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diff --git a/5317-h/5317-h.htm b/5317-h/5317-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a83deeb --- /dev/null +++ b/5317-h/5317-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,5109 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" +"http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en"> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" /> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Style-Type" content="text/css" /> +<title>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Through the Magic Door, by Arthur Conan Doyle</title> +<link rel="coverpage" href="images/cover.jpg" /> +<style type="text/css"> + +body { margin-left: 20%; + margin-right: 20%; + text-align: justify; } + +h1, h2, h3, h4, h5 {text-align: center; font-style: normal; font-weight: +normal; line-height: 1.5; margin-top: .5em; margin-bottom: .5em;} + +h1 {font-size: 300%; + margin-top: 0.6em; + margin-bottom: 0.6em; + letter-spacing: 0.12em; + word-spacing: 0.2em; + text-indent: 0em;} +h2 {font-size: 150%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 1em;} +h3 {font-size: 130%; margin-top: 1em;} +h4 {font-size: 120%;} +h5 {font-size: 110%;} + +.no-break {page-break-before: avoid;} /* for epubs */ + +div.chapter {page-break-before: always; margin-top: 4em;} + +hr {width: 80%; margin-top: 2em; margin-bottom: 2em;} + +p {text-indent: 1em; + margin-top: 0.25em; + margin-bottom: 0.25em; } + +.p2 {margin-top: 2em;} + +p.poem {text-indent: 0%; + margin-left: 10%; + font-size: 90%; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; } + +p.noindent {text-indent: 0% } + +div.fig { display:block; + margin:0 auto; + text-align:center; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em;} + +a:link {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:visited {color:blue; text-decoration:none} +a:hover {color:red} + +</style> + +</head> + +<body> + +<div style='text-align:center; font-size:1.2em; font-weight:bold'>The Project Gutenberg eBook of Through the Magic Door, by Arthur Conan Doyle</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and +most other parts of the world 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 <a href="https://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a>. If you +are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws of the +country where you are located before using this eBook. +</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Through the Magic Door</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Arthur Conan Doyle</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: June 30, 2002 [eBook #5317]<br /> +[Most recently updated: June 14, 2022]</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div> +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div> +<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Anders Thulin and Andrew Sly</div> +<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR ***</div> + +<div class="fig" style="width:55%;"> +<img src="images/cover.jpg" style="width:100%;" alt="[Illustration]" /> +</div> + +<h1>Through the Magic Door</h1> + +<h2 class="no-break">by Arthur Conan Doyle</h2> + +<hr /> + +<h2>Contents</h2> + +<table summary="" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto"> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap01">I.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap02">II.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap03">III.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap04">IV.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap05">V.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap06">VI.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap07">VII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap08">VIII.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap09">IX.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap10">X.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap11">XI.</a></td> +</tr> + +<tr> +<td> <a href="#chap12">XII.</a></td> +</tr> + +</table> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap01"></a>I.</h2> + +<p> +I care not how humble your bookshelf may be, nor how lowly the room which it +adorns. Close the door of that room behind you, shut off with it all the cares +of the outer world, plunge back into the soothing company of the great dead, +and then you are through the magic portal into that fair land whither worry and +vexation can follow you no more. You have left all that is vulgar and all that +is sordid behind you. There stand your noble, silent comrades, waiting in their +ranks. Pass your eye down their files. Choose your man. And then you have but +to hold up your hand to him and away you go together into dreamland. Surely +there would be something eerie about a line of books were it not that +familiarity has deadened our sense of it. Each is a mummified soul embalmed in +cere-cloth and natron of leather and printer’s ink. Each cover of a true +book enfolds the concentrated essence of a man. The personalities of the +writers have faded into the thinnest shadows, as their bodies into impalpable +dust, yet here are their very spirits at your command. +</p> + +<p> +It is our familiarity also which has lessened our perception of the miraculous +good fortune which we enjoy. Let us suppose that we were suddenly to learn that +Shakespeare had returned to earth, and that he would favour any of us with an +hour of his wit and his fancy. How eagerly we would seek him out! And yet we +have him—the very best of him—at our elbows from week to week, and +hardly trouble ourselves to put out our hands to beckon him down. No matter +what mood a man may be in, when once he has passed through the magic door he +can summon the world’s greatest to sympathize with him in it. If he be +thoughtful, here are the kings of thought. If he be dreamy, here are the +masters of fancy. Or is it amusement that he lacks? He can signal to any one of +the world’s great story-tellers, and out comes the dead man and holds him +enthralled by the hour. The dead are such good company that one may come to +think too little of the living. It is a real and a pressing danger with many of +us, that we should never find our own thoughts and our own souls, but be ever +obsessed by the dead. Yet second-hand romance and second-hand emotion are +surely better than the dull, soul-killing monotony which life brings to most of +the human race. But best of all when the dead man’s wisdom and the dead +man’s example give us guidance and strength and in the living of our own +strenuous days. +</p> + +<p> +Come through the magic door with me, and sit here on the green settee, where +you can see the old oak case with its untidy lines of volumes. Smoking is not +forbidden. Would you care to hear me talk of them? Well, I ask nothing better, +for there is no volume there which is not a dear, personal friend, and what can +a man talk of more pleasantly than that? The other books are over yonder, but +these are my own favourites—the ones I care to re-read and to have near +my elbow. There is not a tattered cover which does not bring its mellow +memories to me. +</p> + +<p> +Some of them represent those little sacrifices which make a possession dearer. +You see the line of old, brown volumes at the bottom? Every one of those +represents a lunch. They were bought in my student days, when times were not +too affluent. Threepence was my modest allowance for my midday sandwich and +glass of beer; but, as luck would have it, my way to the classes led past the +most fascinating bookshop in the world. Outside the door of it stood a large +tub filled with an ever-changing litter of tattered books, with a card above +which announced that any volume therein could be purchased for the identical +sum which I carried in my pocket. As I approached it a combat ever raged +betwixt the hunger of a youthful body and that of an inquiring and omnivorous +mind. Five times out of six the animal won. But when the mental prevailed, then +there was an entrancing five minutes’ digging among out-of-date almanacs, +volumes of Scotch theology, and tables of logarithms, until one found something +which made it all worth while. If you will look over these titles, you will see +that I did not do so very badly. Four volumes of Gordon’s +“Tacitus” (life is too short to read originals, so long as there +are good translations), Sir William Temple’s Essays, Addison’s +works, Swift’s “Tale of a Tub,” Clarendon’s +“History,” “Gil Blas,” Buckingham’s Poems, +Churchill’s Poems, “Life of Bacon”—not so bad for the +old threepenny tub. +</p> + +<p> +They were not always in such plebeian company. Look at the thickness of the +rich leather, and the richness of the dim gold lettering. Once they adorned the +shelves of some noble library, and even among the odd almanacs and the sermons +they bore the traces of their former greatness, like the faded silk dress of +the reduced gentlewoman, a present pathos but a glory of the past. +</p> + +<p> +Reading is made too easy nowadays, with cheap paper editions and free +libraries. A man does not appreciate at its full worth the thing that comes to +him without effort. Who now ever gets the thrill which Carlyle felt when he +hurried home with the six volumes of Gibbon’s “History” under +his arm, his mind just starving for want of food, to devour them at the rate of +one a day? A book should be your very own before you can really get the taste +of it, and unless you have worked for it, you will never have the true inward +pride of possession. +</p> + +<p> +If I had to choose the one book out of all that line from which I have had most +pleasure and most profit, I should point to yonder stained copy of +Macaulay’s “Essays.” It seems entwined into my whole life as +I look backwards. It was my comrade in my student days, it has been with me on +the sweltering Gold Coast, and it formed part of my humble kit when I went +a-whaling in the Arctic. Honest Scotch harpooners have addled their brains over +it, and you may still see the grease stains where the second engineer grappled +with Frederick the Great. Tattered and dirty and worn, no gilt-edged +morocco-bound volume could ever take its place for me. +</p> + +<p> +What a noble gateway this book forms through which one may approach the study +either of letters or of history! Milton, Machiavelli, Hallam, Southey, Bunyan, +Byron, Johnson, Pitt, Hampden, Clive, Hastings, Chatham—what nuclei for +thought! With a good grip of each how pleasant and easy to fill in all that +lies between! The short, vivid sentences, the broad sweep of allusion, the +exact detail, they all throw a glamour round the subject and should make the +least studious of readers desire to go further. If Macaulay’s hand cannot +lead a man upon those pleasant paths, then, indeed, he may give up all hope of +ever finding them. +</p> + +<p> +When I was a senior schoolboy this book—not this very volume, for it had +an even more tattered predecessor—opened up a new world to me. History +had been a lesson and abhorrent. Suddenly the task and the drudgery became an +incursion into an enchanted land, a land of colour and beauty, with a kind, +wise guide to point the path. In that great style of his I loved even the +faults—indeed, now that I come to think of it, it was the faults which I +loved best. No sentence could be too stiff with rich embroidery, and no +antithesis too flowery. It pleased me to read that “a universal shout of +laughter from the Tagus to the Vistula informed the Pope that the days of the +crusades were past,” and I was delighted to learn that “Lady +Jerningham kept a vase in which people placed foolish verses, and Mr. Dash +wrote verses which were fit to be placed in Lady Jerningham’s +vase.” Those were the kind of sentences which used to fill me with a +vague but enduring pleasure, like chords which linger in the musician’s +ear. A man likes a plainer literary diet as he grows older, but still as I +glance over the Essays I am filled with admiration and wonder at the alternate +power of handling a great subject, and of adorning it by delightful +detail—just a bold sweep of the brush, and then the most delicate +stippling. As he leads you down the path, he for ever indicates the alluring +side-tracks which branch away from it. An admirable, if somewhat old-fashioned, +literary and historical education might be effected by working through every +book which is alluded to in the Essays. I should be curious, however, to know +the exact age of the youth when he came to the end of his studies. +</p> + +<p> +I wish Macaulay had written a historical novel. I am convinced that it would +have been a great one. I do not know if he had the power of drawing an +imaginary character, but he certainly had the gift of reconstructing a dead +celebrity to a remarkable degree. Look at the simple half-paragraph in which he +gives us Johnson and his atmosphere. Was ever a more definite picture given in +a shorter space— +</p> + +<p> +“As we close it, the club-room is before us, and the table on which stand +the omelet for Nugent, and the lemons for Johnson. There are assembled those +heads which live for ever on the canvas of Reynolds. There are the spectacles +of Burke, and the tall thin form of Langton, the courtly sneer of Beauclerk and +the beaming smile of Garrick, Gibbon tapping his snuff-box, and Sir Joshua with +his trumpet in his ear. In the foreground is that strange figure which is as +familiar to us as the figures of those among whom we have been brought +up—the gigantic body, the huge massy face, seamed with the scars of +disease, the brown coat, the black worsted stockings, the grey wig with the +scorched foretop, the dirty hands, the nails bitten and pared to the quick. We +see the eyes and mouth moving with convulsive twitches; we see the heavy form +rolling; we hear it puffing, and then comes the ‘Why, sir!’ and the +‘What then, sir?’ and the ‘No, sir!’ and the ‘You +don’t see your way through the question, sir!’” +</p> + +<p> +It is etched into your memory for ever. +</p> + +<p> +I can remember that when I visited London at the age of sixteen the first thing +I did after housing my luggage was to make a pilgrimage to Macaulay’s +grave, where he lies in Westminster Abbey, just under the shadow of Addison, +and amid the dust of the poets whom he had loved so well. It was the one great +object of interest which London held for me. And so it might well be, when I +think of all I owe him. It is not merely the knowledge and the stimulation of +fresh interests, but it is the charming gentlemanly tone, the broad, liberal +outlook, the general absence of bigotry and of prejudice. My judgment now +confirms all that I felt for him then. +</p> + +<p> +My four-volume edition of the History stands, as you see, to the right of the +Essays. Do you recollect the third chapter of that work—the one which +reconstructs the England of the seventeenth century? It has always seemed to me +the very high-water mark of Macaulay’s powers, with its marvellous +mixture of precise fact and romantic phrasing. The population of towns, the +statistics of commerce, the prosaic facts of life are all transmuted into +wonder and interest by the handling of the master. You feel that he could have +cast a glamour over the multiplication table had he set himself to do so. Take +a single concrete example of what I mean. The fact that a Londoner in the +country, or a countryman in London, felt equally out of place in those days of +difficult travel, would seem to hardly require stating, and to afford no +opportunity of leaving a strong impression upon the reader’s mind. See +what Macaulay makes of it, though it is no more than a hundred other paragraphs +which discuss a hundred various points— +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“A cockney in a rural village was stared at as much as if he had intruded +into a kraal of Hottentots. On the other hand, when the lord of a Lincolnshire +or Shropshire manor appeared in Fleet Street, he was as easily distinguished +from the resident population as a Turk or a Lascar. His dress, his gait, his +accent, the manner in which he gazed at the shops, stumbled into gutters, ran +against the porters, and stood under the waterspouts, marked him out as an +excellent subject for the operations of swindlers and banterers. Bullies +jostled him into the kennel, Hackney coachmen splashed him from head to foot, +thieves explored with perfect security the huge pockets of his horseman’s +coat, while he stood entranced by the splendour of the Lord Mayor’s Show. +Money-droppers, sore from the cart’s tail, introduced themselves to him, +and appeared to him the most honest friendly gentlemen that he had ever seen. +Painted women, the refuse of Lewkner Lane and Whetstone Park, passed themselves +on him for countesses and maids of honour. If he asked his way to St. +James’, his informants sent him to Mile End. If he went into a shop, he +was instantly discerned to be a fit purchaser of everything that nobody else +would buy, of second-hand embroidery, copper rings, and watches that would not +go. If he rambled into any fashionable coffee-house, he became a mark for the +insolent derision of fops, and the grave waggery of Templars. Enraged and +mortified, he soon returned to his mansion, and there, in the homage of his +tenants and the conversation of his boon companions, found consolation for the +vexations and humiliations which he had undergone. There he was once more a +great man, and saw nothing above himself except when at the assizes he took his +seat on the bench near the Judge, or when at the muster of the militia he +saluted the Lord Lieutenant.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +On the whole, I should put this detached chapter of description at the very +head of his Essays, though it happens to occur in another volume. The History +as a whole does not, as it seems to me, reach the same level as the shorter +articles. One cannot but feel that it is a brilliant piece of special pleading +from a fervid Whig, and that there must be more to be said for the other side +than is there set forth. Some of the Essays are tinged also, no doubt, by his +own political and religious limitations. The best are those which get right +away into the broad fields of literature and philosophy. Johnson, Walpole, +Madame D’Arblay, Addison, and the two great Indian ones, Clive and Warren +Hastings, are my own favourites. Frederick the Great, too, must surely stand in +the first rank. Only one would I wish to eliminate. It is the diabolically +clever criticism upon Montgomery. One would have wished to think that +Macaulay’s heart was too kind, and his soul too gentle, to pen so bitter +an attack. Bad work will sink of its own weight. It is not necessary to souse +the author as well. One would think more highly of the man if he had not done +that savage bit of work. +</p> + +<p> +I don’t know why talking of Macaulay always makes me think of Scott, +whose books in a faded, olive-backed line, have a shelf, you see, of their own. +Perhaps it is that they both had so great an influence, and woke such +admiration in me. Or perhaps it is the real similarity in the minds and +characters of the two men. You don’t see it, you say? Well, just think of +Scott’s “Border Ballads,” and then of Macaulay’s +“Lays.” The machines must be alike, when the products are so +similar. Each was the only man who could possibly have written the poems of the +other. What swing and dash in both of them! What a love of all that is manly +and noble and martial! So simple, and yet so strong. But there are minds on +which strength and simplicity are thrown away. They think that unless a thing +is obscure it must be superficial, whereas it is often the shallow stream which +is turbid, and the deep which is clear. Do you remember the fatuous criticism +of Matthew Arnold upon the glorious “Lays,” where he calls out +“is this poetry?” after quoting— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“And how can man die better<br/> + Than facing fearful odds<br/> +For the ashes of his fathers<br/> + And the Temples of his Gods?” +</p> + +<p> +In trying to show that Macaulay had not the poetic sense he was really showing +that he himself had not the dramatic sense. The baldness of the idea and of the +language had evidently offended him. But this is exactly where the true merit +lies. Macaulay is giving the rough, blunt words with which a simple-minded +soldier appeals to two comrades to help him in a deed of valour. Any high-flown +sentiment would have been absolutely out of character. The lines are, I think, +taken with their context, admirable ballad poetry, and have just the dramatic +quality and sense which a ballad poet must have. That opinion of Arnold’s +shook my faith in his judgment, and yet I would forgive a good deal to the man +who wrote— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“One more charge and then be dumb,<br/> + When the forts of Folly fall,<br/> +May the victors when they come<br/> + Find my body near the wall.” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +Not a bad verse that for one’s life aspiration. +</p> + +<p> +This is one of the things which human society has not yet understood—the +value of a noble, inspiriting text. When it does we shall meet them everywhere +engraved on appropriate places, and our progress through the streets will be +brightened and ennobled by one continual series of beautiful mental impulses +and images, reflected into our souls from the printed thoughts which meet our +eyes. To think that we should walk with empty, listless minds while all this +splendid material is running to waste. I do not mean mere Scriptural texts, for +they do not bear the same meaning to all, though what human creature can fail +to be spurred onwards by “Work while it is day, for the night cometh when +no man can work.” But I mean those beautiful thoughts—who can say +that they are uninspired thoughts?—which may be gathered from a hundred +authors to match a hundred uses. A fine thought in fine language is a most +precious jewel, and should not be hid away, but be exposed for use and +ornament. To take the nearest example, there is a horse-trough across the road +from my house, a plain stone trough, and no man could pass it with any feelings +save vague discontent at its ugliness. But suppose that on its front slab you +print the verse of Coleridge— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“He prayeth best who loveth best<br/> + All things, both great and small<br/> +For the dear Lord who fashioned him<br/> + He knows and loveth all.” +</p> + +<p> +I fear I may misquote, for I have not “The Ancient Mariner” at my +elbow, but even as it stands does it not elevate the horse-trough? We all do +this, I suppose, in a small way for ourselves. There are few men who have not +some chosen quotations printed on their study mantelpieces, or, better still, +in their hearts. Carlyle’s transcription of “Rest! Rest! Shall I +not have all Eternity to rest in!” is a pretty good spur to a weary man. +But what we need is a more general application of the same thing for public and +not for private use, until people understand that a graven thought is as +beautiful an ornament as any graven image, striking through the eye right deep +down into the soul. +</p> + +<p> +However, all this has nothing to do with Macaulay’s glorious lays, save +that when you want some flowers of manliness and patriotism you can pluck quite +a bouquet out of those. I had the good fortune to learn the Lay of Horatius off +by heart when I was a child, and it stamped itself on my plastic mind, so that +even now I can reel off almost the whole of it. Goldsmith said that in +conversation he was like the man who had a thousand pounds in the bank, but +could not compete with the man who had an actual sixpence in his pocket. So the +ballad that you bear in your mind outweighs the whole bookshelf which waits for +reference. But I want you now to move your eye a little farther down the shelf +to the line of olive-green volumes. That is my edition of Scott. But surely I +must give you a little breathing space before I venture upon them. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap02"></a>II.</h2> + +<p> +It is a great thing to start life with a small number of really good books +which are your very own. You may not appreciate them at first. You may pine for +your novel of crude and unadulterated adventure. You may, and will, give it the +preference when you can. But the dull days come, and the rainy days come, and +always you are driven to fill up the chinks of your reading with the worthy +books which wait so patiently for your notice. And then suddenly, on a day +which marks an epoch in your life, you understand the difference. You see, like +a flash, how the one stands for nothing, and the other for literature. From +that day onwards you may return to your crudities, but at least you do so with +some standard of comparison in your mind. You can never be the same as you were +before. Then gradually the good thing becomes more dear to you; it builds +itself up with your growing mind; it becomes a part of your better self, and +so, at last, you can look, as I do now, at the old covers and love them for all +that they have meant in the past. Yes, it was the olive-green line of +Scott’s novels which started me on to rhapsody. They were the first books +I ever owned—long, long before I could appreciate or even understand +them. But at last I realized what a treasure they were. In my boyhood I read +them by surreptitious candle-ends in the dead of the night, when the sense of +crime added a new zest to the story. Perhaps you have observed that my +“Ivanhoe” is of a different edition from the others. The first copy +was left in the grass by the side of a stream, fell into the water, and was +eventually picked up three days later, swollen and decomposed, upon a mud-bank. +I think I may say, however, that I had worn it out before I lost it. Indeed, it +was perhaps as well that it was some years before it was replaced, for my +instinct was always to read it again instead of breaking fresh ground. +</p> + +<p> +I remember the late James Payn telling the anecdote that he and two literary +friends agreed to write down what scene in fiction they thought the most +dramatic, and that on examining the papers it was found that all three had +chosen the same. It was the moment when the unknown knight, at +Ashby-de-la-Zouch, riding past the pavilions of the lesser men, strikes with +the sharp end of his lance, in a challenge to mortal combat, the shield of the +formidable Templar. It was, indeed, a splendid moment! What matter that no +Templar was allowed by the rules of his Order to take part in so secular and +frivolous an affair as a tournament? It is the privilege of great masters to +make things so, and it is a churlish thing to gainsay it. Was it not Wendell +Holmes who described the prosaic man, who enters a drawing-room with a couple +of facts, like ill-conditioned bull-dogs at his heels, ready to let them loose +on any play of fancy? The great writer can never go wrong. If Shakespeare gives +a sea-coast to Bohemia, or if Victor Hugo calls an English prize-fighter Mr. +Jim-John-Jack—well, it <i>was</i> so, and that’s an end of it. +“There is no second line of rails at that point,” said an editor to +a minor author. “I make a second line,” said the author; and he was +within his rights, if he can carry his readers’ conviction with him. +</p> + +<p> +But this is a digression from “Ivanhoe.” What a book it is! The +second greatest historical novel in our language, I think. Every successive +reading has deepened my admiration for it. Scott’s soldiers are always as +good as his women (with exceptions) are weak; but here, while the soldiers are +at their very best, the romantic figure of Rebecca redeems the female side of +the story from the usual commonplace routine. Scott drew manly men because he +was a manly man himself, and found the task a sympathetic one. +</p> + +<p> +He drew young heroines because a convention demanded it, which he had never the +hardihood to break. It is only when we get him for a dozen chapters on end with +a minimum of petticoat—in the long stretch, for example, from the +beginning of the Tournament to the end of the Friar Tuck incident—that we +realize the height of continued romantic narrative to which he could attain. I +don’t think in the whole range of our literature we have a finer +sustained flight than that. +</p> + +<p> +There is, I admit, an intolerable amount of redundant verbiage in Scott’s +novels. Those endless and unnecessary introductions make the shell very thick +before you come to the oyster. They are often admirable in themselves, learned, +witty, picturesque, but with no relation or proportion to the story which they +are supposed to introduce. Like so much of our English fiction, they are very +good matter in a very bad place. Digression and want of method and order are +traditional national sins. Fancy introducing an essay on how to live on nothing +a year as Thackeray did in “Vanity Fair,” or sandwiching in a ghost +story as Dickens has dared to do. As well might a dramatic author rush up to +the footlights and begin telling anecdotes while his play was suspending its +action and his characters waiting wearily behind him. It is all wrong, though +every great name can be quoted in support of it. Our sense of form is +lamentably lacking, and Sir Walter sinned with the rest. But get past all that +to a crisis in the real story, and who finds the terse phrase, the short +fire-word, so surely as he? Do you remember when the reckless Sergeant of +Dragoons stands at last before the grim Puritan, upon whose head a price has +been set: “A thousand marks or a bed of heather!” says he, as he +draws. The Puritan draws also: “The Sword of the Lord and of +Gideon!” says he. No verbiage there! But the very spirit of either man +and of either party, in the few stern words, which haunt your mind. “Bows +and Bills!” cry the Saxon Varangians, as the Moslem horse charges home. +You feel it is just what they must have cried. Even more terse and businesslike +was the actual battle-cry of the fathers of the same men on that long-drawn day +when they fought under the “Red Dragon of Wessex” on the low ridge +at Hastings. “Out! Out!” they roared, as the Norman chivalry broke +upon them. Terse, strong, prosaic—the very genius of the race was in the +cry. +</p> + +<p> +Is it that the higher emotions are not there? Or is it that they are damped +down and covered over as too precious to be exhibited? Something of each, +perhaps. I once met the widow of the man who, as a young signal midshipman, had +taken Nelson’s famous message from the Signal Yeoman and communicated it +to the ship’s company. The officers were impressed. The men were not. +“Duty!” they muttered. “We’ve always done it. Why +not?” Anything in the least highfalutin’ would depress, not exalt, +a British company. It is the under statement which delights them. German troops +can march to battle singing Luther’s hymns. Frenchmen will work +themselves into a frenzy by a song of glory and of Fatherland. Our martial +poets need not trouble to imitate—or at least need not imagine that if +they do so they will ever supply a want to the British soldier. Our sailors +working the heavy guns in South Africa sang: “Here’s another lump +of sugar for the Bird.” I saw a regiment go into action to the refrain of +“A little bit off the top.” The martial poet aforesaid, unless he +had the genius and the insight of a Kipling, would have wasted a good deal of +ink before he had got down to such chants as these. The Russians are not unlike +us in this respect. I remember reading of some column ascending a breach and +singing lustily from start to finish, until a few survivors were left +victorious upon the crest with the song still going. A spectator inquired what +wondrous chant it was which had warmed them to such a deed of valour, and he +found that the exact meaning of the words, endlessly repeated, was “Ivan +is in the garden picking cabbages.” The fact is, I suppose, that a mere +monotonous sound may take the place of the tom-tom of savage warfare, and +hypnotize the soldier into valour. +</p> + +<p> +Our cousins across the Atlantic have the same blending of the comic with their +most serious work. Take the songs which they sang during the most bloody war +which the Anglo-Celtic race has ever waged—the only war in which it could +have been said that they were stretched to their uttermost and showed their +true form—“Tramp, tramp, tramp,” “John Brown’s +Body,” “Marching through Georgia”—all had a playful +humour running through them. Only one exception do I know, and that is the most +tremendous war-song I can recall. Even an outsider in time of peace can hardly +read it without emotion. I mean, of course, Julia Ward Howe’s +“War-Song of the Republic,” with the choral opening line: +“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord.” If that +were ever sung upon a battle-field the effect must have been terrific. +</p> + +<p> +A long digression, is it not? But that is the worst of the thoughts at the +other side of the Magic Door. You can’t pull one out without a dozen +being entangled with it. But it was Scott’s soldiers that I was talking +of, and I was saying that there is nothing theatrical, no posing, no heroics +(the thing of all others which the hero abominates), but just the short bluff +word and the simple manly ways, with every expression and metaphor drawn from +within his natural range of thought. What a pity it is that he, with his keen +appreciation of the soldier, gave us so little of those soldiers who were his +own contemporaries—the finest, perhaps, that the world has ever seen! It +is true that he wrote a life of the great Soldier Emperor, but that was the one +piece of hackwork of his career. How could a Tory patriot, whose whole training +had been to look upon Napoleon as a malignant Demon, do justice to such a +theme? But the Europe of those days was full of material which he of all men +could have drawn with a sympathetic hand. What would we not give for a portrait +of one of Murat’s light-cavalrymen, or of a Grenadier of the Old Guard, +drawn with the same bold strokes as the Rittmeister of Gustavus or the archers +of the French King’s Guard in “Quentin Durward”? +</p> + +<p> +In his visit to Paris Scott must have seen many of those iron men who during +the preceding twenty years had been the scourge and also the redemption of +Europe. To us the soldiers who scowled at him from the sidewalks in 1814 would +have been as interesting and as much romantic figures of the past as the +mail-clad knights or ruffling cavaliers of his novels. A picture from the life +of a Peninsular veteran, with his views upon the Duke, would be as striking as +Dugald Dalgetty from the German wars. But then no man ever does realize the +true interest of the age in which he happens to live. All sense of proportion +is lost, and the little thing hard-by obscures the great thing at a distance. +It is easy in the dark to confuse the fire-fly and the star. Fancy, for +example, the Old Masters seeking their subjects in inn parlours, or St. +Sebastians, while Columbus was discovering America before their very faces. +</p> + +<p> +I have said that I think “Ivanhoe” the best of Scott’s +novels. I suppose most people would subscribe to that. But how about the second +best? It speaks well for their general average that there is hardly one among +them which might not find some admirers who would vote it to a place of honour. +To the Scottish-born man those novels which deal with Scottish life and +character have a quality of raciness which gives them a place apart. There is a +rich humour of the soil in such books as “Old Mortality,” +“The Antiquary,” and “Rob Roy,” which puts them in a +different class from the others. His old Scottish women are, next to his +soldiers, the best series of types that he has drawn. At the same time it must +be admitted that merit which is associated with dialect has such limitations +that it can never take the same place as work which makes an equal appeal to +all the world. On the whole, perhaps, “Quentin Durward,” on account +of its wider interests, its strong character-drawing, and the European +importance of the events and people described, would have my vote for the +second place. It is the father of all those sword-and-cape novels which have +formed so numerous an addition to the light literature of the last century. The +pictures of Charles the Bold and of the unspeakable Louis are extraordinarily +vivid. I can see those two deadly enemies watching the hounds chasing the +herald, and clinging to each other in the convulsion of their cruel mirth, more +clearly than most things which my eyes have actually rested upon. +</p> + +<p> +The portrait of Louis with his astuteness, his cruelty, his superstition and +his cowardice is followed closely from Comines, and is the more effective when +set up against his bluff and war-like rival. It is not often that historical +characters work out in their actual physique exactly as one would picture them +to be, but in the High Church of Innsbruck I have seen effigies of Louis and +Charles which might have walked from the very pages of Scott-Louis, thin, +ascetic, varminty; and Charles with the head of a prize-fighter. It is hard on +us when a portrait upsets all our preconceived ideas, when, for example, we see +in the National Portrait Gallery a man with a noble, olive-tinted, poetic face, +and with a start read beneath it that it is the wicked Judge Jeffreys. +Occasionally, however, as at Innsbruck, we are absolutely satisfied. I have +before me on the mantelpiece yonder a portrait of a painting which represents +Queen Mary’s Bothwell. Take it down and look at it. Mark the big head, +fit to conceive large schemes; the strong animal face, made to captivate a +sensitive, feminine woman; the brutally forceful features—the mouth with +a suggestion of wild boars’ tusks behind it, the beard which could +bristle with fury: the whole man and his life-history are revealed in that +picture. I wonder if Scott had ever seen the original which hangs at the +Hepburn family seat? +</p> + +<p> +Personally, I have always had a very high opinion of a novel which the critics +have used somewhat harshly, and which came almost the last from his tired pen. +I mean “Count Robert of Paris.” I am convinced that if it had been +the first, instead of the last, of the series it would have attracted as much +attention as “Waverley.” I can understand the state of mind of the +expert, who cried out in mingled admiration and despair: “I have studied +the conditions of Byzantine Society all my life, and here comes a Scotch lawyer +who makes the whole thing clear to me in a flash!” Many men could draw +with more or less success Norman England, or mediaeval France, but to +reconstruct a whole dead civilization in so plausible a way, with such dignity +and such minuteness of detail, is, I should think, a most wonderful <i>tour de +force</i>. His failing health showed itself before the end of the novel, but +had the latter half equalled the first, and contained scenes of such humour as +Anna Comnena reading aloud her father’s exploits, or of such majesty as +the account of the muster of the Crusaders upon the shores of the Bosphorus, +then the book could not have been gainsaid its rightful place in the very front +rank of the novels. +</p> + +<p> +I would that he had carried on his narrative, and given us a glimpse of the +actual progress of the First Crusade. What an incident! Was ever anything in +the world’s history like it? It had what historical incidents seldom +have, a definite beginning, middle and end, from the half-crazed preaching of +Peter down to the Fall of Jerusalem. Those leaders! It would take a second +Homer to do them justice. Godfrey the perfect soldier and leader, Bohemund the +unscrupulous and formidable, Tancred the ideal knight errant, Robert of +Normandy the half-mad hero! Here is material so rich that one feels one is not +worthy to handle it. What richest imagination could ever evolve anything more +marvellous and thrilling than the actual historical facts? +</p> + +<p> +But what a glorious brotherhood the novels are! Think of the pure romance of +“The Talisman”; the exquisite picture of Hebridean life in +“The Pirate”; the splendid reproduction of Elizabethan England in +“Kenilworth”; the rich humour of the “Legend of +Montrose”; above all, bear in mind that in all that splendid series, +written in a coarse age, there is not one word to offend the most sensitive +ear, and it is borne in upon one how great and noble a man was Walter Scott, +and how high the service which he did for literature and for humanity. +</p> + +<p> +For that reason his life is good reading, and there it is on the same shelf as +the novels. Lockhart was, of course, his son-in-law and his admiring friend. +The ideal biographer should be a perfectly impartial man, with a sympathetic +mind, but a stern determination to tell the absolute truth. One would like the +frail, human side of a man as well as the other. I cannot believe that anyone +in the world was ever quite so good as the subject of most of our biographies. +Surely these worthy people swore a little sometimes, or had a keen eye for a +pretty face, or opened the second bottle when they would have done better to +stop at the first, or did something to make us feel that they were men and +brothers. They need not go the length of the lady who began a biography of her +deceased husband with the words—“D—— was a dirty +man,” but the books certainly would be more readable, and the subjects +more lovable too, if we had greater light and shade in the picture. +</p> + +<p> +But I am sure that the more one knew of Scott the more one would have admired +him. He lived in a drinking age, and in a drinking country, and I have not a +doubt that he took an allowance of toddy occasionally of an evening which would +have laid his feeble successors under the table. His last years, at least, poor +fellow, were abstemious enough, when he sipped his barley-water, while the +others passed the decanter. But what a high-souled chivalrous gentleman he was, +with how fine a sense of honour, translating itself not into empty phrases, but +into years of labour and denial! You remember how he became sleeping partner in +a printing house, and so involved himself in its failure. There was a legal, +but very little moral, claim against him, and no one could have blamed him had +he cleared the account by a bankruptcy, which would have enabled him to become +a rich man again within a few years. Yet he took the whole burden upon himself +and bore it for the rest of his life, spending his work, his time, and his +health in the one long effort to save his honour from the shadow of a stain. It +was nearly a hundred thousand pounds, I think, which he passed on to the +creditors—a great record, a hundred thousand pounds, with his life thrown +in. +</p> + +<p> +And what a power of work he had! It was superhuman. Only the man who has tried +to write fiction himself knows what it means when it is recorded that Scott +produced two of his long novels in one single year. I remember reading in some +book of reminiscences—on second thoughts it was in Lockhart +himself—how the writer had lodged in some rooms in Castle Street, +Edinburgh, and how he had seen all evening the silhouette of a man outlined on +the blind of the opposite house. All evening the man wrote, and the observer +could see the shadow hand conveying the sheets of paper from the desk to the +pile at the side. He went to a party and returned, but still the hand was +moving the sheets. Next morning he was told that the rooms opposite were +occupied by Walter Scott. +</p> + +<p> +A curious glimpse into the psychology of the writer of fiction is shown by the +fact that he wrote two of his books—good ones, too—at a time when +his health was such that he could not afterwards remember one word of them, and +listened to them when they were read to him as if he were hearing the work of +another man. Apparently the simplest processes of the brain, such as ordinary +memory, were in complete abeyance, and yet the very highest and most complex +faculty—imagination in its supreme form—was absolutely unimpaired. +It is an extraordinary fact, and one to be pondered over. It gives some support +to the feeling which every writer of imaginative work must have, that his +supreme work comes to him in some strange way from without, and that he is only +the medium for placing it upon the paper. The creative thought—the germ +thought from which a larger growth is to come, flies through his brain like a +bullet. He is surprised at his own idea, with no conscious sense of having +originated it. And here we have a man, with all other brain functions +paralyzed, producing this magnificent work. Is it possible that we are indeed +but conduit pipes from the infinite reservoir of the unknown? Certainly it is +always our best work which leaves the least sense of personal effort. +</p> + +<p> +And to pursue this line of thought, is it possible that frail physical powers +and an unstable nervous system, by keeping a man’s materialism at its +lowest, render him a more fitting agent for these spiritual uses? It is an old +tag that +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Great Genius is to madness close allied,<br/> +And thin partitions do those rooms divide.” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +But, apart from genius, even a moderate faculty for imaginative work seems to +me to weaken seriously the ties between the soul and the body. +</p> + +<p> +Look at the British poets of a century ago: Chatterton, Burns, Shelley, Keats, +Byron. Burns was the oldest of that brilliant band, yet Burns was only +thirty-eight when he passed away, “burned out,” as his brother +terribly expressed it. Shelley, it is true, died by accident, and Chatterton by +poison, but suicide is in itself a sign of a morbid state. It is true that +Rogers lived to be almost a centenarian, but he was banker first and poet +afterwards. Wordsworth, Tennyson, and Browning have all raised the average age +of the poets, but for some reason the novelists, especially of late years, have +a deplorable record. They will end by being scheduled with the white-lead +workers and other dangerous trades. Look at the really shocking case of the +young Americans, for example. What a band of promising young writers have in a +few years been swept away! There was the author of that admirable book, +“David Harum”; there was Frank Norris, a man who had in him, I +think, the seeds of greatness more than almost any living writer. His +“Pit” seemed to me one of the finest American novels. He also died +a premature death. Then there was Stephen Crane—a man who had also done +most brilliant work, and there was Harold Frederic, another master-craftsman. +Is there any profession in the world which in proportion to its numbers could +show such losses as that? In the meantime, out of our own men Robert Louis +Stevenson is gone, and Henry Seton Merriman, and many another. +</p> + +<p> +Even those great men who are usually spoken of as if they had rounded off their +career were really premature in their end. Thackeray, for example, in spite of +his snowy head, was only 52; Dickens attained the age of 58; on the whole, Sir +Walter, with his 61 years of life, although he never wrote a novel until he was +over 40, had, fortunately for the world, a longer working career than most of +his brethren. +</p> + +<p> +He employed his creative faculty for about twenty years, which is as much, I +suppose, as Shakespeare did. The bard of Avon is another example of the limited +tenure which Genius has of life, though I believe that he outlived the greater +part of his own family, who were not a healthy stock. He died, I should judge, +of some nervous disease; that is shown by the progressive degeneration of his +signature. Probably it was locomotor ataxy, which is the special scourge of the +imaginative man. Heine, Daudet, and how many more, were its victims. As to the +tradition, first mentioned long after his death, that he died of a fever +contracted from a drinking bout, it is absurd on the face of it, since no such +fever is known to science. But a very moderate drinking bout would be extremely +likely to bring a chronic nervous complaint to a disastrous end. +</p> + +<p> +One other remark upon Scott before I pass on from that line of green volumes +which has made me so digressive and so garrulous. No account of his character +is complete which does not deal with the strange, secretive vein which ran +through his nature. Not only did he stretch the truth on many occasions in +order to conceal the fact that he was the author of the famous novels, but even +intimate friends who met him day by day were not aware that he was the man +about whom the whole of Europe was talking. Even his wife was ignorant of his +pecuniary liabilities until the crash of the Ballantyne firm told her for the +first time that they were sharers in the ruin. A psychologist might trace this +strange twist of his mind in the numerous elfish Fenella-like characters who +flit about and keep their irritating secret through the long chapters of so +many of his novels. +</p> + +<p> +It’s a sad book, Lockhart’s “Life.” It leaves gloom in +the mind. The sight of this weary giant, staggering along, burdened with debt, +overladen with work, his wife dead, his nerves broken, and nothing intact but +his honour, is one of the most moving in the history of literature. But they +pass, these clouds, and all that is left is the memory of the supremely noble +man, who would not be bent, but faced Fate to the last, and died in his tracks +without a whimper. He sampled every human emotion. Great was his joy and great +his success, great was his downfall and bitter his grief. But of all the sons +of men I don’t think there are many greater than he who lies under the +great slab at Dryburgh. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap03"></a>III.</h2> + +<p> +We can pass the long green ranks of the Waverley Novels and Lockhart’s +“Life” which flanks them. Here is heavier metal in the four big +grey volumes beyond. They are an old-fashioned large-print edition of +Boswell’s “Life of Johnson.” I emphasize the large print, for +that is the weak point of most of the cheap editions of English Classics which +come now into the market. With subjects which are in the least archaic or +abstruse you need good clear type to help you on your way. The other is good +neither for your eyes nor for your temper. Better pay a little more and have a +book that is made for use. +</p> + +<p> +That book interests me—fascinates me—and yet I wish I could join +heartily in that chorus of praise which the kind-hearted old bully has enjoyed. +It is difficult to follow his own advice and to “clear one’s mind +of cant” upon the subject, for when you have been accustomed to look at +him through the sympathetic glasses of Macaulay or of Boswell, it is hard to +take them off, to rub one’s eyes, and to have a good honest stare on +one’s own account at the man’s actual words, deeds, and +limitations. If you try it you are left with the oddest mixture of impressions. +How could one express it save that this is John Bull taken to +literature—the exaggerated John Bull of the caricaturists—with +every quality, good or evil, at its highest? Here are the rough crust over a +kindly heart, the explosive temper, the arrogance, the insular narrowness, the +want of sympathy and insight, the rudeness of perception, the positiveness, the +overbearing bluster, the strong deep-seated religious principle, and every +other characteristic of the cruder, rougher John Bull who was the great +grandfather of the present good-natured Johnnie. +</p> + +<p> +If Boswell had not lived I wonder how much we should hear now of his huge +friend? With Scotch persistence he has succeeded in inoculating the whole world +with his hero worship. It was most natural that he should himself admire him. +The relations between the two men were delightful and reflect all credit upon +each. But they are not a safe basis from which any third person could argue. +When they met, Boswell was in his twenty-third and Johnson in his fifty-fourth +year. The one was a keen young Scot with a mind which was reverent and +impressionable. The other was a figure from a past generation with his fame +already made. From the moment of meeting the one was bound to exercise an +absolute ascendency over the other which made unbiassed criticism far more +difficult than it would be between ordinary father and son. Up to the end this +was the unbroken relation between them. +</p> + +<p> +It is all very well to pooh-pooh Boswell as Macaulay has done, but it is not by +chance that a man writes the best biography in the language. He had some great +and rare literary qualities. One was a clear and vivid style, more flexible and +Saxon than that of his great model. Another was a remarkable discretion which +hardly once permitted a fault of taste in this whole enormous book where he +must have had to pick his steps with pitfalls on every side of him. They say +that he was a fool and a coxcomb in private life. He is never so with a pen in +his hand. Of all his numerous arguments with Johnson, where he ventured some +little squeak of remonstrance, before the roaring “No, sir!” came +to silence him, there are few in which his views were not, as experience +proved, the wiser. On the question of slavery he was in the wrong. But I could +quote from memory at least a dozen cases, including such vital subjects as the +American Revolution, the Hanoverian Dynasty, Religious Toleration, and so on, +where Boswell’s views were those which survived. +</p> + +<p> +But where he excels as a biographer is in telling you just those little things +that you want to know. How often you read the life of a man and are left +without the remotest idea of his personality. It is not so here. The man lives +again. There is a short description of Johnson’s person—it is not +in the Life, but in the Tour to the Hebrides, the very next book upon the +shelf, which is typical of his vivid portraiture. May I take it down, and read +you a paragraph of it?— +</p> + +<p> +“His person was large, robust, I may say approaching to the gigantic, and +grown unwieldy from corpulency. His countenance was naturally of the cast of an +ancient statue, but somewhat disfigured by the scars of King’s evil. He +was now in his sixty-fourth year and was become a little dull of hearing. His +sight had always been somewhat weak, yet so much does mind govern and even +supply the deficiencies of organs that his perceptions were uncommonly quick +and accurate. His head, and sometimes also his body, shook with a kind of +motion like the effect of palsy. He appeared to be frequently disturbed by +cramps or convulsive contractions of the nature of that distemper called St. +Vitus’ dance. He wore a full suit of plain brown clothes, with twisted +hair buttons of the same colour, a large bushy greyish wig, a plain shirt, +black worsted stockings and silver buckles. Upon this tour when journeying he +wore boots and a very wide brown cloth great-coat with pockets which might +almost have held the two volumes of his folio dictionary, and he carried in his +hand a large English oak stick.” +</p> + +<p> +You must admit that if one cannot reconstruct the great Samuel after that it is +not Mr. Boswell’s fault—and it is but one of a dozen equally vivid +glimpses which he gives us of his hero. It is just these pen-pictures of his of +the big, uncouth man, with his grunts and his groans, his Gargantuan appetite, +his twenty cups of tea, and his tricks with the orange-peel and the lamp-posts, +which fascinate the reader, and have given Johnson a far broader literary vogue +than his writings could have done. +</p> + +<p> +For, after all, which of those writings can be said to have any life to-day? +Not “Rasselas,” surely—that stilted romance. “The Lives +of the Poets” are but a succession of prefaces, and the +“Ramblers” of ephemeral essays. There is the monstrous drudgery of +the Dictionary, a huge piece of spadework, a monument to industry, but +inconceivable to genius. “London” has a few vigorous lines, and the +“Journey to the Hebrides” some spirited pages. This, with a number +of political and other pamphlets, was the main output of his lifetime. Surely +it must be admitted that it is not enough to justify his predominant place in +English literature, and that we must turn to his humble, much-ridiculed +biographer for the real explanation. +</p> + +<p> +And then there was his talk. What was it which gave it such distinction? His +clear-cut positiveness upon every subject. But this is a sign of a narrow +finality—impossible to the man of sympathy and of imagination, who sees +the other side of every question and understands what a little island the +greatest human knowledge must be in the ocean of infinite possibilities which +surround us. Look at the results. Did ever any single man, the very dullest of +the race, stand convicted of so many incredible blunders? It recalls the remark +of Bagehot, that if at any time the views of the most learned could be stamped +upon the whole human race the result would be to propagate the most absurd +errors. He was asked what became of swallows in the winter. Rolling and +wheezing, the oracle answered: “Swallows,” said he, +“certainly sleep all the winter. A number of them conglobulate together +by flying round and round, and then all in a heap throw themselves under water +and lie in the bed of a river.” Boswell gravely dockets the information. +However, if I remember right, even so sound a naturalist as White of Selborne +had his doubts about the swallows. More wonderful are Johnson’s +misjudgments of his fellow-authors. There, if anywhere, one would have expected +to find a sense of proportion. Yet his conclusions would seem monstrous to a +modern taste. “Shakespeare,” he said, “never wrote six +consecutive good lines.” He would only admit two good verses in +Gray’s exquisite “Elegy written in a Country Churchyard,” +where it would take a very acid critic to find two bad ones. “Tristram +Shandy” would not live. “Hamlet” was gabble. Swift’s +“Gulliver’s Travels” was poor stuff, and he never wrote +anything good except “A Tale of a Tub.” Voltaire was illiterate. +Rousseau was a scoundrel. Deists, like Hume, Priestley, or Gibbon, could not be +honest men. +</p> + +<p> +And his political opinions! They sound now like a caricature. I suppose even in +those days they were reactionary. “A poor man has no honour.” +“Charles the Second was a good King.” “Governments should +turn out of the Civil Service all who were on the other side.” +“Judges in India should be encouraged to trade.” “No country +is the richer on account of trade.” (I wonder if Adam Smith was in the +company when this proposition was laid down!) “A landed proprietor should +turn out those tenants who did not vote as he wished.” “It is not +good for a labourer to have his wages raised.” “When the balance of +trade is against a country, the margin <i>must</i> be paid in current +coin.” Those were a few of his convictions. +</p> + +<p> +And then his prejudices! Most of us have some unreasoning aversion. In our more +generous moments we are not proud of it. But consider those of Johnson! When +they were all eliminated there was not so very much left. He hated Whigs. He +disliked Scotsmen. He detested Nonconformists (a young lady who joined them was +“an odious wench”). He loathed Americans. So he walked his narrow +line, belching fire and fury at everything to the right or the left of it. +Macaulay’s posthumous admiration is all very well, but had they met in +life Macaulay would have contrived to unite under one hat nearly everything +that Johnson abominated. +</p> + +<p> +It cannot be said that these prejudices were founded on any strong principle, +or that they could not be altered where his own personal interests demanded it. +This is one of the weak points of his record. In his dictionary he abused +pensions and pensioners as a means by which the State imposed slavery upon +hirelings. When he wrote the unfortunate definition a pension must have seemed +a most improbable contingency, but when George III., either through policy or +charity, offered him one a little later, he made no hesitation in accepting it. +One would have liked to feel that the violent expression of his convictions +represented a real intensity of feeling, but the facts in this instance seem +against it. +</p> + +<p> +He was a great talker—but his talk was more properly a monologue. It was +a discursive essay, with perhaps a few marginal notes from his subdued +audience. How could one talk on equal terms with a man who could not brook +contradiction or even argument upon the most vital questions in life? Would +Goldsmith defend his literary views, or Burke his Whiggism, or Gibbon his +Deism? There was no common ground of philosophic toleration on which one could +stand. If he could not argue he would be rude, or, as Goldsmith put it: +“If his pistol missed fire, he would knock you down with the butt +end.” In the face of that “rhinoceros laugh” there was an end +of gentle argument. Napoleon said that all the other kings would say +“Ouf!” when they heard he was dead, and so I cannot help thinking +that the older men of Johnson’s circle must have given a sigh of relief +when at last they could speak freely on that which was near their hearts, +without the danger of a scene where “Why, no, sir!” was very likely +to ripen into “Let us have no more on’t!” Certainly one would +like to get behind Boswell’s account, and to hear a chat between such men +as Burke and Reynolds, as to the difference in the freedom and atmosphere of +the Club on an evening when the formidable Doctor was not there, as compared to +one when he was. +</p> + +<p> +No smallest estimate of his character is fair which does not make due allowance +for the terrible experiences of his youth and early middle age. His spirit was +as scarred as his face. He was fifty-three when the pension was given him, and +up to then his existence had been spent in one constant struggle for the first +necessities of life, for the daily meal and the nightly bed. He had seen his +comrades of letters die of actual privation. From childhood he had known no +happiness. The half blind gawky youth, with dirty linen and twitching limbs, +had always, whether in the streets of Lichfield, the quadrangle of Pembroke, or +the coffee-houses of London, been an object of mingled pity and amusement. With +a proud and sensitive soul, every day of his life must have brought some bitter +humiliation. Such an experience must either break a man’s spirit or +embitter it, and here, no doubt, was the secret of that roughness, that +carelessness for the sensibilities of others, which caused Boswell’s +father to christen him “Ursa Major.” If his nature was in any way +warped, it must be admitted that terrific forces had gone to the rending of it. +His good was innate, his evil the result of a dreadful experience. +</p> + +<p> +And he had some great qualities. Memory was the chief of them. He had read +omnivorously, and all that he had read he remembered, not merely in the vague, +general way in which we remember what we read, but with every particular of +place and date. If it were poetry, he could quote it by the page, Latin or +English. Such a memory has its enormous advantage, but it carries with it its +corresponding defect. With the mind so crammed with other people’s goods, +how can you have room for any fresh manufactures of your own? A great memory +is, I think, often fatal to originality, in spite of Scott and some other +exceptions. The slate must be clear before you put your own writing upon it. +When did Johnson ever discover an original thought, when did he ever reach +forward into the future, or throw any fresh light upon those enigmas with which +mankind is faced? Overloaded with the past, he had space for nothing else. +Modern developments of every sort cast no first herald rays upon his mind. He +journeyed in France a few years before the greatest cataclysm that the world +has ever known, and his mind, arrested by much that was trivial, never once +responded to the storm-signals which must surely have been visible around him. +We read that an amiable Monsieur Sansterre showed him over his brewery and +supplied him with statistics as to his output of beer. It was the same +foul-mouthed Sansterre who struck up the drums to drown Louis’ voice at +the scaffold. The association shows how near the unconscious sage was to the +edge of that precipice and how little his learning availed him in discerning +it. +</p> + +<p> +He would have been a great lawyer or divine. Nothing, one would think, could +have kept him from Canterbury or from the Woolsack. In either case his memory, +his learning, his dignity, and his inherent sense of piety and justice, would +have sent him straight to the top. His brain, working within its own +limitations, was remarkable. There is no more wonderful proof of this than his +opinions on questions of Scotch law, as given to Boswell and as used by the +latter before the Scotch judges. That an outsider with no special training +should at short notice write such weighty opinions, crammed with argument and +reason, is, I think, as remarkable a <i>tour de force</i> as literature can +show. +</p> + +<p> +Above all, he really was a very kind-hearted man, and that must count for much. +His was a large charity, and it came from a small purse. The rooms of his house +became a sort of harbour of refuge in which several strange battered hulks +found their last moorings. There were the blind Mr. Levett, and the acidulous +Mrs. Williams, and the colourless Mrs. De Moulins, all old and ailing—a +trying group amid which to spend one’s days. His guinea was always ready +for the poor acquaintance, and no poet was so humble that he might not preface +his book with a dedication whose ponderous and sonorous sentences bore the +hall-mark of their maker. It is the rough, kindly man, the man who bore the +poor street-walker home upon his shoulders, who makes one forget, or at least +forgive, the dogmatic pedantic Doctor of the Club. +</p> + +<p> +There is always to me something of interest in the view which a great man takes +of old age and death. It is the practical test of how far the philosophy of his +life has been a sound one. Hume saw death afar, and met it with unostentatious +calm. Johnson’s mind flinched from that dread opponent. His letters and +his talk during his latter years are one long cry of fear. It was not +cowardice, for physically he was one of the most stout-hearted men that ever +lived. There were no limits to his courage. It was spiritual diffidence, +coupled with an actual belief in the possibilities of the other world, which a +more humane and liberal theology has done something to soften. How strange to +see him cling so desperately to that crazy body, with its gout, its asthma, its +St. Vitus’ dance, and its six gallons of dropsy! What could be the +attraction of an existence where eight hours of every day were spent groaning +in a chair, and sixteen wheezing in a bed? “I would give one of these +legs,” said he, “for another year of life.” None the less, +when the hour did at last strike, no man could have borne himself with more +simple dignity and courage. Say what you will of him, and resent him how you +may, you can never open those four grey volumes without getting some mental +stimulus, some desire for wider reading, some insight into human learning or +character, which should leave you a better and a wiser man. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap04"></a>IV.</h2> + +<p> +Next to my Johnsoniana are my Gibbons—two editions, if you please, for my +old complete one being somewhat crabbed in the print I could not resist getting +a set of Bury’s new six-volume presentment of the History. In reading +that book you don’t want to be handicapped in any way. You want fair +type, clear paper, and a light volume. You are not to read it lightly, but with +some earnestness of purpose and keenness for knowledge, with a classical atlas +at your elbow and a note-book hard by, taking easy stages and harking back +every now and then to keep your grip of the past and to link it up with what +follows. There are no thrills in it. You won’t be kept out of your bed at +night, nor will you forget your appointments during the day, but you will feel +a certain sedate pleasure in the doing of it, and when it is done you will have +gained something which you can never lose—something solid, something +definite, something that will make you broader and deeper than before. +</p> + +<p> +Were I condemned to spend a year upon a desert island and allowed only one book +for my companion, it is certainly that which I should choose. For consider how +enormous is its scope, and what food for thought is contained within those +volumes. It covers a thousand years of the world’s history, it is full +and good and accurate, its standpoint is broadly philosophic, its style +dignified. With our more elastic methods we may consider his manner pompous, +but he lived in an age when Johnson’s turgid periods had corrupted our +literature. For my own part I do not dislike Gibbon’s pomposity. A +paragraph should be measured and sonorous if it ventures to describe the +advance of a Roman legion, or the debate of a Greek Senate. You are wafted +upwards, with this lucid and just spirit by your side upholding and instructing +you. Beneath you are warring nations, the clash of races, the rise and fall of +dynasties, the conflict of creeds. Serene you float above them all, and ever as +the panorama flows past, the weighty measured unemotional voice whispers the +true meaning of the scene into your ear. +</p> + +<p> +It is a most mighty story that is told. You begin with a description of the +state of the Roman Empire when the early Caesars were on the throne, and when +it was undisputed mistress of the world. You pass down the line of the Emperors +with their strange alternations of greatness and profligacy, descending +occasionally to criminal lunacy. When the Empire went rotten it began at the +top, and it took centuries to corrupt the man behind the spear. Neither did a +religion of peace affect him much, for, in spite of the adoption of +Christianity, Roman history was still written in blood. The new creed had only +added a fresh cause of quarrel and violence to the many which already existed, +and the wars of angry nations were mild compared to those of excited sectaries. +</p> + +<p> +Then came the mighty rushing wind from without, blowing from the waste places +of the world, destroying, confounding, whirling madly through the old order, +leaving broken chaos behind it, but finally cleansing and purifying that which +was stale and corrupt. A storm-centre somewhere in the north of China did +suddenly what it may very well do again. The human volcano blew its top off, +and Europe was covered by the destructive debris. The absurd point is that it +was not the conquerors who overran the Roman Empire, but it was the terrified +fugitives, who, like a drove of stampeded cattle, blundered over everything +which barred their way. It was a wild, dramatic time—the time of the +formation of the modern races of Europe. The nations came whirling in out of +the north and east like dust-storms, and amid the seeming chaos each was +blended with its neighbour so as to toughen the fibre of the whole. The fickle +Gaul got his steadying from the Franks, the steady Saxon got his touch of +refinement from the Norman, the Italian got a fresh lease of life from the +Lombard and the Ostrogoth, the corrupt Greek made way for the manly and earnest +Mahommedan. Everywhere one seems to see a great hand blending the seeds. And so +one can now, save only that emigration has taken the place of war. It does not, +for example, take much prophetic power to say that something very great is +being built up on the other side of the Atlantic. When on an Anglo-Celtic basis +you see the Italian, the Hun, and the Scandinavian being added, you feel that +there is no human quality which may not be thereby evolved. +</p> + +<p> +But to revert to Gibbon: the next stage is the flight of Empire from Rome to +Byzantium, even as the Anglo-Celtic power might find its centre some day not in +London but in Chicago or Toronto. There is the whole strange story of the tidal +wave of Mahommedanism from the south, submerging all North Africa, spreading +right and left to India on the one side and to Spain on the other, finally +washing right over the walls of Byzantium until it, the bulwark of +Christianity, became what it is now, the advanced European fortress of the +Moslem. Such is the tremendous narrative covering half the world’s known +history, which can all be acquired and made part of yourself by the aid of that +humble atlas, pencil, and note-book already recommended. +</p> + +<p> +When all is so interesting it is hard to pick examples, but to me there has +always seemed to be something peculiarly impressive in the first entrance of a +new race on to the stage of history. It has something of the glamour which +hangs round the early youth of a great man. You remember how the Russians made +their debut—came down the great rivers and appeared at the Bosphorus in +two hundred canoes, from which they endeavoured to board the Imperial galleys. +Singular that a thousand years have passed and that the ambition of the +Russians is still to carry out the task at which their skin-clad ancestors +failed. Or the Turks again; you may recall the characteristic ferocity with +which they opened their career. A handful of them were on some mission to the +Emperor. The town was besieged from the landward side by the barbarians, and +the Asiatics obtained leave to take part in a skirmish. The first Turk galloped +out, shot a barbarian with his arrow, and then, lying down beside him, +proceeded to suck his blood, which so horrified the man’s comrades that +they could not be brought to face such uncanny adversaries. So, from opposite +sides, those two great races arrived at the city which was to be the stronghold +of the one and the ambition of the other for so many centuries. +</p> + +<p> +And then, even more interesting than the races which arrive are those that +disappear. There is something there which appeals most powerfully to the +imagination. Take, for example, the fate of those Vandals who conquered the +north of Africa. They were a German tribe, blue-eyed and flaxen-haired, from +somewhere in the Elbe country. Suddenly they, too, were seized with the strange +wandering madness which was epidemic at the time. Away they went on the line of +least resistance, which is always from north to south and from east to west. +South-west was the course of the Vandals—a course which must have been +continued through pure love of adventure, since in the thousands of miles which +they traversed there were many fair resting-places, if that were only their +quest. +</p> + +<p> +They crossed the south of France, conquered Spain, and, finally, the more +adventurous passed over into Africa, where they occupied the old Roman +province. For two or three generations they held it, much as the English hold +India, and their numbers were at the least some hundreds of thousands. +Presently the Roman Empire gave one of those flickers which showed that there +was still some fire among the ashes. Belisarius landed in Africa and +reconquered the province. The Vandals were cut off from the sea and fled +inland. Whither did they carry those blue eyes and that flaxen hair? Were they +exterminated by the negroes, or did they amalgamate with them? Travellers have +brought back stories from the Mountains of the Moon of a Negroid race with +light eyes and hair. Is it possible that here we have some trace of the +vanished Germans? +</p> + +<p> +It recalls the parallel case of the lost settlements in Greenland. That also +has always seemed to me to be one of the most romantic questions in +history—the more so, perhaps, as I have strained my eyes to see across +the ice-floes the Greenland coast at the point (or near it) where the old +“Eyrbyggia” must have stood. That was the Scandinavian city, +founded by colonists from Iceland, which grew to be a considerable place, so +much so that they sent to Denmark for a bishop. That would be in the fourteenth +century. The bishop, coming out to his see, found that he was unable to reach +it on account of a climatic change which had brought down the ice and filled +the strait between Iceland and Greenland. From that day to this no one has been +able to say what has become of these old Scandinavians, who were at the time, +be it remembered, the most civilized and advanced race in Europe. They may have +been overwhelmed by the Esquimaux, the despised Skroeling—or they may +have amalgamated with them—or conceivably they might have held their own. +Very little is known yet of that portion of the coast. It would be strange if +some Nansen or Peary were to stumble upon the remains of the old colony, and +find possibly in that antiseptic atmosphere a complete mummy of some bygone +civilization. +</p> + +<p> +But once more to return to Gibbon. What a mind it must have been which first +planned, and then, with the incessant labour of twenty years, carried out that +enormous work! There was no classical author so little known, no Byzantine +historian so diffuse, no monkish chronicle so crabbed, that they were not +assimilated and worked into their appropriate place in the huge framework. +Great application, great perseverance, great attention to detail was needed in +all this, but the coral polyp has all those qualities, and somehow in the heart +of his own creation the individuality of the man himself becomes as +insignificant and as much overlooked as that of the little creature that builds +the reef. A thousand know Gibbon’s work for one who cares anything for +Gibbon. +</p> + +<p> +And on the whole this is justified by the facts. Some men are greater than +their work. Their work only represents one facet of their character, and there +may be a dozen others, all remarkable, and uniting to make one complex and +unique creature. It was not so with Gibbon. He was a cold-blooded man, with a +brain which seemed to have grown at the expense of his heart. I cannot recall +in his life one generous impulse, one ardent enthusiasm, save for the Classics. +His excellent judgment was never clouded by the haze of human emotion—or, +at least, it was such an emotion as was well under the control of his will. +Could anything be more laudable—or less lovable? He abandons his girl at +the order of his father, and sums it up that he “sighs as a lover but +obeys as a son.” The father dies, and he records the fact with the remark +that “the tears of a son are seldom lasting.” The terrible +spectacle of the French Revolution excited in his mind only a feeling of +self-pity because his retreat in Switzerland was invaded by the unhappy +refugees, just as a grumpy country gentleman in England might complain that he +was annoyed by the trippers. There is a touch of dislike in all the allusions +which Boswell makes to Gibbon—often without even mentioning his +name—and one cannot read the great historian’s life without +understanding why. +</p> + +<p> +I should think that few men have been born with the material for +self-sufficient contentment more completely within himself than Edward Gibbon. +He had every gift which a great scholar should have, an insatiable thirst for +learning in every form, immense industry, a retentive memory, and that broadly +philosophic temperament which enables a man to rise above the partisan and to +become the impartial critic of human affairs. It is true that at the time he +was looked upon as bitterly prejudiced in the matter of religious thought, but +his views are familiar to modern philosophy, and would shock no +susceptibilities in these more liberal (and more virtuous) days. Turn him up in +that Encyclopedia, and see what the latest word is upon his contentions. +“Upon the famous fifteenth and sixteenth chapters it is not necessary to +dwell,” says the biographer, “because at this time of day no +Christian apologist dreams of denying the substantial truth of any of the more +important allegations of Gibbon. Christians may complain of the suppression of +some circumstances which might influence the general result, and they must +remonstrate against the unfair construction of their case. But they no longer +refuse to hear any reasonable evidence tending to show that persecution was +less severe than had been once believed, and they have slowly learned that they +can afford to concede the validity of all the secondary causes assigned by +Gibbon and even of others still more discreditable. The fact is, as the +historian has again and again admitted, that his account of the secondary +causes which contributed to the progress and establishment of Christianity +leaves the question as to the natural or supernatural origin of Christianity +practically untouched.” This is all very well, but in that case how about +the century of abuse which has been showered upon the historian? Some +posthumous apology would seem to be called for. +</p> + +<p> +Physically, Gibbon was as small as Johnson was large, but there was a curious +affinity in their bodily ailments. Johnson, as a youth, was ulcerated and +tortured by the king’s evil, in spite of the Royal touch. Gibbon gives us +a concise but lurid account of his own boyhood. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“I was successively afflicted by lethargies and fevers, by opposite +tendencies to a consumptive and dropsical habit, by a contraction of my nerves, +a fistula in my eye, and the bite of a dog, most vehemently suspected of +madness. Every practitioner was called to my aid, the fees of the doctors were +swelled by the bills of the apothecaries and surgeons. There was a time when I +swallowed more physic than food, and my body is still marked by the indelible +scars of lancets, issues, and caustics.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Such is his melancholy report. The fact is that the England of that day seems +to have been very full of that hereditary form of chronic ill-health which we +call by the general name of struma. How far the hard-drinking habits in vogue +for a century or so before had anything to do with it I cannot say, nor can I +trace a connection between struma and learning; but one has only to compare +this account of Gibbon with Johnson’s nervous twitches, his scarred face +and his St. Vitus’ dance, to realize that these, the two most solid +English writers of their generation, were each heir to the same gruesome +inheritance. +</p> + +<p> +I wonder if there is any picture extant of Gibbon in the character of subaltern +in the South Hampshire Militia? With his small frame, his huge head, his round, +chubby face, and the pretentious uniform, he must have looked a most +extraordinary figure. Never was there so round a peg in a square hole! His +father, a man of a very different type, held a commission, and this led to poor +Gibbon becoming a soldier in spite of himself. War had broken out, the regiment +was mustered, and the unfortunate student, to his own utter dismay, was kept +under arms until the conclusion of hostilities. For three years he was divorced +from his books, and loudly and bitterly did he resent it. The South Hampshire +Militia never saw the enemy, which is perhaps as well for them. Even Gibbon +himself pokes fun at them; but after three years under canvas it is probable +that his men had more cause to smile at their book-worm captain than he at his +men. His hand closed much more readily on a pen-handle than on a sword-hilt. In +his lament, one of the items is that his colonel’s example encouraged the +daily practice of hard and even excessive drinking, which gave him the gout. +“The loss of so many busy and idle hours were not compensated for by any +elegant pleasure,” says he; “and my temper was insensibly soured by +the society of rustic officers, who were alike deficient in the knowledge of +scholars and the manners of gentlemen.” The picture of Gibbon flushed +with wine at the mess-table, with these hard-drinking squires around him, must +certainly have been a curious one. He admits, however, that he found +consolations as well as hardships in his spell of soldiering. It made him an +Englishman once more, it improved his health, it changed the current of his +thoughts. It was even useful to him as an historian. In a celebrated and +characteristic sentence, he says, “The discipline and evolutions of a +modern battalion gave me a clearer notion of the Phalanx and the Legions, and +the captain of the Hampshire Grenadiers has not been useless to the historian +of the Roman Empire.” +</p> + +<p> +If we don’t know all about Gibbon it is not his fault, for he wrote no +fewer than six accounts of his own career, each differing from the other, and +all equally bad. A man must have more heart and soul than Gibbon to write a +good autobiography. It is the most difficult of all human compositions, calling +for a mixture of tact, discretion, and frankness which make an almost +impossible blend. Gibbon, in spite of his foreign education, was a very typical +Englishman in many ways, with the reticence, self-respect, and +self-consciousness of the race. No British autobiography has ever been frank, +and consequently no British autobiography has ever been good. Trollope’s, +perhaps, is as good as any that I know, but of all forms of literature it is +the one least adapted to the national genius. You could not imagine a British +Rousseau, still less a British Benvenuto Cellini. In one way it is to the +credit of the race that it should be so. If we do as much evil as our +neighbours we at least have grace enough to be ashamed of it and to suppress +its publication. +</p> + +<p> +There on the left of Gibbon is my fine edition (Lord Braybrooke’s) of +Pepys’ Diary. That is, in truth, the greatest autobiography in our +language, and yet it was not deliberately written as such. When Mr. Pepys +jotted down from day to day every quaint or mean thought which came into his +head he would have been very much surprised had any one told him that he was +doing a work quite unique in our literature. Yet his involuntary autobiography, +compiled for some obscure reason or for private reference, but certainly never +meant for publication, is as much the first in that line of literature as +Boswell’s book among biographies or Gibbon’s among histories. +</p> + +<p> +As a race we are too afraid of giving ourselves away ever to produce a good +autobiography. We resent the charge of national hypocrisy, and yet of all +nations we are the least frank as to our own emotions—especially on +certain sides of them. Those affairs of the heart, for example, which are such +an index to a man’s character, and so profoundly modify his +life—what space do they fill in any man’s autobiography? Perhaps in +Gibbon’s case the omission matters little, for, save in the instance of +his well-controlled passion for the future Madame Neckar, his heart was never +an organ which gave him much trouble. The fact is that when the British author +tells his own story he tries to make himself respectable, and the more +respectable a man is the less interesting does he become. Rousseau may prove +himself a maudlin degenerate. Cellini may stand self-convicted as an amorous +ruffian. If they are not respectable they are thoroughly human and interesting +all the same. +</p> + +<p> +The wonderful thing about Mr. Pepys is that a man should succeed in making +himself seem so insignificant when really he must have been a man of +considerable character and attainments. Who would guess it who read all these +trivial comments, these catalogues of what he had for dinner, these inane +domestic confidences—all the more interesting for their inanity! The +effect left upon the mind is of some grotesque character in a play, fussy, +self-conscious, blustering with women, timid with men, dress-proud, +purse-proud, trimming in politics and in religion, a garrulous gossip immersed +always in trifles. And yet, though this was the day-by-day man, the +year-by-year man was a very different person, a devoted civil servant, an +eloquent orator, an excellent writer, a capable musician, and a ripe scholar +who accumulated 3000 volumes—a large private library in those +days—and had the public spirit to leave them all to his University. You +can forgive old Pepys a good deal of his philandering when you remember that he +was the only official of the Navy Office who stuck to his post during the worst +days of the Plague. He may have been—indeed, he assuredly was—a +coward, but the coward who has sense of duty enough to overcome his cowardice +is the most truly brave of mankind. +</p> + +<p> +But the one amazing thing which will never be explained about Pepys is what on +earth induced him to go to the incredible labour of writing down in shorthand +cipher not only all the trivialities of his life, but even his own very gross +delinquencies which any other man would have been only too glad to forget. The +Diary was kept for about ten years, and was abandoned because the strain upon +his eyes of the crabbed shorthand was helping to destroy his sight. I suppose +that he became so familiar with it that he wrote it and read it as easily as he +did ordinary script. But even so, it was a huge labour to compile these books +of strange manuscript. Was it an effort to leave some memorial of his own +existence to single him out from all the countless sons of men? In such a case +he would assuredly have left directions in somebody’s care with a +reference to it in the deed by which he bequeathed his library to Cambridge. In +that way he could have ensured having his Diary read at any date he chose to +name after his death. But no allusion to it was left, and if it had not been +for the ingenuity and perseverance of a single scholar the dusty volumes would +still lie unread in some top shelf of the Pepysian Library. Publicity, then, +was not his object. What could it have been? The only alternative is reference +and self-information. You will observe in his character a curious vein of +method and order, by which he loved, to be for ever estimating his exact +wealth, cataloguing his books, or scheduling his possessions. It is conceivable +that this systematic recording of his deeds—even of his +misdeeds—was in some sort analogous, sprung from a morbid tidiness of +mind. It may be a weak explanation, but it is difficult to advance another one. +</p> + +<p> +One minor point which must strike the reader of Pepys is how musical a nation +the English of that day appear to have been. Every one seems to have had +command of some instrument, many of several. Part-singing was common. There is +not much of Charles the Second’s days which we need envy, but there, at +least, they seem to have had the advantage of us. It was real music, +too—music of dignity and tenderness—with words which were worthy of +such treatment. This cult may have been the last remains of those mediaeval +pre-Reformation days when the English Church choirs were, as I have read +somewhere, the most famous in Europe. A strange thing this for a land which in +the whole of last century has produced no single master of the first rank! +</p> + +<p> +What national change is it which has driven music from the land? Has life +become so serious that song has passed out of it? In Southern climes one hears +poor folk sing for pure lightness of heart. In England, alas, the sound of a +poor man’s voice raised in song means only too surely that he is drunk. +And yet it is consoling to know that the germ of the old powers is always there +ready to sprout forth if they be nourished and cultivated. If our cathedral +choirs were the best in the old Catholic days, it is equally true, I believe, +that our orchestral associations are now the best in Europe. So, at least, the +German papers said on the occasion of the recent visit of a north of England +choir. But one cannot read Pepys without knowing that the general musical habit +is much less cultivated now than of old. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap05"></a>V.</h2> + +<p> +It is a long jump from Samuel Pepys to George Borrow—from one pole of the +human character to the other—and yet they are in contact on the shelf of +my favourite authors. There is something wonderful, I think, about the land of +Cornwall. That long peninsula extending out into the ocean has caught all sorts +of strange floating things, and has held them there in isolation until they +have woven themselves into the texture of the Cornish race. What is this +strange strain which lurks down yonder and every now and then throws up a great +man with singular un-English ways and features for all the world to marvel at? +It is not Celtic, nor is it the dark old Iberian. Further and deeper lie the +springs. Is it not Semitic, Phoenician, the roving men of Tyre, with noble +Southern faces and Oriental imaginations, who have in far-off days forgotten +their blue Mediterranean and settled on the granite shores of the Northern Sea? +</p> + +<p> +Whence came the wonderful face and great personality of Henry Irving? How +strong, how beautiful, how un-Saxon it was! I only know that his mother was a +Cornish woman. Whence came the intense glowing imagination of the +Brontes—so unlike the Miss-Austen-like calm of their predecessors? Again, +I only know that their mother was a Cornish woman. Whence came this huge elfin +creature, George Borrow, with his eagle head perched on his rocklike shoulders, +brown-faced, white-headed, a king among men? Where did he get that remarkable +face, those strange mental gifts, which place him by himself in literature? +Once more, his father was a Cornishman. Yes, there is something strange, and +weird, and great, lurking down yonder in the great peninsula which juts into +the western sea. Borrow may, if he so pleases, call himself an East +Anglian—“an English Englishman,” as he loved to term +it—but is it a coincidence that the one East Anglian born of Cornish +blood was the one who showed these strange qualities? The birth was accidental. +The qualities throw back to the twilight of the world. +</p> + +<p> +There are some authors from whom I shrink because they are so voluminous that I +feel that, do what I may, I can never hope to be well read in their works. +Therefore, and very weakly, I avoid them altogether. There is Balzac, for +example, with his hundred odd volumes. I am told that some of them are +masterpieces and the rest pot-boilers, but that no one is agreed which is +which. Such an author makes an undue claim upon the little span of mortal +years. Because he asks too much one is inclined to give him nothing at all. +Dumas, too! I stand on the edge of him, and look at that huge crop, and content +myself with a sample here and there. But no one could raise this objection to +Borrow. A month’s reading—even for a leisurely reader—will +master all that he has written. There are “Lavengro,” “The +Bible in Spain,” “Romany Rye,” and, finally, if you wish to +go further, “Wild Wales.” Only four books—not much to found a +great reputation upon—but, then, there are no other four books quite like +them in the language. +</p> + +<p> +He was a very strange man, bigoted, prejudiced, obstinate, inclined to be +sulky, as wayward as a man could be. So far his catalogue of qualities does not +seem to pick him as a winner. But he had one great and rare gift. He preserved +through all his days a sense of the great wonder and mystery of life—the +child sense which is so quickly dulled. Not only did he retain it himself, but +he was word-master enough to make other people hark back to it also. As he +writes you cannot help seeing through his eyes, and nothing which his eyes saw +or his ear heard was ever dull or commonplace. It was all strange, mystic, with +some deeper meaning struggling always to the light. If he chronicled his +conversation with a washer-woman there was something arresting in the words he +said, something singular in her reply. If he met a man in a public-house one +felt, after reading his account, that one would wish to know more of that man. +If he approached a town he saw and made you see—not a collection of +commonplace houses or frowsy streets, but something very strange and wonderful, +the winding river, the noble bridge, the old castle, the shadows of the dead. +Every human being, every object, was not so much a thing in itself, as a symbol +and reminder of the past. He looked through a man at that which the man +represented. Was his name Welsh? Then in an instant the individual is forgotten +and he is off, dragging you in his train, to ancient Britons, intrusive Saxons, +unheard-of bards, Owen Glendower, mountain raiders and a thousand fascinating +things. Or is it a Danish name? He leaves the individual in all his modern +commonplace while he flies off to huge skulls at Hythe (in parenthesis I may +remark that I have examined the said skulls with some care, and they seemed to +me to be rather below the human average), to Vikings, Berserkers, Varangians, +Harald Haardraada, and the innate wickedness of the Pope. To Borrow all roads +lead to Rome. +</p> + +<p> +But, my word, what English the fellow could write! What an organ-roll he could +get into his sentences! How nervous and vital and vivid it all is! +</p> + +<p> +There is music in every line of it if you have been blessed with an ear for the +music of prose. Take the chapter in “Lavengro” of how the screaming +horror came upon his spirit when he was encamped in the Dingle. The man who +wrote that has caught the true mantle of Bunyan and Defoe. And, observe the art +of it, under all the simplicity—notice, for example, the curious weird +effect produced by the studied repetition of the word “dingle” +coming ever round and round like the master-note in a chime. Or take the +passage about Britain towards the end of “The Bible in Spain.” I +hate quoting from these masterpieces, if only for the very selfish reason that +my poor setting cannot afford to show up brilliants. None the less, cost what +it may, let me transcribe that one noble piece of impassioned prose— +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“O England! long, long may it be ere the sun of thy glory sink beneath +the wave of darkness! Though gloomy and portentous clouds are now gathering +rapidly around thee, still, still may it please the Almighty to disperse them, +and to grant thee a futurity longer in duration and still brighter in renown +than thy past! Or, if thy doom be at hand, may that doom be a noble one, and +worthy of her who has been styled the Old Queen of the waters! May thou sink, +if thou dost sink, amidst blood and flame, with a mighty noise, causing more +than one nation to participate in thy downfall! Of all fates, may it please the +Lord to preserve thee from a disgraceful and a slow decay; becoming, ere +extinct, a scorn and a mockery for those self-same foes who now, though they +envy and abhor thee, still fear thee, nay even against their will, honour and +respect thee…. Remove from thee the false prophets, who have seen vanity and +divined lies; who have daubed thy wall with untempered mortar, that it may +fall; who see visions of peace where there is no peace; who have strengthened +the hands of the wicked, and made the heart of the righteous sad. Oh, do this, +and fear not the result, for either shall thy end be a majestic and an enviable +one; or God shall perpetuate thy reign upon the waters, thou Old Queen!” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Or take the fight with the Flaming Tinman. It’s too long for +quotation—but read it, read every word of it. Where in the language can +you find a stronger, more condensed and more restrained narrative? I have seen +with my own eyes many a noble fight, more than one international battle, where +the best of two great countries have been pitted against each other—yet +the second-hand impression of Borrow’s description leaves a more vivid +remembrance upon my mind than any of them. This is the real witchcraft of +letters. +</p> + +<p> +He was a great fighter himself. He has left a secure reputation in other than +literary circles—circles which would have been amazed to learn that he +was a writer of books. With his natural advantages, his six foot three of +height and his staglike agility, he could hardly fail to be formidable. But he +was a scientific sparrer as well, though he had, I have been told, a curious +sprawling fashion of his own. And how his heart was in it—how he loved +the fighting men! You remember his thumb-nail sketches of his heroes. If you +don’t I must quote one, and if you do you will be glad to read it +again— +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“There’s Cribb, the Champion of England, and perhaps the best man +in England; there he is, with his huge, massive figure, and face wonderfully +like that of a lion. There is Belcher, the younger, not the mighty one, who is +gone to his place, but the Teucer Belcher, the most scientific pugilist that +ever entered a ring, only wanting strength to be I won’t say what. He +appears to walk before me now, as he did that evening, with his white hat, +white great coat, thin genteel figure, springy step, and keen determined eye. +Crosses him, what a contrast! Grim, savage Shelton, who has a civil word for +nobody, and a hard blow for anybody. Hard! One blow given with the proper play +of his athletic arm will unsense a giant. Yonder individual, who strolls about +with his hands behind him, supporting his brown coat lappets, undersized, and +who looks anything but what he is, is the king of the light-weights, +so-called—Randall! The terrible Randall, who has Irish blood in his +veins; not the better for that, nor the worse; and not far from him is his last +antagonist, Ned Turner, who, though beaten by him, still thinks himself as good +a man, in which he is, perhaps, right, for it was a near thing. But how shall I +name them all? They were there by dozens, and all tremendous in their way. +There was Bulldog Hudson, and fearless Scroggins, who beat the conqueror of Sam +the Jew. There was Black Richmond—no, he was not there, but I knew him +well; he was the most dangerous of blacks, even with a broken thigh. There was +Purcell, who could never conquer until all seemed over with him. There +was—what! shall I name thee last? Ay, why not? I believe that thou art +the last of all that strong family still above the sod, where mayst thou long +continue—true piece of English stuff—Tom of Bedford. Hail to thee, +Tom of Bedford, or by whatever name it may please thee to be called, Spring or +Winter! Hail to thee, six-foot Englishman of the brown eye, worthy to have +carried a six-foot bow at Flodden, where England’s yeomen triumphed over +Scotland’s King, his clans and chivalry. Hail to thee, last of English +bruisers, after all the many victories which thou hast achieved—true +English victories, unbought by yellow gold.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Those are words from the heart. Long may it be before we lose the fighting +blood which has come to us from of old! In a world of peace we shall at last be +able to root it from our natures. In a world which is armed to the teeth it is +the last and only guarantee of our future. Neither our numbers, nor our wealth, +nor the waters which guard us can hold us safe if once the old iron passes from +our spirit. Barbarous, perhaps—but there are possibilities for barbarism, +and none in this wide world for effeminacy. +</p> + +<p> +Borrow’s views of literature and of literary men were curious. Publisher +and brother author, he hated them with a fine comprehensive hatred. In all his +books I cannot recall a word of commendation to any living writer, nor has he +posthumous praise for those of the generation immediately preceding. Southey, +indeed, he commends with what most would regard as exaggerated warmth, but for +the rest he who lived when Dickens, Thackeray, and Tennyson were all in their +glorious prime, looks fixedly past them at some obscure Dane or forgotten +Welshman. The reason was, I expect, that his proud soul was bitterly wounded by +his own early failures and slow recognition. He knew himself to be a chief in +the clan, and when the clan heeded him not he withdrew in haughty disdain. Look +at his proud, sensitive face and you hold the key to his life. +</p> + +<p> +Harking back and talking of pugilism, I recall an incident which gave me +pleasure. A friend of mine read a pugilistic novel called “Rodney +Stone” to a famous Australian prize-fighter, stretched upon a bed of +mortal sickness. The dying gladiator listened with intent interest but keen, +professional criticism to the combats of the novel. The reader had got to the +point where the young amateur fights the brutal Berks. Berks is winded, but +holds his adversary off with a stiff left arm. The amateur’s second in +the story, an old prize-fighter, shouts some advice to him as to how to deal +with the situation. “That’s right. By —— he’s got +him!” yelled the stricken man in the bed. Who cares for critics after +that? +</p> + +<p> +You can see my own devotion to the ring in that trio of brown volumes which +stand, appropriately enough, upon the flank of Borrow. They are the three +volumes of “Pugilistica,” given me years ago by my old friend, +Robert Barr, a mine in which you can never pick for half an hour without +striking it rich. Alas! for the horrible slang of those days, the vapid witless +Corinthian talk, with its ogles and its fogles, its pointless jokes, its +maddening habit of italicizing a word or two in every sentence. Even these +stern and desperate encounters, fit sports for the men of Albuera and Waterloo, +become dull and vulgar, in that dreadful jargon. You have to turn to +Hazlitt’s account of the encounter between the Gasman and the Bristol +Bull, to feel the savage strength of it all. It is a hardened reader who does +not wince even in print before that frightful right-hander which felled the +giant, and left him in “red ruin” from eyebrow to jaw. But even if +there be no Hazlitt present to describe such a combat it is a poor imagination +which is not fired by the deeds of the humble heroes who lived once so vividly +upon earth, and now only appeal to faithful ones in these little-read pages. +They were picturesque creatures, men of great force of character and will, who +reached the limits of human bravery and endurance. There is Jackson on the +cover, gold upon brown, “gentleman Jackson,” Jackson of the +balustrade calf and the noble head, who wrote his name with an 88-pound weight +dangling from his little finger. +</p> + +<p> +Here is a pen-portrait of him by one who knew him well— +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“I can see him now as I saw him in ’84 walking down Holborn Hill, +towards Smithfield. He had on a scarlet coat worked in gold at the buttonholes, +ruffles and frill of fine lace, a small white stock, no collar (they were not +then invented), a looped hat with a broad black band, buff knee-breeches and +long silk strings, striped white silk stockings, pumps and paste buckles; his +waistcoat was pale blue satin, sprigged with white. It was impossible to look +on his fine ample chest, his noble shoulders, his waist (if anything too +small), his large but not too large hips, his balustrade calf and beautifully +turned but not over delicate ankle, his firm foot and peculiarly small hand, +without thinking that nature had sent him on earth as a model. On he went at a +good five miles and a half an hour, the envy of all men and the admiration of +all women.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Now, that is a discriminating portrait—a portrait which really helps you +to see that which the writer sets out to describe. After reading it one can +understand why even in reminiscent sporting descriptions of those old days, +amid all the Tonis and Bills and Jacks, it is always Mr. John Jackson. He was +the friend and instructor of Byron and of half the bloods in town. Jackson it +was who, in the heat of combat, seized the Jew Mendoza by the hair, and so +ensured that the pugs for ever afterwards should be a close-cropped race. +Inside you see the square face of old Broughton, the supreme fighting man of +the eighteenth century, the man whose humble ambition it was to begin with the +pivot man of the Prussian Guard, and work his way through the regiment. He had +a chronicler, the good Captain Godfrey, who has written some English which +would take some beating. How about this passage?— +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“He stops as regularly as the swordsman, and carries his blows truly in +the line; he steps not back distrusting of himself, to stop a blow, and puddle +in the return, with an arm unaided by his body, producing but fly-flap blows. +No! Broughton steps boldly and firmly in, bids a welcome to the coming blow; +receives it with his guardian arm; then, with a general summons of his swelling +muscles, and his firm body seconding his arm, and supplying it with all its +weight, pours the pile-driving force upon his man.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +One would like a little more from the gallant Captain. Poor Broughton! He +fought once too often. “Why, damn you, you’re beat!” cried +the Royal Duke. “Not beat, your highness, but I can’t see my +man!” cried the blinded old hero. Alas, there is the tragedy of the ring +as it is of life! The wave of youth surges ever upwards, and the wave that went +before is swept sobbing on to the shingle. “Youth will be served,” +said the terse old pugs. But what so sad as the downfall of the old champion! +Wise Tom Spring—Tom of Bedford, as Borrow calls him—had the wit to +leave the ring unconquered in the prime of his fame. Cribb also stood out as a +champion. But Broughton, Slack, Belcher, and the rest—their end was one +common tragedy. +</p> + +<p> +The latter days of the fighting men were often curious and unexpected, though +as a rule they were short-lived, for the alternation of the excess of their +normal existence and the asceticism of their training undermined their +constitution. Their popularity among both men and women was their undoing, and +the king of the ring went down at last before that deadliest of light-weights, +the microbe of tubercle, or some equally fatal and perhaps less reputable +bacillus. The crockiest of spectators had a better chance of life than the +magnificent young athlete whom he had come to admire. Jem Belcher died at 30, +Hooper at 31, Pearce, the Game Chicken, at 32, Turner at 35, Hudson at 38, +Randall, the Nonpareil, at 34. Occasionally, when they did reach mature age, +their lives took the strangest turns. Gully, as is well known, became a wealthy +man, and Member for Pontefract in the Reform Parliament. Humphries developed +into a successful coal merchant. Jack Martin became a convinced teetotaller and +vegetarian. Jem Ward, the Black Diamond, developed considerable powers as an +artist. Cribb, Spring, Langan, and many others, were successful publicans. +Strangest of all, perhaps, was Broughton, who spent his old age haunting every +sale of old pictures and bric-a-brac. One who saw him has recorded his +impression of the silent old gentleman, clad in old-fashioned garb, with his +catalogue in his hand—Broughton, once the terror of England, and now the +harmless and gentle collector. +</p> + +<p> +Many of them, as was but natural, died violent deaths, some by accident and a +few by their own hands. No man of the first class ever died in the ring. The +nearest approach to it was the singular and mournful fate which befell Simon +Byrne, the brave Irishman, who had the misfortune to cause the death of his +antagonist, Angus Mackay, and afterwards met his own end at the hands of Deaf +Burke. Neither Byrne nor Mackay could, however, be said to be boxers of the +very first rank. It certainly would appear, if we may argue from the +prize-ring, that the human machine becomes more delicate and is more sensitive +to jar or shock. In the early days a fatal end to a fight was exceedingly rare. +Gradually such tragedies became rather more common, until now even with the +gloves they have shocked us by their frequency, and we feel that the rude play +of our forefathers is indeed too rough for a more highly organized generation. +Still, it may help us to clear our minds of cant if we remember that within two +or three years the hunting-field and the steeple-chase claim more victims than +the prize-ring has done in two centuries. +</p> + +<p> +Many of these men had served their country well with that strength and courage +which brought them fame. Cribb was, if I mistake not, in the Royal Navy. So was +the terrible dwarf Scroggins, all chest and shoulders, whose springing hits for +many a year carried all before them until the canny Welshman, Ned Turner, +stopped his career, only to be stopped in turn by the brilliant Irishman, Jack +Randall. Shaw, who stood high among the heavy-weights, was cut to pieces by the +French Cuirassiers in the first charge at Waterloo. The brutal Berks died +greatly in the breach of Badajos. The lives of these men stood for something, +and that was just the one supreme thing which the times called for—an +unflinching endurance which could bear up against a world in arms. Look at Jem +Belcher—beautiful, heroic Jem, a manlier Byron—but there, this is +not an essay on the old prize-ring, and one man’s lore is another +man’s bore. Let us pass those three low-down, unjustifiable, fascinating +volumes, and on to nobler topics beyond! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap06"></a>VI.</h2> + +<p> +Which are the great short stories of the English language? Not a bad basis for +a debate! This I am sure of: that there are far fewer supremely good short +stories than there are supremely good long books. It takes more exquisite skill +to carve the cameo than the statue. But the strangest thing is that the two +excellences seem to be separate and even antagonistic. Skill in the one by no +means ensures skill in the other. The great masters of our literature, +Fielding, Scott, Dickens, Thackeray, Reade, have left no single short story of +outstanding merit behind them, with the possible exception of Wandering +Willie’s Tale in “Red Gauntlet.” On the other hand, men who +have been very great in the short story, Stevenson, Poe, and Bret Harte, have +written no great book. The champion sprinter is seldom a five-miler as well. +</p> + +<p> +Well, now, if you had to choose your team whom would you put in? You have not +really a large choice. What are the points by which you judge them? You want +strength, novelty, compactness, intensity of interest, a single vivid +impression left upon the mind. Poe is the master of all. I may remark by the +way that it is the sight of his green cover, the next in order upon my +favourite shelf, which has started this train of thought. Poe is, to my mind, +the supreme original short story writer of all time. His brain was like a +seed-pod full of seeds which flew carelessly around, and from which have sprung +nearly all our modern types of story. Just think of what he did in his offhand, +prodigal fashion, seldom troubling to repeat a success, but pushing on to some +new achievement. To him must be ascribed the monstrous progeny of writers on +the detection of crime—“<i>quorum pars parva fui!</i>” Each +may find some little development of his own, but his main art must trace back +to those admirable stories of Monsieur Dupin, so wonderful in their masterful +force, their reticence, their quick dramatic point. After all, mental acuteness +is the one quality which can be ascribed to the ideal detective, and when that +has once been admirably done, succeeding writers must necessarily be content +for all time to follow in the same main track. But not only is Poe the +originator of the detective story; all treasure-hunting, cryptogram-solving +yarns trace back to his “Gold Bug,” just as all pseudo-scientific +Verne-and-Wells stories have their prototypes in the “Voyage to the +Moon,” and the “Case of Monsieur Valdemar.” If every man who +receives a cheque for a story which owes its springs to Poe were to pay tithe +to a monument for the master, he would have a pyramid as big as that of Cheops. +</p> + +<p> +And yet I could only give him two places in my team. One would be for the +“Gold Bug,” the other for the “Murder in the Rue +Morgue.” I do not see how either of those could be bettered. But I would +not admit <i>perfect</i> excellence to any other of his stories. These two have +a proportion and a perspective which are lacking in the others, the horror or +weirdness of the idea intensified by the coolness of the narrator and of the +principal actor, Dupin in the one case and Le Grand in the other. The same may +be said of Bret Harte, also one of those great short story tellers who proved +himself incapable of a longer flight. He was always like one of his own +gold-miners who struck a rich pocket, but found no continuous reef. The pocket +was, alas, a very limited one, but the gold was of the best. “The Luck of +Roaring Camp” and “Tennessee’s Partner” are both, I +think, worthy of a place among my immortals. They are, it is true, so tinged +with Dickens as to be almost parodies of the master, but they have a symmetry +and satisfying completeness as short stories to which Dickens himself never +attained. The man who can read those two stories without a gulp in the throat +is not a man I envy. +</p> + +<p> +And Stevenson? Surely he shall have two places also, for where is a finer sense +of what the short story can do? He wrote, in my judgment, two masterpieces in +his life, and each of them is essentially a short story, though the one +happened to be published as a volume. The one is “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. +Hyde,” which, whether you take it as a vivid narrative or as a +wonderfully deep and true allegory, is a supremely fine bit of work. The other +story of my choice would be “The Pavilion on the Links”—the +very model of dramatic narrative. That story stamped itself so clearly on my +brain when I read it in <i>Cornhill</i> that when I came across it again many +years afterwards in volume form, I was able instantly to recognize two small +modifications of the text—each very much for the worse—from the +original form. They were small things, but they seemed somehow like a chip on a +perfect statue. Surely it is only a very fine work, of art which could leave so +definite an impression as that. Of course, there are a dozen other of his +stories which would put the average writer’s best work to shame, all with +the strange Stevenson glamour upon them, of which I may discourse later, but +only to those two would I be disposed to admit that complete excellence which +would pass them into such a team as this. +</p> + +<p> +And who else? If it be not an impertinence to mention a contemporary, I should +certainly have a brace from Rudyard Kipling. His power, his compression, his +dramatic sense, his way of glowing suddenly into a vivid flame, all mark him as +a great master. But which are we to choose from that long and varied +collection, many of which have claims to the highest? Speaking from memory, I +should say that the stories of his which have impressed me most are “The +Drums of the Fore and Aft,” “The Man who Would be King,” +“The Man who Was,” and “The Brushwood Boy.” Perhaps, on +the whole, it is the first two which I should choose to add to my list of +masterpieces. +</p> + +<p> +They are stories which invite criticism and yet defy it. The great batsman at +cricket is the man who can play an unorthodox game, take every liberty which is +denied to inferior players, and yet succeed brilliantly in the face of his +disregard of law. So it is here. I should think the model of these stories is +the most dangerous that any young writer could follow. There is digression, +that most deadly fault in the short narrative; there is incoherence, there is +want of proportion which makes the story stand still for pages and bound +forward in a few sentences. But genius overrides all that, just as the great +cricketer hooks the off ball and glides the straight one to leg. There is a +dash, an exuberance, a full-blooded, confident mastery which carries everything +before it. Yes, no team of immortals would be complete which did not contain at +least two representatives of Kipling. +</p> + +<p> +And now whom? Nathaniel Hawthorne never appealed in the highest degree to me. +The fault, I am sure, is my own, but I always seemed to crave stronger fare +than he gave me. It was too subtle, too elusive, for effect. Indeed, I have +been more affected by some of the short work of his son Julian, though I can +quite understand the high artistic claims which the senior writer has, and the +delicate charm of his style. There is Bulwer Lytton as a claimant. His +“Haunted and the Haunters” is the very best ghost story that I +know. As such I should include it in my list. There was a story, too, in one of +the old Blackwoods—“Metempsychosis” it was called, which left +so deep an impression upon my mind that I should be inclined, though it is many +years since I read it, to number it with the best. Another story which has the +characteristics of great work is Grant Allen’s “John Creedy.” +So good a story upon so philosophic a basis deserves a place among the best. +There is some first-class work to be picked also from the contemporary work of +Wells and of Quiller-Couch which reaches a high standard. One little +sketch—“Old Œson” in “Noughts and +Crosses”—is, in my opinion, as good as anything of the kind which I +have ever read. +</p> + +<p> +And all this didactic talk comes from looking at that old green cover of Poe. I +am sure that if I had to name the few books which have really influenced my own +life I should have to put this one second only to Macaulay’s Essays. I +read it young when my mind was plastic. It stimulated my imagination and set +before me a supreme example of dignity and force in the methods of telling a +story. It is not altogether a healthy influence, perhaps. It turns the thoughts +too forcibly to the morbid and the strange. +</p> + +<p> +He was a saturnine creature, devoid of humour and geniality, with a love for +the grotesque and the terrible. The reader must himself furnish the +counteracting qualities or Poe may become a dangerous comrade. We know along +what perilous tracks and into what deadly quagmires his strange mind led him, +down to that grey October Sunday morning when he was picked up, a dying man, on +the side-walk at Baltimore, at an age which should have seen him at the very +prime of his strength and his manhood. +</p> + +<p> +I have said that I look upon Poe as the world’s supreme short story +writer. His nearest rival, I should say, was Maupassant. The great Norman never +rose to the extreme force and originality of the American, but he had a natural +inherited power, an inborn instinct towards the right way of making his +effects, which mark him as a great master. He produced stories because it was +in him to do so, as naturally and as perfectly as an apple tree produces +apples. What a fine, sensitive, artistic touch it is! How easily and delicately +the points are made! How clear and nervous is his style, and how free from that +redundancy which disfigures so much of our English work! He pares it down to +the quick all the time. +</p> + +<p> +I cannot write the name of Maupassant without recalling what was either a +spiritual interposition or an extraordinary coincidence in my own life. I had +been travelling in Switzerland and had visited, among other places, that Gemmi +Pass, where a huge cliff separates a French from a German canton. On the summit +of this cliff was a small inn, where we broke our journey. It was explained to +us that, although the inn was inhabited all the year round, still for about +three months in winter it was utterly isolated, because it could at any time +only be approached by winding paths on the mountain side, and when these became +obliterated by snow it was impossible either to come up or to descend. They +could see the lights in the valley beneath them, but were as lonely as if they +lived in the moon. So curious a situation naturally appealed to one’s +imagination, and I speedily began to build up a short story in my own mind, +depending upon a group of strong antagonistic characters being penned up in +this inn, loathing each other and yet utterly unable to get away from each +other’s society, every day bringing them nearer to tragedy. For a week or +so, as I travelled, I was turning over the idea. +</p> + +<p> +At the end of that time I returned through France. Having nothing to read I +happened to buy a volume of Maupassant’s Tales which I had never seen +before. The first story was called “L’Auberge” (The +Inn)—and as I ran my eye down the printed page I was amazed to see the +two words, “Kandersteg” and “Gemmi Pass.” I settled +down and read it with ever-growing amazement. The scene was laid in the inn I +had visited. The plot depended on the isolation of a group of people through +the snowfall. Everything that I imagined was there, save that Maupassant had +brought in a savage hound. +</p> + +<p> +Of course, the genesis of the thing is clear enough. He had chanced to visit +the inn, and had been impressed as I had been by the same train of thought. All +that is quite intelligible. But what is perfectly marvellous is that in that +short journey I should have chanced to buy the one book in all the world which +would prevent me from making a public fool of myself, for who would ever have +believed that my work was not an imitation? I do not think that the hypothesis +of coincidence can cover the facts. It is one of several incidents in my life +which have convinced me of spiritual interposition—of the promptings of +some beneficent force outside ourselves, which tries to help us where it can. +The old Catholic doctrine of the Guardian Angel is not only a beautiful one, +but has in it, I believe, a real basis of truth. +</p> + +<p> +Or is it that our subliminal ego, to use the jargon of the new psychology, or +our astral, in the terms of the new theology, can learn and convey to the mind +that which our own known senses are unable to apprehend? But that is too long a +side track for us to turn down it. +</p> + +<p> +When Maupassant chose he could run Poe close in that domain of the strange and +weird which the American had made so entirely his own. Have you read +Maupassant’s story called “Le Horla”? That is as good a bit +of <i>diablerie</i> as you could wish for. And the Frenchman has, of course, +far the broader range. He has a keen sense of humour, breaking out beyond all +decorum in some of his stories, but giving a pleasant sub-flavour to all of +them. And yet, when all is said, who can doubt that the austere and dreadful +American is far the greater and more original mind of the two? +</p> + +<p> +Talking of weird American stories, have you ever read any of the works of +Ambrose Bierce? I have one of his works there, “In the Midst of +Life.” This man had a flavour quite his own, and was a great artist in +his way. It is not cheering reading, but it leaves its mark upon you, and that +is the proof of good work. +</p> + +<p> +I have often wondered where Poe got his style. There is a sombre majesty about +his best work, as if it were carved from polished jet, which is peculiarly his +own. I dare say if I took down that volume I could light anywhere upon a +paragraph which would show you what I mean. This is the kind of thing— +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“Now there are fine tales in the volumes of the Magi—in the +iron-bound melancholy volumes of the Magi. Therein, I say, are glorious +histories of the heaven and of the earth, and of the mighty sea—and of +the genius that overruled the sea, and the earth, and the lofty heaven. There +were much lore, too, in the sayings which were said by the Sybils, and holy, +holy things were heard of old by the dim leaves which trembled round Dodona, +but as Allah liveth, that fable which the Demon told me as he sat by my side in +the shadow of the tomb, I hold to be the most wonderful of all.” Or this +sentence: “And then did we, the seven, start from our seats in horror, +and stand trembling and aghast, for the tones in the voice of the shadow were +not the tones of any one being, but of a multitude of beings, and, varying in +their cadences from syllable to syllable, fell duskily upon our ears in the +well-remembered and familiar accents of many thousand departed friends.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Is there not a sense of austere dignity? No man invents a style. It always +derives back from some influence, or, as is more usual, it is a compromise +between several influences. I cannot trace Poe’s. And yet if Hazlitt and +De Quincey had set forth to tell weird stories they might have developed +something of the kind. +</p> + +<p> +Now, by your leave, we will pass on to my noble edition of “The Cloister +and the Hearth,” the next volume on the left. +</p> + +<p> +I notice, in glancing over my rambling remarks, that I classed +“Ivanhoe” as the second historical novel of the century. I dare say +there are many who would give “Esmond” the first place, and I can +quite understand their position, although it is not my own. I recognize the +beauty of the style, the consistency of the character-drawing, the absolutely +perfect Queen Anne atmosphere. There was never an historical novel written by a +man who knew his period so thoroughly. But, great as these virtues are, they +are not the essential in a novel. The essential in a novel is interest, though +Addison unkindly remarked that the real essential was that the pastrycooks +should never run short of paper. Now “Esmond” is, in my opinion, +exceedingly interesting during the campaigns in the Lowlands, and when our +Machiavelian hero, the Duke, comes in, and also whenever Lord Mohun shows his +ill-omened face; but there are long stretches of the story which are heavy +reading. A pre-eminently good novel must always advance and never mark time. +“Ivanhoe” never halts for an instant, and that just makes its +superiority as a novel over “Esmond,” though as a piece of +literature I think the latter is the more perfect. +</p> + +<p> +No, if I had three votes, I should plump them all for “The Cloister and +the Hearth,” as being our greatest historical novel, and, indeed, as +being our greatest novel of any sort. I think I may claim to have read most of +the more famous foreign novels of last century, and (speaking only for myself +and within the limits of my reading) I have been more impressed by that book of +Reade’s and by Tolstoi’s “Peace and War” than by any +others. They seem to me to stand at the very top of the century’s +fiction. There is a certain resemblance in the two—the sense of space, +the number of figures, the way in which characters drop in and drop out. The +Englishman is the more romantic. The Russian is the more real and earnest. But +they are both great. +</p> + +<p> +Think of what Reade does in that one book. He takes the reader by the hand, and +he leads him away into the Middle Ages, and not a conventional study-built +Middle Age, but a period quivering with life, full of folk who are as human and +real as a ’bus-load in Oxford Street. He takes him through Holland, he +shows him the painters, the dykes, the life. He leads him down the long line of +the Rhine, the spinal marrow of Mediaeval Europe. He shows him the dawn of +printing, the beginnings of freedom, the life of the great mercantile cities of +South Germany, the state of Italy, the artist-life of Rome, the monastic +institutions on the eve of the Reformation. And all this between the covers of +one book, so naturally introduced, too, and told with such vividness and +spirit. Apart from the huge scope of it, the mere study of Gerard’s own +nature, his rise, his fall, his regeneration, the whole pitiable tragedy at the +end, make the book a great one. It contains, I think, a blending of knowledge +with imagination, which makes it stand alone in our literature. Let any one +read the “Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini,” and then Charles +Reade’s picture of Mediaeval Roman life, if he wishes to appreciate the +way in which Reade has collected his rough ore and has then smelted it all down +in his fiery imagination. It is a good thing to have the industry to collect +facts. It is a greater and a rarer one to have the tact to know how to use them +when you have got them. To be exact without pedantry, and thorough without +being dull, that should be the ideal of the writer of historical romance. +</p> + +<p> +Reade is one of the most perplexing figures in our literature. Never was there +a man so hard to place. At his best he is the best we have. At his worst he is +below the level of Surreyside melodrama. But his best have weak pieces, and his +worst have good. There is always silk among his cotton, and cotton among his +silk. But, for all his flaws, the man who, in addition to the great book, of +which I have already spoken, wrote “It is Never Too Late to Mend,” +“Hard Cash,” “Foul Play,” and “Griffith +Gaunt,” must always stand in the very first rank of our novelists. +</p> + +<p> +There is a quality of heart about his work which I recognize nowhere else. He +so absolutely loves his own heroes and heroines, while he so cordially detests +his own villains, that he sweeps your emotions along with his own. No one has +ever spoken warmly enough of the humanity and the lovability of his women. It +is a rare gift—very rare for a man—this power of drawing a human +and delightful girl. If there is a better one in nineteenth-century fiction +than Julia Dodd I have never had the pleasure of meeting her. A man who could +draw a character so delicate and so delightful, and yet could write such an +episode as that of the Robber Inn in “The Cloister and the Hearth,” +adventurous romance in its highest form, has such a range of power as is +granted to few men. My hat is always ready to come off to Charles Reade. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap07"></a>VII.</h2> + +<p> +It is good to have the magic door shut behind us. On the other side of that +door are the world and its troubles, hopes and fears, headaches and heartaches, +ambitions and disappointments; but within, as you lie back on the green settee, +and face the long lines of your silent soothing comrades, there is only peace +of spirit and rest of mind in the company of the great dead. Learn to love, +learn to admire them; learn to know what their comradeship means; for until you +have done so the greatest solace and anodyne God has given to man have not yet +shed their blessing upon you. Here behind this magic door is the rest house, +where you may forget the past, enjoy the present, and prepare for the future. +</p> + +<p> +You who have sat with me before upon the green settee are familiar with the +upper shelf, with the tattered Macaulay, the dapper Gibbon, the drab Boswell, +the olive-green Scott, the pied Borrow, and all the goodly company who rub +shoulders yonder. By the way, how one wishes that one’s dear friends +would only be friends also with each other. Why should Borrow snarl so +churlishly at Scott? One would have thought that noble spirit and romantic +fancy would have charmed the huge vagrant, and yet there is no word too bitter +for the younger man to use towards the elder. The fact is that Borrow had one +dangerous virus in him—a poison which distorts the whole vision—for +he was a bigoted sectarian in religion, seeing no virtue outside his own +interpretation of the great riddle. Downright heathendom, the blood-stained +Berserk or the chaunting Druid, appealed to his mind through his imagination, +but the man of his own creed and time who differed from him in minutiae of +ritual, or in the interpretation of mystic passages, was at once evil to the +bone, and he had no charity of any sort for such a person. Scott therefore, +with his reverent regard for old usages, became at once hateful in his eyes. In +any case he was a disappointed man, the big Borrow, and I cannot remember that +he ever had much to say that was good of any brother author. Only in the bards +of Wales and in the Scalds of the Sagas did he seem to find his kindred +spirits, though it has been suggested that his complex nature took this means +of informing the world that he could read both Cymric and Norse. But we must +not be unkind behind the magic door—and yet to be charitable to the +uncharitable is surely the crown of virtue. +</p> + +<p> +So much for the top line, concerning which I have already gossipped for six +sittings, but there is no surcease for you, reader, for as you see there is a +second line, and yet a third, all equally dear to my heart, and all appealing +in the same degree to my emotions and to my memory. Be as patient as you may, +while I talk of these old friends, and tell you why I love them, and all that +they have meant to me in the past. If you picked any book from that line you +would be picking a little fibre also from my mind, very small, no doubt, and +yet an intimate and essential part of what is now myself. Hereditary impulses, +personal experiences, books—those are the three forces which go to the +making of man. These are the books. +</p> + +<p> +This second line consists, as you see, of novelists of the eighteenth century, +or those of them whom I regard as essential. After all, putting aside single +books, such as Sterne’s “Tristram Shandy,” Goldsmith’s +“Vicar of Wakefield,” and Miss Burney’s +“Evelina,” there are only three authors who count, and they in turn +wrote only three books each, of first-rate importance, so that by the mastery +of nine books one might claim to have a fairly broad view of this most +important and distinctive branch of English literature. The three men are, of +course, Fielding, Richardson, and Smollett. The books are: Richardson’s +“Clarissa Harlowe,” “Pamela,” and “Sir Charles +Grandison”; Fielding’s “Tom Jones”, “Joseph +Andrews,” and “Amelia”; Smollett’s “Peregrine +Pickle,” “Humphrey Clinker,” and “Roderick +Random.” There we have the real work of the three great contemporaries +who illuminated the middle of the eighteenth century—only nine volumes in +all. Let us walk round these nine volumes, therefore, and see whether we cannot +discriminate and throw a little light, after this interval of a hundred and +fifty years, upon their comparative aims, and how far they have justified them +by the permanent value of their work. A fat little bookseller in the City, a +rakehell wit of noble blood, and a rugged Scotch surgeon from the +navy—those are the three strange immortals who now challenge a +comparison—the three men who dominate the fiction of their century, and +to whom we owe it that the life and the types of that century are familiar to +us, their fifth generation. +</p> + +<p> +It is not a subject to be dogmatic upon, for I can imagine that these three +writers would appeal quite differently to every temperament, and that whichever +one might desire to champion one could find arguments to sustain one’s +choice. Yet I cannot think that any large section of the critical public could +maintain that Smollett was on the same level as the other two. Ethically he is +gross, though his grossness is accompanied by a full-blooded humour which is +more mirth-compelling than the more polished wit of his rivals. I can remember +in callow boyhood—<i>puris omnia pura</i>—reading “Peregrine +Pickle,” and laughing until I cried over the Banquet in the Fashion of +the Ancients. I read it again in my manhood with the same effect, though with a +greater appreciation of its inherent bestiality. That merit, a gross primitive +merit, he has in a high degree, but in no other respect can he challenge +comparison with either Fielding or Richardson. His view of life is far more +limited, his characters less varied, his incidents less distinctive, and his +thoughts less deep. Assuredly I, for one, should award him the third place in +the trio. +</p> + +<p> +But how about Richardson and Fielding? There is indeed a competition of giants. +Let us take the points of each in turn, and then compare them with each other. +</p> + +<p> +There is one characteristic, the rarest and subtlest of all, which each of them +had in a supreme degree. Each could draw the most delightful women—the +most perfect women, I think, in the whole range of our literature. If the +eighteenth-century women were like that, then the eighteenth-century men got a +great deal more than they ever deserved. They had such a charming little +dignity of their own, such good sense, and yet such dear, pretty, dainty ways, +so human and so charming, that even now they become our ideals. One cannot come +to know them without a double emotion, one of respectful devotion towards +themselves, and the other of abhorrence for the herd of swine who surrounded +them. Pamela, Harriet Byron, Clarissa, Amelia, and Sophia Western were all +equally delightful, and it was not the negative charm of the innocent and +colourless woman, the amiable doll of the nineteenth century, but it was a +beauty of nature depending upon an alert mind, clear and strong principles, +true womanly feelings, and complete feminine charm. In this respect our rival +authors may claim a tie, for I could not give a preference to one set of these +perfect creatures over another. The plump little printer and the worn-out +man-about-town had each a supreme woman in his mind. +</p> + +<p> +But their men! Alas, what a drop is there! To say that we are all capable of +doing what Tom Jones did—as I have seen stated—is the worst form of +inverted cant, the cant which makes us out worse than we are. It is a libel on +mankind to say that a man who truly loves a woman is usually false to her, and, +above all, a libel that he should be false in the vile fashion which aroused +good Tom Newcome’s indignation. Tom Jones was no more fit to touch the +hem of Sophia’s dress than Captain Booth was to be the mate of Amelia. +Never once has Fielding drawn a gentleman, save perhaps Squire Alworthy. A +lusty, brawling, good-hearted, material creature was the best that he could +fashion. Where, in his heroes, is there one touch of distinction, of +spirituality, of nobility? Here I think that the plebeian printer has done very +much better than the aristocrat. Sir Charles Grandison is a very noble +type—spoiled a little by over-coddling on the part of his creator, +perhaps, but a very high-souled and exquisite gentleman all the same. Had +<i>he</i> married Sophia or Amelia I should not have forbidden the banns. Even +the persevering Mr. B—— and the too amorous Lovelace were, in spite +of their aberrations, men of gentle nature, and had possibilities of greatness +and tenderness within them. Yes, I cannot doubt that Richardson drew the higher +type of man—and that in Grandison he has done what has seldom or never +been bettered. +</p> + +<p> +Richardson was also the subtler and deeper writer, in my opinion. He concerns +himself with fine consistent character-drawing, and with a very searching +analysis of the human heart, which is done so easily, and in such simple +English, that the depth and truth of it only come upon reflection. He +condescends to none of those scuffles and buffetings and pantomime rallies +which enliven, but cheapen, many of Fielding’s pages. The latter has, it +may be granted, a broader view of life. He had personal acquaintance of circles +far above, and also far below, any which the douce citizen, who was his rival, +had ever been able or willing to explore. His pictures of low London life, the +prison scenes in “Amelia,” the thieves’ kitchens in +“Jonathan Wild,” the sponging houses and the slums, are as vivid +and as complete as those of his friend Hogarth—the most British of +artists, even as Fielding was the most British of writers. But the greatest and +most permanent facts of life are to be found in the smallest circles. Two men +and a woman may furnish either the tragedian or the comedian with the most +satisfying theme. And so, although his range was limited, Richardson knew very +clearly and very thoroughly just that knowledge which was essential for his +purpose. Pamela, the perfect woman of humble life, Clarissa, the perfect lady, +Grandison the ideal gentleman—these were the three figures on which he +lavished his most loving art. And now, after one hundred and fifty years, I do +not know where we may find more satisfying types. +</p> + +<p> +He was prolix, it may be admitted, but who could bear to have him cut? He loved +to sit down and tell you just all about it. His use of letters for his +narratives made this gossipy style more easy. First <i>he</i> writes and he +tells all that passed. You have his letter. <i>She</i> at the same time writes +to her friend, and also states her views. This also you see. The friends in +each case reply, and you have the advantage of their comments and advice. You +really do know all about it before you finish. It may be a little wearisome at +first, if you have been accustomed to a more hustling style with fireworks in +every chapter. But gradually it creates an atmosphere in which you live, and +you come to know these people, with their characters and their troubles, as you +know no others of the dream-folk of fiction. Three times as long as an ordinary +book, no doubt, but why grudge the time? What is the hurry? Surely it is better +to read one masterpiece than three books which will leave no permanent +impression on the mind. +</p> + +<p> +It was all attuned to the sedate life of that, the last of the quiet centuries. +In the lonely country-house, with few letters and fewer papers, do you suppose +that the readers ever complained of the length of a book, or could have too +much of the happy Pamela or of the unhappy Clarissa? It is only under +extraordinary circumstances that one can now get into that receptive frame of +mind which was normal then. Such an occasion is recorded by Macaulay, when he +tells how in some Indian hill station, where books were rare, he let loose a +copy of “Clarissa.” The effect was what might have been expected. +Richardson in a suitable environment went through the community like a mild +fever. They lived him, and dreamed him, until the whole episode passed into +literary history, never to be forgotten by those who experienced it. It is +tuned, for every ear. That beautiful style is so correct and yet so simple that +there is no page which a scholar may not applaud nor a servant-maid understand. +</p> + +<p> +Of course, there are obvious disadvantages to the tale which is told in +letters. Scott reverted to it in “Guy Mannering,” and there are +other conspicuous successes, but vividness is always gained at the expense of a +strain upon the reader’s good-nature and credulity. One feels that these +constant details, these long conversations, could not possibly have been +recorded in such a fashion. The indignant and dishevelled heroine could not sit +down and record her escape with such cool minuteness of description. Richardson +does it as well as it could be done, but it remains intrinsically faulty. +Fielding, using the third person, broke all the fetters which bound his rival, +and gave a freedom and personal authority to the novel which it had never +before enjoyed. There at least he is the master. +</p> + +<p> +And yet, on the whole, my balance inclines towards Richardson, though I dare +say I am one in a hundred in thinking so. First of all, beyond anything I may +have already urged, he had the supreme credit of having been the first. Surely +the originator should have a higher place than the imitator, even if in +imitating he should also improve and amplify. It is Richardson and not Fielding +who is the father of the English novel, the man who first saw that without +romantic gallantry, and without bizarre imaginings, enthralling stories may be +made from everyday life, told in everyday language. This was his great new +departure. So entirely was Fielding his imitator, or rather perhaps his +parodist, that with supreme audacity (some would say brazen impudence) he used +poor Richardson’s own characters, taken from “Pamela,” in his +own first novel, “Joseph Andrews,” and used them too for the unkind +purpose of ridiculing them. As a matter of literary ethics, it is as if +Thackeray wrote a novel bringing in Pickwick and Sam Weller in order to show +what faulty characters these were. It is no wonder that even the gentle little +printer grew wroth, and alluded to his rival as a somewhat unscrupulous man. +</p> + +<p> +And then there is the vexed question of morals. Surely in talking of this also +there is a good deal of inverted cant among a certain class of critics. The +inference appears to be that there is some subtle connection between immorality +and art, as if the handling of the lewd, or the depicting of it, were in some +sort the hallmark of the true artist. It is not difficult to handle or depict. +On the contrary, it is so easy, and so essentially dramatic in many of its +forms, that the temptation to employ it is ever present. It is the easiest and +cheapest of all methods of creating a spurious effect. The difficulty does not +lie in doing it. The difficulty lies in avoiding it. But one tries to avoid it +because on the face of it there is no reason why a writer should cease to be a +gentleman, or that he should write for a woman’s eyes that which he would +be justly knocked down for having said in a woman’s ears. But “you +must draw the world as it is.” Why must you? Surely it is just in +selection and restraint that the artist is shown. It is true that in a coarser +age great writers heeded no restrictions, but life itself had fewer +restrictions then. We are of our own age, and must live up to it. +</p> + +<p> +But must these sides of life be absolutely excluded? By no means. Our decency +need not weaken into prudery. It all lies in the spirit in which it is done. No +one who wished to lecture on these various spirits could preach on a better +text than these three great rivals, Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett. It is +possible to draw vice with some freedom for the purpose of condemning it. Such +a writer is a moralist, and there is no better example than Richardson. Again, +it is possible to draw vice with neither sympathy nor disapprobation, but +simply as a fact which is there. Such a writer is a realist, and such was +Fielding. Once more, it is possible to draw vice in order to extract amusement +from it. Such a man is a coarse humorist, and such was Smollett. Lastly, it is +possible to draw vice in order to show sympathy with it. Such a man is a wicked +man, and there were many among the writers of the Restoration. But of all +reasons that exist for treating this side of life, Richardson’s were the +best, and nowhere do we find it more deftly done. +</p> + +<p> +Apart from his writings, there must have been something very noble about +Fielding as a man. He was a better hero than any that he drew. Alone he +accepted the task of cleansing London, at that time the most dangerous and +lawless of European capitals. Hogarth’s pictures give some notion of it +in the pre-Fielding days, the low roughs, the high-born bullies, the +drunkenness, the villainies, the thieves’ kitchens with their riverside +trapdoors, down which the body is thrust. This was the Augean stable which had +to be cleaned, and poor Hercules was weak and frail and physically more fitted +for a sick-room than for such a task. It cost him his life, for he died at 47, +worn out with his own exertions. It might well have cost him his life in more +dramatic fashion, for he had become a marked man to the criminal classes, and +he headed his own search-parties when, on the information of some bribed +rascal, a new den of villainy was exposed. But he carried his point. In little +more than a year the thing was done, and London turned from the most rowdy to +what it has ever since remained, the most law-abiding of European capitals. Has +any man ever left a finer monument behind him? +</p> + +<p> +If you want the real human Fielding you will find him not in the novels, where +his real kindliness is too often veiled by a mock cynicism, but in his +“Diary of his Voyage to Lisbon.” He knew that his health was +irretrievably ruined and that his years were numbered. Those are the days when +one sees a man as he is, when he has no longer a motive for affectation or +pretence in the immediate presence of the most tremendous of all realities. +Yet, sitting in the shadow of death, Fielding displayed a quiet, gentle courage +and constancy of mind, which show how splendid a nature had been shrouded by +his earlier frailties. +</p> + +<p> +Just one word upon another eighteenth-century novel before I finish this +somewhat didactic chat. You will admit that I have never prosed so much before, +but the period and the subject seem to encourage it. I skip Sterne, for I have +no great sympathy with his finicky methods. And I skip Miss Burney’s +novels, as being feminine reflections of the great masters who had just +preceded her. But Goldsmith’s “Vicar of Wakefield” surely +deserves one paragraph to itself. There is a book which is tinged throughout, +as was all Goldsmith’s work, with a beautiful nature. No one who had not +a fine heart could have written it, just as no one without a fine heart could +have written “The Deserted Village.” How strange it is to think of +old Johnson patronizing or snubbing the shrinking Irishman, when both in +poetry, in fiction, and in the drama the latter has proved himself far the +greater man. But here is an object-lesson of how the facts of life may be +treated without offence. Nothing is shirked. It is all faced and duly recorded. +Yet if I wished to set before the sensitive mind of a young girl a book which +would prepare her for life without in any way contaminating her delicacy of +feeling, there is no book which I should choose so readily as “The Vicar +of Wakefield.” +</p> + +<p> +So much for the eighteenth-century novelists. They have a shelf of their own in +the case, and a corner of their own in my brain. For years you may never think +of them, and then suddenly some stray word or train of thought leads straight +to them, and you look at them and love them, and rejoice that you know them. +But let us pass to something which may interest you more. +</p> + +<p> +If statistics could be taken in the various free libraries of the kingdom to +prove the comparative popularity of different novelists with the public, I +think that it is quite certain that Mr. George Meredith would come out very low +indeed. If, on the other hand, a number of authors were convened to determine +which of their fellow-craftsmen they considered the greatest and the most +stimulating to their own minds, I am equally confident that Mr. Meredith would +have a vast preponderance of votes. Indeed, his only conceivable rival would be +Mr. Hardy. It becomes an interesting study, therefore, why there should be such +a divergence of opinion as to his merits, and what the qualities are which have +repelled so many readers, and yet have attracted those whose opinion must be +allowed to have a special weight. +</p> + +<p> +The most obvious reason is his complete unconventionality. The public read to +be amused. The novelist reads to have new light thrown upon his art. To read +Meredith is <i>not</i> a mere amusement; it is an intellectual exercise, a kind +of mental dumb-bell with which you develop your thinking powers. Your mind is +in a state of tension the whole time that you are reading him. +</p> + +<p> +If you will follow my nose as the sportsman follows that of his pointer, you +will observe that these remarks are excited by the presence of my beloved +“Richard Feverel,” which lurks in yonder corner. What a great book +it is, how wise and how witty! Others of the master’s novels may be more +characteristic or more profound, but for my own part it is the one which I +would always present to the new-comer who had not yet come under the influence. +I think that I should put it third after “Vanity Fair” and +“The Cloister and the Hearth” if I had to name the three novels +which I admire most in the Victorian era. The book was published, I believe, in +1859, and it is almost incredible, and says little for the discrimination of +critics or public, that it was nearly twenty years before a second edition was +needed. +</p> + +<p> +But there are never effects without causes, however inadequate the cause may +be. What was it that stood in the way of the book’s success? Undoubtedly +it was the style. And yet it is subdued and tempered here with little of the +luxuriance and exuberance which it attained in the later works. But it was an +innovation, and it stalled off both the public and the critics. They regarded +it, no doubt, as an affectation, as Carlyle’s had been considered twenty +years before, forgetting that in the case of an original genius style is an +organic thing, part of the man as much as the colour of his eyes. It is not, to +quote Carlyle, a shirt to be taken on and off at pleasure, but a skin, +eternally fixed. And this strange, powerful style, how is it to be described? +Best, perhaps, in his own strong words, when he spoke of Carlyle with perhaps +the <i>arrière pensée</i> that the words would apply as strongly to himself. +</p> + +<p> +“His favourite author,” says he, “was one writing on heroes +in a style resembling either early architecture or utter dilapidation, so loose +and rough it seemed. A wind-in-the-orchard style that tumbled down here and +there an appreciable fruit with uncouth bluster, sentences without +commencements running to abrupt endings and smoke, like waves against a +sea-wall, learned dictionary words giving a hand to street slang, and accents +falling on them haphazard, like slant rays from driving clouds; all the pages +in a breeze, the whole book producing a kind of electrical agitation in the +mind and joints.” +</p> + +<p> +What a wonderful description and example of style! And how vivid is the +impression left by such expressions as “all the pages in a breeze.” +As a comment on Carlyle, and as a sample of Meredith, the passage is equally +perfect. +</p> + +<p> +Well, “Richard Feverel” has come into its own at last. I confess to +having a strong belief in the critical discernment of the public. I do not +think good work is often overlooked. Literature, like water, finds its true +level. Opinion is slow to form, but it sets true at last. I am sure that if the +critics were to unite to praise a bad book or to damn a good one they could +(and continually do) have a five-year influence, but it would in no wise affect +the final result. Sheridan said that if all the fleas in his bed had been +unanimous, they could have pushed him out of it. I do not think that any +unanimity of critics has ever pushed a good book out of literature. +</p> + +<p> +Among the minor excellences of “Richard Feverel”—excuse the +prolixity of an enthusiast—are the scattered aphorisms which are worthy +of a place among our British proverbs. What could be more exquisite than this, +“Who rises from prayer a better man his prayer is answered”; or +this, “Expediency is man’s wisdom. Doing right is +God’s”; or, “All great thoughts come from the heart”? +Good are the words “The coward amongst us is he who sneers at the +failings of humanity,” and a healthy optimism rings in the phrase +“There is for the mind but one grasp of happiness; from that uppermost +pinnacle of wisdom whence we see that this world is well designed.” In +more playful mood is “Woman is the last thing which will be civilized by +man.” Let us hurry away abruptly, for he who starts quotation from +“Richard Feverel” is lost. +</p> + +<p> +He has, as you see, a goodly line of his brothers beside him. There are the +Italian ones, “Sandra Belloni,” and “Vittoria”; there +is “Rhoda Fleming,” which carried Stevenson off his critical feet; +“Beauchamp’s Career,” too, dealing with obsolete politics. No +great writer should spend himself upon a temporary theme. It is like the beauty +who is painted in some passing fashion of gown. She tends to become obsolete +along with her frame. Here also is the dainty “Diana,” the egoist +with immortal Willoughby Pattern, eternal type of masculine selfishness, and +“Harry Richmond,” the first chapters of which are, in my opinion, +among the finest pieces of narrative prose in the language. That great mind +would have worked in any form which his age had favoured. He is a novelist by +accident. As an Elizabethan he would have been a great dramatist; under Queen +Anne a great essayist. But whatever medium he worked in, he must equally have +thrown the image of a great brain and a great soul. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap08"></a>VIII.</h2> + +<p> +We have left our eighteenth-century novelists—Fielding, Richardson, and +Smollett—safely behind us, with all their solidity and their audacity, +their sincerity, and their coarseness of fibre. They have brought us, as you +perceive, to the end of the shelf. What, not wearied? Ready for yet another? +Let us run down this next row, then, and I will tell you a few things which may +be of interest, though they will be dull enough if you have not been born with +that love of books in your heart which is among the choicest gifts of the gods. +If that is wanting, then one might as well play music to the deaf, or walk +round the Academy with the colour-blind, as appeal to the book-sense of an +unfortunate who has it not. +</p> + +<p> +There is this old brown volume in the corner. How it got there I cannot +imagine, for it is one of those which I bought for threepence out of the +remnant box in Edinburgh, and its weather-beaten comrades are up yonder in the +back gallery, while this one has elbowed its way among the quality in the +stalls. But it is worth a word or two. Take it out and handle it! See how +swarthy it is, how squat, with how bullet-proof a cover of scaling leather. Now +open the fly-leaf “<i>Ex libris</i> Guilielmi Whyte. 1672” in faded +yellow ink. I wonder who William Whyte may have been, and what he did upon +earth in the reign of the merry monarch. A pragmatical seventeenth-century +lawyer, I should judge, by that hard, angular writing. The date of issue is +1642, so it was printed just about the time when the Pilgrim Fathers were +settling down into their new American home, and the first Charles’s head +was still firm upon his shoulders, though a little puzzled, no doubt, at what +was going on around it. The book is in Latin—though Cicero might not have +admitted it—and it treats of the laws of warfare. +</p> + +<p> +I picture some pedantic Dugald Dalgetty bearing it about under his buff coat, +or down in his holster, and turning up the reference for every fresh emergency +which occurred. “Hullo! here’s a well!” says he. “I +wonder if I may poison it?” Out comes the book, and he runs a dirty +forefinger down the index. “<i>Ob fas est aquam hostis venere</i>,” +etc. “Tut, tut, it’s not allowed. But here are some of the enemy in +a barn? What about that?” “<i>Ob fas est hostem +incendio</i>,” etc. “Yes; he says we may. Quick, Ambrose, up with +the straw and the tinder box.” Warfare was no child’s play about +the time when Tilly sacked Magdeburg, and Cromwell turned his hand from the +mash tub to the sword. It might not be much better now in a long campaign, when +men were hardened and embittered. Many of these laws are unrepealed, and it is +less than a century since highly disciplined British troops claimed their +dreadful rights at Badajos and Rodrigo. Recent European wars have been so short +that discipline and humanity have not had time to go to pieces, but a long war +would show that man is ever the same, and that civilization is the thinnest of +veneers. +</p> + +<p> +Now you see that whole row of books which takes you at one sweep nearly across +the shelf? I am rather proud of those, for they are my collection of Napoleonic +military memoirs. There is a story told of an illiterate millionaire who gave a +wholesale dealer an order for a copy of all books in any language treating of +any aspect of Napoleon’s career. He thought it would fill a case in his +library. He was somewhat taken aback, however, when in a few weeks he received +a message from the dealer that he had got 40,000 volumes, and awaited +instructions as to whether he should send them on as an instalment, or wait for +a complete set. The figures may not be exact, but at least they bring home the +impossibility of exhausting the subject, and the danger of losing one’s +self for years in a huge labyrinth of reading, which may end by leaving no very +definite impression upon your mind. But one might, perhaps, take a corner of +it, as I have done here in the military memoirs, and there one might hope to +get some finality. +</p> + +<p> +Here is Marbot at this end—the first of all soldier books in the world. +This is the complete three-volume French edition, with red and gold cover, +smart and <i>débonnaire</i> like its author. Here he is in one frontispiece +with his pleasant, round, boyish face, as a Captain of his beloved Chasseurs. +And here in the other is the grizzled old bull-dog as a full general, looking +as full of fight as ever. It was a real blow to me when some one began to throw +doubts upon the authenticity of Marbot’s memoirs. Homer may be dissolved +into a crowd of skin-clad bards. Even Shakespeare may be jostled in his throne +of honour by plausible Baconians; but the human, the gallant, the inimitable +Marbot! His book is that which gives us the best picture by far of the +Napoleonic soldiers, and to me they are even more interesting than their great +leader, though his must ever be the most singular figure in history. But those +soldiers, with their huge shakoes, their hairy knapsacks, and their hearts of +steel—what men they were! And what a latent power there must be in this +French nation which could go on pouring out the blood of its sons for +twenty-three years with hardly a pause! +</p> + +<p> +It took all that time to work off the hot ferment which the Revolution had left +in men’s veins. And they were not exhausted, for the very last fight +which the French fought was the finest of all. Proud as we are of our infantry +at Waterloo, it was really with the French cavalry that the greenest laurels of +that great epic rested. They got the better of our own cavalry, they took our +guns again and again, they swept a large portion of our allies from the field, +and finally they rode off unbroken, and as full of fight as ever. Read +Gronow’s “Memoirs,” that chatty little yellow volume yonder +which brings all that age back to us more vividly than any more pretentious +work, and you will find the chivalrous admiration which our officers expressed +at the fine performance of the French horsemen. +</p> + +<p> +It must be admitted that, looking back upon history, we have not always been +good allies, nor yet generous co-partners in the battlefield. The first is the +fault of our politics, where one party rejoices to break what the other has +bound. The makers of the Treaty are staunch enough, as the Tories were under +Pitt and Castlereagh, or the Whigs at the time of Queen Anne, but sooner or +later the others must come in. At the end of the Marlborough wars we suddenly +vamped up a peace and, left our allies in the lurch, on account of a change in +domestic politics. We did the same with Frederick the Great, and would have +done it in the Napoleonic days if Fox could have controlled the country. And as +to our partners of the battlefield, how little we have ever said that is hearty +as to the splendid staunchness of the Prussians at Waterloo. You have to read +the Frenchman, Houssaye, to get a central view and to understand the part they +played. Think of old Blucher, seventy years old, and ridden over by a regiment +of charging cavalry the day before, yet swearing that he would come to +Wellington if he had to be strapped to his horse. He nobly redeemed his +promise. +</p> + +<p> +The loss of the Prussians at Waterloo was not far short of our own. You would +not know it, to read our historians. And then the abuse of our Belgian allies +has been overdone. Some of them fought splendidly, and one brigade of infantry +had a share in the critical instant when the battle was turned. This also you +would not learn from British sources. Look at our Portuguese allies also! They +trained into magnificent troops, and one of Wellington’s earnest desires +was to have ten thousand of them for his Waterloo campaign. It was a Portuguese +who first topped the rampart of Badajos. They have never had their due credit, +nor have the Spaniards either, for, though often defeated, it was their +unconquerable pertinacity which played a great part in the struggle. No; I do +not think that we are very amiable partners, but I suppose that all national +history may be open to a similar charge. +</p> + +<p> +It must be confessed that Marbot’s details are occasionally a little hard +to believe. Never in the pages of Lever has there been such a series of +hairbreadth escapes and dare-devil exploits. Surely he stretched it a little +sometimes. You may remember his adventure at Eylau—I think it was +Eylau—how a cannon-ball, striking the top of his helmet, paralyzed him by +the concussion of his spine; and how, on a Russian officer running forward to +cut him down, his horse bit the man’s face nearly off. This was the +famous charger which savaged everything until Marbot, having bought it for next +to nothing, cured it by thrusting a boiling leg of mutton into its mouth when +it tried to bite him. It certainly does need a robust faith to get over these +incidents. And yet, when one reflects upon the hundreds of battles and +skirmishes which a Napoleonic officer must have endured—how they must +have been the uninterrupted routine of his life from the first dark hair upon +his lip to the first grey one upon his head, it is presumptuous to say what may +or may not have been possible in such unparalleled careers. At any rate, be it +fact or fiction—fact it is, in my opinion, with some artistic touching up +of the high lights—there are few books which I could not spare from my +shelves better than the memoirs of the gallant Marbot. +</p> + +<p> +I dwell upon this particular book because it is the best; but take the whole +line, and there is not one which is not full of interest. Marbot gives you the +point of view of the officer. So does De Segur and De Fezensac and Colonel +Gonville, each in some different branch of the service. But some are from the +pens of the men in the ranks, and they are even more graphic than the others. +Here, for example, are the papers of good old Cogniet, who was a grenadier of +the Guard, and could neither read nor write until after the great wars were +over. A tougher soldier never went into battle. Here is Sergeant Bourgogne, +also with his dreadful account of that nightmare campaign in Russia, and the +gallant Chevillet, trumpeter of Chasseurs, with his matter-of-fact account of +all that he saw, where the daily “combat” is sandwiched in betwixt +the real business of the day, which was foraging for his frugal breakfast and +supper. There is no better writing, and no easier reading, than the records of +these men of action. +</p> + +<p> +A Briton cannot help asking himself, as he realizes what men these were, what +would have happened if 150,000 Cogniets and Bourgognes, with Marbots to lead +them, and the great captain of all time in the prime of his vigour at their +head, had made their landing in Kent? For months it was touch-and-go. A single +naval slip which left the Channel clear would have been followed by an +embarkation from Boulogne, which had been brought by constant practice to so +incredibly fine a point that the last horse was aboard within two hours of the +start. Any evening might have seen the whole host upon the Pevensey Flats. What +then? We know what Humbert did with a handful of men in Ireland, and the story +is not reassuring. Conquest, of course, is unthinkable. The world in arms could +not do that. But Napoleon never thought of the conquest of Britain. He has +expressly disclaimed it. What he did contemplate was a gigantic raid in which +he would do so much damage that for years to come England would be occupied at +home in picking up the pieces, instead of having energy to spend abroad in +thwarting his Continental plans. +</p> + +<p> +Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Sheerness in flames, with London either levelled to +the ground or ransomed at his own figure—that was a more feasible +programme. Then, with the united fleets of conquered Europe at his back, +enormous armies and an inexhaustible treasury, swollen with the ransom of +Britain, he could turn to that conquest of America which would win back the old +colonies of France and leave him master of the world. If the worst happened and +he had met his Waterloo upon the South Downs, he would have done again what he +did in Egypt and once more in Russia: hurried back to France in a swift vessel, +and still had force enough to hold his own upon the Continent. It would, no +doubt, have been a big stake to lay upon the table—150,000 of his +best—but he could play again if he lost; while, if he won, he cleared the +board. A fine game—if little Nelson had not stopped it, and with one blow +fixed the edge of salt water as the limit of Napoleon’s power. +</p> + +<p> +There’s the cast of a medal on the top of that cabinet which will bring +it all close home to you. It is taken from the die of the medal which Napoleon +had arranged to issue on the day that he reached London. It serves, at any +rate, to show that his great muster was not a bluff, but that he really did +mean serious business. On one side is his head. On the other France is engaged +in strangling and throwing to earth a curious fish-tailed creature, which +stands for perfidious Albion. “Frappe a Londres” is printed on one +part of it, and “La Descente dans Angleterre” upon another. Struck +to commemorate a conquest, it remains now as a souvenir of a fiasco. But it was +a close call. +</p> + +<p> +By the way, talking of Napoleon’s flight from Egypt, did you ever see a +curious little book called, if I remember right, “Intercepted +Letters”? No; I have no copy upon this shelf, but a friend is more +fortunate. It shows the almost incredible hatred which existed at the end of +the eighteenth century between the two nations, descending even to the most +petty personal annoyance. On this occasion the British Government intercepted a +mail-bag of letters coming from French officers in Egypt to their friends at +home, and they either published them, or at least allowed them to be published, +in the hope, no doubt, of causing domestic complications. Was ever a more +despicable action? But who knows what other injuries had been inflicted to draw +forth such a retaliation? I have myself seen a burned and mutilated British +mail lying where De Wet had left it; but suppose the refinement of his +vengeance had gone so far as to publish it, what a thunder-bolt it might have +been! +</p> + +<p> +As to the French officers, I have read their letters, though even after a +century one had a feeling of guilt when one did so. But, on the whole, they are +a credit to the writers, and give the impression of a noble and chivalrous set +of men. Whether they were all addressed to the right people is another matter, +and therein lay the poisoned sting of this most un-British affair. As to the +monstrous things which were done upon the other side, remember the arrest of +all the poor British tourists and commercials who chanced to be in France when +the war was renewed in 1803. They had run over in all trust and confidence for +a little outing and change of air. They certainly got it, for Napoleon’s +steel grip fell upon them, and they rejoined their families in 1814. He must +have had a heart of adamant and a will of iron. Look at his conduct over the +naval prisoners. The natural proceeding would have been to exchange them. For +some reason he did not think it good policy to do so. All representations from +the British Government were set aside, save in the case of the higher officers. +Hence the miseries of the hulks and the dreadful prison barracks in England. +Hence also the unhappy idlers of Verdun. What splendid loyalty there must have +been in those humble Frenchmen which never allowed them for one instant to turn +bitterly upon the author of all their great misfortunes. It is all brought +vividly home by the description of their prisons given by Borrow in +“Lavengro.” This is the passage— +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“What a strange appearance had those mighty casernes, with their blank, +blind walls, without windows or grating, and their slanting roofs, out of +which, through orifices where the tiles had been removed, would be protruded +dozens of grim heads, feasting their prison-sick eyes on the wide expanse of +country unfolded from their airy height. Ah! there was much misery in those +casernes; and from those roofs, doubtless, many a wistful look was turned in +the direction of lovely France. Much had the poor inmates to endure, and much +to complain of, to the disgrace of England be it said—of England, in +general so kind and bountiful. Rations of carrion meat, and bread from which I +have seen the very hounds occasionally turn away, were unworthy entertainment +even for the most ruffian enemy, when helpless and captive; and such, alas! was +the fare in those casernes. And then, those visits, or rather ruthless inroads, +called in the slang of the place ‘straw-plait hunts,’ when in +pursuit of a contraband article, which the prisoners, in order to procure +themselves a few of the necessaries and comforts of existence, were in the +habit of making, red-coated battalions were marched into the prisons, who, with +the bayonet’s point, carried havoc and ruin into every poor convenience +which ingenious wretchedness had been endeavouring to raise around it; and then +the triumphant exit with the miserable booty, and worst of all, the accursed +bonfire, on the barrack parade of the plait contraband, beneath the view of +glaring eyeballs from those lofty roofs, amid the hurrahs of the troops +frequently drowned in the curses poured down from above like a tempest-shower, +or in the terrific war-whoop of ‘Vive l’Empereur!’” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +There is a little vignette of Napoleon’s men in captivity. Here is +another which is worth preserving of the bearing of his veterans when wounded +on the field of battle. It is from Mercer’s recollections of the Battle +of Waterloo. Mercer had spent the day firing case into the French cavalry at +ranges from fifty to two hundred yards, losing two-thirds of his own battery in +the process. In the evening he had a look at some of his own grim handiwork. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“I had satisfied my curiosity at Hougoumont, and was retracing my steps +up the hill when my attention was called to a group of wounded Frenchmen by the +calm, dignified, and soldier-like oration addressed by one of them to the rest. +I cannot, like Livy, compose a fine harangue for my hero, and, of course, I +could not retain the precise words, but the import of them was to exhort them +to bear their sufferings with fortitude; not to repine, like women or children, +at what every soldier should have made up his mind to suffer as the fortune of +war, but above all, to remember that they were surrounded by Englishmen, before +whom they ought to be doubly careful not to disgrace themselves by displaying +such an unsoldier-like want of fortitude. +</p> + +<p> +“The speaker was sitting on the ground with his lance stuck upright +beside him—an old veteran with thick bushy, grizzly beard, countenance +like a lion—a lancer of the old guard, and no doubt had fought in many a +field. One hand was flourished in the air as he spoke, the other, severed at +the wrist, lay on the earth beside him; one ball (case-shot, probably) had +entered his body, another had broken his leg. His suffering, after a night of +exposure so mangled, must have been great; yet he betrayed it not. His bearing +was that of a Roman, or perhaps an Indian warrior, and I could fancy him +concluding appropriately his speech in the words of the Mexican king, +‘And I too; am I on a bed of roses?’” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +What a load of moral responsibility upon one man! But his mind was insensible +to moral responsibility. Surely if it had not been it must have been crushed +beneath it. Now, if you want to understand the character of Napoleon—but +surely I must take a fresh start before I launch on so portentous a subject as +that. +</p> + +<p> +But before I leave the military men let me, for the credit of my own country, +after that infamous incident of the letters, indicate these six well-thumbed +volumes of “Napier’s History.” This is the story of the great +Peninsular War, by one who fought through it himself, and in no history has a +more chivalrous and manly account been given of one’s enemy. Indeed, +Napier seems to me to push it too far, for his admiration appears to extend not +only to the gallant soldiers who opposed him, but to the character and to the +ultimate aims of their leader. He was, in fact, a political follower of Charles +James Fox, and his heart seems to have been with the enemy even at the moment +when he led his men most desperately against them. In the verdict of history +the action of those men who, in their honest zeal for freedom, inflamed +somewhat by political strife, turned against their own country, when it was in +truth the Champion of Freedom, and approved of a military despot of the most +uncompromising kind, seems wildly foolish. +</p> + +<p> +But if Napier’s politics may seem strange, his soldiering was splendid, +and his prose among the very best that I know. There are passages in that +work—the one which describes the breach of Badajos, that of the charge of +the Fusiliers at Albuera, and that of the French advance at Fuentes +d’Onoro—which once read haunt the mind for ever. The book is a +worthy monument of a great national epic. Alas! for the pregnant sentence with +which it closes, “So ended the great war, and with it all memory of the +services of the veterans.” Was there ever a British war of which the same +might not have been written? +</p> + +<p> +The quotation which I have given from Mercer’s book turns my thoughts in +the direction of the British military reminiscences of that period, less +numerous, less varied, and less central than the French, but full of character +and interest all the same. I have found that if I am turned loose in a large +library, after hesitating over covers for half an hour or so, it is usually a +book of soldier memoirs which I take down. Man is never so interesting as when +he is thoroughly in earnest, and no one is so earnest as he whose life is at +stake upon the event. But of all types of soldier the best is the man who is +keen upon his work, and yet has general culture which enables him to see that +work in its due perspective, and to sympathize with the gentler aspirations of +mankind. Such a man is Mercer, an ice-cool fighter, with a sense of discipline +and decorum which prevented him from moving when a bombshell was fizzing +between his feet, and yet a man of thoughtful and philosophic temperament, with +a weakness for solitary musings, for children, and for flowers. He has written +for all time the classic account of a great battle, seen from the point of view +of a battery commander. Many others of Wellington’s soldiers wrote their +personal reminiscences. You can get them, as I have them there, in the pleasant +abridgement of “Wellington’s Men” (admirably edited by Dr. +Fitchett)—Anton the Highlander, Harris the rifleman, and Kincaid of the +same corps. It is a most singular fate which has made an Australian +nonconformist clergyman the most sympathetic and eloquent reconstructor of +those old heroes, but it is a noble example of that unity of the British race, +which in fifty scattered lands still mourns or rejoices over the same historic +record. +</p> + +<p> +And just one word, before I close down this over-long and too discursive +chatter, on the subject of yonder twin red volumes which flank the shelf. They +are Maxwell’s “History of Wellington,” and I do not think you +will find a better or more readable one. The reader must ever feel towards the +great soldier what his own immediate followers felt, respect rather than +affection. One’s failure to attain a more affectionate emotion is +alleviated by the knowledge that it was the last thing which he invited or +desired. “Don’t be a damned fool, sir!” was his exhortation +to the good citizen who had paid him a compliment. It was a curious, callous +nature, brusque and limited. The hardest huntsman learns to love his hounds, +but he showed no affection and a good deal of contempt for the men who had been +his instruments. “They are the scum of the earth,” said he. +“All English soldiers are fellows who have enlisted for drink. That is +the plain fact—they have all enlisted for drink.” His general +orders were full of undeserved reproaches at a time when the most lavish praise +could hardly have met the real deserts of his army. When the wars were done he +saw little, save in his official capacity, of his old comrades-in-arms. And +yet, from major-general to drummer-boy, he was the man whom they would all have +elected to serve under, had the work to be done once more. As one of them said, +“The sight of his long nose was worth ten thousand men on a field of +battle.” They were themselves a leathery breed, and cared little for the +gentler amenities so long as the French were well drubbed. +</p> + +<p> +His mind, which was comprehensive and alert in warfare, was singularly limited +in civil affairs. As a statesman he was so constant an example of devotion to +duty, self-sacrifice, and high disinterested character, that the country was +the better for his presence. But he fiercely opposed Catholic Emancipation, the +Reform Bill, and everything upon which our modern life is founded. He could +never be brought to see that a pyramid should stand on its base and not on its +apex, and that the larger the pyramid, the broader should be the base. Even in +military affairs he was averse from every change, and I know of no improvements +which came from his initiative during all those years when his authority was +supreme. The floggings which broke a man’s spirit and self-respect, the +leathern stock which hampered his movements, all the old traditional regime +found a champion in him. On the other hand, he strongly opposed the +introduction of the percussion cap as opposed to the flint and steel in the +musket. Neither in war nor in politics did he rightly judge the future. +</p> + +<p> +And yet in reading his letters and dispatches, one is surprised sometimes at +the incisive thought and its vigorous expression. There is a passage in which +he describes the way in which his soldiers would occasionally desert into some +town which he was besieging. “They knew,” he writes, “that +they must be taken, for when we lay our bloody hands upon a place we are sure +to take it, sooner or later; but they liked being dry and under cover, and then +that extraordinary caprice which always pervades the English character! Our +deserters are very badly treated by the enemy; those who deserted in France +were treated as the lowest of mortals, slaves and scavengers. Nothing but +English caprice can account for it; just what makes our noblemen associate with +stage-coach drivers, and become stage-coach drivers themselves.” After +reading that passage, how often does the phrase “the extraordinary +caprice which always pervades the English character” come back as one +observes some fresh manifestation of it! +</p> + +<p> +But let not my last note upon the great duke be a carping one. Rather let my +final sentence be one which will remind you of his frugal and abstemious life, +his carpetless floor and little camp bed, his precise courtesy which left no +humblest letter unanswered, his courage which never flinched, his tenacity +which never faltered, his sense of duty which made his life one long unselfish +effort on behalf of what seemed to him to be the highest interest of the State. +Go down and stand by the huge granite sarcophagus in the dim light of the crypt +of St. Paul’s, and in the hush of that austere spot, cast back your mind +to the days when little England alone stood firm against the greatest soldier +and the greatest army that the world has ever known. Then you feel what this +dead man stood for, and you pray that we may still find such another amongst us +when the clouds gather once again. +</p> + +<p> +You see that the literature of Waterloo is well represented in my small +military library. Of all books dealing with the personal view of the matter, I +think that “Siborne’s Letters,” which is a collection of the +narratives of surviving officers made by Siborne in the year 1827, is the most +interesting. Gronow’s account is also very vivid and interesting. Of the +strategical narratives, Houssaye’s book is my favourite. Taken from the +French point of view, it gets the actions of the allies in truer perspective +than any English or German account can do; but there is a fascination about +that great combat which makes every narrative that bears upon it of enthralling +interest. +</p> + +<p> +Wellington used to say that too much was made of it, and that one would imagine +that the British Army had never fought a battle before. It was a characteristic +speech, but it must be admitted that the British Army never had, as a matter of +fact, for many centuries fought a battle which was finally decisive of a great +European war. There lies the perennial interest of the incident, that it was +the last act of that long-drawn drama, and that to the very fall of the curtain +no man could tell how the play would end—“the nearest run thing +that ever you saw”—that was the victor’s description. It is a +singular thing that during those twenty-five years of incessant fighting the +material and methods of warfare made so little progress. So far as I know, +there was no great change in either between 1789 and 1805. The breech-loader, +heavy artillery, the ironclad, all great advances in the art of war, have been +invented in time of peace. There are some improvements so obvious, and at the +same time so valuable, that it is extraordinary that they were not adopted. +Signalling, for example, whether by heliograph or by flag-waving, would have +made an immense difference in the Napoleonic campaigns. The principle of the +semaphore was well known, and Belgium, with its numerous windmills, would seem +to be furnished with natural semaphores. Yet in the four days during which the +campaign of Waterloo was fought, the whole scheme of military operations on +both sides was again and again imperilled, and finally in the case of the +French brought to utter ruin by lack of that intelligence which could so easily +have been conveyed. June 18th was at intervals a sunshiny day—a four-inch +glass mirror would have put Napoleon in communication with Gruchy, and the +whole history of Europe might have been altered. Wellington himself suffered +dreadfully from defective information which might have been easily supplied. +The unexpected presence of the French army was first discovered at four in the +morning of June 15. It was of enormous importance to get the news rapidly to +Wellington at Brussels that he might instantly concentrate his scattered forces +on the best line of resistance—yet, through the folly of sending only a +single messenger, this vital information did not reach him until three in the +afternoon, the distance being thirty miles. Again, when Blucher was defeated at +Ligny on the 16th, it was of enormous importance that Wellington should know at +once the line of his retreat so as to prevent the French from driving a wedge +between them. The single Prussian officer who was despatched with this +information was wounded, and never reached his destination, and it was only +next day that Wellington learned the Prussian plans. On what tiny things does +History depend! +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap09"></a>IX.</h2> + +<p> +The contemplation of my fine little regiment of French military memoirs had +brought me to the question of Napoleon himself, and you see that I have a very +fair line dealing with him also. There is Scott’s life, which is not +entirely a success. His ink was too precious to be shed in such a venture. But +here are the three volumes of the physician Bourrienne—that Bourrienne +who knew him so well. Does any one ever know a man so well as his doctor? They +are quite excellent and admirably translated. Meneval also—the patient +Meneval—who wrote for untold hours to dictation at ordinary talking +speed, and yet was expected to be legible and to make no mistakes. At least his +master could not fairly criticize his legibility, for is it not on record that +when Napoleon’s holograph account of an engagement was laid before the +President of the Senate, the worthy man thought that it was a drawn plan of the +battle? Meneval survived his master and has left an excellent and intimate +account of him. There is Constant’s account, also written from that point +of view in which it is proverbial that no man is a hero. But of all the vivid +terrible pictures of Napoleon the most haunting is by a man who never saw him +and whose book was not directly dealing with him. I mean Taine’s account +of him, in the first volume of “Les Origines de la France +Contemporaine.” You can never forget it when once you have read it. He +produces his effect in a wonderful, and to me a novel, way. He does not, for +example, say in mere crude words that Napoleon had a more than mediaeval +Italian cunning. He presents a succession of documents—gives a series of +contemporary instances to prove it. Then, having got that fixed in your head by +blow after blow, he passes on to another phase of his character, his +coldhearted amorousness, his power of work, his spoiled child wilfulness, or +some other quality, and piles up his illustrations of that. Instead, for +example, of saying that the Emperor had a marvellous memory for detail, we have +the account of the head of Artillery laying the list of all the guns in France +before his master, who looked over it and remarked, “Yes, but you have +omitted two in a fort near Dieppe.” So the man is gradually etched in +with indelible ink. It is a wonderful figure of which you are conscious in the +end, the figure of an archangel, but surely of an archangel of darkness. +</p> + +<p> +We will, after Taine’s method, take one fact and let it speak for itself. +Napoleon left a legacy in a codicil to his will to a man who tried to +assassinate Wellington. There is the mediaeval Italian again! He was no more a +Corsican than the Englishman born in India is a Hindoo. Read the lives of the +Borgias, the Sforzas, the Medicis, and of all the lustful, cruel, broad-minded, +art-loving, talented despots of the little Italian States, including Genoa, +from which the Buonapartes migrated. There at once you get the real descent of +the man, with all the stigmata clear upon him—the outward calm, the +inward passion, the layer of snow above the volcano, everything which +characterized the old despots of his native land, the pupils of Machiavelli, +but all raised to the dimensions of genius. You can whitewash him as you may, +but you will never get a layer thick enough to cover the stain of that +cold-blooded deliberate endorsement of his noble adversary’s +assassination. +</p> + +<p> +Another book which gives an extraordinarily vivid picture of the man is this +one—the Memoirs of Madame de Remusat. She was in daily contact with him +at the Court, and she studied him with those quick critical eyes of a clever +woman, the most unerring things in life when they are not blinded by love. If +you have read those pages, you feel that you know him as if you had yourself +seen and talked with him. His singular mixture of the small and the great, his +huge sweep of imagination, his very limited knowledge, his intense egotism, his +impatience of obstacles, his boorishness, his gross impertinence to women, his +diabolical playing upon the weak side of every one with whom he came in +contact—they make up among them one of the most striking of historical +portraits. +</p> + +<p> +Most of my books deal with the days of his greatness, but here, you see, is a +three-volume account of those weary years at St. Helena. Who can help pitying +the mewed eagle? And yet if you play the great game you must pay a stake. This +was the same man who had a royal duke shot in a ditch because he was a danger +to his throne. Was not he himself a danger to every throne in Europe? Why so +harsh a retreat as St. Helena, you say? Remember that he had been put in a +milder one before, that he had broken away from it, and that the lives of fifty +thousand men had paid for the mistaken leniency. All this is forgotten now, and +the pathetic picture of the modern Prometheus chained to his rock and devoured +by the vultures of his own bitter thoughts, is the one impression which the +world has retained. It is always so much easier to follow the emotions than the +reason, especially where a cheap magnanimity and second-hand generosity are +involved. But reason must still insist that Europe’s treatment of +Napoleon was not vindictive, and that Hudson Lowe was a man who tried to live +up to the trust which had been committed to him by his country. +</p> + +<p> +It was certainly not a post from which any one would hope for credit. If he +were slack and easy-going all would be well. But there would be the chance of a +second flight with its consequences. If he were strict and assiduous he would +be assuredly represented as a petty tyrant. “I am glad when you are on +outpost,” said Lowe’s general in some campaign, “for then I +am sure of a sound rest.” He was on outpost at St. Helena, and because he +was true to his duties Europe (France included) had a sound rest. But he +purchased it at the price of his own reputation. The greatest schemer in the +world, having nothing else on which to vent his energies, turned them all to +the task of vilifying his guardian. It was natural enough that he who had never +known control should not brook it now. It is natural also that sentimentalists +who have not thought of the details should take the Emperor’s point of +view. What is deplorable, however, is that our own people should be misled by +one-sided accounts, and that they should throw to the wolves a man who was +serving his country in a post of anxiety and danger, with such responsibility +upon him as few could ever have endured. Let them remember Montholon’s +remark: “An angel from heaven would not have satisfied us.” Let +them recall also that Lowe with ample material never once troubled to state his +own case. “<i>Je fais mon devoir et suis indifférent pour le +reste</i>,” said he, in his interview with the Emperor. They were no idle +words. +</p> + +<p> +Apart from this particular epoch, French literature, which is so rich in all +its branches, is richest of all in its memoirs. Whenever there was anything of +interest going forward there was always some kindly gossip who knew all about +it, and was ready to set it down for the benefit of posterity. Our own history +has not nearly enough of these charming sidelights. Look at our sailors in the +Napoleonic wars, for example. They played an epoch-making part. For nearly +twenty years Freedom was a Refugee upon the seas. Had our navy been swept away, +then all Europe would have been one organized despotism. At times everybody was +against us, fighting against their own direct interests under the pressure of +that terrible hand. We fought on the waters with the French, with the +Spaniards, with the Danes, with the Russians, with the Turks, even with our +American kinsmen. Middies grew into post-captains, and admirals into dotards +during that prolonged struggle. And what have we in literature to show for it +all? Marryat’s novels, many of which are founded upon personal +experience, Nelson’s and Collingwood’s letters, Lord +Cochrane’s biography—that is about all. I wish we had more of +Collingwood, for he wielded a fine pen. Do you remember the sonorous opening of +his Trafalgar message to his captains?— +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“The ever to be lamented death of Lord Viscount Nelson, Duke of Bronte, +the Commander-in-Chief, who fell in the action of the 21st, in the arms of +Victory, covered with glory, whose memory will be ever dear to the British Navy +and the British Nation; whose zeal for the honour of his king and for the +interests of his country will be ever held up as a shining example for a +British seaman—leaves to me a duty to return thanks, etc., etc.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +It was a worthy sentence to carry such a message, written too in a raging +tempest, with sinking vessels all around him. But in the main it is a poor crop +from such a soil. No doubt our sailors were too busy to do much writing, but +none the less one wonders that among so many thousands there were not some to +understand what a treasure their experiences would be to their descendants. I +can call to mind the old three-deckers which used to rot in Portsmouth Harbour, +and I have often thought, could they tell their tales, what a missing chapter +in our literature they could supply. +</p> + +<p> +It is not only in Napoleonic memoirs that the French are so fortunate. The +almost equally interesting age of Louis XIV. produced an even more wonderful +series. If you go deeply into the subject you are amazed by their number, and +you feel as if every one at the Court of the Roi Soleil had done what he (or +she) could to give away their neighbours. Just to take the more obvious, there +are St. Simon’s Memoirs—those in themselves give us a more +comprehensive and intimate view of the age than anything I know of which treats +of the times of Queen Victoria. Then there is St. Evremond, who is nearly as +complete. Do you want the view of a woman of quality? There are the letters of +Madame de Sevigne (eight volumes of them), perhaps the most wonderful series of +letters that any woman has ever penned. Do you want the confessions of a rake +of the period? Here are the too salacious memoirs of the mischievous Duc de +Roquelaure, not reading for the nursery certainly, not even for the boudoir, +but a strange and very intimate picture of the times. All these books fit into +each other, for the characters of the one reappear in the others. You come to +know them quite familiarly before you have finished, their loves and their +hates, their duels, their intrigues, and their ultimate fortunes. If you do not +care to go so deeply into it you have only to put Julia Pardoe’s +four-volumed “Court of Louis XIV.” upon your shelf, and you will +find a very admirable condensation—or a distillation rather, for most of +the salt is left behind. There is another book too—that big one on the +bottom shelf—which holds it all between its brown and gold covers. An +extravagance that—for it cost me some sovereigns—but it is +something to have the portraits of all that wonderful galaxy, of Louis, of the +devout Maintenon, of the frail Montespan, of Bossuet, Fénelon, Molière, Racine, +Pascal, Condé, Turenne, and all the saints and sinners of the age. If you want +to make yourself a present, and chance upon a copy of “The Court and +Times of Louis XIV.,” you will never think that your money has been +wasted. +</p> + +<p> +Well, I have bored you unduly, my patient friend, with my love of memoirs, +Napoleonic and otherwise, which give a touch of human interest to the arid +records of history. Not that history should be arid. It ought to be the most +interesting subject upon earth, the story of ourselves, of our forefathers, of +the human race, the events which made us what we are, and wherein, if +Weismann’s views hold the field, some microscopic fraction of this very +body which for the instant we chance to inhabit may have borne a part. But +unfortunately the power of accumulating knowledge and that of imparting it are +two very different things, and the uninspired historian becomes merely the +dignified compiler of an enlarged almanac. Worst of all, when a man does come +along with fancy and imagination, who can breathe the breath of life into the +dry bones, it is the fashion for the dryasdusts to belabour him, as one who has +wandered away from the orthodox path and must necessarily be inaccurate. So +Froude was attacked. So also Macaulay in his day. But both will be read when +the pedants are forgotten. If I were asked my very ideal of how history should +be written, I think I should point to those two rows on yonder shelf, the one +M’Carthy’s “History of Our Own Times,” the other +Lecky’s “History of England in the Eighteenth Century.” +Curious that each should have been written by an Irishman, and that though of +opposite politics and living in an age when Irish affairs have caused such +bitterness, both should be conspicuous not merely for all literary graces, but +for that broad toleration which sees every side of a question, and handles +every problem from the point of view of the philosophic observer and never of +the sectarian partisan. +</p> + +<p> +By the way, talking of history, have you read Parkman’s works? He was, I +think, among the very greatest of the historians, and yet one seldom hears his +name. A New England man by birth, and writing principally of the early history +of the American Settlements and of French Canada, it is perhaps excusable that +he should have no great vogue in England, but even among Americans I have found +many who have not read him. There are four of his volumes in green and gold +down yonder, “The Jesuits in Canada,” and “Frontenac,” +but there are others, all of them well worth reading, “Pioneers of +France,” “Montcalm and Wolfe,” “Discovery of the Great +West,” etc. Some day I hope to have a complete set. +</p> + +<p> +Taking only that one book, “The Jesuits in Canada,” it is worth a +reputation in itself. And how noble a tribute is this which a man of Puritan +blood pays to that wonderful Order! He shows how in the heyday of their +enthusiasm these brave soldiers of the Cross invaded Canada as they did China +and every other place where danger was to be faced, and a horrible death to be +found. I don’t care what faith a man may profess, or whether he be a +Christian at all, but he cannot read these true records without feeling that +the very highest that man has ever evolved in sanctity and devotion was to be +found among these marvellous men. They were indeed the pioneers of +civilization, for apart from doctrines they brought among the savages the +highest European culture, and in their own deportment an object-lesson of how +chastely, austerely, and nobly men could live. France has sent myriads of brave +men on to her battlefields, but in all her long record of glory I do not think +that she can point to any courage so steadfast and so absolutely heroic as that +of the men of the Iroquois Mission. +</p> + +<p> +How nobly they lived makes the body of the book, how serenely they died forms +the end to it. It is a tale which cannot even now be read without a +shudder—a nightmare of horrors. Fanaticism may brace a man to hurl +himself into oblivion, as the Mahdi’s hordes did before Khartoum, but one +feels that it is at least a higher development of such emotion, where men +slowly and in cold blood endure so thankless a life, and welcome so dreadful an +end. Every faith can equally boast its martyrs—a painful thought, since +it shows how many thousands must have given their blood for error—but in +testifying to their faith these brave men have testified to something more +important still, to the subjugation of the body and to the absolute supremacy +of the dominating spirit. +</p> + +<p> +The story of Father Jogue is but one of many, and yet it is worth recounting, +as showing the spirit of the men. He also was on the Iroquois Mission, and was +so tortured and mutilated by his sweet parishioners that the very dogs used to +howl at his distorted figure. He made his way back to France, not for any +reason of personal rest or recuperation, but because he needed a special +dispensation to say Mass. The Catholic Church has a regulation that a priest +shall not be deformed, so that the savages with their knives had wrought better +than they knew. He received his dispensation and was sent for by Louis XIV., +who asked him what he could do for him. No doubt the assembled courtiers +expected to hear him ask for the next vacant Bishopric. What he did actually +ask for, as the highest favour, was to be sent back to the Iroquois Mission, +where the savages signalized his arrival by burning him alive. +</p> + +<p> +Parkman is worth reading, if it were only for his account of the Indians. +Perhaps the very strangest thing about them, and the most unaccountable, is +their small numbers. The Iroquois were one of the most formidable of tribes. +They were of the Five Nations, whose scalping-parties wandered over an expanse +of thousands of square miles. Yet there is good reason to doubt whether the +whole five nations could have put as many thousand warriors in the field. It +was the same with all the other tribes of Northern Americans, both in the east, +the north, and the west. Their numbers were always insignificant. And yet they +had that huge country to themselves, the best of climates, and plenty of food. +Why was it that they did not people it thickly? It may be taken as a striking +example of the purpose and design which run through the affairs of men, that at +the very moment when the old world was ready to overflow the new world was +empty to receive it. Had North America been peopled as China is peopled, the +Europeans might have founded some settlements, but could never have taken +possession of the continent. Buffon has made the striking remark that the +creative power appeared to have never had great vigour in America. He alluded +to the abundance of the flora and fauna as compared with that of other great +divisions of the earth’s surface. Whether the numbers of the Indians are +an illustration of the same fact, or whether there is some special cause, is +beyond my very modest scientific attainments. When one reflects upon the +countless herds of bison which used to cover the Western plains, or marks in +the present day the race statistics of the French Canadians at one end of the +continent, and of the Southern negro at the other, it seems absurd to suppose +that there is any geographical reason against Nature being as prolific here as +elsewhere. However, these be deeper waters, and with your leave we will get +back into my usual six-inch wading-depth once more. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap10"></a>X.</h2> + +<p> +I don’t know how those two little books got in there. They are +Henley’s “Song of the Sword” and “Book of +Verses.” They ought to be over yonder in the rather limited Poetry +Section. Perhaps it is that I like his work so, whether it be prose or verse, +and so have put them ready to my hand. He was a remarkable man, a man who was +very much greater than his work, great as some of his work was. I have seldom +known a personality more magnetic and stimulating. You left his presence, as a +battery leaves a generating station, charged up and full. He made you feel what +a lot of work there was to be done, and how glorious it was to be able to do +it, and how needful to get started upon it that very hour. With the frame and +the vitality of a giant he was cruelly bereft of all outlet for his strength, +and so distilled it off in hot words, in warm sympathy, in strong prejudices, +in all manner of human and stimulating emotions. Much of the time and energy +which might have built an imperishable name for himself was spent in +encouraging others; but it was not waste, for he left his broad thumb-mark upon +all that passed beneath it. A dozen second-hand Henleys are fortifying our +literature to-day. +</p> + +<p> +Alas that we have so little of his very best! for that very best was the finest +of our time. Few poets ever wrote sixteen consecutive lines more noble and more +strong than those which begin with the well-known quatrain— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Out of the night that covers me,<br/> + Black as the pit from Pole to Pole,<br/> +I thank whatever Gods there be<br/> + For my unconquerable soul.” +</p> + +<p> +It is grand literature, and it is grand pluck too; for it came from a man who, +through no fault of his own, had been pruned, and pruned again, like an +ill-grown shrub, by the surgeon’s knife. When he said— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“In the fell clutch of Circumstance<br/> + I have not winced nor cried aloud,<br/> +Beneath the bludgeonings of Chance<br/> + My head is bloody but unbowed.” +</p> + +<p class="noindent"> +It was not what Lady Byron called “the mimic woe” of the poet, but +it was rather the grand defiance of the Indian warrior at the stake, whose +proud soul can hold in hand his quivering body. +</p> + +<p> +There were two quite distinct veins of poetry in Henley, each the very extreme +from the other. The one was heroic, gigantic, running to large sweeping images +and thundering words. Such are the “Song of the Sword” and much +more that he has written, like the wild singing of some Northern scald. The +other, and to my mind both the more characteristic and the finer side of his +work, is delicate, precise, finely etched, with extraordinarily vivid little +pictures drawn in carefully phrased and balanced English. Such are the +“Hospital Verses,” while the “London Voluntaries” stand +midway between the two styles. What! you have not read the “Hospital +Verses!” Then get the “Book of Verses” and read them without +delay. You will surely find something there which, for good or ill, is unique. +You can name—or at least I can name—nothing to compare it with. +Goldsmith and Crabbe have written of indoor themes; but their monotonous, if +majestic metre, wearies the modern reader. But this is so varied, so flexible, +so dramatic. It stands by itself. Confound the weekly journals and all the +other lightning conductors which caused such a man to pass away, and to leave a +total output of about five booklets behind him! +</p> + +<p> +However, all this is an absolute digression, for the books had no business in +this shelf at all. This corner is meant for chronicles of various sorts. Here +are three in a line, which carry you over a splendid stretch of French (which +usually means European) history, each, as luck would have it, beginning just +about the time when the other leaves off. The first is Froissart, the second de +Monstrelet, and the third de Comines. When you have read the three you have the +best contemporary account first hand of considerably more than a +century—a fair slice out of the total written record of the human race. +</p> + +<p> +Froissart is always splendid. If you desire to avoid the mediaeval French, +which only a specialist can read with pleasure, you can get Lord Berners’ +almost equally mediaeval, but very charming English, or you can turn to a +modern translation, such as this one of Johnes. A single page of Lord Berners +is delightful; but it is a strain, I think, to read bulky volumes in an archaic +style. Personally, I prefer the modern, and even with that you have shown some +patience before you have reached the end of that big second tome. +</p> + +<p> +I wonder whether, at the time, the old Hainault Canon had any idea of what he +was doing—whether it ever flashed across his mind that the day might come +when his book would be the one great authority, not only about the times in +which he lived, but about the whole institution of chivalry? I fear that it is +far more likely that his whole object was to gain some mundane advantage from +the various barons and knights whose names and deeds be recounts. He has left +it on record, for example, that when he visited the Court of England he took +with him a handsomely-bound copy of his work; and, doubtless, if one could +follow the good Canon one would find his journeys littered with similar copies +which were probably expensive gifts to the recipient, for what return would a +knightly soul make for a book which enshrined his own valour? +</p> + +<p> +But without looking too curiously into his motives, it must be admitted that +the work could not have been done more thoroughly. There is something of +Herodotus in the Canon’s cheery, chatty, garrulous, take-it-or-leave-it +manner. But he has the advantage of the old Greek in accuracy. Considering that +he belonged to the same age which gravely accepted the travellers’ tales +of Sir John Maundeville, it is, I think, remarkable how careful and accurate +the chronicler is. Take, for example, his description of Scotland and the +Scotch. Some would give the credit to Jean-le-Bel, but that is another matter. +Scotch descriptions are a subject over which a fourteenth-century Hainaulter +might fairly be allowed a little scope for his imagination. Yet we can see that +the account must on the whole have been very correct. The Galloway nags, the +girdle-cakes, the bagpipes—every little detail rings true. Jean-le-Bel +was actually present in a Border campaign, and from him Froissart got his +material; but he has never attempted to embroider it, and its accuracy, where +we can to some extent test it, must predispose us to accept his accounts where +they are beyond our confirmation. +</p> + +<p> +But the most interesting portion of old Froissart’s work is that which +deals with the knights and the knight-errants of his time, their deeds, their +habits, their methods of talking. It is true that he lived himself just a +little after the true heyday of chivalry; but he was quite early enough to have +met many of the men who had been looked upon as the flower of knighthood of the +time. His book was read too, and commented on by these very men (as many of +them as could read), and so we may take it that it was no fancy portrait, but a +correct picture of these soldiers which is to be found in it. The accounts are +always consistent. If you collate the remarks and speeches of the knights (as I +have had occasion to do) you will find a remarkable uniformity running through +them. We may believe then that this really does represent the kind of men who +fought at Crecy and at Poictiers, in the age when both the French and the +Scottish kings were prisoners in London, and England reached a pitch of +military glory which has perhaps never been equalled in her history. +</p> + +<p> +In one respect these knights differ from anything which we have had presented +to us in our historical romances. To turn to the supreme romancer, you will +find that Scott’s mediaeval knights were usually muscular athletes in the +prime of life: Bois-Guilbert, Front-de-Bœuf, Richard, Ivanhoe, Count +Robert—they all were such. But occasionally the most famous of +Froissart’s knights were old, crippled and blinded. Chandos, the best +lance of his day, must have been over seventy when he lost his life through +being charged upon the side on which he had already lost an eye. He was well on +to that age when he rode out from the English army and slew the Spanish +champion, big Marten Ferrara, upon the morning of Navaretta. Youth and strength +were very useful, no doubt, especially where heavy armour had to be carried, +but once on the horse’s back the gallant steed supplied the muscles. In +an English hunting-field many a doddering old man, when he is once firmly +seated in his familiar saddle, can give points to the youngsters at the game. +So it was among the knights, and those who had outlived all else could still +carry to the wars their wiliness, their experience with arms, and, above all, +their cool and undaunted courage. +</p> + +<p> +Beneath his varnish of chivalry, it cannot be gainsayed that the knight was +often a bloody and ferocious barbarian. There was little quarter in his wars, +save when a ransom might be claimed. But with all his savagery, he was a +light-hearted creature, like a formidable boy playing a dreadful game. He was +true also to his own curious code, and, so far as his own class went, his +feelings were genial and sympathetic, even in warfare. There was no personal +feeling or bitterness as there might be now in a war between Frenchmen and +Germans. On the contrary, the opponents were very softspoken and polite to each +other. “Is there any small vow of which I may relieve you?” +“Would you desire to attempt some small deed of arms upon me?” And +in the midst of a fight they would stop for a breather, and converse amicably +the while, with many compliments upon each other’s prowess. When Seaton +the Scotsman had exchanged as many blows as he wished with a company of French +knights, he said, “Thank you, gentlemen, thank you!” and galloped +away. An English knight made a vow, “for his own advancement and the +exaltation of his lady,” that he would ride into the hostile city of +Paris, and touch with his lance the inner barrier. The whole story is most +characteristic of the times. As he galloped up, the French knights around the +barrier, seeing that he was under vow, made no attack upon him, and called out +to him that he had carried himself well. As he returned, however, there stood +an unmannerly butcher with a pole-axe upon the side-walk, who struck him as he +passed, and killed him. Here ends the chronicler; but I have not the least +doubt that the butcher had a very evil time at the hands of the French knights, +who would not stand by and see one of their own order, even if he were an +enemy, meet so plebeian an end. +</p> + +<p> +De Comines, as a chronicler, is less quaint and more conventional than +Froissart, but the writer of romance can dig plenty of stones out of that +quarry for the use of his own little building. Of course Quentin Durward has +come bodily out of the pages of De Comines. The whole history of Louis XI. and +his relations with Charles the Bold, the strange life at Plessis-le-Tours, the +plebeian courtiers, the barber and the hangman, the astrologers, the +alternations of savage cruelty and of slavish superstition—it is all set +forth here. One would imagine that such a monarch was unique, that such a +mixture of strange qualities and monstrous crimes could never be matched, and +yet like causes will always produce like results. Read Walewski’s +“Life of Ivan the Terrible,” and you will find that more than a +century later Russia produced a monarch even more diabolical, but working +exactly on the same lines as Louis, even down to small details. The same +cruelty, the same superstition, the same astrologers, the same low-born +associates, the same residence outside the influence of the great +cities—a parallel could hardly be more complete. If you have not supped +too full of horrors when you have finished Ivan, then pass on to the same +author’s account of Peter the Great. What a land! What a succession of +monarchs! Blood and snow and iron! Both Ivan and Peter killed their own sons. +And there is a hideous mockery of religion running through it all which gives +it a grotesque horror of its own. We have had our Henry the Eighth, but our +very worst would have been a wise and benevolent rule in Russia. +</p> + +<p> +Talking of romance and of chivalry, that tattered book down yonder has as much +between its disreputable covers as most that I know. It is Washington +Irving’s “Conquest of Granada.” I do not know where he got +his material for this book—from Spanish Chronicles, I presume—but +the wars between the Moors and the Christian knights must have been among the +most chivalrous of exploits. I could not name a book which gets the beauty and +the glamour of it better than this one, the lance-heads gleaming in the dark +defiles, the red bale fires glowing on the crags, the stern devotion of the +mail-clad Christians, the debonnaire and courtly courage of the dashing Moslem. +Had Washington Irving written nothing else, that book alone should have forced +the door of every library. I love all his books, for no man wrote fresher +English with a purer style; but of them all it is still “The Conquest of +Granada” to which I turn most often. +</p> + +<p> +To hark back for a moment to history as seen in romances, here are two exotics +side by side, which have a flavour that is new. They are a brace of foreign +novelists, each of whom, so far as I know, has only two books. This +green-and-gold volume contains both the works of the Pomeranian Meinhold in an +excellent translation by Lady Wilde. The first is “Sidonia the +Sorceress,” the second, “The Amber Witch.” I don’t know +where one may turn for a stranger view of the Middle Ages, the quaint details +of simple life, with sudden intervals of grotesque savagery. The most weird and +barbarous things are made human and comprehensible. There is one incident which +haunts one after one has read it, where the executioner chaffers with the +villagers as to what price they will give him for putting some young witch to +the torture, running them up from a barrel of apples to a barrel and a half, on +the grounds that he is now old and rheumatic, and that the stooping and +straining is bad for his back. It should be done on a sloping hill, he +explains, so that the “dear little children” may see it easily. +Both “Sidonia” and “The Amber Witch” give such a +picture of old Germany as I have never seen elsewhere. +</p> + +<p> +But Meinhold belongs to a bygone generation. This other author, in whom I find +a new note, and one of great power, is Merejkowski, who is, if I mistake not, +young and with his career still before him. “The Forerunner” and +“The Death of the Gods” are the only two books of his which I have +been able to obtain, but the pictures of Renaissance Italy in the one, and of +declining Rome in the other, are in my opinion among the masterpieces of +fiction. I confess that as I read them I was pleased to find how open my mind +was to new impressions, for one of the greatest mental dangers which comes upon +a man as he grows older is that he should become so attached to old favourites +that he has no room for the new-comer, and persuades himself that the days of +great things are at an end because his own poor brain is getting ossified. You +have but to open any critical paper to see how common is the disease, but a +knowledge of literary history assures us that it has always been the same, and +that if the young writer is discouraged by adverse comparisons it has been the +common lot from the beginning. He has but one resource, which is to pay no heed +to criticism, but to try to satisfy his own highest standard and leave the rest +to time and the public. Here is a little bit of doggerel, pinned, as you see, +beside my bookcase, which may in a ruffled hour bring peace and guidance to +some younger brother— +</p> + +<p class="poem"> +“Critics kind—never mind!<br/> +Critics flatter—no matter!<br/> +Critics blame—all the same!<br/> +Critics curse—none the worse!<br/> +Do your best— —— the rest!” +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap11"></a>XI.</h2> + +<p> +I have been talking in the past tense of heroes and of knight-errants, but +surely their day is not yet passed. When the earth has all been explored, when +the last savage has been tamed, when the final cannon has been scrapped, and +the world has settled down into unbroken virtue and unutterable dulness, men +will cast their thoughts back to our age, and will idealize our romance +and—our courage, even as we do that of our distant forbears. “It is +wonderful what these people did with their rude implements and their limited +appliances!” That is what they will say when they read of our +explorations, our voyages, and our wars. +</p> + +<p> +Now, take that first book on my travel shelf. It is Knight’s +“Cruise of the <i>Falcon</i>.” Nature was guilty of the pun which +put this soul into a body so named. Read this simple record and tell me if +there is anything in Hakluyt more wonderful. Two landsmen—solicitors, if +I remember right—go down to Southampton Quay. They pick up a long-shore +youth, and they embark in a tiny boat in which they put to sea. Where do they +turn up? At Buenos Ayres. Thence they penetrate to Paraguay, return to the West +Indies, sell their little boat there, and so home. What could the Elizabethan +mariners have done more? There are no Spanish galleons now to vary the monotony +of such a voyage, but had there been I am very certain our adventurers would +have had their share of the doubloons. But surely it was the nobler when done +out of the pure lust of adventure and in answer to the call of the sea, with no +golden bait to draw them on. The old spirit still lives, disguise it as you +will with top hats, frock coats, and all prosaic settings. Perhaps even they +also will seem romantic when centuries have blurred them. +</p> + +<p> +Another book which shows the romance and the heroism which still linger upon +earth is that large copy of the “Voyage of the <i>Discovery</i> in the +Antarctic” by Captain Scott. Written in plain sailor fashion with no +attempt at over-statement or colour, it none the less (or perhaps all the more) +leaves a deep impression upon the mind. As one reads it, and reflects on what +one reads, one seems to get a clear view of just those qualities which make the +best kind of Briton. Every nation produces brave men. Every nation has men of +energy. But there is a certain type which mixes its bravery and its energy with +a gentle modesty and a boyish good-humour, and it is just this type which is +the highest. Here the whole expedition seem to have been imbued with the spirit +of their commander. No flinching, no grumbling, every discomfort taken as a +jest, no thought of self, each working only for the success of the enterprise. +When you have read of such privations so endured and so chronicled, it makes +one ashamed to show emotion over the small annoyances of daily life. Read of +Scott’s blinded, scurvy-struck party staggering on to their goal, and +then complain, if you can, of the heat of a northern sun, or the dust of a +country road. +</p> + +<p> +That is one of the weaknesses of modern life. We complain too much. We are not +ashamed of complaining. Time was when it was otherwise—when it was +thought effeminate to complain. The Gentleman should always be the Stoic, with +his soul too great to be affected by the small troubles of life. “You +look cold, sir,” said an English sympathizer to a French <i>emigré</i>. +The fallen noble drew himself up in his threadbare coat. “Sir,” +said he, “a gentleman is never cold.” One’s consideration for +others as well as one’s own self-respect should check the grumble. This +self-suppression, and also the concealment of pain are two of the old +<i>noblesse oblige</i> characteristics which are now little more than a +tradition. Public opinion should be firmer on the matter. The man who must hop +because his shin is hacked, or wring his hand because his knuckles are bruised +should be made to feel that he is an object not of pity, but of contempt. +</p> + +<p> +The tradition of Arctic exploration is a noble one among Americans as well as +ourselves. The next book is a case in point. It is Greely’s “Arctic +Service,” and it is a worthy shelf-companion to Scott’s +“Account of the Voyage of the <i>Discovery</i>.” There are +incidents in this book which one can never forget. The episode of those +twenty-odd men lying upon that horrible bluff, and dying one a day from cold +and hunger and scurvy, is one which dwarfs all our puny tragedies of romance. +And the gallant starving leader giving lectures on abstract science in an +attempt to take the thoughts of the dying men away from their +sufferings—what a picture! It is bad to suffer from cold and bad to +suffer from hunger, and bad to live in the dark; but that men could do all +these things for six months on end, and that some should live to tell the tale, +is, indeed, a marvel. What a world of feeling lies in the exclamation of the +poor dying lieutenant: “Well, this <i>is</i> wretched,” he groaned, +as he turned his face to the wall. +</p> + +<p> +The Anglo-Celtic race has always run to individualism, and yet there is none +which is capable of conceiving and carrying out a finer ideal of discipline. +There is nothing in Roman or Grecian annals, not even the lava-baked sentry at +Pompeii, which gives a more sternly fine object-lesson in duty than the young +recruits of the British army who went down in their ranks on the Birkenhead. +And this expedition of Greely’s gave rise to another example which seems +to me hardly less remarkable. You may remember, if you have read the book, that +even when there were only about eight unfortunates still left, hardly able to +move for weakness and hunger, the seven took the odd man out upon the ice, and +shot him dead for breach of discipline. The whole grim proceeding was carried +out with as much method and signing of papers, as if they were all within sight +of the Capitol at Washington. His offence had consisted, so far as I can +remember, of stealing and eating the thong which bound two portions of the +sledge together, something about as appetizing as a bootlace. It is only fair +to the commander to say, however, that it was one of a series of petty thefts, +and that the thong of a sledge might mean life or death to the whole party. +</p> + +<p> +Personally I must confess that anything bearing upon the Arctic Seas is always +of the deepest interest to me. He who has once been within the borders of that +mysterious region, which can be both the most lovely and the most repellent +upon earth, must always retain something of its glamour. Standing on the +confines of known geography I have shot the southward flying ducks, and have +taken from their gizzards pebbles which they have swallowed in some land whose +shores no human foot has trod. The memory of that inexpressible air, of the +great ice-girt lakes of deep blue water, of the cloudless sky shading away into +a light green and then into a cold yellow at the horizon, of the noisy +companionable birds, of the huge, greasy-backed water animals, of the slug-like +seals, startlingly black against the dazzling whiteness of the ice—all of +it will come back to a man in his dreams, and will seem little more than some +fantastic dream itself, so removed is it from the main stream of his life. And +then to play a fish a hundred tons in weight, and worth two thousand +pounds—but what in the world has all this to do with my bookcase? +</p> + +<p> +Yet it has its place in my main line of thought, for it leads me straight to +the very next upon the shelf, Bullen’s “Cruise of the +<i>Cachelot</i>,” a book which is full of the glamour and the mystery of +the sea, marred only by the brutality of those who go down to it in ships. This +is the sperm-whale fishing, an open-sea affair, and very different from that +Greenland ice groping in which I served a seven-months’ apprenticeship. +Both, I fear, are things of the past—certainly the northern fishing is +so, for why should men risk their lives to get oil when one has but to sink a +pipe in the ground. It is the more fortunate then that it should have been +handled by one of the most virile writers who has described a sailor’s +life. Bullen’s English at its best rises to a great height. If I wished +to show how high, I would take that next book down, “Sea Idylls.” +</p> + +<p> +How is this, for example, if you have an ear for the music of prose? It is a +simple paragraph out of the magnificent description of a long calm in the +tropics. +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“A change, unusual as unwholesome, came over the bright blue of the sea. +No longer did it reflect, as in a limpid mirror, the splendour of the sun, the +sweet silvery glow of the moon, or the coruscating clusters of countless stars. +Like the ashen-grey hue that bedims the countenance of the dying, a filmy +greasy skin appeared to overspread the recent loveliness of the ocean surface. +The sea was sick, stagnant, and foul, from its turbid waters arose a miasmatic +vapour like a breath of decay, which clung clammily to the palate and dulled +all the senses. Drawn by some strange force, from the unfathomable depths +below, eerie shapes sought the surface, blinking glassily at the unfamiliar +glare they had exchanged for their native gloom—uncouth creatures bedight +with tasselled fringes like weed-growths waving around them, fathom-long, +medusae with coloured spots like eyes clustering all over their transparent +substance, wriggling worm-like forms of such elusive matter that the smallest +exposure to the sun melted them, and they were not. Lower down, vast pale +shadows creep sluggishly along, happily undistinguishable as yet, but adding a +half-familiar flavour to the strange, faint smell that hung about us.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +Take the whole of that essay which describes a calm in the Tropics, or take the +other one: “Sunrise as seen from the Crow’s-nest,” and you +must admit that there have been few finer pieces of descriptive English in our +time. If I had to choose a sea library of only a dozen volumes I should +certainly give Bullen two places. The others? Well, it is so much a matter of +individual taste. “Tom Cringle’s Log” should have one for +certain. I hope boys respond now as they once did to the sharks and the +pirates, the planters, and all the rollicking high spirits of that splendid +book. Then there is Dana’s “Two Years before the Mast.” I +should find room also for Stevenson’s “Wrecker” and +“Ebb Tide.” Clark Russell deserves a whole shelf for himself, but +anyhow you could not miss out “The Wreck of the <i>Grosvenor</i>.” +Marryat, of course, must be represented, and I should pick “Midshipman +Easy” and “Peter Simple” as his samples. Then throw in one of +Melville’s Otaheite books—now far too completely +forgotten—“Typee” or “Omoo,” and as a quite +modern flavour Kipling’s “Captains Courageous” and Jack +London’s “Sea Wolf,” with Conrad’s “Nigger of the +Narcissus.” Then you will have enough to turn your study into a cabin and +bring the wash and surge to your ears, if written words can do it. Oh, how one +longs for it sometimes when life grows too artificial, and the old Viking blood +begins to stir! Surely it must linger in all of us, for no man who dwells in an +island but had an ancestor in longship or in coracle. Still more must the salt +drop tingle in the blood of an American when you reflect that in all that broad +continent there is not one whose forefather did not cross 3000 miles of ocean. +And yet there are in the Central States millions and millions of their +descendants who have never seen the sea. +</p> + +<p> +I have said that “Omoo” and “Typee,” the books in which +the sailor Melville describes his life among the Otaheitans, have sunk too +rapidly into obscurity. What a charming and interesting task there is for some +critic of catholic tastes and sympathetic judgment to undertake rescue work +among the lost books which would repay salvage! A small volume setting forth +their names and their claims to attention would be interesting in itself, and +more interesting in the material to which it would serve as an introduction. I +am sure there are many good books, possibly there are some great ones, which +have been swept away for a time in the rush. What chance, for example, has any +book by an unknown author which is published at a moment of great national +excitement, when some public crisis arrests the popular mind? Hundreds have +been still-born in this fashion, and are there none which should have lived +among them? Now, there is a book, a modern one, and written by a youth under +thirty. It is Snaith’s “Broke of Covenden,” and it scarce +attained a second edition. I do not say that it is a Classic—I should not +like to be positive that it is not—but I am perfectly sure that the man +who wrote it has the possibility of a Classic within him. Here is another +novel—“Eight Days,” by Forrest. You can’t buy it. You +are lucky even if you can find it in a library. Yet nothing ever written will +bring the Indian Mutiny home to you as this book will do. Here’s another +which I will warrant you never heard of. It is Powell’s “Animal +Episodes.” No, it is not a collection of dog-and-cat anecdotes, but it is +a series of very singularly told stories which deal with the animal side of the +human, and which you will feel have an entirely new flavour if you have a +discriminating palate. The book came out ten years ago, and is utterly unknown. +If I can point to three in one small shelf, how many lost lights must be +flitting in the outer darkness! +</p> + +<p> +Let me hark back for a moment to the subject with which I began, the romance of +travel and the frequent heroism of modern life. I have two books of Scientific +Exploration here which exhibit both these qualities as strongly as any I know. +I could not choose two better books to put into a young man’s hands if +you wished to train him first in a gentle and noble firmness of mind, and +secondly in a great love for and interest in all that pertains to Nature. The +one is Darwin’s “Journal of the Voyage of the <i>Beagle</i>.” +Any discerning eye must have detected long before the “Origin of +Species” appeared, simply on the strength of this book of travel, that a +brain of the first order, united with many rare qualities of character, had +arisen. Never was there a more comprehensive mind. Nothing was too small and +nothing too great for its alert observation. One page is occupied in the +analysis of some peculiarity in the web of a minute spider, while the next +deals with the evidence for the subsidence of a continent and the extinction of +a myriad animals. And his sweep of knowledge was so great—botany, +geology, zoology, each lending its corroborative aid to the other. How a youth +of Darwin’s age—he was only twenty-three when in the year 1831 he +started round the world on the surveying ship <i>Beagle</i>—could have +acquired such a mass of information fills one with the same wonder, and is +perhaps of the same nature, as the boy musician who exhibits by instinct the +touch of the master. Another quality which one would be less disposed to look +for in the savant is a fine contempt for danger, which is veiled in such +modesty that one reads between the lines in order to detect it. When he was in +the Argentine, the country outside the Settlements was covered with roving +bands of horse Indians, who gave no quarter to any whites. Yet Darwin rode the +four hundred miles between Bahia and Buenos Ayres, when even the hardy Gauchos +refused to accompany him. Personal danger and a hideous death were small things +to him compared to a new beetle or an undescribed fly. +</p> + +<p> +The second book to which I alluded is Wallace’s “Malay +Archipelago.” There is a strange similarity in the minds of the two men, +the same courage, both moral and physical, the same gentle persistence, the +same catholic knowledge and wide. sweep of mind, the same passion for the +observation of Nature. Wallace by a flash of intuition understood and described +in a letter to Darwin the cause of the Origin of Species at the very time when +the latter was publishing a book founded upon twenty years’ labour to +prove the same thesis. What must have been his feelings when he read that +letter? And yet he had nothing to fear, for his book found no more enthusiastic +admirer than the man who had in a sense anticipated it. Here also one sees that +Science has its heroes no less than Religion. One of Wallace’s missions +in Papua was to examine the nature and species of the Birds-of-Paradise; but in +the course of the years of his wanderings through those islands he made a +complete investigation of the whole fauna. A footnote somewhere explains that +the Papuans who lived in the Bird-of-Paradise country were confirmed cannibals. +Fancy living for years with or near such neighbours! Let a young fellow read +these two books, and he cannot fail to have both his mind and his spirit +strengthened by the reading. +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div class="chapter"> + +<h2><a name="chap12"></a>XII.</h2> + +<p> +Here we are at the final seance. For the last time, my patient comrade, I ask +you to make yourself comfortable upon the old green settee, to look up at the +oaken shelves, and to bear with me as best you may while I preach about their +contents. The last time! And yet, as I look along the lines of the volumes, I +have not mentioned one out of ten of those to which I owe a debt of gratitude, +nor one in a hundred of the thoughts which course through my brain as I look at +them. As well perhaps, for the man who has said all that he has to say has +invariably said too much. +</p> + +<p> +Let me be didactic for a moment! I assume this solemn—oh, call it not +pedantic!—attitude because my eye catches the small but select corner +which constitutes my library of Science. I wanted to say that if I were +advising a young man who was beginning life, I should counsel him to devote one +evening a week to scientific reading. Had he the perseverance to adhere to his +resolution, and if he began it at twenty, he would certainly find himself with +an unusually well-furnished mind at thirty, which would stand him in right good +stead in whatever line of life he might walk. When I advise him to read +science, I do not mean that he should choke himself with the dust of the +pedants, and lose himself in the subdivisions of the Lepidoptera, or the +classifications of the dicotyledonous plants. These dreary details are the +prickly bushes in that enchanted garden, and you are foolish indeed if you +begin your walks by butting your head into one. Keep very clear of them until +you have explored the open beds and wandered down every easy path. For this +reason avoid the text-books, which repel, and cultivate that popular science +which attracts. You cannot hope to be a specialist upon all these varied +subjects. Better far to have a broad idea of general results, and to understand +their relations to each other. A very little reading will give a man such a +knowledge of geology, for example, as will make every quarry and railway +cutting an object of interest. A very little zoology will enable you to satisfy +your curiosity as to what is the proper name and style of this buff-ermine moth +which at the present instant is buzzing round the lamp. A very little botany +will enable you to recognize every flower you are likely to meet in your walks +abroad, and to give you a tiny thrill of interest when you chance upon one +which is beyond your ken. A very little archaeology will tell you all about +yonder British tumulus, or help you to fill in the outline of the broken Roman +camp upon the downs. A very little astronomy will cause you to look more +intently at the heavens, to pick out your brothers the planets, who move in +your own circles, from the stranger stars, and to appreciate the order, beauty, +and majesty of that material universe which is most surely the outward sign of +the spiritual force behind it. How a man of science can be a materialist is as +amazing to me as how a sectarian can limit the possibilities of the Creator. +Show me a picture without an artist, show me a bust without a sculptor, show me +music without a musician, and then you may begin to talk to me of a universe +without a Universe-maker, call Him by what name you will. +</p> + +<p> +Here is Flammarion’s “L’Atmosphere”—a very +gorgeous though weather-stained copy in faded scarlet and gold. The book has a +small history, and I value it. A young Frenchman, dying of fever on the west +coast of Africa, gave it to me as a professional fee. The sight of it takes me +back to a little ship’s bunk, and a sallow face with large, sad eyes +looking out at me. Poor boy, I fear that he never saw his beloved Marseilles +again! +</p> + +<p> +Talking of popular science, I know no better books for exciting a man’s +first interest, and giving a broad general view of the subject, than these of +Samuel Laing. Who would have imagined that the wise savant and gentle dreamer +of these volumes was also the energetic secretary of a railway company? Many +men of the highest scientific eminence have begun in prosaic lines of life. +Herbert Spencer was a railway engineer. Wallace was a land surveyor. But that a +man with so pronounced a scientific brain as Laing should continue all his life +to devote his time to dull routine work, remaining in harness until extreme old +age, with his soul still open to every fresh idea and his brain acquiring new +concretions of knowledge, is indeed a remarkable fact. Read those books, and +you will be a fuller man. +</p> + +<p> +It is an excellent device to talk about what you have recently read. Rather +hard upon your audience, you may say; but without wishing to be personal, I +dare bet it is more interesting than your usual small talk. It must, of course, +be done with some tact and discretion. It is the mention of Laing’s works +which awoke the train of thought which led to these remarks. I had met some one +at a <i>table d’hôte</i> or elsewhere who made some remark about the +prehistoric remains in the valley of the Somme. I knew all about those, and +showed him that I did. I then threw out some allusion to the rock temples of +Yucatan, which he instantly picked up and enlarged upon. He spoke of ancient +Peruvian civilization, and I kept well abreast of him. I cited the Titicaca +image, and he knew all about that. He spoke of Quaternary man, and I was with +him all the time. Each was more and more amazed at the fulness and the accuracy +of the information of the other, until like a flash the explanation crossed my +mind. “You are reading Samuel Laing’s ‘Human +Origins’!” I cried. So he was, and so by a coincidence was I. We +were pouring water over each other, but it was all new-drawn from the spring. +</p> + +<p> +There is a big two-volumed book at the end of my science shelf which would, +even now, have its right to be called scientific disputed by some of the +pedants. It is Myers’ “Human Personality.” My own opinion, +for what it is worth, is that it will be recognized a century hence as a great +root book, one from which a whole new branch of science will have sprung. Where +between four covers will you find greater evidence of patience, of industry, of +thought, of discrimination, of that sweep of mind which can gather up a +thousand separate facts and bind them all in the meshes of a single consistent +system? Darwin has not been a more ardent collector in zoology than Myers in +the dim regions of psychic research, and his whole hypothesis, so new that a +new nomenclature and terminology had to be invented to express it, telepathy, +the subliminal, and the rest of it, will always be a monument of acute +reasoning, expressed in fine prose and founded upon ascertained fact. +</p> + +<p> +The mere suspicion of scientific thought or scientific methods has a great +charm in any branch of literature, however far it may be removed from actual +research. Poe’s tales, for example, owe much to this effect, though in +his case it was a pure illusion. Jules Verne also produces a charmingly +credible effect for the most incredible things by an adept use of a +considerable amount of real knowledge of nature. But most gracefully of all +does it shine in the lighter form of essay, where playful thoughts draw their +analogies and illustrations from actual fact, each showing up the other, and +the combination presenting a peculiar piquancy to the reader. +</p> + +<p> +Where could I get better illustration of what I mean than in those three little +volumes which make up Wendell Holmes’ immortal series, “The +Autocrat,” “The Poet,” and “The Professor at the +Breakfast Table”? Here the subtle, dainty, delicate thought is +continually reinforced by the allusion or the analogy which shows the wide, +accurate knowledge behind it. What work it is! how wise, how witty, how +large-hearted and tolerant! Could one choose one’s philosopher in the +Elysian fields, as once in Athens, I would surely join the smiling group who +listened to the human, kindly words of the Sage of Boston. I suppose it is just +that continual leaven of science, especially of medical science, which has from +my early student days given those books so strong an attraction for me. Never +have I so known and loved a man whom I had never seen. It was one of the +ambitions of my lifetime to look upon his face, but by the irony of Fate I +arrived in his native city just in time to lay a wreath upon his newly-turned +grave. Read his books again, and see if you are not especially struck by the +up-to-dateness of them. Like Tennyson’s “In Memoriam,” it +seems to me to be work which sprang into full flower fifty years before its +time. One can hardly open a page haphazard without lighting upon some passage +which illustrates the breadth of view, the felicity of phrase, and the singular +power of playful but most suggestive analogy. Here, for example, is a +paragraph—no better than a dozen others—which combines all the rare +qualities:— +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“Insanity is often the logic of an accurate mind overtasked. Good mental +machinery ought to break its own wheels and levers, if anything is thrust upon +them suddenly which tends to stop them or reverse their motion. A weak mind +does not accumulate force enough to hurt itself; stupidity often saves a man +from going mad. We frequently see persons in insane hospitals, sent there in +consequence of what are called religious mental disturbances. I confess that I +think better of them than of many who hold the same notions, and keep their +wits and enjoy life very well, outside of the asylums. Any decent person ought +to go mad if he really holds such and such opinions…. Anything that is brutal, +cruel, heathenish, that makes life hopeless for the most of mankind, and +perhaps for entire races—anything that assumes the necessity for the +extermination of instincts which were given to be regulated—no matter by +what name you call it—no matter whether a fakir, or a monk, or a deacon +believes it—if received, ought to produce insanity in every +well-regulated mind.” +</p> + +<p> +There’s a fine bit of breezy polemics for the dreary fifties—a fine +bit of moral courage too for the University professor who ventured to say it. +</p> + +<p> +I put him above Lamb as an essayist, because there is a flavour of actual +knowledge and of practical acquaintance with the problems and affairs of life, +which is lacking in the elfin Londoner. I do not say that the latter is not the +rarer quality. There are my “Essays of Elia,” and they are +well-thumbed as you see, so it is not because I love Lamb less that I love this +other more. Both are exquisite, but Wendell Holmes is for ever touching some +note which awakens an answering vibration within my own mind. +</p> + +<p> +The essay must always be a somewhat repellent form of literature, unless it be +handled with the lightest and deftest touch. It is too reminiscent of the +school themes of our boyhood—to put a heading and then to show what you +can get under it. Even Stevenson, for whom I have the most profound admiration, +finds it difficult to carry the reader through a series of such papers, adorned +with his original thought and quaint turn of phrase. Yet his “Men and +Books” and “Virginibus Puerisque” are high examples of what +may be done in spite of the inherent unavoidable difficulty of the task. +</p> + +<p> +But his style! Ah, if Stevenson had only realized how beautiful and nervous was +his own natural God-given style, he would never have been at pains to acquire +another! It is sad to read the much-lauded anecdote of his imitating this +author and that, picking up and dropping, in search of the best. The best is +always the most natural. When Stevenson becomes a conscious stylist, applauded +by so many critics, he seems to me like a man who, having most natural curls, +will still conceal them under a wig. The moment he is precious he loses his +grip. But when he will abide by his own sterling Lowland Saxon, with the direct +word and the short, cutting sentence, I know not where in recent years we may +find his mate. In this strong, plain setting the occasional happy word shines +like a cut jewel. A really good stylist is like Beau Brummell’s +description of a well-dressed man—so dressed that no one would ever +observe him. The moment you begin to remark a man’s style the odds are +that there is something the matter with it. It is a clouding of the +crystal—a diversion of the reader’s mind from the matter to the +manner, from the author’s subject to the author himself. +</p> + +<p> +No, I have not the Edinburgh edition. If you think of a presentation—but +I should be the last to suggest it. Perhaps on the whole I would prefer to have +him in scattered books, rather than in a complete set. The half is more than +the whole of most authors, and not the least of him. I am sure that his friends +who reverenced his memory had good warrant and express instructions to publish +this complete edition—very possibly it was arranged before his lamented +end. Yet, speaking generally, I would say that an author was best served by +being very carefully pruned before being exposed to the winds of time. Let +every weak twig, every immature shoot be shorn away, and nothing but strong, +sturdy, well-seasoned branches left. So shall the whole tree stand strong for +years to come. How false an impression of the true Stevenson would our critical +grandchild acquire if he chanced to pick down any one of half a dozen of these +volumes! As we watched his hand stray down the rank, how we would pray that it +might alight upon the ones we love, on the “New Arabian Nights” +“The Ebb-tide,” “The Wrecker,” “Kidnapped,” +or “Treasure Island.” These can surely never lose their charm. +</p> + +<p> +What noble books of their class are those last, “Kidnapped” and +“Treasure Island”! both, as you see, shining forth upon my lower +shelf. “Treasure Island” is the better story, while I could imagine +that “Kidnapped” might have the more permanent value as being an +excellent and graphic sketch of the state of the Highlands after the last +Jacobite insurrection. Each contains one novel and admirable character, Alan +Breck in the one, and Long John in the other. Surely John Silver, with his face +the size of a ham, and his little gleaming eyes like crumbs of glass in the +centre of it, is the king of all seafaring desperadoes. Observe how the strong +effect is produced in his case: seldom by direct assertion on the part of the +story-teller, but usually by comparison, innuendo, or indirect reference. The +objectionable Billy Bones is haunted by the dread of “a seafaring man +with one leg.” Captain Flint, we are told, was a brave man; “he was +afraid of none, not he, only Silver—Silver was that genteel.” Or, +again, where John himself says, “there was some that was feared of Pew, +and some that was feared of Flint; but Flint his own self was feared of me. +Feared he was, and proud. They was the roughest crew afloat was Flint’s. +The devil himself would have been feared to go to sea with them. Well, now, I +will tell you. I’m not a boasting man, and you seen yourself how easy I +keep company; but when I was quartermaster, lambs wasn’t the word for +Flint’s old buccaneers.” So, by a touch here and a hint there, +there grows upon us the individuality of the smooth-tongued, ruthless, +masterful, one-legged devil. He is to us not a creation of fiction, but an +organic living reality with whom we have come in contact; such is the effect of +the fine suggestive strokes with which he is drawn. And the buccaneers +themselves, how simple and yet how effective are the little touches which +indicate their ways of thinking and of acting. “I want to go in that +cabin, I do; I want their pickles and wine and that.” “Now, if you +had sailed along o’ Bill you wouldn’t have stood there to be spoke +twice—not you. That was never Bill’s way, not the way of sich as +sailed with him.” Scott’s buccaneers in “The Pirate” +are admirable, but they lack something human which we find here. It will be +long before John Silver loses his place in sea fiction, “and you may lay +to that.” +</p> + +<p> +Stevenson was deeply influenced by Meredith, and even in these books the +influence of the master is apparent. There is the apt use of an occasional +archaic or unusual word, the short, strong descriptions, the striking +metaphors, the somewhat staccato fashion of speech. Yet, in spite of this +flavour, they have quite individuality enough to constitute a school of their +own. Their faults, or rather perhaps their limitations, lie never in the +execution, but entirely in the original conception. They picture only one side +of life, and that a strange and exceptional one. There is no female interest. +We feel that it is an apotheosis of the boy-story—the penny number of our +youth <i>in excelsis</i>. But it is all so good, so fresh, so picturesque, +that, however limited its scope, it still retains a definite and well-assured +place in literature. There is no reason why “Treasure Island” +should not be to the rising generation of the twenty-first century what +“Robinson Crusoe” has been to that of the nineteenth. The balance +of probability is all in that direction. +</p> + +<p> +The modern masculine novel, dealing almost exclusively with the rougher, more +stirring side of life, with the objective rather than the subjective, marks the +reaction against the abuse of love in fiction. This one phase of life in its +orthodox aspect, and ending in the conventional marriage, has been so hackneyed +and worn to a shadow, that it is not to be wondered at that there is a tendency +sometimes to swing to the other extreme, and to give it less than its fair +share in the affairs of men. In British fiction nine books out of ten have held +up love and marriage as the be-all and end-all of life. Yet we know, in actual +practice, that this may not be so. In the career of the average man his +marriage is an incident, and a momentous incident; but it is only one of +several. He is swayed by many strong emotions—his business, his +ambitions, his friendships, his struggles with the recurrent dangers and +difficulties which tax a man’s wisdom and his courage. Love will often +play a subordinate part in his life. How many go through the world without ever +loving at all? It jars upon us then to have it continually held up as the +predominating, all-important fact in life; and there is a not unnatural +tendency among a certain school, of which Stevenson is certainly the leader, to +avoid altogether a source of interest which has been so misused and overdone. +If all love-making were like that between Richard Feverel and Lucy Desborough, +then indeed we could not have too much of it; but to be made attractive once +more, the passion must be handled by some great master who has courage to break +down conventionalities and to go straight to actual life for his inspiration. +</p> + +<p> +The use of novel and piquant forms of speech is one of the most obvious of +Stevenson’s devices. No man handles his adjectives with greater judgment +and nicer discrimination. There is hardly a page of his work where we do not +come across words and expressions which strike us with a pleasant sense of +novelty, and yet express the meaning with admirable conciseness. “His +eyes came coasting round to me.” It is dangerous to begin quoting, as the +examples are interminable, and each suggests another. Now and then he misses +his mark, but it is very seldom. As an example, an “eye-shot” does +not commend itself as a substitute for “a glance,” and “to +tee-hee” for “to giggle” grates somewhat upon the ear, though +the authority of Chaucer might be cited for the expressions. +</p> + +<p> +Next in order is his extraordinary faculty for the use of pithy similes, which +arrest the attention and stimulate the imagination. “His voice sounded +hoarse and awkward, like a rusty lock.” “I saw her sway, like +something stricken by the wind.” “His laugh rang false, like a +cracked bell.” “His voice shook like a taut rope.” “My +mind flying like a weaver’s shuttle.” “His blows resounded on +the grave as thick as sobs.” “The private guilty considerations I +would continually observe to peep forth in the man’s talk like rabbits +from a hill.” Nothing could be more effective than these direct and +homely comparisons. +</p> + +<p> +After all, however, the main characteristic of Stevenson is his curious +instinct for saying in the briefest space just those few words which stamp the +impression upon the reader’s mind. He will make you see a thing more +clearly than you would probably have done had your eyes actually rested upon +it. Here are a few of these word-pictures, taken haphazard from among hundreds +of equal merit— +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +“Not far off Macconochie was standing with his tongue out of his mouth, +and his hand upon his chin, like a dull fellow thinking hard. +</p> + +<p> +“Stewart ran after us for more than a mile, and I could not help laughing +as I looked back at last and saw him on a hill, holding his hand to his side, +and nearly burst with running. +</p> + +<p> +“Ballantrae turned to me with a face all wrinkled up, and his teeth all +showing in his mouth…. He said no word, but his whole appearance was a kind of +dreadful question. +</p> + +<p> +“Look at him, if you doubt; look at him, grinning and gulping, a detected +thief. +</p> + +<p> +“He looked me all over with a warlike eye, and I could see the challenge +on his lips.” +</p> + +<p class="p2"> +What could be more vivid than the effect produced by such sentences as these? +</p> + +<p> +There is much more that might be said as to Stevenson’s peculiar and +original methods in fiction. As a minor point, it might be remarked that he is +the inventor of what may be called the mutilated villain. It is true that Mr. +Wilkie Collins has described one gentleman who had not only been deprived of +all his limbs, but was further afflicted by the insupportable name of +Miserrimus Dexter. Stevenson, however, has used the effect so often, and with +such telling results, that he may be said to have made it his own. To say +nothing of Hyde, who was the very impersonation of deformity, there is the +horrid blind Pew, Black Dog with two fingers missing, Long John with his one +leg, and the sinister catechist who is blind but shoots by ear, and smites +about him with his staff. In “The Black Arrow,” too, there is +another dreadful creature who comes tapping along with a stick. Often as he has +used the device, he handles it so artistically that it never fails to produce +its effect. +</p> + +<p> +Is Stevenson a classic? Well, it is a large word that. You mean by a classic a +piece of work which passes into the permanent literature of the country. As a +rule, you only know your classics when they are in their graves. Who guessed it +of Poe, and who of Borrow? The Roman Catholics only canonize their saints a +century after their death. So with our classics. The choice lies with our +grandchildren. But I can hardly think that healthy boys will ever let +Stevenson’s books of adventure die, nor do I think that such a short tale +as “The Pavilion on the Links” nor so magnificent a parable as +“Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” will ever cease to be esteemed. How well +I remember the eagerness, the delight with which I read those early tales in +“Cornhill” away back in the late seventies and early eighties. They +were unsigned, after the old unfair fashion, but no man with any sense of prose +could fail to know that they were all by the same author. Only years afterwards +did I learn who that author was. +</p> + +<p> +I have Stevenson’s collected poems over yonder in the small cabinet. +Would that he had given us more! Most of them are the merest playful sallies of +a freakish mind. But one should, indeed, be a classic, for it is in my judgment +by all odds the best narrative ballad of the last century—that is if I am +right in supposing that “The Ancient Mariner” appeared at the very +end of the eighteenth. I would put Coleridge’s tour de force of grim +fancy first, but I know none other to compare in glamour and phrase and easy +power with “Ticonderoga.” Then there is his immortal epitaph. The +two pieces alone give him a niche of his own in our poetical literature, just +as his character gives him a niche of his own in our affections. No, I never +met him. But among my most prized possessions are several letters which I +received from Samoa. From that distant tower he kept a surprisingly close watch +upon what was doing among the bookmen, and it was his hand which was among the +first held out to the striver, for he had quick appreciation and keen +sympathies which met another man’s work half-way, and wove into it a +beauty from his own mind. +</p> + +<p> +And now, my very patient friend, the time has come for us to part, and I hope +my little sermons have not bored you over-much. If I have put you on the track +of anything which you did not know before, then verify it and pass it on. If I +have not, there is no harm done, save that my breath and your time have been +wasted. There may be a score of mistakes in what I have said—is it not +the privilege of the conversationalist to misquote? My judgments may differ +very far from yours, and my likings may be your abhorrence; but the mere +thinking and talking of books is in itself good, be the upshot what it may. For +the time the magic door is still shut. You are still in the land of faerie. +But, alas, though you shut that door, you cannot seal it. Still come the ring +of bell, the call of telephone, the summons back to the sordid world of work +and men and daily strife. Well, that’s the real life after all—this +only the imitation. And yet, now that the portal is wide open and we stride out +together, do we not face our fate with a braver heart for all the rest and +quiet and comradeship that we found behind the Magic Door? +</p> + +</div><!--end chapter--> + +<div style='display:block; margin-top:4em'>*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR ***</div> +<div style='text-align:left'> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will +be renamed. +</div> + +<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'> +Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright +law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, +so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United +States without permission and without paying copyright +royalties. 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