THEBIBLIOTAPH AND-OTHER-PEOPLE BY-LEON-H-VINCENT Sir' Y7T BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME FROM THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND THE GIFT OF Henrg 191. Sage 1891 Mim. ipiim.- Cornell University Library PN 511.V77 BIbllotaph, 3 1924 026 943 229 Cornell University Library The original of tliis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924026943229 THE BIBLIOTAPH And Other People BY LEON H. VINCENT m^^^^m BOSTON AND NEW YORK HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY (SEfye Hitottfiise pces^, Cambribge

:dtlv con- cealed the measure of Greek, whether great or small, which is in his possession. To put the matter in another form, though Hardy may have drunk in large quantity ' the spirit breathed from dead men to their kind,' he has not al- lowed his potations to intoxicate him. This paragraph is not likely to be misinter- preted unless by some honest soul who has yei. to learn that ' literature is not sworn testimony.' Therefore it ma)- be weU to add that Mr. Hardy undoubtedly owns a collection of books, and has upon his shelves dictionaries and enc3'do- pedias, together with a decent representation of those works which people call ■ standard.' But it is of importance to remember this : That while he may be a well-read man, as the |diiase THOMAS HARDY 85 goes, he is not and never has been of that class which Emerson describes with pale sarcasm as •meek young men in libraries.' It is clear that Hardy has not 'weakened his eyesight over books,' and it is equally clear that he has« 'sharpened his eyesight on men and women.' Let us consider a few of his vurtues. II In the first place he tells a good story. No extravagant praise is due him for this ; it is his business, his trade. He ought to do it, and therefore he does it. The ' first morality ' of a novelist is to be able to tell a story, as the first morality of a painter is to be able to handle his brush skillfully and make it do his brain's in- tending. After all, telling stories in an admi- rable fashion is rather a familiar accomplish- ment nowadays. Many men, many women are able to make stories of considerable ingenuity as to plot, and of thrilling interest in the unroll- ing of a scheme of events. Numberless writ- ers are shrewd and clever in constructing their ' fable,' but they are unable to do much beyond this. Walter Besant writes good stories ; Rob- ert Buchanan writes good stories ; Grant Allen and David Christie Murray are acceptable to many readers. But unless I mistake greatly and do these men an injustice I should be sorry to do them, their ability ceases just at this point. They tell good stories and do nothing 86 THOMAS HARDY else. They write books and do not make liter- ature. They are authors by their own will and not by grace of God. It may be said of them as Augustine Birrell said of Professor Freeman and the Bishop of Chester, that they are horny- handed sons of toil and worthy of their wage. But one would like to say a little more. Grant- ing that this is praise, it is so faint as to be almost inaudible. If Hardy only wrote good stories he would be merely doing his duty, and therefore accounted an unprofitable servant. But he does much besides. He fulfills one great function of the literary artist, which is to mediate between nature and the reading public. Such a man is an eye specialist. Through his amiable offices people who have hitherto been blind are put into con- dition to see. Near-sighted persons have spec- tacles fitted to them — which they generally refuse to wear, not caring for literature which clears the mental vision. Hardy opens the eyes of the reader to the charm, the beauty, the mystery to be found in common life and in every-day objects. So alert and forceful an intelligence rarely applies its energy to fiction. The result is that he makes an almost hopelessly high standard. The ex- ceptional man who comes after him may be a rival, but the majority of writing gentlemen can do little more than enviously admire. He seems to have established for himself such a THOMAS HARDY 87 rule as this, that he will write no page which shall not be interesting. He pours out the treasures of his observation in every chapter. He sees ever)rthing, feels everything, sympa- thizes with everything. To be sure he has an unusually rich field for work. In The Mayor of Casterbridge is an account of the discovery of the remains of an old Roman soldier. One would expect Hardy to make something graphic of the episode. And so he does. You can almost see the warrior as he lies there 'in an oval scoop in the chalk, like a chicken in its shell ; his knees drawn up to his chest ; his spear against his arm ; an urn at his knees, a jar at his throat, a bottle at his mouth ; and mystified conjecture pouring down upon him from the eyes of Casterbridge street-boys and men.' The real virtue in this bit of description lies in the few words expressive of the mental atti- tude of the onlookers. And it is a nice distinc- tion which Hardy makes when he says that 'imaginative inhabitants who would have felt an unpleasantness at the discovery of a compar- atively modern skeleton in their gardens were quite unmoved by these hoary shapes. They had lived so long ago, their hopes and motives were so widely removed from ours, that be- tween them and the living there seemed to stretch a gulf too wide for even a spirit to pass.' 88 THOMAS HARDY He takes note of that language which, though not articulate, is in common use among yeo- men, dairymen, farmers, and the townsfolk of his little world. It is a language superimposed upon the ordinary language. ' To express sat- isfaction the Casterbridge market-man added to his utterance a broadening of the cheeks, a crevicing of the eyes, a throwing back of the shoulders.' ' If he wondered . . . you knew it from perceiving the inside of his crimson mouth and the target-like circling of his eyes.' The language of deliberation expressed itself in the form of ' sundry attacks on the moss of adjoin- ing walls with the end of his stick ' or a ' change of his hat from the horizontal to the less so.' The novel called The Woodlanders is filled with notable illustrations of an interest in mi- nute things. The facts are introduced unob- trusively and no great emphasis is laid upon them. But they cling to the memory. Giles Winterbourne, a chief character in this story, ' had a marvelous power in making trees grow. Although he would seem to shovel in the earth quite carelessly there was a sort of sympathy between himself and the fir, oaJc, or beach that he was operating on ; so that the roots took hold of the soil in a few days.' When any of the journeymen planted, one quarter of the trees died away. There is a graphic little scene where Winterbourne plants and Marty South holds the trees for him. 'Winter- THOMAS HARDY 89 bourne's fingers were endowed with a gentle conjurer's touch in spreading the roots of each little tree, resulting in a sort of caress under which the delicate fibres all laid themselves out in their proper direction for growth.' Marty- declared that the trees began to ' sigh ' as soon as they were put upright, ' though when they are lying down they don't sigh at all.' Winter- bourne had never noticed it. ' She erected one of the young pines into its hole, and held up her finger ; the soft musical breathing instantly set in, which was not to cease night or day till the grown tree should be felled — probably long after the two planters had been felled themselves.' Later on in the story there is a description of this same Giles Winterbourne returning with his horses and his cider apparatus from a neigh- boring village. ' He looked and smelt like autumn's very brother, his face being sunburnt to wheat color, his eyes blue as corn flowers, his sleeves and leggings dyed with fruit stains, his hands clammy with the sweet juice of ap- ples, his hat sprinkled with pips, and every- where about him that atmosphere of cider which at its first return each season has such an indescribable fascination for those who have been born and bred among the orchards.' Hardy throws off little sketches of this sort with an air of unconsciousness which is fasci- nating. It may be a sunset, or it may be only 90 THOMAS HARDY a flake of snow falling upon a young girl's hair, or the light from lanterns penetrating the shut- ters and flickering over the ceiling of a room in the early winter morning, — no matter what the circumstance or happening is, it is caught in the act, photographed in permanent colors, made indelible and beautiful. Hardy's art is tyrannical. It compels one to be interested in that which delights him. It imposes its own standards. There is a rude strength about the man which readers endure because they are not unwilling to be slaves to genius. You may dislike sheep, and care but little for the poetical aspect of cows, if indeed you are not inclined to question the existence of poetry in cows ; but if you read Far from the Madding Crowd you can never again pass a flock of sheep without being conscious of a multitude of new thoughts, new images, new matters for comparison. AU that dormant sec- tion of your soul which for years was in a comatose condition on the subject of sheep. is suddenly and broadly awake. Read Tess and at once cows and a dairy have a new meaning to you. They are a conspicuous part of the setting of that stage upon which poor Tess Durbeyfield's life drama was played. But Hardy does not flaunt his knowledge in his reader's face. These things are distinctly means to an end, not ends in themselves. He has no theory to advance about keeping bees THOMAS HARDY 91 or making cider. He has taken no little jour- neys in the world. On the contrary, where he has traveled at all, he has traveled extensively. He is like a tourist who has been so many times abroad that his allusions are naturally and unaf- fectedly made. But the man just back from a first trip on the continent has astonishment stamped upon his face, and he speaks of Paris and of the Alps as if he had discovered both. Zola is one of those practitioners who, big with recently acquired knowledge, appear to labor under the idea that the chief end of a novel is to convey miscellaneous information. This is probably a mistake. Novels are not handbooks on floriculture, banking, railways, or the man- agement of department stores. One may make a parade of minute details and endlessly weari- some learning and gain a certain credit thereby ; but what if the details and the learning are chiefly of value in a dictionary of sciences and commerce ? Wisdom of this sort is to be spar- ingly used in a work of art. In these matters I cannot but feel that Hardy has a reticence so commendable that praise of it is superfluous and impertinent. After all, men and women are better than sheep and cows, and had he been more explicit, he would have tempted one to inquire whether he proposed making a story or a volume which might bear the title TAe Wessex Farmer's Own Hand-Book, and containing wise advice as to pigs, poultry, 92 THOMAS HARDY and the useful art of making two heads of cab- bage grow where only one had grown before. Ill Among the most engaging qualities of this writer is humor. Hardy is a humorous man himself and entirely appreciative of the humor that is in others. According to a distinguished philosopher, wit and humor produce love. Hardy must then be in daUy receipt of large measures of this ' improving passion ' from his innumerable readers on both sides of the At- lantic. His humor manifests itself in a variety of ways ; by the use of witty epithet ; by ingen- ious description of a thing which is not strik- ingly laughable in itself, but which becomes so from the closeness of his rendering; by a leisurely and ample account of a character with humorous traits, — traits which are brought ar- tistically into prominence as an actor heightens the complexion in stage make-up; and finally by his lively reproductions of the talk of village and country people, — a class of society whose everyday speech has only to be heard to be en- joyed. I do not pretend that the sources of Hardy's humor are exhausted in this analysis, but the majority of illustrations can be assigned to some one of these divisions. He is usually thought to be at his best in de- scriptions of farmers, village mechanics, labor- THOMAS HARDY 93 ers, dairymen, men who kill pigs, tend sheep, furze-cutters, masons, hostlers, loafers who do nothing in particular, and while thus occupied rail on Lady Fortune in good set terms. Cer- tainly he paints these people with affectionate fidelity. Their virile, racy talk delights him. His reproductions of that talk are often in- tensely realistic. Nearly every book has its chorus of human grotesques whose mere names are a source of mirth. William Worm, Grand- fer Cantle, ' Corp'el ' TuUidge, Christopher Coney^ John Upjohn, Robert Creedle, Martin Cannister, Haymoss Fry, Robert Lickpan, and Sammy Blore, — men so denominated should stand for comic things, and these men do. Wil- liam Worm, for example, was deaf. His deaf- ness took an unusual form ; he heard fish frying in his head, and he was not reticent upon the subject of his infirmity. He usually described himself by the epithet 'wambling,' and pro- tested that he would never pay the Lord for his making, — a degree of self-knowledge which many have arrived at but few have the courage to confess. He was once observed in the act of making himself 'passing civil and friendly by overspreading his face with a large smile that seemed to have no connection with the humor he was in.' Sympathy because of his deafness elicited this response : ' Ay, I assure you that frying 0' fish is going on for nights and days. And, you know, sometimes 'tis n't 94 THOMAS HARDY only fish, but rashers o' bacon and inions. Ay, I can hear the fat pop and fizz as nateral as life.' He was questioned as to what means of cure he had tried. ' Oh, ay bless ye, I 've tried everything. Ay, Providence is a merciful man, and I have hoped he 'd have found it out by this time, Hv- ing so many years in a parson's famUy, too, as I have ; but 'a don't seem to relieve me. Ay, I be a poor wambling man, and life's a mint o' trouble.' One knows not which to admire the more, the appetizing realism in William Worm's ac- count of his infirmity, or the primitive state of his theological views which allowed him to look for special diviae favor by virtue of the eccle- siastical conspicuousness of his late residence. Hardy must have heard, with comfort in the thought of its literary possibilities, the follow- ing dialogue on the cleverness of women. It occurs in the last chapter of The Woodlanders. A man who is always spoken of as the ' hollow- turner,' a phrase obviously descriptive of his line of business, which related to wooden bowls, spigots, cheese -vats, and funnels, talks with John Upjohn. ' What women do know nowadays ! ' he says. 'You can't deceive 'em as you could in my time.' * What they knowed then was not small,' said THOMAS HARDY 95 John Upjohn. 'Always a good deal more than the men ! Why, when I went courting my wife that is now, the skillfulness that she would show in keeping me on her pretty side as she walked was beyond all belief. Perhaps you 've noticed that she 's got a pretty side to her face as well as a plain one .' ' " I can't say I 've noticed it particular much/ said the hollow-turner blandly. ' Well,' continued Upjohn, not disconcerted, ' she has. All women under the sun be pret- tier one side than t' other. And, as I was say- ing, the pains she would take to make me walk on the pretty side were unending. I warrent that whether we were going with the sun or against the sun, uphill or downhill, in wind or in lewth, that wart of hers was always toward the hedge, and that dimple toward me. There was I too simple to see her wheelings and turnings; and she so artful though two years younger, that she could lead me with a cotton thread like a blind ham ; . . . no, I don't think the women have got cleverer, for they was never otherwise.' IV These men have sap and juice in their talk. When they think they think clearly. When they speak they express themselves with an energy and directness which mortify the thin speech of conventional persons. Here is Far- 96 THOMAS HARDY frae, the young Scotchman, in the tap-room of the Three Mariners Inn of Casterbridge, sing- ing of his ain contree with a pathos quite un- known in that part of the world. The worthies who frequent the place are deeply moved. ' Danged if our country down here is worth singing about like that,' says Billy Wills, the glazier, — while the literal Christopher Coney inquires, 'What did ye come away from yer own country for, young maister, if ye be so wownded about it ? ' Then it occurs to him that it was n't worth Farfrae's while to leave the fair face and the home of which he had been singing to come among such as they. ' We be bruckle folk here — the best o' us hardly honest sometimes, what with hard win- ters, and so many mouths to fill, and God- a'mighty sending his little taties so terrible small to fill 'em with. We don't think about flowers and fair faces, not we — except in the shape of cauliflowers and pigs' chaps.' I should like to see the man who sat to Artist Hardy for the portrait of Corporal Tullidge in The Trumpet- Major. This worthy, who was deaf and talked in an uncompromisingly loud voice, had been struck in the head by a piece of shell at Valenciennes in '93. His left arm had been smashed. Time and Nature had done what they could, and under their beneficent in- fluences the arm had become a sort of anatomi- cal rattle-box People interested in Corp'el THOMAS HARDY 97 Tullidge were allowed to see his head and hear his arm. The corp'el gave these private views at any time, and was quite willing to show off, though the exhibition was apt to bore him a little. His fellows displayed him much as one would a ' freak ' in a dime museum. 'You have got a silver plate let into yer head, have n't ye, corp'el .' ' said Anthony Crip- plestraw. ' I have heard that the way they mortised yer skull was a beautiful piece of work- manship. Perhaps the young woman would like to see the place.' The young woman was Anne Garland, the sweet heroine of the story ; and Anne did n't want to see the silver plate, the thought of which made her almost faint. Nor could she be tempted by being told that one could n't see such a 'wownd' every day. Then Cripple- straw, earnest to please her, suggested that Tullidge rattle his arm, which Tullidge did, to Anne's great distress. 'Oh, it don't hurt him, bless ye. Do it, cor- p'el ? ' said Cripplestraw. 'Not a bit,' said the corporal, still working his arm with great energy. There was, how- ever, a perfunctoriness in his manner ' as if the glory of exhibition had lost somewhat of its novelty, though he was still willing to oblige.' Anne resisted all entreaties to convince herself by feeling of the corporal's arm that the bones were ' as loose as a bag of ninepins,' and dis- 98 THOMAS HARDY played an anxiety to escape. Whereupon the corporal, ' with a sense that his time was get- ting wasted,' inquired : 'Do she want to see or hear any more, or don't she ? ' This is but a single detail in the account of a party which Miller Loveday gave to soldier guests in honor of his son John, — a descrip- tion the sustained vivacity of which can only be appreciated through a reading of those brilliant early chapters of the story. Half the mirth that is in these men comes from the frankness with which they confess their actual thoughts. Ask a man of average morals and average attainments why he does n't go to church. You won't know any better after he has given you his answer. Ask Nat Chap- man, of the novel entitled Two on a Tower, and you will not be troubled with ambiguities. He does n't like to go because Mr. Torkmgham's sermons make him think of soul-saving and other bewildering and uncomfortable topics. So when the son of Torkingham's predecessor asks Nat how it goes with him, that tiller of the soil answers promptly : ' Pa' son Tarkenham do tease a feller's conscience that much, that church is no holler-day at all to the limbs, as it was in yer reverent father's time ! ' The unswerving honesty with which they as- sign utilitarian motives for a particular line of conduct is delightful. Three men discuss a wedding, which took place not at the home of THOMAS HARDY 99 the bride but in a neighboring parish, and was therefore very private. The first does n't blame the new married pair, because ' a wedding at home means five and six handed reels by the hour, and they do a man's legs no good when he 's over forty.' A second corroborates the re- mark and says : ' True. Once at the woman's house you can hardly say nay to being one in a jig, knowing all the time that you be ex- pected to make yourself worth your victuals.' The third puts the whole matter beyond the need of further discussion by adding : ' For my part, I like a good hearty funeral as well as anything. You 've as splendid victuals and drink as at other parties, and even better. And it don't wear your legs to stumps in talking over a poor fellow's ways as it do to stand up in hornpipes.' Beings who talk like this know their minds, — a rather unwonted circumstance among the sons of men, — and knowing them, they do the next most natural thing in the world, which is to speak the minds they have. There is yet another phase of Hardy's humor to be noted : that humor, sometimes defiant, sometimes philosophic, which concerns death and its accompaniments. It cannot be thought morbid. Hardy is too fond of Nature ever to degenerate into mere morbidity. He has lived much in the open air, which always corrects a tendency to * vapors.' He takes little pleasure 100 THOMAS HARDY in the gruesome, a statement in support of which one may cite all his works up to 1892, the date of the appearance of Tess. This pa- per includes no comment in detail upon the later books ; but so far as Tess is concerned it would be critical folly to speak of it as morbid. It is sad, it is terrible, as Lear is terrible, or as any one of the great tragedies, written by men we call ' masters,' is terrible. Jude is psy- chologically gruesome, no doubt ; but not abso- lutely indefensible. Even if it were as black a book as some critics have painted it, the gen- eral truth of the statement as to the healthful- ness of Hardy's work would not be impaired. This work judged as a whole is sound and in- vigorating. He cannot be accused of over-fond- ness for charnel-houses or ghosts. He does not discourse of graves and vaults in order to arouse that terror which the thought of death inspires. It is not for the purpose of making the reader uncomfortable. If the grave inter- ests him, it is because of the reflections awak- ened. 'Man, proud man,' needs that jog to his memory which the pomp of interments and aspect of tombstones give. Hardy has keen perception of that humor which glows in the presence of death and on the edge of the grave. The living have such a tremendous advantage over the dead, that they can neither help feel- ing it nor avoid a display of the feeling. When the lion is buried the dogs crack jokes at the THOMAS HARDY loi funeral. They do it in a subdued manner, no doubt, and with a sense of proprieties, but nevertheless they do it. Their immense supe- riority is never so apparent as at just this mo- ment. This humor, which one notes in Hardy, is akin to the humor of the grave-diggers in Ham- let, but not so grim. I have heard a country undertaker describe the details of the least at- tractive branch of his uncomfortable business with a pride and self-satisfaction that would have been farcical had not the subject been so depressing. This would have been matter for Hardy's pen. There are few scenes in his books more telling than that which shows the operations in the family vault of the Luxellians, when John Smith, Martin Cannister, and old Simeon prepare the place for Lady Luxellian's coffin. It seems hardly wise to pronounce this episode as good as the grave-diggers' scene in Hamlet; that would shock some one and gain for the writer the reputation of being enthusi- astic rather than critical. But I profess that I enjoy the talk of old Simeon and Martin Can- nister quite as much as the talk of the first and second grave-diggers. Simeon, the shriveled mason, was ' a marvel- ously old man, whose skin seemed so much too large for his body that it would not stay in position.' He talked of the various great dead whose coffins filled the family vault. Here was the stately and irascible Lord George : — 102 THOMAS HARDY 'Ah, poor Lord George/ said the mason, looking contemplatively at the huge coffin ; ' he and I were as bitter enemies once as any could be when one is a lord and t' other only a mortal man. Poor fellow ! He 'd clap his hand upon my shoulder and cuss me as familiar arid neigh- borly as if he'd been a common chap. Ay, 'a cussed me up hill and 'a cussed me down ; and then 'a would rave out again and the goold clamps of his fine new teeth would glisten in the sun like fetters of brass, while I, being a small man and poor, was fain to say nothing at all. Such a strappen fine gentleman as he was too ! Yes, I rather liken en sometimes. But once now and then, when I looked at his tower- ing height, I 'd think in my inside, " What a weight you '11 be, my lord, for our arms to lower under the inside of Endelstow church some day ! " ' ' And was he ? ' inquired a young laborer. ' He was. He was five hundred weight if 'a were a pound. What with his lead, and his oak, and his handles, and his one thing and t' other ' — here the ancient man slapped his hand upon the cover with a force that caused a rattle among the bones inside — 'he haK broke my back when I took his feet to lower en down the steps there. "Ah," saith I to John there — did n't I, John .? — " that ever one man's glory should be such a weight upon another man ! " But there, I liked my Lord George sometimes.' THOMAS HARDY 103 It may be observed that as Hardy grows older his humor becomes more subtle or quite dies away, as if serious matters pressed upon his mind, and there was no time for being jocu- lar. Some day, perhaps, if he should rise to the dignity of an English classic, this will be spoken of as his third period, and critics will be wise in the elucidation thereof. But just at present this third period is characterized by the terms 'pessimistic' and 'unhealthy.' That he is a pessimist in the colloquial sense admits of little question. Nor is it surprising ; it is rather difificult not to be. Not a few per- sons are pessimists and won't tell. They pre- serve a fair exterior, but secretly hold that all flesh is grass. Some people escape the disease by virtue of much philosophy or much religion or much work. Many who have not taken up permanent residence beneath the roof of Scho- penhauer or Von Hartmann are occasional guests. Then there is that great mass of pes- simism which is the result, not of thought, but of mere discomfort, physical and super-physical. One may have attacks of pessimism from a variety of small causes. A bad stomach will produce it. Financial difficulties will produce it. The light-minded get it from changes in the weather. That note of melancholy which we detect in many of Hardy's novels is as it should be. For no man can apprehend life aright and still look 104 THOMAS HARDY upon it as a carnival. He may attain serenity in respect to it, but he can never be jaunty and flippant. He can never slap life upon the back and call it by familiar names. He may hold that the world is indisputably growing better, but he will need to admit that the world is hav- ing a hard time in so doing. Hardy would be sure of a reputation for pes- simism in some quarters if only because of his attitude, or what people think is his attitude, toward marriage. He has devoted many pages and not a little thought to the problems of the relations between men and women. He is con- siderably interested in questions of 'matrimo- nial divergence.' He recognizes that most obvious of all obvious truths, that marriage is not always a success ; nay, more than this, that it is often a makeshift, an apology, a pretense. But he professes to undertake nothing beyond a statement of the facts. It rests with the pub- lic to lay his statement beside their experience and observation, and thus take measure of the fidelity of his art. He notes the variety of motives by which people are actuated in the choice of husbands and wives. In the novel called The Woodland- ers, Grace Melbury, the daughter of a rich though humbly -born yeoman, has unusual opportunities for a girl of her class, and is edu- cated to a point of physical and intellectual daintiness which make her seem superior to THOMAS HARDY loj her home environment. Her father has hoped that she will marry her rustic lover, Giles Win- terbourne, who, by the way, is a man in every fibre of his being. Grace is quite unspoiled by her life at a fashionable boarding school, but after her return her father feels (and Hardy makes the reader feel) that in marrying Giles she will sacrifice herself. She marries Dr. Fitzspiers, a brilliant young physician, recently come into the neighborhood, and in so doing she chooses for the worse. The character of Dr. Fitzspiers is summarized in a statement he once made (presumably to a male friend) that ' on one occasion he had noticed himself to be possessed by five distinct infatuations at the same time.' His flagrant infidelities bring about a tem- porary separation ; Grace is not able to compre- hend ' such double and treble-barreled hearts.' When finally they are reunited the life-problem of each still awaits an adequate solution. For the motive which brings the girl back to her husband is only a more complex phase of the same motive which chiefly prompted her to marry him. Hardy says that Fitzspiers as a lover acted upon Grace 'like a dram.' His presence ' threw her into an atmosphere which biased her doings untU the influence was over.' Afterward she felt ' something of the nature of regret for the mood she had experienced.' But this same story contains two other char- io6 THOMAS HARDY acters who are unmatched in fiction as the incarnation of pure love and self-forgetfulness. Giles Winterbourne, whose devotion to Grace is without wish for happiness which shall not imply a greater happiness for her, dies that no breath of suspicion may fall upon her. He in turn is loved by Marty South with a com- pleteness which destroys all thought of self. She enjoys no measure of reward while Winter- bourne lives. He never knows of Marty's love. But in that last fine paragraph of this remark- able book, when the poor girl places the flow- ers upon his grave she utters a little lament which for beauty, pathos, and realistic simpli- city is without parallel in modern fiction. Hardy was never more of an artist than when writing the last chapter of The Woodlanders. After all, a book in which unselfish love is described in terms at once just and noble can- not be dangerously pessimistic, even if it also takes cognizance of such hopeless cases as a man with a chronic tendency to fluctuations of the heart. The matter may be put briefly thus : In Hardy's novels one sees the artistic result of an effort to paint life as it is, with much of its joy and a deal of its sorrow, with its good peo- ple and its selfish people, its positive characters and its Laodiceans, its men and women who dominate circumstances, and its unhappy ones who are submerged. These books are the THOMAS HARDY 107 record of what a clear-eyed, sane, vigorous, sympathetic, humorous man knows about life ; a man too conscious of things as they are to wish grossly to exaggerate or to disguise them ; and at the same time so entirely aware how much poetry as well as irony God has mingled in the order of the world as to be incapable of concealing that fact either. He is of such ample intellectual frame that he makes the petty contentions of literary schools appear foolish. I find a measure of Hardy's mind in passages which set forth his conception of the preciousness of life, no matter what the form in which life expresses itself. He is pecul- iarly tender toward brute creation. In that paragraph which describes Tess discovering the wounded pheasants in the wood, Hardy suggests the thought, quite new to many peo- ple, that chivalry is not confined to the rela- tions of man to man or of man to woman. There are stUl weaker fellow-creatures in Na- ture's teeming family. What if we are unman- nerly or unchivalrous toward them .' He abounds in all manner of pithy sayings, many of them wise, a few of them profound, and not one which is unworthy a second read- ing. It is to be hoped that he will escape the doubtful honor of being dispersedly set forth in a 'Wit and Wisdom of Thomas Hardy.' Such books are a depressing species of literature and seem chiefly designed to be given away at holi- io8 THOMAS HARDY day time to acquaintances who are too impor- tant to be put off with Christmas cards, and not important enough to be suppUed with gifts of a calculable value. One must praise the immense spirit and viva- city of scenes where something in the nature of a struggle, a moral duel, goes on. In such passages every power at the writer's command is needed ; unerring directness of thought, and words which clothe this thought as an athlete's garments fit the body. Everything must count, and the movement of the narrative must be sustained to the utmost. The chess-plapng scene between Elfride and Knight in A Pair of Blue Eyes is an illustration. Sergeant Troy displaying his skill in handling the sword — weaving his spell about Bathsheba in true snake fashion, is another example. Still more brilliant is the gambling scene in The Return of the Native, where Wildeve and Diggory Venn, out on the heath in the night, throw dice by the light of a lantern for Thomasin's money. Venn, the reddleman, in the Mephistophelian garb of his profession, is the incarnation of a good spirit, and wins the guineas from the clutch of the spendthrift husband. The scene is immensely dramatic, with its accompani- ments of blackness and silence, Wildeve's hag- gard face, the circle of ponies, known as heath- croppers, which are attracted by the light, the death's-head moth which extinguishes the can- THOMAS HARDY 109 die, and the finish of the game by the light of glow-worms. It is a glorious bit of writing in true bravura style. His books have a quality which I shall ven- ture to call ' spaciousness,' in the hope that the word conveys the meaning I try to express. It is obvious that there is a difference between books which are large and books which are merely long. The one epithet refers to atmo- sphere, the other to number of pages. Hardy writes large books. There is room in them for the reader to expand his mind. They are distinctly out-of-door books, 'not smacking of the cloister or the library.' In reading them one has a feeling that the vault of heaven is very high, and that the earth stretches away to interminable distances upon all sides. This quality of largeness is not dependent upon number of pages; nor is length absolute as applied to books. A book may contain one hundred pages and still be ninety-nine pages too long, for the reason that its truth, its les- son, its literary virtue, are not greater than might be expressed in a single page. Spaciousness is in even less degree dependent upon miles. The narrowness, geographically speaking, of Hardy's range of expression is notable. There is much contrast between him and Stevenson in this respect. The Scotch- man has embodied in his fine books the experi- ences of life in a dozen different quarters of IK> THOMAS HARDY tbe ^obe. Hadtf^ vith i:^i£e lobiet hal^ lastianpekd fitoa Rvtlarad to BaCih.aBid £nm 'WiBtQncester* to - Exnainaj,' — j amqaii bsrcly r=>^ne sennas dnm firaa tfae bfaae bed to file farown. And it is beoer thas. Xo leader of 71r IlMAarm «f ite Jimiiix vqe^ kinre been ccn^eitf that: Saslaaa "Vje ysaald pexsBEsde ber bv^BJod back to F^ris. Raiker than &e bode- Trrdsooeprelias^^gdaRbeai^ss Haanfypnts il^ "tbe gr^r infiolate piao^' ^e -mcaraable Mnaadk^h dia^' vbicb is aanit«BeBj, Gti- batKjsi, ci»Maat snbdoe. He is vilbcxe question ooe of ir^e best vxit- eis of ccr tn^ vbedier Cor ooaaedf or for trage^: amd for estianagaiiza^ too^ 25 vitaess bis ^neLy &ite ealkd Tkt Mmmd jf £AiS«TiK. He C3Z1 write Sakgoe or deso^tiEn. He is so escdfemt i& eidier tint eiUier, 3s ym lead k. a^qpeass to make for yorar U^test pfeasase. If bis cbaiacters talk, jou wnld ^adfy barcod thin j.^ ^Rrhkh aoe in.xy read in G."..itier"s J9i>'.\'^ .;.v Kc'r.-.t.^'stK^, The narrad\-e is or.e ct r.-.uch sweetness and humosr. It oug^h: re* be tr.ir.s- kred far the baiefit erf re.\>ior? who know G-iiitiia- chiefiV by Jfadrmfs'srSU Jr Jf.txf:v and that fear reasons .uiiong^ which !ove of Hter- atnre is perhaps the least inn^iectiil I: is p!e,VN.int co and that RoHimd cvnfim-.s the popular view of Gautia-"s oharacter, M, Tiillicai sa)^ that Renduel ne^tr spcte of Gau- tiar but in pr-iise. ' «JhieI bon gr-irvvn ! ' he used to s.iy. •Qud brave cveur!" M. Jiil'.ien h-is natur.il.Y no ..it^ts nunibesr of r.ew t.-.crs to j;i\-e cvucemir.j: G.iurier. But there -tre eigiit off nine letters from Gautier ro Ker.cael w"bich win be reid with pleasure, especu!!)- the or.e in which the po<^ Svi\-s to the ptibiisher. * Hi^\-«i jHresunts of Frsftch Ktarature to learn how unt\-ers.\I'y it is; granted that Gautiar had skillful cv^mr.iand of th.it Lia- gu.ige to which he \v.is Krn. Vet he hims^ w.xs by no means sure that he des*r\-ed a raas- ter's degree. He quotes one of Gxxthes s.«y- ing^ — a sa\Tng in which the great Gi^rman CONCERNING A RED WAISTCOAT 201 poet declares that after the practice of many- arts there was but one art in which he could be said to excel, namely, the art of writing in Ger- man ; in that he was almost a master. Then Gautier exclaims, 'Would that we, after so many years of labor, had become almost a mas- ter of the art of writing in French ! But such ambitions are not for us ! ' Yet they were for him ; and it is a satisfac- tion to note how invariably he is accounted, by the artists in literature, an eminent man among many eminent men in whose touch language was plastic. STEVENSON: THE VAGABOND AND THE PHILOSOPHER A CERTAIN critic said of Stevenson that he was ' incurably literary ; ' the phrase is a good one, being both humorous and true. There is comfort in the thought that such efforts as may have been made to keep him in the path of virtuous respectability failed. Rather than do anything Stevenson preferred to loaf and to write books. And he early learned that con- siderable loafing is necessary if one expects to become a writer. There is a sense in which it is true that only lazy people are fit for litera- tiure. Nothing is so fruitful as a fine gift for idleness. The most prolific writers have been people who seemed to have nothing to do. Every one has read that description of George Sand in her latter years, ' an old lady who came out into the garden at mid-day in a broad- brimmed hat and sat doAwn on a bench or wan- dered slowly about. So she remained for hours looking about her, musing, contemplating. She was gathering impressions, absorbing the uni- verse, steeping herself in Nature ; and at night she would give all this forth as a sort of emana- VAGABOND AND PHILOSOPHER 203 tion.' One shudders to think what the result might have been if instead of absorbing the universe George Sand had done something practical during those hours. But the Scotch- man was not like George Sand in any particular that I know of save in his perfect willingness to bask in the sunshine and steep himself in Nature. His books did not 'emanate.' The one way in which he certainly did not produce literature was by improvisation. George Sand never revised her work ; it might almost be said that Robert Louis Stevenson never did any- thing else. Of his method we know this much. He himself has said that when he went for a walk he usually carried two books in his pocket, one a book to read, the other a note-book in which to put down the ideas that came to him. This remark has undoubtedly been seized upon and treasured in the memory as embodying a secret of his success. Trusting young souls have begim to walk about with note-books : only to learn that the note-book was a detail, not an essential, in the process. He who writes while he walks cannot write very much, but he may, if he chooses, write very welL He may turn over the rubbish of his vocabulary until he finds some exquisite and perfect word with which to bring out his mean- ing. This word need not be unusual ; and if it is ' exquisite ' then exquisite only in the sense 204 STEX'EXSON of being fitted with rare exactness to the idea. Stevenson wrote so well in part because he wrote so deliberately. He knew the ^-ulgarity of haste, especially in the TnaHng of literatnre: He knew that finish counted for much, per- haps for half. Has he not been reported as sa\Tng that it was n't worth a man's while to attempt to be a writa- unless he was quite will- ing to spend a day if the need were, on the turn of a single sentence? In general this means the sacrifice of earthly reward ; it means that a man must work for love and let the ra- vens feed him. That scriptural sotince has been distinctly unfruitful in these latter days, and few authors are willing to take a prophet's chances. But Stevenson was one of the few. He laid the foundations of his rq>utation with two little volumes of travel An Inlatid Voyage appeared in 1878; Travels zintlt a Donkey in ttu Cevennes, in 1879. These books are not dry chronicles of drier facts. They bear much the same relation to conventional accoimts of travel that flowers growing in a garden bear to dried plants in a herbarium. They are the most friendly and urbane things in modem English literatiu-e. They have been likened to Sterne's Sentimental Journey. The criticism would be better if one were able to imagine Stevenson writing the adventure of the fille de chambre, or could conceive of Lawrence Sterne writing the accoxmt of the meeting with VAGABOND AND PHILOSOPHER 205 the Plymouth Brother. 'And if ever at length, out of our separate and sad ways, we should all come together into one common-house, I have a hope to which I cling dearly, that my moun- tain Plymouth Brother will hasten to shalce hands with me again.' That was written twenty years ago and the Brother was an old man then. And now Stevenson is gone. How impossible it is not to wonder whether they have yet met in that ' one common-house.' ' He feared to intrude, but he would not willingly forego one moment of my society; and he seemed never weary of shaking me by the hand.' The Inland Voyage contains passages hardly to be matched for beauty. Let him who would be convmced read the description of the forest Mormal, that forest whose breath was perfumed with nothing less delicate than sweet brier. ' I wish our way had always lain among woods,' says Stevenson. 'Trees are the most civil society,' Stevenson's traveling companion was a young English baronet. The two adventurers pad- dled in canoes through the pleasant rivers and canals of Belgium and North France. They had plenty of rain and a variety of small mis- adventures ; but they also had sunshine, fresh ail", and experiences among the people of the country such as they could have got in no other way. They excited not a little wonder, and 2q6 STEVEN'S ox the common t^Hmom was that they were dsang the journey for a wajer ; there seamed ta be no other reasoii why rw: respectaMe gentie- mesi, not poor, should wcrk so hard amd get so This was conceived in a nKse advenLuruus van than a|^>ears at first sigiit. In an unsub- dued coontEy cue cfHitends with bea^s and men who are (^)eiily hostile. But when