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diff --git a/old/5317.txt b/old/5317.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..a4109bc --- /dev/null +++ b/old/5317.txt @@ -0,0 +1,4818 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of Through the Magic Door, by Arthur Conan Doyle +#32 in our series by Arthur Conan Doyle + +Copyright laws are changing all over the world. Be sure to check the +copyright laws for your country before downloading or redistributing +this or any other Project Gutenberg eBook. + +This header should be the first thing seen when viewing this Project +Gutenberg file. Please do not remove it. Do not change or edit the +header without written permission. + +Please read the "legal small print," and other information about the +eBook and Project Gutenberg at the bottom of this file. Included is +important information about your specific rights and restrictions in +how the file may be used. You can also find out about how to make a +donation to Project Gutenberg, and how to get involved. + + +**Welcome To The World of Free Plain Vanilla Electronic Texts** + +**eBooks Readable By Both Humans and By Computers, Since 1971** + +*****These eBooks Were Prepared By Thousands of Volunteers!***** + + +Title: Through the Magic Door + +Author: Arthur Conan Doyle + +Release Date: March, 2004 [EBook #5317] +[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule] +[This file was first posted on June 30, 2002] + +Edition: 10 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR *** + + + + +Transcribed by Anders Thulin. +Adapted for Project Gutenberg by Andrew Sly. + + + + + +THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR + +BY ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE + + + + +I. + + +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. + +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 strength in the living of our own strenuous days. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 night 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. + +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-- + + "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!'" + +It is etched into your memory for ever. + +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. + +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-- + + "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." + +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. + +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 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-- + + "And how can man die better + Than facing fearful odds + For the ashes of his fathers + And the Temples of his Gods?" + +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-- + + "One more charge and then be dumb, + When the forts of Folly fall, + May the victors when they come + Find my body near the wall." + +Not a bad verse that for one's life aspiration. + +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-- + + "He prayeth best who loveth best + All things, both great and small + For the dear Lord who fashioned him + He knows and loveth all." + +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. + +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. + + + +II. + + +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. + +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 was 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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"? + +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. + +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. + +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? + +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 tour de force. 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. + +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? + +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 car, +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 + + "Great Genius is to madness close allied, + And thin partitions do those rooms divide." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + +III. + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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?-- + + "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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 must be paid in current +coin." Those were a few of his convictions. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 tour de force as literature can +show. + +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. + +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. + + + +IV. + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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? + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + "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." + +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. + +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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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! + +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. + + + +V. + + +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? + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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! + +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-- + + "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!" + +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. + +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-- + + "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." + +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. + +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. + +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? + +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 tum 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. + +Here is a pen-portrait of him by one who knew him well-- + + "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." + +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?-- + + "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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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! + + + +VI. + + +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. + +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--"quorum pars parva fui!" 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. + +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 _perfect_ 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. + +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 Cornhill 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. + +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. + +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. + +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 +Oeson" in "Noughts and Crosses"--is, in my opinion, as good as +anything of the kind which I have ever read. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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 diablerie 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? + +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. + +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-- + + "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." + +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. + +Now, by your leave, we will pass on to my noble edition of "The +Cloister and the Hearth," the next volume on the left. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + +VII. + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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--puris omnia pura--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. + +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. + +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. + +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 _he_ 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. + +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. + +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 +_he_ writes and he tells all that passed. You have his letter. _She_ +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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? + +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. + +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." + +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. + +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. + +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 not 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. + +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. + +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 arriere +pensee that the words would apply as strongly to himself. + +"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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + +VIII. + + +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. + +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 +"Ex libris 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. + +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. "Ob fas est aquam hostis venere," +etc. "Tut, tut, it's not allowed. But here are some of the enemy in +a barn? What about that?" "Ob fas est hostem incendio," 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. + +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. + +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 debonnaire 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! + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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! + +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-- + + "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!'" + +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. + + "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. + + "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?'" + +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. + +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. + +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? + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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! + +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. + +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. + +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! + + + +IX. + + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. "Je fais mon devoir et suis indifferent pour le reste," +said he, in his interview with the Emperor. They were no idle words. + +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?-- + + "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." + +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. + +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, Fenelon, Moliere, Racine, Pascal, Conde, +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + + + +X. + + +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. + +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-- + + "Out of the night that covers me, + Black as the pit from Pole to Pole, + I thank whatever Gods there be + For my unconquerable soul." + +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-- + + "In the fell clutch of Circumstance + I have not winced nor cried aloud, + Beneath the bludgeonings of Chance + My head is bloody but unbowed." + +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. + +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! + +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. + +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. + +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? + +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. + +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. + +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-Boeuf, 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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-- + + "Critics kind--never mind! + Critics flatter--no matter! + Critics blame--all the same! + Critics curse--none the worse! + Do your best-- ---- the rest!" + + + +XI. + + +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. + +Now, take that first book on my travel shelf. It is Knight's "Cruise +of the Falcon." 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 Paraquay, 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. + +Another book which shows the romance and the heroism which still +linger upon earth is that large copy of the "Voyage of the Discovery +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. + +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 emigre. 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 noblesse oblige +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. + +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 Discovery." 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 _is_ wretched," he groaned, as he +turned his face to the wall. + +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. + +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, go 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? + +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 +Cachelot," 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." + +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. + + "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." + +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 +Grosvenor." 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 +cars, 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. + +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! + +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 Beagle." 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 Beagle--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 Argentina, 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. + +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. + + + +XII. + + +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. + +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. + +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! + +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. + +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 table d'hote +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. + +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. + +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. + +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:-- + + "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." + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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." + +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 in excelsis. 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. + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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-- + + "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. + + "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. + + "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. + + "Look at him, if you doubt; look at him, grinning and gulping, + a detected thief. + + "He looked me all over with a warlike eye, and I could see the + challenge on his lips." + +What could be more vivid than the effect produced by such sentences +as these? + +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. + +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. + +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. + +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? + + + + + + + + +End of Project Gutenberg's Through the Magic Door, by Arthur Conan Doyle + +*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THROUGH THE MAGIC DOOR *** + +This file should be named 5317.txt or 5317.zip + +Transcribed by Anders Thulin. +Adapted for Project Gutenberg by Andrew Sly. + +Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed +editions, all of which are confirmed as Public Domain in the US +unless a copyright notice is included. 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