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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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