable even at this day. Did
+Lyly not grow wearied of perpetually riding these alliterative
+trick-ponies? Apparently not. The book is 'executed' with a vivacity,
+a dash, a 'go,' that will captivate any reader who is willing to meet
+the author halfway. _Euphues_ became the rage, and its literary style
+the fashion. How or why must be left to him to explain who can tell
+why sleeves grow small and then grow big, why skirts are at one time
+only two and a half yards around and at another time five and a half
+or eight yards around. An Elizabethan gentleman might be too poor to
+dress well, but he would squander his last penny in getting his ruff
+starched. Lyly's style bristles with extravagances of the starched
+ruff sort, which only serve to call attention to the intellectual
+deficiencies in the matter of doublet and hose.
+
+Of plot or story there is but little. The hero, Euphues, who gives the
+title to the romance, is a young, clever, and rich Athenian. He visits
+Naples, where his money and wit attract many to his side. By his
+careless, pleasure-seeking mode of life he wakens the fatherly
+interest of a wise old gentleman, Eubulus, who calls upon him to warn
+him of his danger. The conversation between the two is the first and
+not the least amusing illustration of the courtly verbal fencing with
+which the book is filled. The advice of the old man only provokes
+Euphues into making the sophistical plea that his style of living is
+right because nature prompts him to it; and he leaves Eubulus 'in a
+great quandary' and in tears. Nevertheless, the old gentleman has the
+righteous energy which prompts him to say to the departing Euphues,
+already out of hearing, 'Seeing thou wilt not buy counsel at the first
+hand good cheap, thou shalt buy repentance at the second hand, at such
+unreasonable rate, that thou wilt curse thy hard pennyworth, and ban
+thy hard heart.' Euphues takes to himself a new sworn brother, one
+Philautus, who carries him to visit his lady-love, Lucilla. Lucilla is
+rude at first, but becomes enamored of Euphues's conversational power,
+and finally of himself. In fact, she unceremoniously throws over her
+former lover, and tells her father that she will either marry Euphues
+or else lead apes in hell. This causes a break in the friendship
+between Euphues and Philautus, and there is an exchange of formidably
+worded letters, in which Philautus reminds Euphues that all Greeks are
+liars, and Euphues quotes Euripides to the effect that all is lawful
+in love. Lucilla, who is fickle, suddenly dismisses her new cavalier
+for yet a third, while Euphues and Philautus, in the light of their
+common misfortune, fall upon each other's necks and are reconciled.
+Both profess themselves to have been fools, while Euphues, as the
+greater and more recent fool, composes a pamphlet against love. This
+he calls a 'cooling-card.' It is addressed primarily to Philautus, but
+contains general advice for 'all fond lovers.' Euphues's own cure was
+radical, for he says, 'Now do I give a farewell to the world, meaning
+rather to macerate myself with melancholy, than pine in folly, rather
+choosing to die in my study amidst my books than to court it in Italy
+in the company of ladies.' He returns to Athens, applies himself to
+the study of philosophy, becomes public reader in the University, and,
+as crowning evidence that he has finished sowing his wild oats,
+produces three volumes of lectures. Realizing how much of his own
+youth has been wasted, he writes a pamphlet on the education of the
+young, a dialogue with an atheist, and these, with a bundle of
+letters, make up the first part of the _Anatomy of Wit_. From one of
+the letters we learn that Lucilla was as frail as she was beautiful,
+and that she died in evil report. The story, including the diatribe
+against love, is about as long as _The Vicar of Wakefield_. It begins
+as a romance and ends as a sermon.
+
+The continuation of the novel, _Euphues and his England_, is a little
+over a third longer than Part One. The two friends carry out their
+project of visiting England. After a wearisome voyage they reach
+Dover, view the cliffs and the castle, and then proceed to Canterbury.
+Between Canterbury and London they stop for a while with a 'comely
+olde gentleman,' Fidus, who keeps bees and tells good stories. He also
+gives sound advice as to the way in which strangers should conduct
+themselves. A lively bit of writing is the account which Fidus gives
+of his commonwealth of bees. It is not according to Lubbock, but is
+none the less amusing. In London the two travelers become favorites at
+the court. Philautus falls in love, to the great annoyance of Euphues,
+who argues mightily with him against such folly. The two gentlemen
+expend vast resources of stationery and language upon the subject.
+They quarrel violently, and Euphues becomes so irritated that he must
+needs go and rent new lodgings, 'which by good friends he quickly got,
+and there fell to his _Pater noster_, where awhile,' says Lyly
+innocently, 'I will not trouble him in his prayers.' They are
+reconciled later, and Philautus obtains permission to love; but he has
+discovered in the mean time that the lady will not have him. The
+account of his passion, how it 'boiled and bubbled,' of his visit to
+the soothsayer to purchase love charms, his stately declamations to
+Camilla and her elaborate replies to him, of his love letter concealed
+in a pomegranate, and her answer stitched into a copy of Petrarch,--is
+all very lively reading, much more so than that dreary love-making
+between Pyrocles and Philoclea, or between any other pair of the many
+exceedingly tiresome folk in Sidney's _Arcadia_. Grant that it is
+deliciously absurd. It is not to be supposed that a clever
+eighteen-year-old girl, replying to a declaration of love, will talk
+in the language of a trained nurse, and say: 'Green sores are to be
+dressed roughly lest they fester, tettars are to be drawn in the
+beginning lest they spread, Ringworms to be anointed when they first
+appear lest they compass the whole body, and the assaults of love to
+be beaten back at the first siege lest they undermine at the second.'
+Was ever suitor in this fashion rejected! It makes one think of some
+of the passages in the _History of John Buncle_, where the hero pours
+out a torrent of passionate phrases, and the 'glorious' Miss Noel, in
+reply, begs that they may take up some rational topic of conversation;
+for example, what is _his_ view of that opinion which ascribes
+'primaevity and sacred prerogatives' to the Hebrew language.
+
+But Philautus does not break his heart over Camilla's rejection. He is
+consoled with the love of another fair maiden, marries her, and
+settles in England. Euphues goes back to Athens, and presently retires
+to the country, where he follows the calling of one whose profession
+is melancholy. Like most hermits of culture, he leaves his address
+with his banker. We assume this, for he was very rich; it is not
+difficult to be a hermit on a large income. The book closes with a
+section called 'Euphues Glasse for Europe,' a thirty-page panegyric on
+England and the Queen.
+
+They say that this novel was very popular, and certain causes of its
+popularity are not difficult to come at. A large measure of the
+success that _Euphues_ had is due to the commonplaceness of its
+observations. It abounds in proverbs and copy-book wisdom. In this
+respect it is as homely as an almanac. John Lyly had a great store of
+'miscellany thoughts,' and he cheerfully parted with them. His book
+succeeded as Tupper's _Proverbial Philosophy_ and Watts' _On the Mind_
+succeeded. People believed that they were getting ideas, and people
+like what they suppose to be ideas if no great effort is required in
+the getting of them. It is astonishing how often the world needs to be
+advised of the brevity of time. Yet every person who can wade in the
+shallows of his own mind and not wet his shoe-tops finds a sweet
+melancholy and a stimulating freshness in the thought that time is
+short. John Lyly said, 'There is nothing more swifter than time,
+nothing more sweeter,'--and countless Elizabethan gentlemen and ladies
+underscored that sentence, or transferred it to their commonplace
+books,--if they had such painful aids to culture,--and were comforted
+and edified by the discovery that brilliant John Lyly had made. This
+glib command of the matter-of-course, with a ready use of the proverb
+and the 'old said saw,' is a marked characteristic of the work. It
+emphasizes the youth of its author. We learn what could not have been
+new even in 1579, that 'in misery it is a great comfort to have a
+companion;' that 'a new broom sweepeth clean;' that 'delays breed
+dangers;' that 'nothing is so perilous as procrastination;' that 'a
+burnt child dreadeth the fire;' that it is well not to make
+comparisons 'lest comparisons should seem odious;' that 'it is too
+late to shut the stable door when the steed is stolen;' that 'many
+things fall between the cup and the lip;' and that 'marriages are made
+in heaven, though consummated on earth.' With these old friends come
+others, not altogether familiar of countenance, and quaintly archaic
+in their dress: 'It must be a wily mouse that shall breed in the cat's
+ear;' 'It is a mad hare that will be caught with a tabor, and a
+foolish bird that stayeth the laying salt on her tail, and a blind
+goose that cometh to the fox's sermon.' Lyly would sometimes translate
+a proverb; he does not tell us that fine words butter no parsnips, but
+says, 'Fair words fat few,'--which is delightfully alliterative, but
+hardly to be accounted an improvement. Expressions that are
+surprisingly modern turn up now and then. One American street urchin
+taunts another by telling him that he doesn't know enough to come in
+when it rains. The saying is at least three hundred years old, for
+Lyly says, in a dyspeptic moment, 'So much wit is sufficient for a
+woman as when she is in the rain can warn her to come out of it.'
+
+Another cause of the popularity of _Euphues_ is its sermonizing. The
+world loves to hear good advice. The world is not nervously anxious to
+follow the advice, but it understands the edification that comes by
+preaching. With many persons, to have heard a sermon is almost
+equivalent to having practiced the virtues taught in the sermon.
+Churches are generally accepted as evidences of civilization. A man
+who is exploiting the interests of a new Western town will invariably
+tell you that it has so many churches. Also, an opera-house. The
+English world above all other worlds loves to hear good advice.
+England is the natural home of the sermon. Jusserand notes, almost
+with wonder, that in the annual statistics of the London publishers
+the highest numbers indicate the output of sermons and theological
+works. Then come novels. John Lyly was ingenious; he combined good
+advice and storytelling. Not skillfully, hiding the sermon amid lively
+talk and adventure, but blazoning the fact that he was going to
+moralize as long as he would. He shows no timidity, even declares upon
+one of his title-pages that in this volume 'there is small offense by
+lightness given to the wise, and less occasion of looseness proffered
+to the wanton.' Such courage in this day would be apt seriously to
+injure the sale of a novel. Did not Ruskin declare that Miss Edgeworth
+had made virtue so obnoxious that since her time one hardly dared
+express the slightest bias in favor of the Ten Commandments? Lyly knew
+the public for which he acted as literary caterer. They liked sermons,
+and sermons they should have. Nearly every character in the book
+preaches, and Euphues is the most gifted of them all. Even that old
+gentleman of Naples who came first to Euphues because his heart bled
+to see so noble a youth given to loose living has the tables turned
+upon him, for Euphues preaches to the preacher upon the sovereign duty
+of resignation to the will of God.
+
+A noteworthy characteristic is the frequency of Lyly's classical
+allusions. If the only definition of pedantry be 'vain and
+ostentatious display of learning,' I question if we may dismiss Lyly's
+wealth of classical lore with the word 'pedantry.' He was fresh from
+his university life. If he studied at all when he was at Oxford, he
+must have studied Latin and Greek, for after these literatures little
+else was studied. Young men and their staid tutors were compelled to
+know ancient history and mythology. Like Heine, they may have taken a
+'real delight in the mob of gods and goddesses who ran so jolly naked
+about the world.' In the first three pages of the _Anatomy of Wit_
+there are twenty classical names, ten of them coupled each with an
+allusion. Nobody begins a speech without a reference of this nature
+within calling distance. Euphues and Philautus fill their talk with
+evidences of a classical training. The ladies are provided with apt
+remarks drawn from the experiences of Helen, of Cornelia, of Venus, of
+Diana, and Vesta. Even the master of the ship which conveyed Euphues
+from Naples to England declaims about Ulysses and Julius Caesar. This
+naturally destroys all dramatic effect. Everybody speaks Euphuism,
+though classical allusion alone is not essentially Euphuistic. John
+Lyly would be the last man to merit any portion of that fine praise
+bestowed by Hazlitt upon Shakespeare when he said that Shakespeare's
+genius 'consisted in the faculty of transforming himself at will into
+whatever he chose.' Lyly's genius was the opposite of this; it
+consisted in the faculty of transforming everybody into a
+reduplication of himself. There is no change in style when the
+narrative parts end and the dialogue begins. All the persons of the
+drama utter one strange tongue. They are no better than the characters
+in a Punch and Judy show, where one concealed manipulator furnishes
+voice for each of the figures. But in Lyly's novel there is not even
+an attempt at the most rudimentary ventriloquism.
+
+What makes the book still less a reflection of life is that the
+speakers indulge in interminably long harangues. No man (unless he
+were a Coleridge) would be tolerated who talked in society at such
+inordinate length. When the characters can't talk to one another they
+retire to their chambers and declaim to themselves. They polish their
+language with the same care, open the classical dictionary, and have
+at themselves in good set terms. Philautus, inflamed with love of
+Camilla, goes to his room and pronounces a ten-minute discourse on the
+pangs of love, having only himself for auditor. They are amazingly
+patient under the verbal inflictions of one another. Euphues, angry
+with Philautus for having allowed himself to fall in love, takes him
+to task in a single speech containing four thousand words. If Lyly had
+set out with the end in view of constructing a story by putting into
+it alone 'what is not life,' his product would have been what we find
+it now. One could easily believe the whole affair to have been
+intended for a tremendous joke were it not that the tone is so
+serious. We are accustomed to think of youth as light-hearted: but
+look at a serious child,--there is nothing more serious in the world.
+Lyly was twenty-six years when he first published. Much of the
+seriousness in his romance is the burden of twenty-six years'
+experience of life, a burden greater perhaps than he ever afterward
+carried.
+
+Being, as we take it, an unmarried man, Lyly gives directions for
+managing a wife. He believes in the wholesome doctrine that a man
+should select his own wife. 'Made marriages by friends' are dangerous.
+'I had as lief another should take measure by his back of my apparel
+as appoint what wife I shall have by his mind.' He prefers in a wife
+'beauty before riches, and virtue before blood.' He holds to the
+radical English doctrine of wifely submission; there is no swerving
+from the position that the man is the woman's 'earthly master,'[2] but
+in taming a wife no violence is to be employed. Wives are to be
+subdued with kindness. 'If their husbands with great threatenings,
+with jars, with brawls, seek to make them tractable, or bend their
+knees, the more stiff they make them in the joints, the oftener they
+go about by force to rule them, the more froward they find them; but
+using mild words, gentle persuasions, familiar counsel, entreaty,
+submission, they shall not only make them to bow their knees, but to
+hold up their hands, not only cause them to honor them, but to stand
+in awe of them.' By such methods will that supremest good of an
+English home be brought about, namely, that the wife shall stand in
+awe of her husband.
+
+    [2] Lady Burton's Dedication of her husband's
+        biography,--'To my earthly master,' etc.
+
+The young author admits that some wives have the domineering instinct,
+and that way danger lies. A man must look out for himself. If he is
+not to make a slave of his wife, he is also not to be too submissive;
+'that will cause her to disdain thee.' Moreover, he must have an eye
+to the expenditure. She may keep the keys, but he will control the
+pocket-book. The model wife in Ecclesiastes had greater privileges;
+she could not only consider a piece of ground, but she could buy it if
+she liked it. Not so this well-trained wife of Lyly's novel. 'Let all
+the keys hang at her girdle, but the purse at thine, so shalt thou
+know what thou dost spend, and how she can spare.' But in setting
+forth his theory for being happy though married, Lyly, methinks,
+preaches a dangerous doctrine in this respect: he hints at the
+possibility of a man's wanting, in vulgar parlance, to go on a spree,
+expresses no question as to the propriety of his so doing, but says
+that if a man does let himself loose in this fashion his wife must not
+know it. 'Imitate the kings of Persia, who when they were given to
+riot kept no company with their wives, but when they used good order
+had their queens even at the table.' In short, the wife was to
+duplicate the moods of her husband. 'Thou must be a glass to thy wife,
+for in thy face must she see her own; for if when thou laughest she
+weep, when thou mournest she giggle, the one is a manifest sign she
+delighteth in others, the other a token she despiseth thee.' John Lyly
+was a wise youth. He struck the keynote of the mode in which most
+incompatible marriages are played when he said that it was a bad sign
+if one's wife giggled when one was disposed to be melancholy.
+
+An interesting study is the author's attitude toward foreign travel.
+It would appear to have been the fashion of the time to indulge in
+much invective against foreign travel, but nevertheless--to travel.
+Many men believed with young Valentine that 'home keeping youth have
+ever homely wits,' while others were rather of Ascham's mind when he
+said, 'I was once in Italy, but I thank God my stay there was only
+nine days.' Lyly came of a nation of travelers. Then as now it was
+true that there was no accessible spot of the globe upon which the
+Englishman had not set his foot. Nomadic England went abroad;
+sedentary England stayed at home to rail at him for so doing. Aside
+from that prejudice which declared that all foreigners were fools,
+there was a well-founded objection to the sort of traveling usually
+described as seeing the world. Young men went upon the continent to
+see questionable forms of pleasure, perhaps to practice them. Whether
+justly or not, common report named Italy as the higher school of
+pleasurable vices, and Naples as the city where one's doctorate was to
+be obtained. Gluttony and licentiousness are the sins of Naples.
+Eubulus tells Euphues that in that city are those who 'sleep with meat
+in their mouths, with sin in their hearts, and with shame in their
+houses.' There is no limit to the inconveniences of traveling. 'Thou
+must have the back of an ass to bear all, and the snout of a swine to
+say nothing.... Travelers must sleep with their eyes open lest they be
+slain in their beds, and wake with their eyes shut lest they be
+suspected by their looks.' Journeys by the fireside are better. 'If
+thou covet to travel strange countries, search the maps, there shalt
+thou see much with great pleasure and small pains, if to be conversant
+in all courts, read histories, where thou shalt understand both what
+the men have been and what their manners are, and methinketh there
+must be much delight where there is no danger.' Perhaps Lyly intended
+to condemn traveling with character unformed. A boy returned with more
+vices than he went forth with pence, and was able to sin both by
+experience and authority. Lest he should be thought to speak with
+uncertain voice upon this matter Lyly gives Euphues a story to tell in
+which the chief character describes the effect of traveling upon
+himself. 'There was no crime so barbarous, no murder so bloody, no
+oath so blasphemous, no vice so execrable, but that I could readily
+recite where I learned it, and by rote repeat the peculiar crime of
+every particular country, city, town, village, house, or chamber.'
+Here, indeed, is no lack of plain speech.
+
+In the section called 'Euphues and his Ephoebus' twenty-nine pages are
+devoted to the question of the education of youth. It is largely taken
+from Plutarch. Some of the points are these: that a mother shall
+herself nurse her child, that the child shall be early framed to
+manners, 'for as the steele is imprinted in the soft waxe, so learning
+is engraven in ye minde of an young Impe.' He is not to hear 'fonde
+fables or filthy tales.' He is to learn to pronounce distinctly and to
+be kept from 'barbarous talk,' that is, no dialect and no slang. He is
+to become expert in martial affairs, in shooting and darting, and he
+must hunt and hawk for his 'honest recreation.' If he will not study,
+he is not to be 'scourged with stripes, but threatened with words, not
+_dulled with blows_, like servants, the which, the more they are
+beaten the better they bear it, and the less they care for it.' In
+taking this position Lyly is said to be only following Ascham. Ascham
+was not the first in his own time to preach such doctrine. Forty years
+before the publication of _The Schoolmaster_, Sir Thomas Elyot, in his
+book called _The Governour_, raised his voice against the barbarity of
+teachers 'by whom the wits of children be dulled,'--almost the very
+words of John Lyly.
+
+_Euphues_, besides being a treatise on love and education, is a sort
+of Tudor tract upon animated nature. It should be a source of joy
+unspeakable to the general reader if only for what it teaches him in
+the way of natural history. How much of what is most gravely stated
+here did John Lyly actually believe? It is easy to grant so orthodox a
+statement of physical fact as that 'the Sunne doth harden the durte,
+and melte the waxe;' but ere the sentence be finished, the author
+calls upon us to believe that 'Perfumes doth refresh the Dove and kill
+the Betill.' The same reckless extravagance of remark is to be noted
+whenever bird, beast, or reptile is mentioned. The crocodile of
+Shakespeare's time must have been a very contortionist among beasts,
+for, says Lyly, 'when one approacheth neere unto him, [he] gathereth
+up himselfe into the roundnesse of a ball, but running from him,
+stretcheth himselfe into the length of a tree.' Perhaps the fame of
+this creature's powers grew in the transmission of the narrative from
+the banks of the Nile to the banks of the Thames. The ostrich was
+human in its vanity according to Lyly; men and women sometimes pull
+out their white hairs, but 'the Estritch, that taketh the greatest
+pride in her feathers, picketh some of the worst out and burneth
+them.' Nay, more than that, being in 'great haste she pricketh none
+but hirselfe which causeth hir to runne when she would rest.' We shall
+presently expect to hear that ostriches wear boots by the straps of
+which they lift themselves over ten-foot woven-wire fences. But Lyly
+used the conventional natural history that was at hand, and troubled
+himself in no respect to inquire about its truth or falsity.
+
+There is yet another cause of the popularity of this book in its own
+time, which has been too little emphasized. It is that trumpet blast
+of patriotism with which the volume ends. We feel, as we read the
+thirty pages devoted to the praise of England and the Queen, that this
+is right, fitting, artistic, and we hope that it is tolerably sincere.
+Flattery came easily to men in those days, and there was small hope of
+advancement for one who did not master the art. But there is a glow of
+earnestness in these paragraphs rather convincing to the skeptic. Nor
+would the book be complete without this eulogy. We have had everything
+else; a story for who wanted a story, theories upon the education of
+children, a body of mythological divinity, a discussion of methods of
+public speaking, advice for men who are about to marry, a theological
+sparring match, in which a man of straw is set up to be knocked down,
+and _is_ knocked down, a thousand illustrations of wit and curious
+reading, and now, as a thing that all men could understand, the author
+tells Englishmen of their own good fortune in being Englishmen, and is
+finely outspoken in praise of what he calls 'the blessed Island.'
+
+This is an old-fashioned vein, to be sure,--the _ad captandum_ trick
+of a popular orator bent upon making a success. It is not looked upon
+in all places with approval. 'Our unrivaled prosperity' was a phrase
+which greatly irritated Matthew Arnold. Here in America, are we not
+taught by a highly fastidious journal that we may be patriotic if we
+choose, but we must be careful how we let people know it? We mustn't
+make a fuss about it. We mustn't be blatant. The star-spangled banner
+on the public schools is at best a cheap and vulgar expression of
+patriotism. But somehow even this sort of patriotism goes with the
+people, and perhaps these instincts of the common folk are not
+entirely to be despised. Many a reader of _Euphues_, who cared but
+little for its elaborated style, who was not moved by its orthodoxy,
+who didn't read books simply because they were fashionable, must have
+felt his pulse stirred by Lyly's chant of England's greatness. For
+Euphues is John Lyly, and John Lyly's creed was substantially that of
+the well-known hero of a now forgotten comic opera, 'I am an
+Englishman.'
+
+In the thin disguise of the chief character of his story the author
+describes the happy island, its brave gentlemen and rich merchants,
+its fair ladies and its noble Queen. The glories of London, which he
+calls the storehouse and mart of all Europe, and the excellence of
+English universities, 'out of which do daily proceed men of great
+wisdom,' are alike celebrated. England's material wealth in mines and
+quarries is amply set forth, also the fine qualities of the breed of
+cattle, and the virtues of English spaniels, hounds, and mastiffs; for
+these constitute a sort of good that all could appreciate. He is
+satirical at the expense of his countrymen's dress,--'there is nothing
+in England more constant than the inconstancie of attire,'--but
+praises their silence and gravity at their meals. They have wise
+ministers in the court, and devout guardians of the true religion and
+of the church. 'O thrice happy England, where such councilors are,
+where such people live, where such virtue springeth.'
+
+In the paragraphs relating to the queen, Lyly grows positively
+eloquent. He praises her matchless beauty, her mercy, patience, and
+moderation, and emphasizes the fact of her virginity to a degree that
+would have satisfied the imperial votaress herself if but once she had
+considered her admirer's words: 'O fortunate England that hath such a
+Queen; ungratefull, if thou pray not for her; wicked, if thou do not
+love her; miserable, if thou lose her.' He calls down Heaven's
+blessings upon her that she may be 'triumphant in victories like the
+Palm tree, fruitful in her age like the Vine, in all ages prosperous,
+to all men gracious, in all places glorious: so that there be no end
+of her praise, until the end of all flesh.'
+
+With passages such as these, this interesting book draws to a
+conclusion. A most singular and original book, worthy to be read,
+unless, indeed, the reading of these out-of-the-way volumes were found
+to encroach upon time belonging by right of eminent intellectual
+domain to Chaucer and to Shakespeare, to Spenser and to Milton. That
+_Euphues_ is in no exact sense a novel admits of little question. It
+is also a brilliant illustration of how not to write English.
+Nevertheless it is very amusing, and its disappearance would be a
+misfortune, since it would eclipse the innocent gayety of many a man
+who loves to bask in that golden sunshine which streams from the pages
+of old English books.
+
+
+
+
+THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF A FAIR-MINDED MAN
+
+
+It is by no means necessary that one be a man of letters in order to
+write a good book. Some very admirable books have been written by men
+who gave no especial thought to literature as an art. They wrote
+because they were so fortunate as to find themselves in possession of
+ideas, and not because they had determined to become authors.
+Literature as such implies sophistication, and people who devote
+themselves to literature do so from a variety of motives. But these
+writers of whom I now speak have a less complex thought back of their
+work. They do not, for example, propose pleasure to the reader as an
+object in writing. Their aim is single. They recount an experience, or
+plead a cause. Literature with them is always a means to an end. They
+are like pedestrians who never look upon walking as other than a
+rational process for reaching a given place. It does not occur to them
+that walking makes for health and pleasure, and that it is also an
+exercise for displaying a graceful carriage, the set of the shoulders,
+the poise of the head.
+
+To be sure one runs the risk of being deceived in this matter. The
+actress who plays the part of an unaffected young girl, for aught that
+the spectator knows to the contrary may be a pronounced woman of the
+world. Not every author who says to the public 'excuse my untaught
+manner' is on this account to be regarded as a literary ingenu. His
+simplicity awakens distrust. The fact that he professes to be a layman
+is a reason for suspecting him. He is probably an adept, a master of
+the wiles by which readers are snared.
+
+But aside from the cases in which deception is practiced, or at least
+attempted, there is in the world a respectable body of literature
+which is not the work of literary men. Its chief characteristic is
+sincerity. The writers of these books are so busy in telling the truth
+that they have no time to think of literature.
+
+Among the more readable of these pieces is that unpretentious volume
+in which Dr. Joseph Priestley relates the story of his life. For in
+classing this book with the writings of authors who are not men of
+letters one surely does not go wide of the mark. There is a sense in
+which it is entirely proper to say that Priestley was not a literary
+man. He produced twenty-five volumes of 'works,' but they were for use
+rather than for art. He wrote on science, on grammar, on theology, on
+law. He published controversial tracts: 'Did So-and-So believe
+so-and-so or something quite different?' and then a discussion of the
+'grounds' of this belief. He made 'rejoinders,' 'defenses,'
+'animadversions,' and printed the details of his _Experiments on
+Different Kinds of Air_. This is distinctly uninviting. Let me propose
+an off-hand test by which to determine whether or no a given book is
+literature. _Can you imagine Charles Lamb in the act of reading that
+book?_ If you can; it's literature; if you can't, it isn't. I find it
+difficult to conceive of Charles Lamb as mentally immersed in the
+_Letter to an Anti-paedobaptist_ or the _Doctrine of Phlogiston
+Established_, but it is natural to think of him turning the pages of
+Priestley's Memoir, reading each page with honest satisfaction and
+pronouncing the volume to be worthy the title of A BOOK.
+
+It is a plain unvarnished tale and entirely innocent of those arts by
+the practice of which authors please their public. There is no
+eloquence, no rhetoric, no fine writing of any sort. The two or three
+really dramatic events in Priestley's career are not handled with a
+view to producing dramatic effect. There are places where the author
+might easily have become impassioned. But he did not become
+impassioned. Not a few paragraphs contain unwritten poems. The
+simple-hearted Priestley was unconscious of this, or if conscious,
+then too modest to make capital of it. He had never aspired to the
+reputation of a clever writer, but rather of a useful one. His aim was
+quite as simple when he wrote the Memoir as when he wrote his various
+philosophical reports. He never deviated into brilliancy. He set down
+plain statements about events which had happened to him, and people
+whom he had known. Nevertheless the narrative is charming, and the
+reasons of its charm are in part these:--
+
+In the first place the book belongs to that department of literature
+known as autobiography. Autobiography has peculiar virtues. The
+poorest of it is not without some flavor of life, and at its best it
+is transcendent. A notable value lies in its power to stimulate. This
+power is very marked in Priestley's case, where the self-delineated
+portrait is of a man who met and overcame enormous difficulties. He
+knew poverty and calumny, both brutal things. He had a thorn in the
+flesh,--for so he himself characterized that impediment in his speech
+which he tried more or less unsuccessfully all his life to cure. He
+found his scientific usefulness impaired by religious and political
+antagonisms. He tasted the bitterness of mob violence; his house was
+sacked, his philosophical instruments destroyed, his manuscripts and
+books scattered along the highway. But as he looked back upon these
+things he was not moved to impatience. There is a high serenity in his
+narrative as becomes a man who has learned to distinguish between the
+ephemeral and the permanent elements of life.
+
+Yet it is not impossible that autobiography of this sort has an effect
+the reverse of stimulating upon some people. It is pleasanter to read
+of heroes than to be a hero oneself. The story of conquest is
+inspiring, but the actual process is apt to be tedious. One's nerves
+are tuned to a fine energy in reading of Priestley's efforts to
+accomplish a given task. 'I spent the latter part of every week with
+Mr. Thomas, a Baptist minister, ... who had no liberal education. Him
+I instructed in Hebrew, and by that means made myself a considerable
+proficient in that language. At the same time I learned Chaldee and
+Syriac and just began to read Arabic' This seems easy in the telling,
+but in reality it was a long, a monotonous, an exhausting process.
+Think of the expenditure of hours and eyesight over barbarous
+alphabets and horrid grammatical details. One must needs have had a
+mind of leather to endure such philological and linguistic wear and
+tear. Priestley's mind not only cheerfully endured it but actually
+toughened under it. The man was never afraid of work. Take as an
+illustration his experience in keeping school.
+
+He had pronounced objections to this business, and he registered his
+protest. But suppose the alternative is to teach school or to starve.
+A man will then teach school. I don't know that this was quite the
+situation in which Priestley found himself, though he needed money. He
+may have hesitated to enter a profession which in his time required a
+more extensive muscular equipment than he was able to furnish. The old
+English schoolmasters were 'bruisers.' They had thick skins, hard
+heads, and solid fists. The symbols of their office were a Greek
+grammar and a flexible rod. They were skillful either with the book or
+the birch. It has taken many years to convince the world that the
+short road to the moods and tenses does not necessarily lie through
+the valley of the shadow of flogging. Perhaps Priestley objected to
+school-mastering because it was laborious. It was indeed laborious as
+he practiced it. One marvels at his endurance. His school consisted of
+about thirty boys, and he had a separate room for about half-a-dozen
+young ladies. 'Thus I was employed from seven in the morning until
+four in the afternoon, without any interval except one hour for
+dinner; and I never gave a holiday on any consideration, the red
+letter days excepted. Immediately after this employment in my own
+school-rooms I went to teach in the family of Mr. Tomkinson, an
+eminent attorney, ... and here I continued until seven in the
+evening.' Twelve consecutive hours of teaching, less one hour for
+dinner! It was hardly necessary for Priestley to add that he had 'but
+little leisure for reading.'
+
+He laid up no money from teaching, but like a true man of genius spent
+it upon books, a small air-pump, an electrical machine. By training
+his advanced pupils to manipulate these he 'extended the reputation'
+of his school. This was playing at science. Several years were yet to
+elapse before he should acquire fame as an original investigator.
+
+This autobiography is valuable because it illustrates the events of a
+remarkable time. He who cares about the history of theological
+opinion, the history of chemical science, the history of liberty, will
+read these pages with keen interest. Priestley was active in each of
+these fields. Men famous for their connection with the great movements
+of the period were among his friends and acquaintance. He knew
+Franklin and Richard Price. John Canton, who was the first man in
+England to verify Franklin's experiments, was a friend of Priestley.
+So too were Smeaton the engineer, James Watt, Boulton, Josiah
+Wedgewood, and Erasmus Darwin. He knew Kippis, Lardner, Parr, and had
+met Porson and Dr. Johnson. His closest friend for many years was
+Theophilus Lindsey. One might also mention the great Lavoisier,
+Magellan the Jesuit philosopher, and a dozen other scientific,
+ecclesiastical, and political celebrities. The Memoir, however, is
+almost as remarkable for what it does not tell concerning these people
+as for what it does. Priestley was not anecdotal. And he is only a
+little less reticent about himself than he is about others. He does
+indeed describe his early struggles as a dissenting minister, but the
+reader would like a little more expansiveness in the account of his
+friendships and his chemical discoveries. These discoveries were made
+during the time that he was minister at the Mill-hill Chapel, Leeds.
+Here he began the serious study of chemistry. And that without
+training in the science as it was then understood. At Warrington he
+had heard a series of chemical lectures by Dr. Turner of Liverpool, a
+gentleman whom Americans ought to regard with amused interest, for he
+was the man who congratulated his fellows in a Liverpool debating
+society that while they had just lost the _terra firma_ of thirteen
+colonies in America, they had gained, under the generalship of Dr.
+Herschel, a _terra incognita_ of much greater extent _in nubibus_.
+Priestley not only began his experiments without any great store of
+knowledge, but also without apparatus save what he devised for himself
+of the cheapest materials. In 1772 he published his first important
+scientific tract, 'a small pamphlet on the method of impregnating
+water with fixed air.' For this he received the Copley medal from the
+Royal Society. On the first of August, 1774, he discovered oxygen.
+Nobody in Leeds troubled particularly to inquire what this dissenting
+minister was about with his vials and tubes, his mice and his plants.
+Priestley says that the only person who took 'much interest' was Mr.
+Hey, a surgeon. Mr. Hey was a 'zealous Methodist' and wrote answers to
+Priestley's theological papers. Arminian and Socinian were at peace if
+science was the theme. When Priestley departed from Leeds, Hey begged
+of him the 'earthen trough' in which all his experiments had been
+made. This earthen trough was nothing more nor less than a washtub of
+the sort in common local use. So independent is genius of the
+elaborate appliances with which talent must produce results.
+
+The discoveries brought fame, especially upon the Continent, and led
+Lord Shelburne to invite Priestley to become his 'literary companion.'
+Dr. Price was the intermediary in effecting this arrangement.
+Priestley's nominal post was that of 'librarian,' and he now and then
+officiated as experimentalist extraordinary before Lord Shelburne's
+guests. The compensation was not illiberal, and the relation seems to
+have been as free from degrading elements as such relations can be.
+Priestley was not a sycophant even in the day when men of genius
+thought it no great sin to give flattery in exchange for dinners. It
+was never his habit to burn incense before the great simply because
+the great liked the smell of incense and were accustomed to it. On the
+other hand, Shelburne appears to have treated the philosopher with
+kindness and delicacy, and the situation was not without difficulties
+for his lordship.
+
+Among obvious advantages which Priestley derived from this residence
+were freedom from financial worry, time for writing and experimenting,
+a tour on the Continent, and the privilege of spending the winter
+season of each year in London.
+
+It was during these London visits that he renewed his acquaintance
+with Dr. Franklin. They were members of a club of 'philosophical
+gentlemen' which met at stated times at the London Coffee House,
+Ludgate Hill. There were few days upon which the Father of Pneumatic
+Chemistry and the Father of Electrical Science did not meet. When
+their talk was not of dephlogisticated air and like matters it was
+pretty certain to be political. The war between England and America
+was imminent. Franklin dreaded it. He often said to Priestley that 'if
+the difference should come to an open rupture, it would be a war of
+_ten years_, and he should not live to see the end of it.' He had no
+doubt as to the issue. 'The English may take all our great towns, but
+that will not give them possession of the country,' he used to say.
+Franklin's last day in England was given to Priestley. The two friends
+spent much of the time in reading American newspapers, especially
+accounts of the reception which the Boston Port Bill met with in
+America, and as Franklin read the addresses to the inhabitants of
+Boston, from the places in the neighborhood, 'the tears trickled down
+his cheeks.' He wrote to Priestley from Philadelphia just a month
+after the battle of Lexington, briefly describing that lively episode,
+and mentioning his pleasant six weeks voyage with weather 'so moderate
+that a London wherry might have accompanied us all the way.' At the
+close of his letter he says: 'In coming over I made a valuable
+philosophical discovery, which I shall communicate to you when I can
+get a little time. At present I am extremely hurried.' In October of
+that year, 1775, Franklin wrote to Priestley about the state of
+affairs in America. His letter contains one passage which can hardly
+be hackneyed from over-quotation. Franklin wants Priestley to tell
+'our dear good friend,' Dr. Price, that America is 'determined and
+unanimous.' 'Britain at the expense of three millions has killed 150
+yankees this campaign, which is 20,000 l. a head; and at Bunker's
+Hill, she gained a mile of ground, all of which she lost again, by our
+taking post on Ploughed Hill. During the same time 60,000 children
+have been born in America.' From these data Dr. Price is to calculate
+'the time and expense necessary to kill us all, and conquer the whole
+of our territory.' Then the letter closes with greetings 'to the club
+of honest whigs at the London Coffee House.'
+
+Seven years later Franklin's heart was still faithful to the club. He
+writes to Priestley from France: 'I love you as much as ever, and I
+love all the honest souls that meet at the London Coffee House.... I
+labor for peace with more earnestness that I may again be happy in
+your sweet society.' Franklin thought that war was folly. In a letter
+to Dr. Price, he speaks of the great improvements in natural
+philosophy, and then says: 'There is one improvement in moral
+philosophy which I wish to see: the discovery of a plan that would
+induce and oblige nations to settle their disputes without first
+cutting one another's throats.'
+
+Priestley lamented that a man of Franklin's character and influence
+'should have been an unbeliever in Christianity, and also have done as
+much as he did to make others unbelievers.' Franklin acknowledged that
+he had not given much attention to the evidences of Christianity, and
+asked Priestley to recommend some 'treatises' on the subject 'but not
+of great length.' Priestley suggested certain chapters of Hartley's
+_Observations on Man_, and also what he himself had written on the
+subject in his _Institutes of Natural and Revealed Religion_. Franklin
+had promised to read whatever books his friend might advise and give
+his 'sentiments on them.' 'But the American war breaking out soon
+after, I do not believe,' says Priestley, 'that he ever found himself
+sufficiently at leisure for the discussion.'
+
+Priestley valued his own scientific reputation not a little for the
+weight it gave, among skeptics, to his arguments in support of his
+religious belief. He found that all the philosophers in Paris were
+unbelievers. They looked at him with mild astonishment when they
+learned that he was not of the same mind. They may even have thought
+him a phenomenon which required scientific investigation. 'As I chose
+on all occasions to appear as a Christian, I was told by some of them
+that I was the only person they had ever met with, of whose
+understanding they had any opinion, who professed to believe
+Christianity.' Priestley began to question them as to what they
+supposed Christianity was, and with the usual result,--they were not
+posted on the subject.
+
+In 1780 Priestley went to Birmingham. In the summer of 1791 occurred
+that remarkable riot, perhaps the most dramatic event in the
+philosopher's not unpicturesque career. This storm had long been
+gathering, and when it broke, the principal victim of its anger was, I
+verily believe, more astonished than frightened. The Dissenters were
+making unusual efforts to have some of their civil disabilities
+removed. Feeling against them was especially bitter. In Birmingham
+this hostility was intensified by the public discourses of Mr. Madan,
+'the most respectable clergyman of the town,' says Priestley. He
+published 'a very inflammatory sermon ... inveighing against the
+Dissenters in general, and myself in particular.' Priestley made a
+defense under the title of _Familiar Letters to the Inhabitants of
+Birmingham_. This produced a 'reply' from Madan, and 'other letters'
+from his opponent. Being a conspicuous representative of that body
+which was most 'obnoxious to the court' it is not surprising that
+Priestley should have been singled out for unwelcome honors. The
+feeling of intolerance was unusually strong. It was said--I don't know
+how truly--that at a confirmation in Birmingham tracts were
+distributed against Socinianism in general and Priestley in
+particular. Very reputable men thought they did God service in
+inflaming the minds of the rabble against this liberal-minded
+gentleman. Priestley's account of the riot in the Memoir is singularly
+temperate. It might even be called tame. He was quite incapable of
+posing, or of playing martyr to an audience of which a goodly part was
+sympathetic and ready to believe his sufferings as great as he chose
+to make them appear. One could forgive a slight outburst of
+indignation had the doctor chosen so to relieve himself. 'On occasion
+of the celebration of the anniversary of the French revolution, on
+July 14, 1791, by several of my friends, but with which I had little
+to do, a mob, encouraged by some persons in power, first burned the
+meeting-house in which I preached, then another meeting-house in the
+town, and then my dwelling-house, demolishing my library, apparatus,
+and as far as they could everything belonging to me.... Being in some
+personal danger on this occasion I went to London.'
+
+A much livelier account from Priestley's own hand and written the next
+day after the riot is found in a letter to Theophilus Lindsay. 'The
+company were hardly gone from the inn before a drunken mob rushed into
+the house and broke all the windows. They then set fire to our
+meeting-house and it is burned to the ground. After that they gutted,
+and some say burned the old meeting. In the mean time some friends
+came to tell me that I and my house were threatened, and another
+brought a chaise to convey me and my wife away. I had not presence of
+mind to take even my MSS.; and after we were gone the mob came and
+demolished everything, household goods, library, and apparatus.' The
+letter differs from the Memoir in saying that 'happily no fire could
+be got.' Priestley afterwards heard that 'much pains was taken, but
+without effect, to get fire from my large electrical machine which
+stood in the Library.'
+
+It is rather a curious fact that Priestley was not at the inn where
+the anniversary was celebrating. While the company there were chanting
+the praises of liberty he was at home playing backgammon with his
+wife, a remarkably innocent and untreasonable occupation. Mr. Arthur
+Young visited the scene of the riot a few days later and had thoughts
+upon it. 'Seeing, as I passed, a house in ruins, on inquiry I found
+that it was Dr. Priestley's. I alighted from my horse, and walked over
+the ruins of that laboratory which I had left home with the
+expectation of reaping instruction in; of that laboratory, the labours
+of which have not only illuminated mankind but enlarged the sphere of
+science itself; which has carried its master's fame to the remotest
+corner of the civilized world; and will now with equal celerity convey
+the infamy of its destruction to the disgrace of the age and the
+scandal of the British name.' It is not necessary to supplement Arthur
+Young's burst of indignation with private bursts of our own. We can
+afford to be as philosophic over the matter as Priestley was. That
+feeling was hot against him even in London is manifest from the fact
+that the day after his arrival a hand-bill was distributed beginning
+with the words: 'Dr. Priestley is a damned rascal, an enemy both to
+the religious and political constitution of this country, a fellow of
+a treasonable mind, consequently a bad Christian.' The 'bad Christian'
+thought it showed 'no small degree of courage' in Mr. William Vaughan
+to receive him into his house. 'But it showed more in Dr. Price's
+congregation at Hackney to invite me to succeed him.' The invitation
+was not unanimous, as Priestley with his characteristic passion for
+exactness is at pains to tell the reader. Some of the members
+withdrew, 'which was not undesirable.'
+
+People generally looked askance at him. If he was upon one side of the
+street the respectable part of the world made it convenient to pass by
+on the other side. He even found his relations with his philosophical
+acquaintance 'much restricted.' 'Most of the members of the Royal
+Society shunned him,' he says. This seems amusing and unfortunate.
+Apparently one's qualifications as a scientist were of little avail if
+one happened to hold heterodox views on the Trinity, or were of
+opinion that more liberty than Englishmen then had would be good for
+them. Priestley resigned his fellowship in the Royal Society.
+
+One does not need even mildly to anathematize the instigators of that
+historic riot. They were unquestionably zealous for what they believed
+to be the truth. Moreover, as William Hutton observed at the time,
+'It's the right of every Englishman to walk in darkness if he
+chooses.' The method employed defeated its own end. Persecution is an
+unsafe investment and at best pays a low rate of interest. No
+dignified person can afford to indulge in it. There's the danger of
+being held up to the laughter of posterity. It has happened so many
+times that the unpopular cause has become popular. This ought to teach
+zealots to be cautious. What would Madan have thought if he could have
+been told that within thirty years one of his own coadjutors in this
+affair would have publicly expressed regret for the share he had in
+it? Madan has his reward, three quarters of a column in the
+_Dictionary of National Biography_. But to-day Priestley's statue
+stands in a public square of Birmingham opposite the Council House.
+Thus do matters get themselves readjusted in this very interesting
+world.
+
+Rutt's Life of Priestley (that remarkable illustration of how to make
+a very poor book out of the best materials) contains a selection of
+the addresses and letters of condolence which were forthcoming at this
+time. Some of them are stilted and dull, but they are actual
+'documents,' and the words in them are alive with the passion of that
+day. They make the transaction very real and close at hand.
+
+Priestley was comparatively at ease in his new home. Yet he could not
+entirely escape punishment. There were 'a few personal insults from
+the lowest of the rabble.' Anxiety was felt lest he might again
+receive the attentions of a mob. He humorously remarked: 'On the 14th
+of July, 1792, it was taken for granted by many of my neighbors that
+my house was to come down just as at Birmingham the year before.' The
+house did not come down, but its occupant grew ill at ease, and within
+another two years he had found a new home in the new nation across the
+sea.
+
+It is hardly exact to say that he was 'driven' from England, as some
+accounts of his life have it. Mere personal unpopularity would not
+have sufficed for this. But at sixty-one a man hasn't as much fight in
+him as at forty-five. He is not averse to quiet. Priestley's three
+sons were going to America because their father thought that they
+could not be 'placed' to advantage in a country so 'bigoted' as their
+native land was then. 'My own situation, if not hazardous, was become
+unpleasant, so that I thought my removal would be of more service to
+the cause of truth than my longer stay in England.'
+
+The sons went first and laid the foundations of the home in
+Northumberland, Pennsylvania. The word 'Susquehanna' had a magic sound
+to Englishmen. On March 30, 1794, Priestley delivered his farewell
+discourse. April 6 he passed with his friends the Lindsays in Essex
+Street, and a day later went to Gravesend. For the details of the
+journey one must go to his correspondence.
+
+His last letters were written from Deal and Falmouth, April 9 and 11.
+The vessel was six weeks in making the passage. The weather was bad
+and the travelers experienced everything 'but shipwreck and famine.'
+There was no lack of entertainment, for the ocean was fantastic and
+spectacular. Not alone were there the usual exhibitions of
+flying-fish, whales, porpoises, and sharks, but also 'mountains of ice
+larger than the captain had ever seen before,'--for thus early had
+transatlantic captains learned the art of pronouncing upon the
+exceptional character of a particular voyage for the benefit of the
+traveler who is making that voyage. They saw water-spouts, 'four at
+one time.' The billows were 'mountain-high, and at night appeared to
+be all on fire.' They had infinite leisure, and scarcely knew how to
+use it. Mrs. Priestley wrote 'thirty-two large pages of paper.' The
+doctor read 'the whole of the Greek Testament and the Hebrew Bible as
+far as the first book of Samuel.' He also read through Hartley's
+second volume, and 'for amusement several books of voyages and Ovid's
+Metamorphoses.' 'If I had [had] a Virgil I should have read him
+through, too. I read a great deal of Buchanan's poems, and some of
+Petrarch's _de remediis_, and Erasmus's Dialogues; also Peter Pindar's
+poems, ... which pleased me much more than I expected. He is Paine in
+verse.'
+
+On June 1 the ship reached Sandy Hook. Three days later Dr. and Mrs.
+Priestley 'landed at the Battery in as private a manner as possible,
+and went immediately to Mrs. Loring's lodging-house close by.' The
+next morning the principal inhabitants of New York came to pay their
+respects and congratulations; among others Governor Clinton, Dr.
+Prevoost, bishop of New York; Mr. Osgood, late envoy to Great Britain;
+the heads of the college; most of the principal merchants, and many
+others; for an account of which amenities one must read Henry Wansey's
+_Excursion to the United States in the Summer of 1794_, published by
+Salisbury in 1796, a most amusing and delectable volume.
+
+Priestley missed seeing Vice-president John Adams by one day. Adams
+had sailed for Boston on the third. But he left word that Boston was
+'better calculated' for Priestley than any other part of America, and
+that 'he would find himself very well received if he should be
+inclined to settle there.'
+
+Mrs. Priestley in a letter home says: 'Dr. P. is wonderfully pleased
+with everything, and indeed I think he has great reason from the
+attentions paid him.' The good people became almost frivolous with
+their dinner-parties, receptions, calls, and so forth. Then there were
+the usual addresses from the various organizations,--one from the
+Tammany Society, who described themselves as 'a numerous body of
+freemen, who associate to cultivate among them the love of liberty,
+and the enjoyment of the happy republican government under which they
+live.' There was an address from the 'Democratic Society,' one from
+the 'Associated Teachers in the City of New York,' one from the
+'Republican Natives of Great Britain and Ireland,' one from the
+'Medical Society.'
+
+The pleasure was not unmixed. Dr. Priestley the theologian had a less
+cordial reception than Dr. Priestley the philosopher and martyr. The
+orthodox were considerably disturbed by his coming. 'Nobody asks me to
+preach, and I hear there is much jealousy and dread of me.' In
+Philadelphia at a Baptist meeting the minister bade his people beware,
+for 'a Priestley had entered the land.' But the heretic was very
+patient and earnest to do what he might for the cause of 'rational'
+Christianity. The widespread infidelity distressed him. He mentioned
+it as a thing to be wondered at that in America the lawyers were
+almost universally unbelievers. He lost no time in getting to work. On
+August 27, when he had been settled in Northumberland only a month, he
+wrote to a friend that he had just got Paine's _Age of Reason_, and
+thought to answer it. By September 14 he had done so. 'I have
+transcribed for the press my answer to Mr. Paine, whose work is the
+weakest and most absurd as well as most arrogant of anything I have
+yet seen.'
+
+Priestley was fully conscious of the humor of his situation. He was
+trying to save the public, including lawyers, from the mentally
+debilitating effects of reading Paine's _Age of Reason_, while at the
+same time all the orthodox divines were warning their flocks of the
+danger consequent upon having anything to do with _him_.
+
+Honors and rumors of honors came to him. He was talked of for the
+presidency of colleges yet to be founded, and was invited to
+professorships in colleges that actually were. He went occasionally to
+Philadelphia, a frightful journey from Northumberland in those days.
+Through his influence a Unitarian society was established. He gave
+public discourses, and there was considerable curiosity to see and
+hear so famous a man. 'I have the use of Mr. Winchester's pulpit every
+morning ... and yesterday preached my first sermon.' He was told that
+'a great proportion of the members of Congress were present,' and we
+know that 'Mr. Vice-President Adams was a regular attendant.'
+
+In company with his friend Mr. Russell, Priestley went to take tea
+with President Washington. They stayed two hours 'as in any private
+family,' and at leavetaking were invited 'to come at any time without
+ceremony.'
+
+About a year later Priestley saw again Washington, who had finished
+his second term of office. 'I went to take leave of the late
+president. He seemed not to be in very good spirits. He invited me to
+Mt. Vernon, and said he thought he should hardly go from home twenty
+miles as long as he lived.'
+
+Priestley was not to have the full measure of the rest which he
+coveted. He had left England to escape persecution, and persecution
+followed him. Cobbett, who had assailed him in a scurrilous pamphlet
+at the time of his emigration, continued his attacks. Priestley was
+objectionable because he was a friend of France. Moreover he had
+opinions about things, some of which he freely expressed,--a habit he
+had contracted so early in life as to render it hopeless that he
+should ever break himself of it. Cobbett's virulence was so great as
+to excite the astonishment of Mr. Adams, who said to Priestley, 'I
+wonder why the man abuses you;' when a hint from Adams, Priestley
+thought, would have prevented it all. But it was not easy to control
+William Cobbett. Adams may have thought that Cobbett was a being
+created for the express purpose of being let alone. There are such
+beings. Every one knows, or can guess, to what sort of animal Churton
+Collins compared Dean Swift, when the Dean was in certain moods.
+William Cobbett, too, had his moods.
+
+Yet it is impossible to read Priestley's letters between 1798 and 1801
+without indignation against those who preyed upon his peace of mind.
+He writes to Lindsay: 'It is nothing but a firm faith in a good
+Providence that is my support at present: but it is an effectual one.'
+His 'never failing resource' was the 'daily study of the Scriptures.'
+In moments of depression he loved to read the introduction to
+Hartley's second volume, those noble passages beginning: 'Whatever be
+our doubts, fears, or anxieties, whether selfish or social, whether
+for time or eternity, our only hope and refuge must be in the infinite
+power, knowledge and goodness of God.'
+
+Priestley was indeed a remarkable man. His services to science were
+very great. He laid the foundations of notable structures which,
+however, other men were to rear. He might have been a greater man had
+he been less versatile. And yet his versatility was one source of his
+greatness. He clung to old-fashioned notions, defending the doctrine
+of 'philogiston' after it had been abandoned by nearly every other
+chemist of repute. For this he has been ridiculed. But he was not
+ridiculous, he was singularly open-minded. He knew that his reputation
+as a philosopher was under a cloud. 'Though all the world is at
+present against me, I see no reason to despair of the old system; and
+yet, _if I should see reason to change my opinion, I think I should
+rather feel a pride in making the most public acknowledgment of it_.'
+These are words which Professor Huxley might well have quoted in his
+beautiful address on Priestley delivered at Birmingham, for they are
+the perfect expression and symbol of the fair-minded man.
+
+He was as modest as he was fair-minded. When it was proposed that he
+should accompany Captain Cook's expedition to the South Seas, and the
+arrangements were really completed, he was objected to because of his
+political and religious opinions. Dr. Reinhold Foster was appointed in
+his stead. He was a person 'far better qualified,' said Priestley.
+Again when he was invited to take the chair of Chemistry at
+Philadelphia he refused. This for several reasons, the chief of which
+was that he did not believe himself fitted for it. One would naturally
+suppose that the inventor of soda-water and the discoverer of oxygen
+would have been able to give lectures to young men on chemistry. But
+Priestley believed that he 'could not have acquitted himself in it to
+proper advantage.' 'Though I have made discoveries in some branches of
+chemistry, I never gave much attention to the common routine of it,
+and know but little of the common processes.'
+
+Priestley still awaits a biographer. The two thick volumes compiled by
+Rutt more than sixty-three years ago have not been reprinted, nor are
+they likely to be. But a life so precious in its lessons should be
+recorded in just terms. It would be an inspiring book, and its title
+might well be 'The Story of a Man of Character.' Not the least of its
+virtues would consist in ample recognition of Joseph Priestley's
+unwavering confidence that all things were ordered for the best; and
+then of his piety, which prompted him to say, as he looked back upon
+his life: 'I am thankful to that good Providence which always took
+more care of me than ever I took of myself.'
+
+
+
+
+CONCERNING A RED WAISTCOAT
+
+
+Hero-worship is appropriate only to youth. With age one becomes cynical,
+or indifferent, or perhaps too busy. Either the sense of the marvelous
+is dulled, or one's boys are just entering college and life is agreeably
+practical. Marriage and family cares are good if only for the reason
+that they keep a man from getting bored. But they also stifle his
+yearnings after the ideal. They make hero-worship appear foolish. How
+can a man go mooning about when he has just had a good cup of coffee
+and a snatch of what purports to be the news, while an attractive and
+well-dressed woman sits opposite him at breakfast-table, and by her
+mere presence, to say nothing of her wit, compels him to be respectable
+and to carry a level head? The father of a family and husband of a
+federated club woman has no business with hero-worship. Let him leave
+such folly to beardless youth.
+
+But if a man has never outgrown the boy that was in him, or has never
+married, then may he do this thing. He will be happy himself, and
+others will be happy as they consider him. Indeed, there is something
+altogether charming about the personality of him who proves faithful
+to his early loves in literature and art; who continues a graceful
+hero-worship through all the caprices of literary fortune; and who,
+even though his idol may have been dethroned, sets up a private shrine
+at which he pays his devotions, unmindful of the crowd which hurries
+by on its way to do homage to strange gods.
+
+Some men are born to be hero-worshipers. Theophile Gautier is an
+example. If one did not love Gautier for his wit and his good-nature,
+one would certainly love him because he dared to be sentimental. He
+displayed an almost comic excess of emotion at his first meeting with
+Victor Hugo. Gautier smiles as he tells the story; but he tells it
+exactly, not being afraid of ridicule. He went to call upon Hugo with
+his friends Gerard de Nerval and Petrus Borel. Twice he mounted the
+staircase leading to the poet's door. His feet dragged as if they had
+been shod with lead instead of leather. His heart throbbed; cold sweat
+moistened his brow. As he was on the point of ringing the bell, an
+idiotic terror seized him, and he fled down the stairs, four steps at
+a time, Gerard and Petrus after him, shouting with laughter. But the
+third attempt was successful. Gautier saw Victor Hugo--and lived. The
+author of _Odes et Ballades_ was just twenty-eight years old. Youth
+worshiped youth in those great days.
+
+Gautier said little during that visit, but he stared at the poet with
+all his might. He explained afterwards that one may look at gods,
+kings, pretty women, and great poets rather more scrutinizingly than
+at other persons, and this too without annoying them. 'We gazed at
+Hugo with admiring intensity, but he did not appear to be
+inconvenienced.'
+
+What brings Gautier especially to mind is the appearance within a few
+weeks of an amusing little volume entitled _Le Romantisme et l'editeur
+Renduel_. Its chief value consists, no doubt, in what the author, M.
+Adolphe Jullien, has to say about Renduel. That noted publisher must
+have been a man of unusual gifts and unusual fortune. He was a
+fortunate man because he had the luck to publish some of the best
+works of Victor Hugo, Sainte-Beuve, Theophile Gautier, Alfred de
+Musset, Gerard de Nerval, Charles Nodier, and Paul Lacroix; and he was
+a gifted man because he was able successfully to manage his troop of
+geniuses, neither quarreling with them himself nor allowing them to
+quarrel overmuch with one another. Renduel's portrait faces the
+title-page of the volume, and there are two portraits of him besides.
+There are fac-similes of agreements between the great publisher and
+his geniuses. There is a famous caricature of Victor Hugo with a brow
+truly monumental. There is a caricature of Alfred de Musset with a
+figure like a Regency dandy,--a figure which could have been acquired
+only by much patience and unremitted tight-lacing; also one of Balzac,
+which shows that that great novelist's waist-line had long since
+disappeared, and that he had long since ceased to care. What was a
+figure to him in comparison with the flesh-pots of Paris!
+
+One of the best of these pictorial satires is Roubaud's sketch of
+Gautier. It has a teasing quality, it is diabolically fascinating. It
+shows how great an art caricature is in the hands of a master.
+
+But the highest virtue of a good new book is that it usually sends the
+reader back to a good old book. One can hardly spend much time upon
+Renduel; he will remember that Gautier has described that period when
+hero-worship was in the air, when the sap of a new life circulated
+everywhere, and when he himself was one of many loyal and enthusiastic
+youths who bowed the head at mention of Victor Hugo's name. The reader
+will remember, too, that Gautier was conspicuous in that band of
+Romanticists who helped to make _Hernani_ a success the night of its
+first presentation. Gautier believed that to be the great event of his
+life. He loved to talk about it, dream about it, write of it.
+
+There was a world of good fellowship among the young artists,
+sculptors, and poets of that day. They took real pleasure in shouting
+Hosanna to Victor Hugo and to one another. Even Zola, the
+Unsentimental, speaks of _ma tristesse_ as he reviews that delightful
+past. He cannot remember it, to be sure, but he has read about it. He
+thinks ill of the present as he compares the present with 'those dead
+years.' Writers then belonged to a sort of heroic brotherhood. They
+went out like soldiers to conquer their literary liberties. They were
+kings of the Paris streets. 'But we,' says Zola in a pensive strain,
+'we live like wolves each in his hole.' I do not know how true a
+description this is of modern French literary society, but it is not
+difficult to make one's self think that those other days were the days
+of magnificent friendships between young men of genius. It certainly
+was a more brilliant time than ours. It was flamboyant, to use one of
+Gautier's favorite words.
+
+Youth was responsible for much of the enthusiasm which obtained among
+the champions of artistic liberty. These young men who did honor to
+the name of Hugo were actually young. They rejoiced in their youth.
+They flaunted it, so to speak, in the faces of those who were without
+it. Gautier says that young men of that day differed in one respect
+from young men of this day; modern young men are generally in the
+neighborhood of fifty years of age.
+
+Gautier has described his friends and comrades most felicitously. All
+were boys, and all were clever. They were poor and they were happy.
+They swore by Scott and Shakespeare, and they planned great futures
+for themselves.
+
+Take for an example Jules Vabre, who owed his reputation to a certain
+Essay on the Inconvenience of Conveniences. You will search the
+libraries in vain for this treatise. The author did not finish it. He
+did not even commence it,--only talked about it. Jules Vabre had a
+passion for Shakespeare, and wanted to translate him. He thought of
+Shakespeare by day and dreamed of Shakespeare by night. He stopped
+people in the street to ask them if they had read Shakespeare.
+
+He had a curious theory concerning language. Jules Vabre would not
+have said, As a man thinks so is he, but, As a man drinks so is he.
+According to Gautier's statement, Vabre maintained the paradox that
+the Latin languages needed to be 'watered' (_arroser_) with wine, and
+the Anglo-Saxon languages with beer. Vabre found that he made
+extraordinary progress in English upon stout and extra stout. He went
+over to England to get the very atmosphere of Shakespeare. There he
+continued for some time regularly 'watering' his language with English
+ale, and nourishing his body with English beef. He would not look at a
+French newspaper, nor would he even read a letter from home. Finally
+he came back to Paris, anglicized to his very galoshes. Gautier says
+that when they met, Vabre gave him a 'shake hand' almost energetic
+enough to pull the arm from the shoulder. He spoke with so strong an
+English accent that it was difficult to understand him; Vabre had
+almost forgotten his mother tongue. Gautier congratulated the exile
+upon his return, and said, 'My dear Jules Vabre, in order to translate
+Shakespeare it is now only necessary for you to learn French.'
+
+Gautier laid the foundations of his great fame by wearing a red
+waistcoat the first night of _Hernani_. All the young men were
+fantastic in those days, and the spirit of carnival was in the whole
+romantic movement. Gautier was more courageously fantastic than other
+young men. His costume was effective, and the public never forgot him.
+He says with humorous resignation: 'If you pronounce the name of
+Theophile Gautier before a Philistine who has never read a line of our
+works, the Philistine knows us, and remarks with a satisfied air, "Oh
+yes, the young man with the red waistcoat and the long hair." ... Our
+poems are forgotten, but our red waistcoat is remembered.' Gautier
+cheerfully grants that when everything about him has faded into
+oblivion this gleam of light will remain, to distinguish him from
+literary contemporaries whose waistcoats were of soberer hue.
+
+The chapter in his _Histoire du Romantisme_ in which Gautier tells how
+he went to the tailor to arrange for the most spectacular feature of
+his costume is lively and amusing. He spread out the magnificent piece
+of cherry-colored satin, and then unfolded his design for a
+'pour-point,' like a 'Milan cuirass.' Says Gautier, using always his
+quaint editorial _we_, 'It has been said that we know a great many
+words, but we don't know words enough to express the astonishment of
+our tailor when we lay before him our plan for a waistcoat.' The man
+of shears had doubts as to his customer's sanity.
+
+'Monsieur,' he exclaimed, 'this is not the fashion!'
+
+'It will be the fashion when we have worn the waistcoat once,' was
+Gautier's reply. And he declares that he delivered the answer with a
+self-possession worthy of a Brummel or 'any other celebrity of
+dandyism.'
+
+It is no part of this paper to describe the innocently absurd and
+good-naturedly extravagant things which Gautier and his companions
+did, not alone the first night of _Hernani_, but at all times and in
+all places. They unquestionably saw to it that Victor Hugo had fair
+play the evening of February 25, 1830. The occasion was an historic
+one, and they with their Merovingian hair, their beards, their
+waistcoats, and their enthusiasm helped to make it an unusually lively
+and picturesque occasion.
+
+I have quoted a very few of the good things which one may read in
+Gautier's _Histoire du Romantisme_. The narrative is one of much
+sweetness and humor. It ought to be translated for the benefit of
+readers who know Gautier chiefly by _Mademoiselle de Maupin_ and that
+for reasons among which love of literature is perhaps the least
+influential.
+
+It is pleasant to find that Renduel confirms the popular view of
+Gautier's character. M. Jullien says that Renduel never spoke of
+Gautier but in praise. 'Quel bon garcon!' he used to say. 'Quel brave
+coeur!' M. Jullien has naturally no large number of new facts to give
+concerning Gautier. But there are eight or nine letters from Gautier
+to Renduel which will be read with pleasure, especially the one in
+which the poet says to the publisher, 'Heaven preserve you from
+historical novels, and your eldest child from the smallpox.'
+
+Gautier must have been both generous and modest. No mere egoist could
+have been so faithful in his hero-worship or so unpretentious in his
+allusions to himself. One has only to read the most superficial
+accounts of French literature to learn how universally it is granted
+that Gautier had skillful command of that language to which he was
+born. Yet he himself was by no means sure that he deserved a master's
+degree. He quotes one of Goethe's sayings,--a saying in which the
+great German poet declares that after the practice of many arts there
+was but one art in which he could be said to excel, namely, the art of
+writing in German; in that he was almost a master. Then Gautier
+exclaims, 'Would that _we_, after so many years of labor, had become
+almost a master of the art of writing in French! But such ambitions
+are not for us!'
+
+Yet they were for him; and it is a satisfaction to note how invariably
+he is accounted, by the artists in literature, an eminent man among
+many eminent men in whose touch language was plastic.
+
+
+
+
+STEVENSON: THE VAGABOND AND THE PHILOSOPHER
+
+
+A certain critic said of Stevenson that he was 'incurably literary;'
+the phrase is a good one, being both humorous and true. There is
+comfort in the thought that such efforts as may have been made to keep
+him in the path of virtuous respectability failed. Rather than _do_
+anything Stevenson preferred to loaf and to write books. And he early
+learned that considerable loafing is necessary if one expects to
+become a writer. There is a sense in which it is true that only lazy
+people are fit for literature. Nothing is so fruitful as a fine gift
+for idleness. The most prolific writers have been people who seemed to
+have nothing to do. Every one has read that description of George Sand
+in her latter years, 'an old lady who came out into the garden at
+mid-day in a broad-brimmed hat and sat down on a bench or wandered
+slowly about. So she remained for hours looking about her, musing,
+contemplating. She was gathering impressions, absorbing the universe,
+steeping herself in Nature; and at night she would give all this forth
+as a sort of emanation.' One shudders to think what the result might
+have been if instead of absorbing the universe George Sand had done
+something practical during those hours. But the Scotchman was not like
+George Sand in any particular that I know of save in his perfect
+willingness to bask in the sunshine and steep himself in Nature. His
+books did not 'emanate.' The one way in which he certainly did not
+produce literature was by improvisation. George Sand never revised her
+work; it might almost be said that Robert Louis Stevenson never did
+anything else.
+
+Of his method we know this much. He himself has said that when he went
+for a walk he usually carried two books in his pocket, one a book to
+read, the other a note-book in which to put down the ideas that came
+to him. This remark has undoubtedly been seized upon and treasured in
+the memory as embodying a secret of his success. Trusting young souls
+have begun to walk about with note-books: only to learn that the
+note-book was a detail, not an essential, in the process.
+
+He who writes while he walks cannot write very much, but he may, if he
+chooses, write very well. He may turn over the rubbish of his
+vocabulary until he finds some exquisite and perfect word with which
+to bring out his meaning. This word need not be unusual; and if it is
+'exquisite' then exquisite only in the sense of being fitted with rare
+exactness to the idea. Stevenson wrote so well in part because he
+wrote so deliberately. He knew the vulgarity of haste, especially in
+the making of literature. He knew that finish counted for much,
+perhaps for half. Has he not been reported as saying that it wasn't
+worth a man's while to attempt to be a writer unless he was quite
+willing to spend a day if the need were, on the turn of a single
+sentence? In general this means the sacrifice of earthly reward; it
+means that a man must work for love and let the ravens feed him. That
+scriptural source has been distinctly unfruitful in these latter days,
+and few authors are willing to take a prophet's chances. But Stevenson
+was one of the few.
+
+He laid the foundations of his reputation with two little volumes of
+travel. _An Inland Voyage_ appeared in 1878; _Travels with a Donkey in
+the Cevennes_, in 1879. These books are not dry chronicles of drier
+facts. They bear much the same relation to conventional accounts of
+travel that flowers growing in a garden bear to dried plants in a
+herbarium. They are the most friendly and urbane things in modern
+English literature. They have been likened to Sterne's _Sentimental
+Journey_. The criticism would be better if one were able to imagine
+Stevenson writing the adventure of the _fille de chambre_, or could
+conceive of Lawrence Sterne writing the account of the meeting with
+the Plymouth Brother. 'And if ever at length, out of our separate and
+sad ways, we should all come together into one common-house, I have a
+hope to which I cling dearly, that my mountain Plymouth Brother will
+hasten to shake hands with me again.' That was written twenty years
+ago and the Brother was an old man then. And now Stevenson is gone.
+How impossible it is not to wonder whether they have yet met in that
+'one common-house.' 'He feared to intrude, but he would not willingly
+forego one moment of my society; and he seemed never weary of shaking
+me by the hand.'
+
+The _Inland Voyage_ contains passages hardly to be matched for beauty.
+Let him who would be convinced read the description of the forest
+Mormal, that forest whose breath was perfumed with nothing less
+delicate than sweet brier. 'I wish our way had always lain among
+woods,' says Stevenson. 'Trees are the most civil society.'
+
+Stevenson's traveling companion was a young English baronet. The two
+adventurers paddled in canoes through the pleasant rivers and canals
+of Belgium and North France. They had plenty of rain and a variety of
+small misadventures; but they also had sunshine, fresh air, and
+experiences among the people of the country such as they could have
+got in no other way. They excited not a little wonder, and the common
+opinion was that they were doing the journey for a wager; there seemed
+to be no other reason why two respectable gentlemen, not poor, should
+work so hard and get so wet.
+
+This was conceived in a more adventurous vein than appears at first
+sight. In an unsubdued country one contends with beasts and men who
+are openly hostile. But when one is a stranger in the midst of
+civilization and meets civilization at its back door, he is astonished
+to find how little removed civilization is from downright savagery.
+Stevenson and his companion learned as they could not have learned
+otherwise how great deference the world pays to clothes. Whether your
+heart is all right turns out a matter of minor importance; but--_are
+your clothes all right_? If so, smiles, and good beds at respectable
+inns; if not, a lodging in a cow-shed or beneath any poor roof which
+suffices to keep off the rain. The voyagers had constantly to meet the
+accusation of being peddlers. They denied it and were suspected afresh
+while the denial was on their lips. The public mind was singularly
+alert and critical on the subject of peddlers.
+
+At La Fere, 'of Cursed Memory,' they had a rebuff which nearly spoiled
+their tempers. They arrived in a rain. It was the finest kind of a
+night to be indoors 'and hear the rain upon the windows.' They were
+told of a famous inn. When they reached the carriage entry 'the rattle
+of many dishes fell upon their ears.' They sighted a great field of
+snowy table-cloth, the kitchen glowed like a forge. They made their
+triumphal entry, 'a pair of damp rag-and-bone men, each with a limp
+India-rubber bag upon his arm.' Stevenson declares that he never had a
+sound view of that kitchen. It seemed to him a culinary paradise
+'crowded with the snowy caps of cookmen, who all turned round from
+their sauce-pans and looked at us with surprise.' But the landlady--a
+flushed, angry woman full of affairs--there was no mistaking her. They
+asked for beds and were told to find beds in the suburbs: 'We are too
+busy for the like of you!' They said they would dine then, and were
+for putting down their luggage. The landlady made a run at them and
+stamped her foot: 'Out with you--out of the door,' she screeched.
+
+I once heard a young Englishman who had been drawn into some
+altercation at a continental hotel explain a discreet movement on his
+own part by saying: 'Now a French cook running amuck with a carving
+knife in his hand would have bean a nahsty thing to meet, you know.'
+There were no knives in this case, only a woman's tongue. Stevenson
+says that he doesn't know how it happened, 'but next moment we were
+out in the rain, and I was cursing before the carriage entry like a
+disappointed mendicant.'
+
+'It's all very fine to talk about tramps and morality. Six hours of
+police surveillance (such as I have had) or one brutal rejection from
+an inn door change your views upon the subject, like a course of
+lectures. As long as you keep in the upper regions, with all the world
+bowing to you as you go, social arrangements have a very handsome air;
+but once get under the wheels and you wish society were at the devil.
+I will give most respectable men a fortnight of such a life, and then
+I will offer them twopence for what remains of their morality.'
+
+Stevenson declares that he could have set the temple of Diana on fire
+that night if it had been handy. 'There was no crime complete enough
+to express my disapproval of human institutions.' As for the baronet,
+he was horrified to learn that he had been taken for a peddler again;
+and he registered a vow before Heaven never to be uncivil to a
+peddler. But before making that vow he particularized a complaint for
+every joint in the landlady's body.
+
+To read _An Inland Voyage_ is to be impressed anew with the thought
+that some men are born with a taste for vagabondage. They are
+instinctively for being on the move. Like the author of that book they
+travel 'not to go any where but to go.' If they behold a stage-coach
+or a railway train in motion they heartily wish themselves aboard.
+They are homesick when they stop at home, and are only at home when
+they are on the move. Talk to them of foreign lands and they are
+seized with unspeakable heart-ache and longing. Stevenson met an
+omnibus driver in a Belgian village who looked at him with thirsty
+eyes because he was able to travel. How that omnibus driver 'longed to
+be somewhere else and see the round world before he died.' 'Here I
+am,' said he. 'I drive to the station. Well. And then I drive back
+again to the hotel. And so on every day and all the week round. My
+God, is that life?' Stevenson opined that this man had in him the
+making of a traveler of the right sort; he might have gone to Africa
+or to the Indies after Drake. 'But it is an evil age for the gipsily
+inclined among men. He who can sit squarest on a three-legged stool,
+he it is who has the wealth and glory.'
+
+In his _Travels with a Donkey_ the author had no companionship but
+such as the donkey afforded; and to tell the truth this companionship
+was almost human at times. He learned to love the quaint little beast
+which shared his food and his trials. 'My lady-friend' he calls her.
+Modestine was her name; 'she was patient, elegant in form, the color
+of an ideal mouse and inimitably small.' She gave him trouble, and at
+times he felt hurt and was distant in manner towards her. Modestine
+carried the luggage. She may not have known that R. L. Stevenson wrote
+books, but she knew as by instinct that R. L. Stevenson had never
+driven a donkey. She wrought her will with him, that is, she took her
+own gait. 'What that pace was there is no word mean enough to
+describe; it was something as much slower than a walk as a walk is
+slower than a run.' He must belabor her incessantly. It was an ignoble
+toil, and he felt ashamed of himself besides, for he remembered her
+sex. 'The sound of my own blows sickened me. Once when I looked at her
+she had a faint resemblance to a lady of my acquaintance who had
+formerly loaded me with kindness; and this increased my horror of my
+cruelty.'
+
+From time to time Modestine's load would topple off. The villagers
+were delighted with this exhibition and laughed appreciatively. 'Judge
+if I was hot!' says Stevenson. 'I remembered having laughed myself
+when I had seen good men struggling with adversity in the person of a
+jack-ass, and the recollection filled me with penitence. That was in
+my old light days before this trouble came upon me.'
+
+He had a sleeping-bag, waterproof without, blue sheep's wool within,
+and in this portable house he passed his nights afield. Not always by
+choice, as witness his chapter entitled 'A Camp in the Dark.' There
+are two or three pages in that chapter which come pretty near to
+perfection,--if there be such a thing as perfection in literature. I
+don't know who could wish for anything better than the paragraphs in
+which Stevenson describes falling asleep in the tempest, and awaking
+next morning to see the 'world flooded with a blue light, the mother
+of dawn.' He had been in search of an adventure all his life, 'a pure
+dispassionate adventure, such as befell early and heroic voyagers,'
+and he thinks that he realized a fraction of his daydreams when that
+morning found him, an inland castaway, 'as strange to his surroundings
+as the first man upon the earth.'
+
+Passages like these indicate Stevenson's quality. He was no
+carpet-knight; he had the true adventurer's blood in his veins. He and
+Drake and the Belgian omnibus-driver should have gone to the Indies
+together. Better still, the omnibus driver should have gone with
+Drake, and Stevenson should have gone with Amyas Leigh. They say that
+Stevenson traveled in search of health. Without doubt; but think how
+he _would_ have traveled if he had had good health. And one has
+strange mental experiences alone with the stars. That came of sleeping
+in the fields 'where God keeps an open house.' 'I thought I had
+rediscovered one of those truths which are revealed to savages and hid
+from political economists.'
+
+Much as he gloried in his solitude he 'became aware of a strange
+lack;' for he was human. And he gave it as his opinion that 'to live
+out of doors with the woman a man loves is of all lives the most
+complete and free.' It may be so. Such a woman would need to be of
+heroic physical mould, and there is danger that she would turn out of
+masculine mould as well. Isopel Berners was of such sort. Isopel could
+handle her clenched fists like a prizefighter. She was magnificent in
+the forest, and never so perfectly in place as when she backed up
+George Borrow in his fight with the Flaming Tinman. Having been in the
+habit of taking her own part, she was able to give pertinent advice at
+a critical moment. 'It's of no use flipping at the Flaming Tinman with
+your left hand,' she said, 'why don't you use your right?' Isopel
+called Borrow's right arm 'Long Melford.' And when the Flaming Tinman
+got his knock-down blow from Borrow's right, Isopel exclaimed, 'Hurrah
+for Long Melford; there is nothing like Long Melford for shortness all
+the world over!'
+
+But what an embarrassing personage Miss Berners would have been
+transferred from the dingle to the drawing-room; nay, how impossible
+it is to think of that athletic young goddess as _Miss_ Berners! The
+distinctions and titles of conventional society refuse to cling even
+to her name. I wonder how Stevenson would have liked Isopel Berners.
+
+And now his philosophy. Yet somehow 'philosophy' seems a big word for
+so unpretentious a theory of life as his. Stevenson didn't
+philosophize much; he was content to live and to enjoy. He was
+deliberate, and in general he would not suffer himself to be driven.
+He resembled an admirable lady of my acquaintance who, when urged to
+get something done by a given time, usually replied that 'time was
+made for slaves.' Stevenson had the same feeling. He says: 'Hurry is
+the resource of the faithless. When a man can trust his own heart and
+those of his friends to-morrow is as good as to-day. And if he die in
+the mean while, why, then, there he dies, and the question is solved.'
+
+You think this a poor philosophy? But there must be all kinds of
+philosophy; the people in the world are not run into one mould like so
+much candle-grease. And because of this, his doctrine of Inaction and
+Postponement, stern men and practical women have frowned upon
+Stevenson. In their opinion instead of being up and doing he
+consecrated too many hours to the idleness of literature. They feel
+towards him as Hawthorne fancied his ancestor the great witch judge
+would have felt towards _him_. Hawthorne imagines that ghostly and
+terrible ancestor looking down upon him and exclaiming with infinite
+scorn, 'A writer of storybooks. What kind of employment is that for an
+immortal soul?'
+
+To many people nothing is more hateful than this willingness to hold
+aloof and let things drift. That any human being should acquiesce with
+the present order of the world appears monstrous to these earnest
+souls. An Indian critic once called Stevenson 'a faddling Hedonist.'
+Stevenson quotes the phrase with obvious amusement and without
+attempting to gainsay its accuracy.
+
+But if he allowed the world to take its course he expected the same
+privilege. He wished neither to interfere nor to be interfered with.
+And he was a most cheerful nonconformist withal. He says: 'To know
+what you prefer instead of humbly saying amen to what the world tells
+you you ought to prefer is to have kept your soul alive.' Independence
+and optimism are vital parts of his unformulated creed. He hated
+cynicism and sourness. He believed in praise of one's own good estate.
+He thought it was an inspiriting thing to hear a man boast, 'so long
+as he boasts of what he really has.' If people but knew this they
+would boast 'more freely and with a better grace.'
+
+Stevenson was humorously alive to the old-fashioned quality of his
+doctrine of happiness and content. He says in the preface to an
+_Inland Voyage_ that although the book 'runs to considerably over a
+hundred pages, it contains not a single reference to the imbecility of
+God's universe, nor so much as a single hint that I could have made a
+better one myself--I really do not know where my head can have been.'
+But while this omission will, he fears, render his book
+'philosophically unimportant' he hopes that 'the eccentricity may
+please in frivolous circles.'
+
+Stevenson could be militant. His letter on Father Damien shows that.
+But there was nothing of the professional reformer about him. He had
+no hobby, and he was the artist first and then the philanthropist.
+This is right; it was the law of his being. Other men are better
+equipped to do the work of humanity's city missionaries than was he.
+Let their more rugged health and less sensitive nerves bear the
+burden; his poet's mission was not the less important.
+
+The remaining point I have to note, among a number which might be
+noted, is his firm grasp of this idea: that whether he is his
+brother's keeper or not he is at all events his brother's brother. It
+is 'philosophy' of a very good sort to have mastered this conception
+and to have made the life square with the theory. This doctrine is
+fashionable just now, and thick books have been written on the
+subject, filled with wise terms and arguments. I don't know whether
+Stevenson bothered his head with these matters from a scientific point
+of view or not, but there are many illustrations of his interest. Was
+it this that made him so gentle in his unaffected manly way? He
+certainly understood how difficult it is for the well-to-do member of
+society to get any idea not wholly distorted of the feelings and
+motives of the lower classes. He believed that certain virtues resided
+more conspicuously among the poor than among the rich. He declared
+that the poor were more charitably disposed than their superiors in
+wealth. 'A workman or a peddler cannot shutter himself off from his
+less comfortable neighbors. If he treats himself to a luxury he must
+do it in the face of a dozen who cannot. And what should more directly
+lead to charitable thoughts?' But with the advent of prosperity a man
+becomes incapable of understanding how the less fortunate live.
+Stevenson likens that happy individual to a man going up in a balloon.
+'He presently passes through a zone of clouds and after that merely
+earthly things are hidden from his gaze. He sees nothing but the
+heavenly bodies, all in admirable order and positively as good as new.
+He finds himself surrounded in the most touching manner by the
+attentions of Providence, and compares himself involuntarily with the
+lilies and the sky-larks. He does not precisely sing, of course; but
+then he looks so unassuming in his open landau! If all the world dined
+at one table this philosophy would meet with some rude knocks.'
+
+In the three years since Stevenson's death many additions have been
+made to the body of literature by him and about him. There are
+letters, finished and unfinished novels, and recollections by the
+heaping handful. Critics are considerably exercised over the question
+whether any, or all, or only two or three of his books are to last.
+The matter has, I believe, been definitely decided so that posterity,
+whatever other responsibilities it has, will at least not have that
+one; and anything that we can do to relieve the future of its burdens
+is altruism worthy the name.
+
+Stevenson was one of the best tempered men that ever lived. He never
+prated about goodness, but was unaffectedly good and sunny-hearted as
+long as he lived. Of how many men can it be said, as it _can_ be said
+of him, that he was sick all his days and never uttered a whimper?
+What rare health of mind was this which went with such poor health of
+body! I've known men to complain more over toothache than Stevenson
+thought it worth while to do with death staring him in the face. He
+did not, like Will o' the Mill, live until the snow began to thicken
+on his head. He never knew that which we call middle age.
+
+He worked harder than a man in his condition should have done. At
+times he felt the need to write for money; and this was hostile to his
+theory of literature. He wrote to his friend Colvin: 'I sometimes sit
+and yearn for anything in the nature of an income that would come
+in--mine has all got to be gone and fished for with the immortal mind
+of man. What I want is an income that really comes in of itself while
+all you have to do is just to blossom and exist and sit on chairs.'
+
+I wish he might have had it; I can think of no other man whose
+indolence would have been so profitable to the world.
+
+
+
+
+STEVENSON'S ST. IVES
+
+
+With the publication of _St. Ives_ the catalogue of Stevenson's
+important writings has closed. In truth it closed several years
+ago,--in 1891, to be exact,--when _Catriona_ was published. Nothing
+which has appeared since that date can modify to any great extent the
+best critical estimate of his novels. Neither _Weir of Hermiston_ nor
+_St. Ives_ affects the matter. You may throw them into the scales with
+his other works, and then you may take them out; beyond a mere
+trembling the balance is not disturbed. But suppose you were to take
+out _Kidnapped_, or _Treasure Island_, or _The Master of Ballantrae_,
+the loss would be felt at once and seriously. And unless he has left
+behind him, hidden away among his loose papers, some rare and perfect
+sketch, some letter to posterity which shall be to his reputation what
+Neil Paraday's lost novel in _The Death of the Lion_ might have been
+to his, _St. Ives_ may be regarded as the epilogue.
+
+Stevenson's death and the publication of this last effort of his fine
+genius may tend to draw away a measure of public interest from that
+type of novel which he, his imitators, and his rivals have so
+abundantly produced. This may be the close of a 'period' such as we
+read about in histories of literature.
+
+If the truth be told, has not our generation had enough of duels,
+hair-breadth escapes, post-chaises, and highwaymen, mysterious
+strangers muffled in great-coats, and pistols which always miss fire
+when they shouldn't? To say positively that we _have_ done with all
+this might appear extravagant in the light of the popularity of
+certain modern heroic novels. But it might not be too radical a view
+if one were to maintain that these books are the expression of
+something temporary and accidental, that they sustain a chronological
+relation to modern literature rather than an essential one.
+
+Matthew Arnold spoke of Heine as a sardonic smile on the face of the
+Zeitgeist. Let us say that these modern stories in the heroic vein are
+a mere heightening of color on the cheeks of that interesting young
+lady, the Genius of the modern novel--a heightening of color _on_ the
+cheeks, for the color comes from without and not from within. It is a
+matter of no moment. Artificial red does no harm for once, and looks
+well under gaslight.
+
+These novels of adventure which we buy so cheerfully, read with such
+pleasure, and make such a good-natured fuss over, are for the greater
+part an expression of something altogether foreign to the deeper
+spirit of modern fiction. Surely the true modern novel is the one
+which reflects the life of to-day. And life to-day is easy, familiar,
+rich in material comforts, and on the whole without painfully striking
+contrasts and thrilling episodes. People have enough to eat,
+reasonable liberty, and a degree of patience with one another which
+suggests indifference. A man may shout aloud in the market-place the
+most revolutionary opinions, and hardly be taken to task for it; and
+then on the other hand we have got our rulers pretty well under
+control. This paragraph, however, is not the peroration of a eulogy
+upon 'our unrivaled happiness.' It attempts merely to lay stress on
+such facts as these, that it is not now possible to hang a clergyman
+of the Church of England for forgery, as was done in 1777; that a man
+may not be deprived of the custody of his own children because he
+holds heterodox religious opinions, as happened in 1816. There is
+widespread toleration; and civilization in the sense in which Ruskin
+uses the word has much increased. Now it is possible for a Jew to
+become Prime Minister, and for a Roman Catholic to become England's
+Poet Laureate.
+
+If, then, life is familiar, comfortable, unrestrained, and easy, as it
+certainly seems to be, how are we to account for the rise of this
+semihistoric, heroic literature? It is almost grotesque, the contrast
+between the books themselves and the manner in which they are
+produced. One may picture the incongruous elements of the
+situation,--a young society man going up to his suite in a handsome
+modern apartment house, and dictating romance to a type-writer. In the
+evening he dines at his club, and the day after the happy launching of
+his novel he is interviewed by the representative of a newspaper
+syndicate, to whom he explains his literary method, while the
+interviewer makes a note of his dress and a comment on the decoration
+of his mantelpiece.
+
+Surely romance written in this way--and we have not grossly
+exaggerated the way--bears no relation to modern literature other than
+a chronological one. _The Prisoner of Zenda_ and _A Gentleman of
+France_, to mention two happy and pleasing examples of this type of
+novel, are not modern in the sense that they express any deep feeling
+or any vital characteristic of to-day. They are not instinct with the
+spirit of the times. One might say that these stories represent the
+novel in its theatrical mood. It is the novel masquerading. Just as a
+respectable bookkeeper likes to go into private theatricals, wear a
+wig with curls, a slouch hat with ostrich feathers, a sword and
+ruffles, and play a part to tear a cat in, so does the novel like to
+do the same. The day after the performance the whole artificial
+equipment drops away and disappears. The bookkeeper becomes a
+bookkeeper once more and a natural man. The hour before the footlights
+has done him no harm. True, he forgot his lines at one place, but what
+is a prompter for if not to act in such an emergency? Now that it is
+over the affair may be pronounced a success,--particularly in the
+light of the gratifying statement that a clear profit has been
+realized towards paying for the new organ.
+
+This is a not unfair comparison of the part played by these books in
+modern fiction. The public likes them, buys them, reads them; and
+there is no reason why the public should not. In proportion to the
+demand for color, action, posturing, and excessive gesticulation,
+these books have a financial success; in proportion to the
+conscientiousness of the artist who creates them they have a literary
+vitality. But they bear to the actual modern novel a relation not
+unlike that which _The Castle of Otranto_ bears to _Tom
+Jones_,--making allowance of course for the chronological discrepancy.
+
+From one point the heroic novel is a protest against the commonplace
+and stupid elements of modern life. According to Mr. Frederic Harrison
+there is no romance left in us. Life is stale and flat; yet even Mr.
+Harrison would hardly go to the length of declaring that it is also
+commercially unprofitable. The artificial apartment-house romance is
+one expression of the revolt against the duller elements in our
+civilization; and as has often been pointed out, the novel of
+psychological horrors is another expression.
+
+There are a few men, however, whose work is not accounted for by
+saying that they love theatrical pomp and glitter for its own sake, or
+that they write fiction as a protest against the times in which they
+live. Stevenson was of this number. He was an adventurer by
+inheritance and by practice. He came of a race of adventurers,
+adventurers who built lighthouses and fought with that bold outlaw,
+the Sea. He himself honestly loved, and in a measure lived, a wild
+life. There is no truer touch of nature than in the scene where St.
+Ives tells the boy Rowley that he is a hunted fugitive with a price
+set upon his head, and then enjoys the tragic astonishment depicted in
+the lad's face.
+
+Rowley 'had a high sense of romance and a secret cultus for all
+soldiers and criminals. His traveling library consisted of a chap-book
+life of Wallace, and some sixpenny parts of the Old Bailey Sessions
+Papers; ... and the choice depicts his character to a hair. You can
+imagine how his new prospects brightened on a boy of this disposition.
+To be the servant and companion of a fugitive, a soldier, and a
+murderer rolled in one--to live by stratagems, disguises, and false
+names, in an atmosphere of midnight and mystery so thick that you
+could cut it with a knife--was really, I believe, more dear to him
+than his meals, though he was a great trencher-man and something of a
+glutton besides. For myself, as the peg by which all this romantic
+business hung, I was simply idolized from that moment; and he would
+rather have sacrificed his hand than surrendered the privilege of
+serving me.'
+
+One can believe that Stevenson was a boy with tastes and ambitions
+like Rowley. But for that matter Rowley stands for universal
+boy-nature.
+
+Criticism of _St. Ives_ becomes both easy and difficult by reason of
+the fact that we know so much about the book from the author's point
+of view. He wrote it in trying circumstances, and never completed it;
+the last six chapters are from the pen of a practiced story-teller,
+who follows the author's known scheme of events. Stevenson was almost
+too severe in his comment upon his book. He says of _St. Ives_:--
+
+'It is a mere tissue of adventures; the central figure not very well
+or very sharply drawn; no philosophy, no destiny, to it; some of the
+happenings very good in themselves, I believe, but none of them
+_bildende_, none of them constructive, except in so far perhaps as
+they make up a kind of sham picture of the time, all in italics, and
+all out of drawing. Here and there, I think, it is well written; and
+here and there it's not.... If it has a merit to it, I should say it
+was a sort of deliberation and swing to the style, which seems to me
+to suit the mail-coaches and post-chaises with which it sounds all
+through. 'Tis my most prosaic book.'
+
+One must remember that this is epistolary self-criticism, and that it
+is hardly to be looked upon in the nature of an 'advance notice.'
+Still more confidential and epistolary is the humorous and reckless
+affirmation that _St. Ives_ is 'a rudderless hulk.' 'It's a pagoda,'
+says Stevenson in a letter dated September, 1894, 'and you can just
+feel--or I can feel--that it might have been a pleasant story if it
+had only been blessed at baptism.'
+
+He had to rewrite portions of it in consequence of having received
+what Dr. Johnson would have called 'a large accession of new ideas.'
+The ideas were historical. The first five chapters describe the
+experiences of French prisoners of war in Edinburgh Castle. St. Ives
+was the only 'gentleman' among them, the only man with ancestors and a
+right to the 'particle.' He suffered less from ill treatment than from
+the sense of being made ridiculous. The prisoners were dressed in
+uniform,--'jacket, waistcoat, and trousers of a sulphur or mustard
+yellow, and a shirt of blue-and-white striped cotton.' St. Ives
+thought that 'some malignant genius had found his masterpiece of irony
+in that dress.' So much is made of this point that one reads with
+unusual interest the letter in which Stevenson bewails his 'miserable
+luck' with _St. Ives_; for he was halfway through it when a book,
+which he had ordered six months before, arrived, upsetting all his
+previous notions of how the prisoners were cared for. Now he must
+change the thing from top to bottom. 'How could I have dreamed the
+French prisoners were watched over like a female charity school, kept
+in a grotesque livery, and shaved twice a week?' All his points had
+been made on the idea that they were 'unshaved and clothed anyhow.' He
+welcomes the new matter, however, in spite of the labor it entails.
+And it is easy to see how he has enriched the earlier chapters by
+accentuating St. Ives's disgust and mortification over his hideous
+dress and stubby chin.
+
+The book has a light-hearted note, as a romance of the road should
+have. The events take place in 1813; they might have occurred fifty or
+seventy-five years earlier. For the book lacks that convincing
+something which fastens a story immovably within certain chronological
+limits. It is the effect which Thomas Hardy has so wonderfully
+produced in that little tale describing Napoleon's night-time visit to
+the coast of England; the effect which Stevenson himself was equally
+happy in making when he wrote the piece called _A Lodging for a
+Night_.
+
+_St. Ives_ has plenty of good romantic stuff in it, though on the
+whole it is romance of the conventional sort. It is too well bred, let
+us say too observant of the forms and customs which one has learned to
+expect in a novel of the road. There is an escape from the castle in
+the sixth chapter, a flight in the darkness towards the cottage of the
+lady-love in the seventh chapter, an appeal to the generosity of the
+lady-love's aunt, a dragon with gold-rimmed eyeglasses, in the ninth
+chapter. And so on. We would not imply that all this is lacking in
+distinction, but it seems to want that high distinction which
+Stevenson could give to his work. Ought one to look for it in a book
+confessedly unsatisfactory to its author, and a book which was left
+incomplete?
+
+There is a pretty account of the first meeting between St. Ives and
+Flora. One naturally compares it with the scene in which David Balfour
+describes his sensations and emotions when the spell of Catriona's
+beauty came upon him. Says David:--
+
+'There is no greater wonder than the way the face of a young woman
+fits in a man's mind and stays there, and he could never tell you why;
+it just seems it was the thing he wanted.'
+
+This is quite perfect, and in admirable keeping with the genuine
+simplicity of David's character:--
+
+'She had wonderful bright eyes like stars; ... and whatever was the
+cause, I stood there staring like a fool.'
+
+This is more concise than St. Ives's description of Flora; but St.
+Ives was a man of the world who had read books, and knew how to
+compare the young Scotch beauty to Diana:--
+
+'As I saw her standing, her lips parted, a divine trouble in her eyes,
+I could have clapped my hands in applause, and was ready to acclaim
+her a genuine daughter of the winds.'
+
+The account of the meeting with Walter Scott and his daughter on the
+moors does not have the touch of reality in it that one would like.
+Here was an opportunity, however, of the author's own making.
+
+There are flashes of humor, as when St. Ives found himself locked in
+the poultry-house 'alone with half a dozen sitting hens. In the
+twilight of the place all fixed their eyes on me severely, and seemed
+to upbraid me with some crying impropriety.'
+
+There are sentences in which, after Stevenson's own manner, real
+insight is combined with felicitous expression. St. Ives is commenting
+upon the fact that he has done a thing which most men learned in the
+wisdom of this world would have pronounced absurd; he has 'made a
+confidant of a boy in his teens and positively smelling of the
+nursery.' But he has no cause to repent it. 'There is none so apt as a
+boy to be the adviser of any man in difficulties like mine. To the
+beginnings of virile common sense he adds the last lights of the
+child's imagination.'
+
+Men have been known to thank God when certain authors died,--not
+because they bore the slightest personal ill-will, but because they
+knew that as long as the authors lived nothing could prevent them from
+writing. In thinking of Stevenson, however, one cannot tell whether he
+experiences the more a feeling of personal or of literary loss,
+whether he laments chiefly the man or the author. It is not possible
+to separate the various cords of love, admiration, and gratitude which
+bind us to this man. He had a multitude of friends. He appealed to a
+wider audience than he knew. He himself said that he was read by
+journalists, by his fellow novelists, and by boys. Envious admiration
+might prompt a less successful writer to exclaim, 'Well, isn't that
+enough?' No, for to be truly blest one must have women among one's
+readers. And there are elect ladies not a few who know Stevenson's
+novels; yet it is a question whether he has reached the great mass of
+female novel-readers. Certainly he is not well known in that circle of
+fashionable maidens and young matrons which justly prides itself upon
+an acquaintance with Van Bibber. And we can hardly think he is a
+familiar name to that vast and not fashionable constituency which
+battens upon the romances of Marie Corelli under the impression that
+it is perusing literature, while he offers no comfort whatever to that
+type of reader who prefers that a novel shall be filled with hard
+thinking, with social riddles, theological problems, and 'sexual
+theorems.' Stevenson was happy with his journalists and boys. Among
+all modern British men of letters he was in many ways the most highly
+blest; and his career was entirely picturesque and interesting. Other
+men have been more talked about, but the one thing which he did not
+lack was discriminating praise from those who sit in high critical
+places.
+
+He was prosperous, too, though not grossly prosperous. It is no new
+fact that the sales of his books were small in proportion to the
+magnitude of his contemporary fame. People praised him tremendously,
+but paid their dollars for entertainment of another quality than that
+supplied by his fine gifts. _An Inland Voyage_ has never been as
+popular as _Three Men in a Boat_, nor _Treasure Island_ and
+_Kidnapped_ as _King Solomon's Mines_; while _The Black Arrow_, which
+Mr. Lang does not like, and Professor Saintsbury insists is 'a
+wonderfully good story,' has not met a wide public favor at all.
+_Travels with a Donkey_, which came out in 1879, had only reached its
+sixth English edition in 1887. Perhaps that is good for a book so
+entirely virtuous in a literary way, but it was not a success to keep
+a man awake nights.
+
+We have been told that it is wrong to admire _Jekyll and Hyde_, that
+the story is 'coarse,' an 'outrage upon the grand allegories of the
+same motive,' and several other things; nay, it is even hinted that
+this popular tale is evidence of a morbid strain in the author's
+nature. Rather than dispute the point it is a temptation to urge upon
+the critic that he is not radical enough, for in Stevenson's opinion
+all literature might be only a 'morbid secretion.'
+
+The critics, however, agree in allowing us to admire without stint
+those smaller works in which his characteristic gifts displayed
+themselves at the best. _Thrawn Janet_ is one of these, and the story
+of Tod Lapraik, told by Andie Dale in _Catriona_, is another.
+Stevenson himself declared that if he had never written anything
+except these two stories he would still have been a writer. We hope
+that there would be votes cast for _Will o' the Mill_, which is a
+lovely bit of literary workmanship. And there are a dozen besides
+these.
+
+He was an artist of undoubted gifts, but he was an artist in small
+literary forms. His longest good novels are after all little books.
+When he attempted a large canvas he seemed not perfectly in command of
+his materials, though he could use those materials as they could have
+been used by no other artist. There is nothing in his books akin to
+that broad and massive treatment which may be felt in a novel like
+_Rhoda Fleming_ or in a tragedy like _Tess of the D'Urbervilles_.
+
+Andrew Lang was right when he said of Stevenson: He is a 'Little
+Master,' but of the Little Masters the most perfect and delightful.
+
+
+
+
+The Riverside Press
+
+CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS, U. S. A.
+ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED BY
+H. O. HOUGHTON AND CO.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Bibliotaph, by Leon H. Vincent
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